American mythology promises upward mobility, and college can provide an important first step up the class ladder. With the rise of the “knowledge economy” and the decline of industrial jobs and unions, some insisted that education is the answer to economic displacement. If you can’t earn a stable, living wage as a steelworker, go to college and become a nurse or a computer programmer. And if you didn’t make that choice, it’s your own fault that you’re struggling. After all, college was affordable, accessible, and varied. read more »
Politics
Trouble in Paradise: The Crumbling California Model
Some horrified conservatives dismiss California as the progressive dystopia, bound for bankruptcy and, let’s hope, growing irrelevance. read more »
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U.S. Road Conditions and Performance in 2020
While Americans drove their cars only 84 percent as many miles in 2020 as in 2019, according to data recently published by the Federal Highway Administration, they drove semi-trucks 101 percent as many miles. read more »
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Vehicle Miles Traveled vs. Pay-at-the-Pump Gas Tax
For some years now, policy wonks have proposed replacing the pay-at-the-pump gas tax with a “vehicle miles traveled” system. The reasons take a few different paths but are mostly centered around the issue of the fairness of “user fees” compared to purchase taxation, an idea made more relevant by the proliferation of non-gas using electric cars. read more »
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The Left Doesn't Own Minority Voters
Demographic transitions present political opportunities, but do not protect politicians from their own folly. The shift in most Western countries to a more racially and ethnically diverse demographic has been widely seen by left-wingers as an opportunity to cement their ascendancy. read more »
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Building Back Better?
As we await U.S. Senate action on President Biden’s Build Back Better plan, it is worth reflecting on what the past few tumultuous months have meant for U.S. workers. Much has happened in the short time since the summer drew to a close. Collective and individual actions have worked together to create new leverage for both organized and unorganized workers that didn’t exist six months ago. Workers are expressing higher levels of discontent than we have seen in years. read more »
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Our Neo-Feudal Future
America has only a limited feudal past, the plantation aristocracy of the antebellum South and the enormous class chasms of the Gilded Age being pretty much our only examples. Yet today—after decades of social mobility, a digital revolution that was supposed to empower individuals everywhere, and the construction of a vigorous anti-discrimination apparatus that putatively ensures equal rights and status—a rigid new social order with feudal elements has come into view. read more »
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Manchin and Sinema Hold the Key for Democrats: Respecting Regional Difference
Throughout the long and drawn-out negotiations over Joe Biden's ambitious Build Back Better Act, two senators have emerged as punching bags for Democrats anxious to get the bill passed: Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. The two moderates have been clear about their refusal to support the more ambitious items in the bill, and it's brought them in for censure and even some online abuse from fellow Democrats, who believe that their cratering poll numbers need Build Back Better to help them survive the midterms. read more »
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Work or Welfare?
If a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists. read more »
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How to Tax a Billionaire (or Not)
Our institutions created centibillionaires and are now trying to contain them.
In Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, a group of high-achieving industrialists have had enough with being exploited (in their view) by “parasitic” collectivists and “second-handers”. They withdraw to a perfect community Galt’s Gulch aka Atlantis where they can live in peace and prosperity with each other, far away from the do-nothing (in their view) populace and according to their own laws and beliefs. read more »
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