 Overspent Some states consistently live beyond their means. PETER BERKOWITZ Conservatism and the People From Burke to Buckley to Trump, the Right has always had a populist current. Foundations Of Immigration Reform by Edward Paul Lazear via PolicyEdAmerica’s immigration system needs to be reformed in order to handle modern challenges of immigration. Long lines to get in exist alongside millions of undocumented immigrants already in the country. To deal with both of these problems, Congress should rebalance our system to encourage more work-based visas for those wanting to work in the US, and it should bring illegal immigrants back into the system through a special visa that puts them at the back of the line for permanent residency. Which Adds More To The Deficit? Defense Spending Or Social Security & Medicare? via Budget Matters via America Off BalanceDeficits are projected to permanently top one trillion dollars by 2021. And while the drivers of long-term spending growth come overwhelmingly from Medicare, Social Security, and net interest on the debt, a common claim is that defense spending is a bigger fiscal problem than entitlements because defense doesn’t have any dedicated revenue that helps offset its cost. The Risky Business Of Public Pensions
by Joshua D. Rauh via PolicyEdState and local governments all around the country have failed to set aside enough money to pay for the pensions they have promised to workers in the public sector. They’re also making unrealistic assumptions about their future investment returns, further risking their budgets and the ability to pay for promised pension benefits. Confronting the true cost of future pension payments would force state and local governments to save more now and prevent budget problems in the future.
Too Much Democracy?
A new book argues that the problem with the U.S. political system is not insufficient participation but weakened parties. CONNOR HARRIS Potemkin MTA Reform The Cuomo–de Blasio plan ignores the subway system’s deepest problems.
Trump Signals a Great Debate on Socialism
Editorial of The New York Sun | March 4, 2019 https://www.nysun.com/editorials/trump-or-the-road-to-serfdom/90595/ Not since Lincoln and Douglas can we remember a call to a national election debate like that which President Trump has been sounding in respect of socialism. He laid this marker in his State of the Union speech, vowing that America would never be a socialist country. He picked up the theme in his speech at CPAC, offering a taste of how the issue will sound in the campaign now gathering. Continue Reading  Getting Serious About Infrastructure Nicole Gelinas, Washington Times California’s indefinite delay of its high-speed rail spine isn’t a failure of a technology that works well from France to Japan. For advocates of a Green New Deal or even a less ambitious vision of a less car-dependent America, it’s even worse than that. It’s a failure of progressive Democrats to execute big, complex infrastructure projects — the last legacy of the Obama stimulus. Most new governors use their inaugural State of the State speech to announce grand plans. New California Gov. Gavin Newsom used his to end a grand plan. Read more here.... Where Millennials Really Go for Jobs
Joel Kotkin & Wendell Cox, City Journal When Amazon decided to locate its second headquarters in New York, it cited the supposed advantages of the city’s talent base. Now that progressive politicians have chased Amazon out of town, the tech booster chorus has been working overtime to prove that Gotham, and other big, dense, expensive cities, are destined to become “tech towns” anyway, because of their young, motivated labor pools. That argument may sound great to New York Times readers or on local talk shows, but it is increasingly untrue. Read more here....  Moms Matter: Evidence on the Gender Wage Gap, Parental Influence, Welfare Reform
Lyman Stone, E21 Do moms really matter? The question seems almost too obvious to ask: of course moms matter! But the extent to which parents or parenting matter for child outcomes is hotly debated. Some researchers have suggested that parents really don’t have much influence on how children develop. But new research supports the idea that parenting counts. Using data on tens of thousands of Israeli students in the 1980s and 1990s, a team of researchers has provided compelling new proof that parents influence kids. Read more here....  How to restore separation of powers John Yoo and James C. Phillips | NationalReview.com The separation of powers is not just about the separation of powers. It’s also about religious liberty, free speech, due process, and every other liberty the Constitution protects and all those not enumerated in its text. Who's Afraid Of Budget Deficits? I Am. by David R. Henderson via Defining IdeasTaking issue with Jason Furman and Larry Summers Who's Afraid Of Budget Deficits?
by David R. Henderson via EconLogIn a provocative article in Foreign Affairs titled “Who’s Afraid of Budget Deficits?” Jason Furman and Lawrence H. Summers argue that we should not worry much about the federal government’s large and growing budget deficits. While they admit that politicians and policymakers “shouldn’t ignore fiscal constraints entirely,” they say that they “should focus on urgent social problems, not deficits.”
Native American Heritage: It's Not What You Think
by Terry Anderson, Wendy Purnell via Defining IdeasThe ideas defining a free Native American society.  "FDD's Research Assessment: Cyber,"Annie Fixler and David Maxwell, Midterm Assessment: The Trump Administration's Foreign and National Security Policies "FDD's Midterm Assessment: Economic Security," Juan C. Zarate, Midterm Assessment: The Trump Administration's Foreign and National Security Policies
 Chart Of The Day: The Inverse Relationship Between The Top Marginal Income Tax Rate And The Tax Burden On 'The Rich' with Thomas Sowell via Hoover Daily ReportNow that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez wants to raise the top personal income tax rate to 70% and Rep. Ilhan Omar thinks 90% would be even better, it might be a good time to review the history over time from 1960 to 2013 of: a) the top marginal tax rate in every year and b) the share of total income taxes collected from the top one-half percent of taxpayers. CBO As Agenda Setter On Tax Policy by David R. Henderson via EconLog In December 2018, the Congressional Budget Office published a 316-page report titled Options for Reducing the Deficit: 2019 to 2028. Those reports are often useful because they can tell you the implications for the deficit of various changes in government spending and in tax law. This report is relatively comprehensive. It examines dozens of ways in which the U.S. government could cut spending and dozens of ways in which it could increase taxes. Taxes, incorporation, and productivity Robert J. Barro and Brian Wheaton | AEI Economics Working Paper Series Long-difference regressions for 1968–2013 show that a higher tax wedge reduces the C-corporate share of net capital stocks, equity (book value), gross assets, and positive net income, as well as the corporate share of gross investment. America Off Balance: One Nation Under Debt with Hoover Institution via PolicyEdScroll through America Off Balance, the Hoover Institution’s new web platform that guides users through the tough choices that must be made to avert looming fiscal disaster and fix the federal budget. The platform hosts three major digital products: an interactive tour of the federal budget (The Balancing Act), a comprehensive state-of-the-art Budget Calculator to identify and test new reform proposals, and Budget Matters, which offers analysis and commentary on policy options. New Hoover Institution Digital Products Highlight Fiscal Challenges And The Need To Fix America's Chronic Debt Problem
via Hoover Daily ReportScholars at the Hoover Institution have created a new web platform, America Off Balance, that hosts digital products highlighting the looming fiscal disaster that the country will face—unless tough choices are made, and made soon.
How the Deep State Came to America: A History by Ryan Gingeras
 Success is not a sequence
Brent Orrell | AEIdeas The “success sequence” — the argument that avoiding poverty depends on graduating from high school, getting a full-time job, and marrying before having children — is enjoying a minor resurgence in policy circles of late.
Why 70 Percent Tax Rates Cannot Finance Socialism
Brian Riedl, National Review Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s call for a 70 percent income-tax rate to finance green-energy initiatives has energized the Left. Yet this is completely destructive proposal. A 70 percent tax bracket would raise very little (if any) revenue, while damaging the economy and sending income and jobs overseas. While details of Ocasio-Cortez’s energy proposal are unavailable, former Green-party presidential candidate Jill Stein has proposed a “Green New Deal” costing between $700 billion and $1 trillion per year for public jobs and clean energy initiatives. That is roughly 4 percent of GDP. Read more here.... 
Economic shocks and clinging
Michael R. Strain and Stan Veuger | AEI Economics Working Paper Series During his first campaign for president, Barack Obama was criticized when he argued that residents of towns with poor local labor markets “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustration.” Michael Strain and Stan Veuger test empirically whether this is the case.
Policy Briefs: Josh Rauh Warns Why Taxpayers Will Have To Bail Out Public Pensions
by Joshua D. Rauh via PolicyEd State and local governments are claiming that they’re running balanced budgets, when in reality they’re relying on future investment returns to pay for pension benefits to retirees.
Increased Workforce Participation Alone Won’t Fix Social Security Finances
Charles Blahous, E21 Last month, Morgan Stanley published a research report projecting that US labor force growth will exceed Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections starting in the 2020s, and also asserting that this faster growth “should” delay Social Security’s insolvency, “perhaps by decades.” Specifically, the report stated that “a faster increase in the pool of covered workers is an important factor in the Social Security Trustees’ ‘low cost’ scenario, which would delay the date at which the Social Security trust fund reserves could become depleted from 2034 to 2062.” Read more here.... TRENDS IN ELECTORAL POLITICS FOR 2020: HENRY OLSON & WHAT THE MIDTERMS TEACH ABOUT US VOTING POLITY12/28/2018 
 The Biggest Emerging Market Debt Problem Is in America Carmen Reinhart thinks conditions are ripe for a global crisis stemming from high issuance of corporate collateralized loan obligations. Health Insurance by Scott W. Atlas, Michael J. Boskin, Tom Church, John H. Cochrane , John F. Cogan, Daniel Heil, Daniel P. Kessler, John B. Taylor via PolicyEd Health insurance helps many Americans purchase health care. So why is it so expensive, and how can we make it more affordable? Transformational Health Care Reform by Scott W. Atlas via PolicyEd The American health care system is on an unsustainable path characterized by government-dominated insurance. Fixing health care begins with changing the incentives and empowering consumers to seek value with their money, while increasing competition among providers. Liberalized HSAs, insurance with lower premiums and fewer mandates, and more options for Medicare and Medicaid enrollees will improve access, choice, and quality of health care. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation has too much power
Joseph Antos and James C. Capretta | RealClearPolicy The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation’s authority is so broad that little is beyond its potential reach. Our Exhausted American Mediocracy by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness The unlikely 2016 election of Donald Trump—the first president without either prior political or military office—was a repudiation of the American “aristocracy.” By “rule of the best” I mean the ancien régime was no longer understood to suggest wealth and birth (alone), but instead envisioned itself as a supposed national meritocracy of those with proper degrees, and long service in the top hierarchies of government, media, blue-chip law firms, Wall Street, high tech, and academia. The Burden Of Public Pension Promises On State And Local Budgets by Joshua D. Rauh, Daniel Bergstresser via EconoFact Unfunded pension liabilities represent a significant challenge to the finances of many state and local governments. While no analysts dispute the general statement that pensions are underfunded in aggregate, there has been some discussion about how to estimate the magnitude of the gap.  Part I: Will left-wing anti-Zionists and anti-Semites in America succeed in hollowing out the traditional liberal left in the United States, as they have in Britain and France?
Part II: Michael Walzer's critique of Leftist "inwardness" and the ways in which Bernie Sanders has succeeded in setting a different course. Part III: How the late Richard Rorty foresaw the Trumpian moment and how he also envisioned a way out of it. James Bloodworth: The dueling visions of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders Alexander Zubatov: Just because anti-Semities talk about 'cultural Marxism' doesn't mean it isn't real Cathy Young: The current revival of Communist-inspired politics and where it could lead Tim Shenk: Is there anyone who still believes that America is great because it is good? Aaron Maté: Israel, not Jeremy Corbyn, is the real threat to the Jewish Left Emily Benedek: The charismatic female stars of the new American Left Paul Berman: The last word  Skills for the 21st century
Brent Orrell | AEIdeas There are no simple either-or propositions in the labor market future. Educators at all levels should focus on teaching certain noncognitive skills while continuing to foster narrower, in-demand technical skills that are connected to immediate employment opportunities. |
HENRY OLSON: POLITICAL DEMOGRAPHY
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