Economics and Social Problems

October 15, 2021

Privilege and price controls make USPS too big to fail

The United States Postal Service (USPS) has come under criticism for extending first-class delivery times as part of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s 10-year plan to revitalize the agency. According to Tyler Powell and David Wessel at Brookings, “The USPS has operated at a loss since 2007.” Continue Reading...

October 12, 2021

The current labor crisis started before the pandemic and has much to teach us

The United States is facing a labor shortage of epic proportions. With over 10 million jobs currently available and almost 9 million available workers waiting on the sidelines, “the U.S. now has more job openings than any time in history,” according to NBC News. Continue Reading...

October 09, 2021

Rising to the challenges of ‘so-so automation’

Fears about job loss and human obsolescence continue to consume the cultural imagination, compounded by ongoing strides in artificial intelligence and machine learning. The job-killing robots are almost at the door, we are told, mere moments away from replacing the last traces of human inefficiency and heralding the dawn of a world without work. Continue Reading...

October 08, 2021

Hold internet companies responsible for content on their platforms, not just the government

Frances Haugen’s recent whistleblower testimony regarding Facebook will only stoke the fires of the battle heating up in courts and legislatures over provisions originally addressed in Rule 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Continue Reading...

October 01, 2021

Free trade with China is still good for us all

Doug Irwin in his seminal book Free Trade Under Fire points out that Democrats and Republicans have historically vacillated on free trade. The Democratic Party of the late 19th century up until World War II was the party of trade liberalization when Republicans consistently voted for high tariffs. Continue Reading...

September 14, 2021

‘Win-win denial’: The roots of zero-sum thinking

One of the basic insights of economics is that trade is mutually beneficial, making both parties better off than they were before. It’s a proposition about human exchange that stretches back to Adam Smith’s foundational treatise, “The Wealth of Nations.” Continue Reading...

September 10, 2021

Freedom and free stuff: How prudence preserves liberty

What is the relationship between freedom and government redistribution? Can the two coexist? Some believe there is a negative correlation between the two because free economies are often associated with less government intervention. Continue Reading...

September 09, 2021

Banning evictions poses harm for low-income renters

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down President Joe Biden’s recent renewal of the eviction mortarium as issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should come as no surprise. Continue Reading...

August 26, 2021

How America’s ‘creative class’ learned to love conformity

In 2000, columnist David Brooks wrote Bobos in Paradise, hailing the dawn of a new phase in America’s longstanding story of meritocracy. The “bobos” were a peculiar breed — part bohemian, part bourgeoisie — blurring class divides in a way that would introduce a new form of enlightened, activist citizenship in a country with an otherwise ambivalent middle class. Continue Reading...

August 23, 2021

Strong families are good for the economy – and vice versa

Families and free market economies: On the surface, they seem unrelated. We associate family with game nights, holiday traditions, and cute baby photos, while the economy is associated with the stock market, cold-hearted businessmen, and bloated corporations. Continue Reading...

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