Friend of the blog David Callahan and I have been going back and forth over at Demos about social mobility and equal opportunity. It started when Callahan wrote a post noting that kids born near the top of the income distribution wind up, on average, lower than their parents in the income distribution. He represented… Continue reading How many birth-right privileges should we have?
Policy Shop: Poverty is Poison
New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: The lead analogy is a good one for purposes of policy construction. In response to learning that lead was messing up kids brains, we sought to eliminate exposure to it, e.g. by banning leaded gasoline, by banning lead paint, and by undertaking lead remediation projects. But we don’t do… Continue reading Policy Shop: Poverty is Poison
The Soul of Man under Socialism in the New York Times
Peter Buffett has a piece in the New York Times titled The Charitable-Industrial Complex. From the article: As more lives and communities are destroyed by the system that creates vast amounts of wealth for the few, the more heroic it sounds to “give back.” It’s what I would call “conscience laundering” — feeling better about… Continue reading The Soul of Man under Socialism in the New York Times
Policy Shop: Which Economic Classes Have the Most Student Debt?
New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: Whatever else there is to say about student debt, it cannot be said that debt falls primarily on lower income households. You would expect, from what we know of the college wage premium, that debt would primarily fall on higher income households, and indeed that’s what you find. For… Continue reading Policy Shop: Which Economic Classes Have the Most Student Debt?
Policy Shop: Shadow Stats and Tom Coburn’s Inflation Fantasies
New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: One point missed in the debunkings so far is that the source Tom Coburn is almost certainly using, shadowstats.com, is total nonsense. The basic thrust of Coburn’s and Ron Paul’s inflation conspiracy theory is that the government has changed the way it measures inflation over time to intentionally generate… Continue reading Policy Shop: Shadow Stats and Tom Coburn’s Inflation Fantasies