If you get past the over-the-top political rhetoric—that special interests are “trying to steal” a benefit conferred by private employers to their employees—this is exactly the kind of policy discussion we should be having: What’s more fundamental, liberty or “local democracy”? In her Dallas Morning News opinion piece, New America’s Lydia Bean takes the local...
The issue of persistent poverty in many of America’s urban centers is once again in the news. U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson commented this week that when, as pediatric neurosurgeon, he had a young patient from East Baltimore, he faced a “horrible dilemma,” when having to discharge patients back to homes, “infested...
In his argument earlier this month before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Robert Henneke once again demonstrated how Obamacare’s individual mandate provision harms hard-working, law-abiding citizens. (Full disclosure: I too work for the Texas Public Policy Foundation.) Henneke represents individuals who continue to be injured by the Affordable Care Act — working Americans whose...
Ongoing blackouts in New York City offer a wakeup call: If you enjoy electricity, then the Green New Deal isn’t for you. Thousands in the Big Apple are still dealing with power outages as work continues on the mechanical issues behind last week’s massive blackout in Brooklyn, when over 70,000 customers went without power for hours,...
When President Trump signed the First Step Act into law in December 2018, he was flanked by conservative senators and law enforcement officials. They were on hand to see him enact a carefully cultivated collection of criminal justice reforms, emulating on the federal level smart policy changes already successfully passed in red states such as...
Low state tax rates appear to be driving faster job growth since President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 into law in December of that year. The law limited state and local tax (SALT) deductions for individual income tax filers who itemized to $10,000 per household, having the economic effect of...
If a man is from Texas, he’ll tell you, Chicago Journalist John Gunther once wrote. If he’s not, why embarrass him by asking? It’s true that Texans are plain-spoken. And for years, Texas taxpayers have told their lawmakers that property taxes are just too high, and getting higher at an unsustainable pace. And we have...
The Trump administration’s new asylum rule will limit the ability of Central Americans to claim asylum at the southwest border. If implemented, it might ease overcrowding at border detention facilities in the near term. But the rule, announced Monday, is at best a stopgap measure, not a permanent solution. The border crisis will never end until we overhaul...
Eric Helland and Alex Tabarrok’s new book, Why Are the Prices So D*mn High?, has reignited a debate about why the costs of higher education to students and taxpayers have grown so quickly. Their answer traces back to an idea put forth a half-century ago by economists William Baumol and William G. Bowen. Traditionally referred to as Baumol’s...
Many cities have jumped on the bandwagon of renewable energy initiatives in recent years. In Central Texas alone, Austin, Georgetown, and now San Antonio – who all maintain a municipally-owned electricity provider from which their residents are forced to purchase electricity– have pursued “green” initiatives in a highly touted trend toward the increased use of...
America’s criminal justice system at its breaking point. For decades, we’ve been addicted to more: more people convicted of drug offenses in prison; more prosecutors putting people in prison; and more money spent on prosecutors putting people in prison. These policies have not made us safer, haven’t addressed the root causes of crime and haven’t...
In almost any other political environment, the United States would be the hero of this story — we are a world leader in reducing pollution (even as the economy roars ahead and people prosper) and our environment is cleaner than ever. At the same time, the draconian actions of the world’s self-proclaimed climate leaders (similar...