The shutdown recession from February to April 2020 was devastating, and the costly effects of the policy errors since then have been large and long-lasting. There must be a return to the dignity and permanent value of work instead of dependency on government from Washington’s big-government agenda and mandates related to COVID-19. The U.S. labor...
The fact that our nation’s unemployment rate is approaching the low rate of 3.5% that was reached just prior to the pandemic should be a cause for celebration. But for a variety of reasons, the official unemployment number is misleading. The employment situation is not as rosy as it may seem. There is a wide...
The economic shock from the shutdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were unprecedented. Never had state governors imposed stay-at-home orders that cut people off from their lives and livelihoods. Those costly policies were bad enough, but then came historic increases in deficit spending and money creation. While these may have been well-intentioned policies early...
When Uvea was 9, Oregon’s foster care agency couldn’t find a placement in-state, so it sent her to Montana—to a poorly supervised facility where she was drugged, physically restrained and verbally abused by facility staff. “Can I say the two words she called me?” Uvea asked a lawmaker during a later legislative hearing. “They made...
Americans have less money than they had last year—though taxes haven’t been raised. So what’s the problem? Inflation, which has increased at a 40-year high annual pace of 7.9%. It acts as a hidden tax because we don’t see it listed on our tax bills, but we sure see less money on our bank accounts....
In recent years, there’s been a growing consensus that the “Success Sequence” is a key pathway to avoiding poverty. Unfortunately, this prevailing theory doesn’t fully account for circumstances beyond one’s control. We need a more holistic approach to poverty prevention and alleviation. Brookings Institution fellows Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill originally coined the “Success Sequence”...
An MSNBC headline reporting on a recent interview of a White House economic advisor Jared Bernstein claimed that America has a “booming economy.” But that’s not what most Americans think about the economic situation. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index for March, which gauges how consumers feel about the economy, fell to a decade...
We should be able keep what we purchase outright. But that’s not the case with real estate in Texas. Even if a mortgage is paid, many homeowners struggle to afford their yearly local property tax bill. This forces too many Texans to lose their homes. And renters who pay more because of skyrocketing property taxes...
It’s bad enough when politicians enact witless economic policies with huge price tags, but it’s even worse when those policies destroy American lives and livelihoods. New research shows that this will be the pandemic-era legacy of the politicians that forcibly closed businesses, made people stay home, then incentivized millions of out-of-work Americans to give up...
Watching the screen on a gas pump while filling your vehicle’s tank is liable to induce a panic attack. Paying for a used car almost requires taking out a second mortgage. Speaking of mortgages, members of the middle class are being priced out of the housing market as home prices march relentlessly upward. Many price increases are...
The media is quick to explain away the runaway inflation that is squeezing American families and darkening the prospects of Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. “The U.S. economy has been hit with increased gas prices, inflation, and supply-chain issues due to the Ukraine crisis,” CBS News tweeted on Tuesday. Its article went on to...
We think about poverty all wrong. And because we think about poverty all wrong, much of our approach to alleviating it is wrong. Thus, poverty stubbornly persists and the trillions of dollars we spend barely nudges the needle to long-term poverty relief. The problem is the disconnect between what poverty really is and what our public policies are trying to solve. A clear...