Watts: Book Review
‘Taxes Have Consequences: An Income Tax History of the United States’ by Arthur Laffer, Brian Domitrovic and Jeanne Cairns by Tyler Watts, Ph.D. “Taxes Have Consequences” (THC) is a masterful survey of income taxation in the United States since the ratification of the 16th amendment in 1913. The authors make a com pelling case that Read the full article…
The Outstater
Unstacking Public Education IF YOU DIDN’T already think it a bad idea to allow public-sector workers to hire their own bosses and set their own salaries in a self-serving fiscal doom loop then the headline this week in the Capital Chronicle should have been eye-opening: “Union for ISTA Staff Files Unfair Labor Charges.” Yes, the teachers union’s own employees Read the full article…
Eichenberger: A Bubble-Wrapped Childhood
by Dan Eichenberger, MD, MBA In the past 15 years, rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicidal thoughts among adolescents — especially those born after 1995 — have surged. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls this the “Great Rewiring” of childhood: the decline of play-based childhoods and the rise of phone-based ones. The uncomfortable truth is that well-meaning Read the full article…
Franke: Book Review
The Great Crash of 1929 by Mark Franke One of the most fascinating books I read in high school was “The Great Crash: 1929” by John Kenneth Galbraith. I believed what most everyone else did, that the Great Depression was caused by the stock market crash. Galbraith disabused me of such a simplistic explanation. Journalist Read the full article…
The Outstater
Politics, Voting Are Overrated “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 10 IN THE MORNING MAIL is the two-thousandth postcard asking for my vote. The thought occurs that in a lifetime of going to the polls I have voted against my own interests a good deal of the time. I didn’t know enough — couldn’t know enough — to choose wisely. Read the full article…
Watts: ‘Birthright Capitalism’ Beats Socialism
by Tyler Watts, Ph.D. We free-market economists tend to pooh-pooh complaints about income and wealth inequality. When “democratic socialist” or even populist right-wing demagogues complain about stagnant or declining middle-class incomes, we point out all sorts of empirical flaws in the data they use: “They don’t include government transfer payments in income measures.” True. “They Read the full article…
