Socioeconomics

April 18, 2016

Should we give smartphones to the homeless?

Across the globe, extreme poverty has been reduced by the advent and ubiquity of a simple tool: cell phones. As USAID says, mobile phones “fundamentally transform the way people in the developing world interact with one another and their governments, and access basic health, education, business and financial services.” Continue Reading...

April 07, 2016

Minimum Wage Advocates: ‘Sure a $15 Wage Will Increase Unemployment. So What?’

In almost every long-term clash over a cultural or political policy, there comes a point that I’d call the “comfort-level concession.” If the agenda of one side has been won — or has at least moved sufficiently toward achieving victory — the winning side often feels comfortable making concessions about claims that they may have previously denied. Continue Reading...

March 30, 2016

10 Things You Should Know About the Minimum Wage Debate

Since 1938, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced the first federal minimum wage in the U.S., a debate has raged about whether wage floors help or hurt workers. But thanks to a radical economic experiment in California, we may be only a few years away from having a definitive answer. Continue Reading...

January 07, 2016

Americans Say Government is Our Greatest Problem

What is the worst problem facing America? According to a recent Gallup poll, most Americans agree with former President Reagan, who said government is not a the solution, government is the problem. Continue Reading...

January 04, 2016

Why Minimum Wages Increases Don’t Target Poverty

If you ask most people why they support raising the minimum wage they’ll says it’s because it helps the poor. But as David Neumark, a scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco notes, numerous studies have shown that there is no statistically significant relationship between raising the minimum wage and reducing poverty. Continue Reading...

December 29, 2015

Why Does the New York Times Want to Hurt the Poor?

While it may be difficult to imagine, there was once an era when the New York Times was concerned about the poor. Consider, for example, a 1987 editorial they ran with the headline, “The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00.” Continue Reading...

December 22, 2015

The Most Important (Good) News Story of 2015

From mass shootings to terrorist attacks, political incompetence to racial unrest, there has been no shortage of bad news stories in 2015. Death, destruction, and divisiveness tend to dominate the news cycle, leading us to despair over the direction our world is headed. Continue Reading...

December 14, 2015

Why Poverty Figures Can Be Misleading

What if told you that between 90-100 percent of Americans are living in “healthcare poverty.” You would probably object and say that while the country certainly has a healthcare crisis, my numbers are surely inflated. Continue Reading...

December 07, 2015

The Federal ‘Anti-Poverty’ Program that Taxes the Poor

Imagine you’re at the checkout line at the supermarket and the clerk asks how much income your family earns each year. Offended, you ask why that is any of her business. Continue Reading...

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