AUTOMATION & THE FUTURE OF WORK

Why do prime-age men prefer not to work for a living. @larry_kudlow Scott Winship @swinshi Director of Social Capital Project, Joint Economic Committee, Office of Vice Chairman @senmikelee .
• The inactive, not the unemployed, are behind falling male work rates. While it became more difficult for job seekers to find work starting in the 1970s, the decline in work was primarily a consequence of more men not looking for work; that is, of rising inactivity. The inactivity rate for prime-age men rose from under 2 percent in 1930 to 4 percent in 1970 and to 11.5 percent by 2016.

• While many observers assume that increasing inactivity rates reflect more men “dropping out” of the labor force out of frustration with the job market, relatively few prime-age inactive men fit the picture. Just 3 percent meet the official federal definition of a “discouraged worker,” and in 2014 just 7 percent of prime-age men inactive the entire preceding year said their reason for not working was that they could not find a job. The increase in their ranks accounted for just 9 percent of the rise in full-year inactivity from 1968 to 2014.

Few inactive men say they want a job in a typical week, and most of the increase in inactivity has involved men who do not want a job. This study estimates that only about one in four inactive men in 2014 wanted a job, and only about 25 percent of the increase in inactivity in a typical week from 1969 to 2014 involved men who wanted a job. Less than one-third of non-disabled inactive men want a job.

• Increasing male inactivity has been accompanied by rising, not falling, pay. After accounting for inflation, median pay among all men was higher by 23 to 31 percent in 2016 than in 1967, and the pay of less-skilled workers was 10 percent higher.

• Understanding why prime-age male inactivity has risen requires focusing on disability. No fewer than 58 percent of prime-age inactive men report being disabled. While they make up a smaller share of inactive men than in the past, they still play a major role in rising inactivity.

https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/winship_malelaborparticipation_mr-rs_media_v2.pdf

Schooling success isn't about the money. Eric Hanushek, Paul Peterson, @hooverinst.

"...Coleman found that variations in per-pupil expenditure had little correlation with student outcomes. Although this was one of the key findings of the report, little attention was paid to this inconvenient fact. At the time, the Johnson administration was trumpeting a federally funded compensatory education program that was supposed to equalize educational opportunity by concentrating more funding on students living in low-income neighborhoods. But the finding gradually assumed greater importance in policy debates, as extensive subsequent research engendered by the Coleman Report reinforced this conclusion.

"A defining moment came in the 1970s, when the California Supreme Court in Serrano v. Priest decided that in order to ensure equal educational opportunity for all children, all school districts in California must spend equal amounts per pupil, instigating a wave of school-finance court cases across the country. If expenditures must be equal in order for opportunity to be equal, then the amount spent per pupil must be critically important to student learning. Despite the Coleman findings, the claim that money matters was routinely made in courtrooms in nearly every state, provoking a bevy of research on the effects of school expenditure on student achievement. This is not the place to explore a debate that has relied on a mixture of scientific evidence, professional punditry, and misleading claims. Given the fiscal stakes involved, it is hardly surprising that the conversations have been politically charged and have led to an ongoing battle under the misleading sobriquet “money doesn’t matter...."

http://educationnext.org/what-matters-for-student-achievement/?utm_source=Hoover+Daily+Report&utm_campaign=5b5a41e166-New_HDR_Live_8_17_158_17_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_21b1edff3c-5b5a41e166-72527561

THE HIGH COST OF GOOD INTENTIONS:  ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS IN AMERIKA
AMAZON BOOKS a.co/6S174Ka
Federal entitlement programs are strewn throughout the pages of U.S. history, springing from the noble purpose of assisting people who are destitute through no fault of their own. Yet as federal entitlement programs have grown, so too have their inefficiency and their cost. Neither tax revenues nor revenues generated by the national economy have been able to keep pace with their rising growth, bringing the national debt to a record peacetime level.
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The High Cost of Good Intentions is the first comprehensive history of these federal entitlement programs. Combining economics, history, political science, and law, John F. Cogan reveals how the creation of entitlements brings forth a steady march of liberalizing forces that cause entitlement programs to expand. This process―as visible in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as in the present day―is repeated until benefits are extended to nearly all who could be considered eligible, and in turn establishes a new base for future expansions. His work provides a unifying explanation for the evolutionary path that nearly all federal entitlement programs have followed over the past two hundred years, tracing both their shared past and the financial risks they pose for future generations.

HOOVER INSTITUTION:  THE HIGH COST OF GOOD INTENTIONS

Republicans need tax principles. Like these. 
Michael R. Strain | Bloomberg ViewMichael Strain argues that effective tax reform should be guided by big-picture goals and principles. Strain outlines some of these goals such as a tax system that treats similarly situated people equally and reform that encourages long-run economic growth. He believes that tax reform needs to both reduce distortions and encourage fiscal responsibility to promote economic growth. Strain argues that the primary purpose of the tax system is to provide the government with revenue -- that revenue should be raised in the least distortive way possible.

Best part of Republican tax plan is repeal of the state tax deduction 
Alex Brill | The HillAlex Brill argues in favor of repealing the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, believing it would be an important move toward broadening the tax base. He believes that repealing the SALT deduction alone can finance a cut in the top tax rate to 35 percent and a reduction in other rates, preserve the tax code’s progressivity, substantially increase the number of taxpayers on the standard deduction, and cut taxes for half of all filers. Brill elaborates on and provides a graphical illustration of the SALT deduction here. His illustrations show that by removing the unfair tax advantage people in high-tax states currently have, this change will result in a tax cut for 80 million taxpayers.

AEI tax brief: The child tax credit versus the earned income tax credit 
Aparna Mathur and Cody Kallen | AEI AEI Tax Briefs aim to offer insights using open source models. In this AEI Tax Brief, Aparna Mathur and Cody Kallen explore doubling the child tax credit and expanding the earned income tax credit. They find that the benefits of the EITC expansion would be more concentrated among low-income households, but the benefits of doubling the child tax credit can spread across the income distribution.

Single payer: What is it? 
Joseph Antos | AEIdeas

Implications of Medicaid financing reform for state government budgets 
Jeffrey Clemens and Benedic N. Ippolito | National Bureau of Economic ResearchIn their most recent NBER working paper, Jeffrey Clemens and Benedic Ippolito analyze the potential reforms to Medicaid financing through the lens of fiscal federalism. They argue that because Medicaid plays a prominent role in state government finances, Medicaid financing reforms have significant fiscal implications. Their paper assesses the implications of alternative Medicaid financing structures along several dimensions. The authors’ analysis helps illustrate how the design of federal transfers shapes states’ incentives and therefore helps determine the generosity of the redistribution that occurs through states’ Medicaid programs.

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