Testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee recently, I was asked by Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) if, with respect to higher education, I would favor eliminating the US Department of Education. She was aghast when I said “yes.” Before I go into the damage our national educational ministry has done to higher […]
How big is the distinction between education and indoctrination? Not terribly, if you ask some Tennessee lawmakers. They are pushing to remove any mention of religion from Tennessee’s State Academic Standards. At issue is an apparently controversial unit in seventh grade world history class that spends some time exploring Islam. At some point, the students […]
Will restricting housing options for the wealthy benefit the poor? Is more regulation the solution to problems created by past regulations? And how can we avoid the interventionist cycle that Ludwig von Mises warned us about? Critics of Airbnb are not asking these questions. In California, they have proposed stringent regulations to reign in the […]
Rising home prices and apartment rents have been in the news lately, but almost no one is looking at the real causes behind these problems. Instead, they are proposing band-aid solutions that will do little to help most people afford housing but will greatly benefit special interest groups. According to the news, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Portland, San Francisco–Oakland, San […]
Earlier this week, the Chinese Communist Party rolled back one of the most egregiously illiberal vestiges of its bloody recent past by replacing the one-child policy with a new and improved limit of two children. Going forward, urban Chinese are permitted legally to grow their families slightly larger than before, even if their first child is […]
People Need a Way to Decide Who Gets What. “The motives of fear and greed are what the market brings to prominence,” argues G.A. Cohen in Why Not Socialism? “One’s opposite-number marketeers are predominantly seen as possible sources of enrichment, and as threats to one’s success.” Cohen further notes that these are “horrible ways of […]
As I’ve written before, the case for “free” college is decrepit, and Bernie Sanders’s op-ed in the Washington Post does nothing to bolster it. It sounds wonderful to say “everyone, go get a free education!” but of course it wouldn’t be free — taxpayers would have to foot the bill — and more importantly, it would spur […]
Apple just rolled out its high-definition voice protocol, and it’s amazing. It’s like the person is standing next to you. You can hear everything crystal clear, even slight breathing inflections. That new technology gives it an edge over the competition. And there’s plenty of it. You can make voice calls on the Facebook app, on […]
The question of the importance of family structure, specifically marriage, is back in the limelight. Conservatives are promoting three papers that provide some strong evidence that children raised by married parents do better along a number of dimensions than those raised in other household forms. For many commentators, this makes for a strong case against […]
“The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.” Senator Bernie Sanders first said those words in 1974 and has been repeating them ever since. Senator Sanders is not alone in his belief. Three out of four Americans agree with the statement, “Today it’s really true that the rich just get richer while the poor get poorer.” Senator Sanders […]
I spend a lot of time talking and writing about the minimum wage. I do so because it sears my economist’s soul to encounter a policy that is as popular with people as it is poorly understood by them. Opinion polls consistently show that an overwhelming portion of Americans — about 75 percent — support […]
Hundreds of thousands people will lose their insurance plans as a raft of health insurance cooperatives (CO-OPs) created by the Affordable Care Act will cease operations. Just last week, CO-OPs in Oregon, Colorado, Tennessee and Kentucky announced that they would be winding down operations due to lower than expected enrollment and solvency concerns (although the […]
“This book is too dangerous for the general public,” the Bavarian State Library’s historian told the Washington Post. Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf is about to join the ranks of public domain texts as Bavaria’s 70-year-old copyright comes to an end in December. Contrary to popular belief, the book was never banned by the German government. […]
Bernie Sanders has tapped into a frenzied millennial base by proposing “free” college tuition (that is, tuition paid for by the government). Bachelor degrees are pitched as the primary means by which individuals can gain skills and increase their incomes, so skyrocketing tuition is becoming a hot election topic. But are more subsidies to the university […]
“Sometimes standing against evil is more important than defeating it,” wrote novelist N.D. Wilson. “The greatest heroes stand because it is right to do so, not because they believe they will walk away with their lives. Such selfless courage is a victory in itself.” In the last six of his 49 years of life, brought […]