In January 2019, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez found a perhaps unexpected vein of popular support when she proposed raising the top marginal tax rate from 37 percent to 70 percent for those with annual incomes of over $10 million.1 Polling conducted by the Hill and HarrisX soon revealed that 59 percent of Americans supported this idea:…
Read MoreIt would not be possible in the space of even a lengthy review to do justice to either the scope or the style of Brooks and Papola’s cinematic achievement. I can only share some of what I saw. After a brief credit sequence we meet “Arthur,” which is what I will call the Brooks-esque character in the film. (I am going to assume we are not quite meant to identify him with the real-life Brooks, who cannot possibly be as stupid and sinister by turns as this guy…
Read MoreFamily policy brings into focus the importance of direct, government-driven measures ordered to achieve outcomes in accordance with the common good. For too many years in the United States, however, family policy has, in effect, been caught in the middle between Republican Party libertarianism and Democratic Party welfarism—both out of step with the broad wishes…
Read MoreSince the mid-1970s, inequality has increased under Democratic as well as Republican administrations and Congresses. In retrospect, the four and a half decades from 1933 to 1978 were a historical aberration. The longer-term trend toward more inequality in capitalist economies, which prevailed before this period, has resumed after it. That leads us to conclude that there may well be no technocratic or tax policy fix for capitalism’s tendency to generate ever more inequality…
Read MoreWill more restrictive trade policies harm the U.S. economy by shielding domestic businesses against competition? That’s what standard economic theory holds, insisting that pressure from foreign rivals is needed for U.S.-based businesses to continue to innovate, to create the highest quality goods, and to sell them for the lowest possible prices. Although this theory has…
Read MoreSince it began operations in 2010, Uber has grown to the point where it now collects over $45 billion in gross passenger revenue, and it has seized a major share of the urban car service market. But the widespread belief that it is a highly innovative and successful company has no basis in economic reality. An examination of Uber’s economics suggests that it has no hope of ever earning sustainable urban car service profits in competitive markets…
Read MoreIn 2013, a group of MIT researchers published a study examining the business trajectory of 150 start-up firms that grew out of technology developed at the university. These were production-related “hardware” firms that actually manufactured things. The firms were able to attract early stage venture capital (VC) funding. They were also able to find the…
Read MoreA cursory glance at Google Trends reveals that interest in robotics and automation was far less intense throughout the last decade than interest in proposed solutions to the problems that these technologies are supposedly creating, especially universal basic income (UBI). Automation—the process of applying technology and organization to do more with less, with robotics being…
Read MoreA new practice of production has emerged in all the major economies of the world. The simplest and most telling of its many names is the knowledge economy. It holds the promise of changing, to our benefit, some of the most deep-seated and universal regularities of economic life and of dramatically enhancing productivity and growth.…
Read MoreIn mid-November 2018, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez issued a rallying cry that was not given sufficient attention. She called on left-wing activists to take over the Democratic Party. Her chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti went one step further, openly calling on left-wingers to primary sitting Democrats. Together with YouTube personalities Cenk Uyger and Kyle Kulinski, Chakrabarti is…
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