Columnist.
Have you ever wondered why Republicans and Democrats differ in the way they think about government? I'm not talking about the difference between conservatives and liberals. Those differences are pretty apparent. But most Democrats are not all that liberal and ideology is not what drives them to the voting booth.
Two Michigan cities made the front page of The New York Times on Thursday. One concerned contaminated water in Flint, leading to lead poisoning in children. The other exposed the sorry state of the public schools in Detroit, where student test scores are abysmal, the buildings are filthy and teachers are engaged in an illegal strike.
It's been 50 years since the War on Poverty was launched and after all that time and trillions of dollars spent about one of every seven people in the country is still living below the poverty line. Everyone on the right and the left seems to agree: in the war on poverty, poverty is clearly winning. So what should be done? You may have noticed that Paul Ryan and the Republican presidential candidates were guests of the Jack Kemp Center in North Carolina the other day, trotting out their ideas on how to combat poverty.
One of the most intriguing movies I've seen in a long time is *The Big Short*. It's about the housing bubble and what we now call the Great Recession, based on Michael Lewis's bestselling book "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine." The main characters are money managers who not only realized that the housing bubble was being supported by unsustainable subprime mortgages, but also found a way to make millions of dollars from the inevitable crash. Here are 10 things moviegoers need to know.
Can you name the most contentious issue in American politics? Here's a hint. It's being fought at the federal, state and local levels. And it doesn't go away. The struggle is persistent, ongoing, unending. Here is a second hint. The issue is not gay marriage, or gun control, or police brutality and or immigration. Those issues are either settled, largely settled, isolated or completely out of the control of local and state governments.
When is the last time you heard Hillary Clinton talk about poverty? How about Barack Obama? Or Bernie Sanders? Granted, they use the word "middle class" a lot. But when is the last time you heard them talk about what they want to do for the "poor"? I can't remember.
Why did it take so long? I don't know. But it's happened. Students at Princeton University have discovered that the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs on their campus is named after … well … after Woodrow Wilson.
Are you confused about how Barack Obama thinks about the War on Terror? How about Hillary Clinton? What about the editorial page of The New York Times? If you can't make sense of anything you hear or read, there is a reason for that. How they really think is rarely ever made explicit and never debated or publicly discussed. Until now. Here are ten bad ideas implicit in most left-wing commentary on this topic.
Suppose your best friend is down on her luck. Magnanimously, you give her a spare room in your house, on a temporary basis, and when she starts earning some income, you let her pay rent — say, $100 a week. You would think that just about everybody would applaud you. After all, your act of charity has prevented one more person from becoming homeless. But not everybody is happy with that result. The hotel industry doesn't like it for selfish reasons. Progressive politicians don't like it because … well, it's not always clear why progressives think the way they do.
If an employer could hire a woman to do the same job as a man for one-fourth less pay, who do you think the employer is going to hire? The woman or the man? That's a no brainer. Or, a least it's a no brainer if employers care anything about making a profit. But if you listen to Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail, we are being asked to believe that is exactly what is happening. And it's not just one employer. In order for there to be persistent differences in what men and women are paid for the same work, entire industries have to be discriminating.
Strike up a conversation with any taxi cab driver or any fry cook at a roadside diner and the word "inequality" is unlikely to ever come up.
Writing about Republicans in U.S. House of Representatives, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says Paul Ryan is "basically, the best con man they've got." He goes on to characterize the modern Republican Party" as "a post-policy enterprise, which doesn't do real solutions to real problems."
While politicians seem to never tire of proposing new ways to regulate the workplace, I want to propose a radically different idea: get government out of the workplace altogether. If that's too radical for you, here is a compromise proposal: allow parallel systems under which workers in the same industry can choose to work as employees or work as independent contractors in an essentially unregulated labor market.
Why Isn’t the Economy Growing Faster?
Pope Francis's visit to Cuba and the United States and his previous efforts to bring about a rapprochement between the two countries brings the world's attention to three facts. First, Cuba is one of two remaining communist countries in the world — countries dedicated to the belief that individuals have a duty to live for the state. Second, although the United States does not have the freest economy in the world (Hong Kong and Singapore get that honor and we now rank number 16!), it is the symbolic fountainhead of capitalism — a country whose founding document proclaims the right of everyone to pursue their own happiness. Three, there are still people in the world who contend that communism is better.
Bernie Sanders is angry. Who is he angry at? Rich people. Why rich people? That's not clear. At Liberty University, Sanders complained about a small number of people who have "huge yachts, and jet planes and tens of billions" while others "are struggling to feed their families." In Madison Wisconsin, Sanders called for a "political revolution against greed."
Stanford University economist Thomas Sowell was asked the other day whether the understanding of basic economics has been elevated in political discussions over time. His answer? Economic literacy hasn't gotten better. It's gotten worse. "At one time you had a lot of people who hadn't had any economics saying foolish things. Now you have well-known economists saying foolish things," he said. Although he didn't name names, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman must rank high on the list of guilty parties. There was a time, not long ago, when The New York Times called for a zero minimum wage and Krugman agreed with them. The reason? A minimum wage law isn't just a restriction on employers. It's also a restriction on workers.
First the good news. The federal government's tax receipts are coming in at a rate somewhat higher than what was expected a few months ago. That means a shut-down-the-government debt limit stalemate will be pushed back until November or December. It also means that the federal debt will actually decline a bit this year. Now for the bad news. We are experiencing the calm before the storm. The Congressional Budget Office reported Tuesday that although our fiscal situation is improving, by 2018 we will snap back to swelling deficits and unsustainable debt.
Last Saturday I made a first-ever visit to the down town Dallas Police Department to fill out a report. I had never been to a police department before. My only image of one was the police station I had seen on the television series *Hill Street Blues*. Unlike the television show, the building I approached was thoroughly modern — constructed of glass and steel. I was impressed. Also unlike the television show, the building was locked. Locked? Yes locked. The police take off on weekends? Apparently. From what I remember, people walked in and out of the *Hill Street Blues* police station at any time night or day. It was part of the community. Not in Dallas.
Our health care system and our system of higher education have a lot more in common than you might think. As I explained in a previous column at Forbes, in both systems a third-party payer pays a good portion of the bill, leaving consumers and producers with perverse incentives to take advantage of it. The financing of both systems is dysfunctional. There is much waste and inefficiency. And low-income families are the least well served.
