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DiSalvo and Jordan McGillis dive deep into the facts and figures underlying the ballooning pension obligations for our country’s superstar cities.
Uncertainty and Inflation
By Allison SchragerPolicymakers take comfort that longer term inflation expectations still hover around 2%. That seems to suggest that eventually the pre-pandemic low inflation/low interest rate world will soon return and the Fed still has the credibility it needs to conduct monetary policy. READ HERE
The Fed should heed the IMF’s credit-crunch warning before throwing us into a hard economic landing
Judging by its latest World Economic Report, the International Monetary Fund is well aware of credit-cycle risks.
It’s Time for a New Nuclear Posture Review by Robert Peters
Stress Testing American Grand Strategy II: Critical Assumptions and Great-Power Rivalry
Hal Brands, Peter D. Feaver, and William Inboden | American Enterprise Institute
Medicare And Social Security: Tackle Them Now
by David R. Henderson via Defining Ideas The budget crunch is real. Fortunately, there are also real ways to master it.
Budget deficits continue to soar in Washington as the President proposes yet another tax increase. As a reminder, the Treasury Department has projected that the government will breach the debt limit around the third quarter of this year. In his latest for National Review, MI’s Brian Riedl notes that eye-watering deficits no longer generate much fanfare. He explores the implications of the latest CBO projections, including their impact on funding for Medicare and Social Security.
Issue Brief: Supply-Side Solutions to Boost Growth and Lower Inflation
Allison Schrager & Brian Riedl, Manhattan Institute
Hemorrhaging Losses, the Fed’s Problems Are Now the Taxpayer’s
Paul H. Kupiec and Alex J. Pollock | Hill The Federal Reserve is technically insolvent, yet due to taxpayer support, it will still issue billions in new interest-bearing liabilities. Paul H. Kupiec and Alex J. Pollock write that this deceptive tactic allows the Fed, without congressional authorization, to borrow taxpayer money to cover its losses without the borrowing or losses showing on the federal government’s ledgers. They recommend that this issue, among others, be addressed in the Fed’s next congressional appearance.
Capretta explains how both parties’ budgetary strategies are unrealistic and overlook the severity of the nation’s fiscal outlook.
Capretta and David N. Bernstein outline four additional changes to the existing price transparency rules issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to improve incentives for consumers to shop for services based on price.
Signs of Geopolitical Sanity at National Review
By Francis P. Sempa, RealClearDefense: “Ever since William F. Buckley, Jr. and his immediate successor John O’Sullivan left the helm at National Review, the once leading journal of conservatism has lost its way, especially in its coverage of foreign policy issues and its reflexive anti-Trumpism. Under editor Rich Lowry’s leadership, National Review . . ."
James L. Buckley at 100
Matthew Continetti | National Review On March 9, one of the few people to have served in high positions in all three branches of the federal government will celebrate his 100th birthday. Full Story
Clausewitz’s Analysis Resonates to This Day
By Alexander S. Burns, The National Interest: “A recently translated text by Clausewitz coincidentally describes an eighteenth-century Russian war in Ukraine and Crimea, which can impart lessons for contemporary students of strategy."
If China’s Push on Somaliland Works, Who Might Be Beijing’s Next Target?
Michael Rubin | 19fortyfive.com The China Consensus: Do Almost Nothing Derek Scissors | AEIdeas A More Hawkish China Policy? Five Takeaways from the House Committee’s Inaugural Hearing on Confronting Beijing Michael Beckley | Conversation
“Surging” hiring has not resulted in a resurgence of working-age men returning to the workforce. Companies continue to struggle filling empty roles, creating a “major hole” in the economy.
Americans and Brits alike should be careful not to learn the wrong lessons from the Truss premiership.
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Anarchy, American-Style
by Victor Davis Hanson via American GreatnessThe Left runs Oceania, and we work for their various bureaus.
Reinvigorating America’s Commercial Republic
by Peter Berkowitz via Real Clear Politics The left once possessed a near-monopoly on the critique of economic freedom. The bourgeoisie exploited the proletariat, according to Karl Marx’s classic condemnation, and the profit motive degraded property owners even as labor produced little for the laborer but physical misery and spiritual alienation.
To fully appreciate the controversy over Chevron, one must confront the dubious constitutional status of the administrative state.
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We Will Regret Our Missed Opportunities to Reform Social Security
Why Entitlement Reform Is So Hard
What Went Wrong in Britain
by daniel patterson Americans and Brits alike should be careful not to learn the wrong lessons from the Truss premiership. READ MORE ›
We Will Regret Our Missed Opportunities to Reform Social Security
Andrew G. Biggs | National Review More modest fixes to Social Security in the past would have brought the program to solvency. Now extreme, uncomfortable action is a virtual certainty.
MI’s Chris Pope provides insight into the country’s five co-operating healthcare systems. Steps to aligning these systems, such as breaking down barriers between individual- and employer-sponsored coverage, would empower consumers while managing costs.
Are income stagnation and inequality serious threats to economic prosperity in the US? Michael R. Strain debunks this popular myth and explains how recent data prove wages and incomes have grown over the past several decades.
Desmond Lachman warns that although an economic slowdown in China may lower the United States’ inflation rate, there’s a good chance that it will also push the global economy toward a serious economic recession.
James Pethokoukis considers potential trends for worldwide economic growth and what the United States must do to keep up as the tricentennial of American independence approaches.
Lachman explains why the Biden administration’s irresponsible fiscal policy, paired with a few monetary policy missteps by the Federal Reserve, has gotten the US economy into deep trouble.
Price Transparency 2.0: Helping Patients Identify and Select Providers of High-Value Medical Services
In a new AEI Economic Perspectives report, James C. Capretta and David N. Bernstein envision how policymakers can translate "bipartisan support for transparent health care prices into savings for patients and taxpayers." Capretta and Bernstein argue that recent federal price transparency rules need further reform to support consumer choice in the health care market. They outline a number of possible reforms, including universal access to posted prices and standardizing bundles of health care services. "Patients can become the driving force behind less expensive medical care," the coauthors conclude, "if the market is structured to allow them to easily identify low-cost and high-quality care based on credible pricing and outcome data."
Star Power: What the Stunning Nuclear-Fusion Breakthrough Really Means
James Pethokoukis | Faster, Please!
Labor’s Lost
In America today, we have informal labor cartels for the college-educated elite, while private sector unions for the working class are all but annihilated BY MICHAEL LIND What Can Be Done to Make Health Care More Efficient? James C. Capretta | Dispatch Excellent medical care is common in the US, but it is provided amid all-too-evident dysfunction. The fundamental problem is the absence of discipline and accountability. James C. Capretta outlines several reforms that would make the American health care system far more efficient. Full Story If You Think the Deficit Is Bad Now, It Will Soon Get Worse
Mark J. Warshawsky | Hill In July, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the federal government budget deficit would be 3.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023. The author's rough calculation is that the 2023 deficit will come in at 6.4 percent of GDP, or nearly 70 percent higher than the CBO projection.
Restoring The Fed’s Credibility?
by andrew stuattaford Paul Volcker would have been appalled by the Fed's complacent reaction to growing inflation last year, a blunder that damaged the bank's credibility. READ MORE
The Federal Reserve's Operating Losses and the Federal Budget Deficit
With the Federal Reserve on track to record operating losses for the first time since 1915, Paul H. Kupiec and Alex J. Pollock anticipate what those losses will mean for the federal deficit. "The economic reality, of course, is that Fed losses increase the government's deficit," write Kupiec and Pollock, but they also explain why the Federal Reserve's unique privileges make these losses harder to measure.
Rajan Underlines Why Even Growth Needs A Liberal Democracy
New Book On The Fed And Recent Monetary Policy ANDREY MIR How the Media Polarized Us The shift from ad revenue to the pursuit of digital subscriptions has turned journalism into post-journalism. Recent histories of America's two political parties show what it takes to win a governing majority. READ MORE › A strategy of détente with Russia and China would buy the United States time to rebuild its technological and military capabilities. READ MORE › Empire Imagined
Giselle Donnelly | State University of New York Press Empire Imagined, Giselle Donnelly’s upcoming book, offers a unique perspective for understanding the current debate about America’s role in the world. Reviewing the history of the Elizabethan age and its ties to the American colonial experience, Donnelly traces the origins of the United States’s distinct approach to war and military power.
The pseudonymous "Paracelsus" argues that America's medical system is profoundly and perhaps irretrievably broken.
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The Establishment Clause has long been used to systematically secularize American society. Those days appear to be over.
READ MORE › Democrats, Seeking To Disqualify Trump, Eye an Arcane Article of the 14th Amendment Editorial of The New York Sun | January 5, 2022 https://www.nysun.com/editorials/democrats-seeking-to-disqualify-trump-eye/91869/ Blue States Come Out for States' Rights Editorial of The New York Sun | January 6, 2022 https://www.nysun.com/editorials/blue-states-come-out-for-states-rights/91870/ Trump: Truth and Consequences Editorial of The New York Sun | January 20, 2022 https://www.nysun.com/editorials/trump-truth-and-consequences/91953/ Immigration Reform by Tom Church Immigration is a contentious topic. Reforms should focus on adequately responding to work force demands, discouraging illegal immigration, and streamlining existing barriers to immigration.Immigration Reform OPIOIDS AND THE UNATTACHED MALE By EPPC Patrick T. Brown
City Journal Policy makers should understand that the drug-overdose crisis is a crisis of single men. Read More
Specific steps to improve the fairness and sustainability of Medicaid’s financing of long-term services and supports for older Americans
Mark J. Warshawsky | AEI Economic Policy Working Paper Series This paper provides specific steps to improve the system of financing long-term services and supports for older Americans by making it fairer, more sustainable, and more consistent with the value of self-reliance. Full Story
The trouble with state and local government employee pension plans: The case of Connecticut
Mark J. Warshawsky | AEI Economic Policy Working Paper Series The political economy of health reform: Price regulation vs. regulated competition James C. Capretta | AEI Economic Perspective
Repealing the state and local tax cap: State-by-state impact
Matt Jensen and Don Boyd | American Enterprise Institute The political economy of health reform: Price regulation vs. regulated competition James C. Capretta | AEI Economic Perspectives | September 13, 2021 Increasing cost pressures in the commercial health care market Benedic N. Ippolito | American Enterprise Institute To improve the depressed cost efficiency in the commercial health care market, policymakers can deter future consolidation, expand markets of providers, and limit dominant providers’ ability to translate a lack of competition into high prices. The experts somehow overlooked authoritarians on the left
Sally Satel | The Atlantic An ideological monoculture in the discipline of psychology has damaged our collective understanding of political psychology — and, by extension, American politics. MARTIN GURRI The Breakdown of Objective Reality A crisis of authority has left the public increasingly willing to believe implausible things. James Capretta considers its social spending increases in context of existing entitlement programs. Steven Kamin breaks down inflation and the role of central banks. The entitlement train rolls on Where are the Social Security and Medicare Trustees’ reports? Letter: The price of inflation, now and in the future China’s challenge to the global economic recovery Desmond Lachman | The Hill STEVEN MALANGA An Epidemic of Bad Budgeting Covid-19 lockdowns exposed cities’ deep-seated financial troubles American Decline: A Symposium on The Decline of Nations by law & liberty editors American decline has become a regular topic of conversation among those on the right. But why do nations fail? And what has caused this new despondency about America’s future? Joseph F. Johnston addresses these questions in The Decline of Nations. From immigration to globalization, fading religious faith, centralized power, and economic stagnation, Johnston considers how […] READ MORE › But Thou Shalt Endure by david p. goldman In his indictment of America's national decline, Johnston's belief that America has the wherewithal to restore itself shines through. READ MORE › Decline on the Mind by bradford littlejohn Joseph Johnston’s study joins a long line of “decline and fall” studies attempting to glean lessons from history to avoid repeating it. READ MORE › Failure at Every Stage
What the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan tells us After Sixty Days Biden Is Drifting Into Surrealism By CONRAD BLACK, Special to the Sun | March 27, 2021 https://www.nysun.com/national/after-first-60-days-biden-is-drifting-into/91459/ A Storm Over the American Republic by Guy Millièr A Taiwan Crisis May Mark the End of the American Empire By Niall Ferguson via Bloomberg Niall Ferguson warns of China’s capability of overtaking Taiwan in the near term. He explains that the United States’ commitment to Taiwan has grown verbally stronger, even as the US has become militarily weaker relative to China in the Indo-Pacific region. He also argues that if Washington fails to deter such a crisis, it will mark the end of American predominance in Asia. Biden Should Ditch the Doha Deal with Taliban by Amir Taheri Look Who’s Embracing ‘America First’ Now Jonathan Schanzer and Mark Dubowitz — Newsweek Countless news outlets have portrayed the nascent Biden administration’s foreign policy as rapidly pivoting away from President Donald Trump‘s much-maligned “America First” approach toward “Americans together” or “America is back,” to name just a few. The implication is that the United States will no longer prioritize its narrowly defined self-interest or pursue merely transactional deals at the expense of the greater good. Read more The UN and the Illiberal International Order Clifford D. May, Emma Reilly, Orde Kittrie and Richard Goldberg — FDD's Foreign Podicy With the defeat of the Axis Powers in 1945, the United States emerged as the strongest nation on earth. But rather than emulate hegemons of the past, American leaders envisioned a new and different world order. Their goal was to organize an “international community,” establish “universal human rights,” and a growing body of “international law.” This project required new institutions, in particular the United Nations. Listen here Biden Risks Repeating Mistakes of the Past if He Ignores the Evidence on Iran Richard Goldberg — The Dispatch The U.N.’s nuclear chief on Monday all but accused Iran of lying to international inspectors about the existence of undeclared nuclear material and sites inside the country—an alarming development in an investigation that predates America’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. The statement raises an important question for the Biden administration: Will Iran be required to account for its past and present clandestine nuclear work before President Joe Biden agrees to lift U.S. sanctions? Read more What Red Line Tells Us About Syria’s Chemical Weapons
David Adesnik – The National Interest
HEATHER MAC DONALD
Trump’s Exit Encouraging a mob to target his own allies and disrupt the rule of law, the president has ended his tenure disgracefully—and emboldened the Left.
HOW THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE WORKS
7 Things You Need to Know About Today's Electoral College Vote
Dominion Voting System "Designed...to Create Systemic Fraud" by Soeren Kern
Unsatisfying Election Could Boomerang On Both Sides
By IRA STOLL, Special to the Sun | November 16, 2020 https://www.nysun.com/national/unsatisfying-election-could-boomerang-on-both/91337/ What an unsatisfying election. Opponents of President Trump were denied what they had long sought -- a resounding rejection of Trump and Trumpism by the American electorate. Hoped-for Democratic gains in congressional contests, high-profile Senate races, and state legislatures largely failed to materialize. Mr. Trump won roughly 10 million more votes than he received in 2020. The Democratic presidential ticket failed to carry such hotly contested battleground states as Iowa, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, or Texas, where the Democrats had invested substantial resources. Continue Reading
The Republican Workers Party?
https://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-republican-workers-party/91328/
MICHAEL BARONE
What the pollsters got so wrong with 2020 election I find it remarkable that polling has been as accurate as it has been — but it got worse this week. The RealClearPolitics average of recent polls showed Joe Biden…
Bum's Rush for Trump Is Biden's First Mistake
Editorial of The New York Sun | November 7, 2020 https://www.nysun.com/editorials/trying-give-the-bums-rush-to-trump-is-bidens/91330/
The Election is Not Over by Chris Farrell
In Defense of the Electoral College
Will Sellers, City Journal I came of age politically with the 1968 presidential election. Alabama governor George Wallace was running as an independent against Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. My parents were Nixon supporters, and I, their five-year-old son, hopped on the Nixon bandwagon with gusto. The dinnertime conversations in the month preceding the election were all about whether Wallace’s third-party candidacy could work. Read more here..
Trump’s Vast Deregulatory Landscape Goes Unnoticed – Casey Mulligan, E21
JONATHAN A. LESSER
The “Transition from Oil” and Other Fairy Tales Politicians promising a painless switch to renewables are deluding themselves—or more likely you.
JOHN PODHORETZ
The pollsters were wrong again — why do we listen to them? Every single major election year, they do it to us. They offer us numbers, and people...
Participation is only a part of democratic education
Frederick M. Hess | Education Week Democratic government means that we can have faith that the state's reach will be limited, our rights will be protected, and the practical consequences of an election result go only so far. |
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