Biden Is Once Again Being “Generous” to Student Debtors with Taxpayer Money
Neal McCluskey Today, the Biden administration launched a new website for student debtors to enroll in its next big effort to reduce their repayments. Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan seeks to make income‐driven repayment (IDR) much more generous than it
What Will It Take for Cryptocurrencies to Become Full-Fledged Money?
Bitcoin is the beginning of something great: a currency without a government, something necessary and imperative.1– NASSIM TALEB The crypto-unit bitcoin2 holds out the prospect of something revolutionary: money created in the free market, money the production and use of which the
The Untested Assumptions in SEC Chair Gensler’s Pivot to AI
Jack Solowey Crypto startups and venture capitalists are not the only ones pivoting to artificial intelligence (AI). Recently, SEC Chair Gary Gensler delivered remarks to the National Press Club outlining his concerns about AI’s role in the future of finance. In those
The Culture Wars and Public Libraries
Jeffrey Miron This article appeared on Substack on July 31, 2023. A recent front in the culture wars is public libraries, such as in Front Royal, Virginia, where a handful of residents ha[s] begun demanding the removal of certain books in the children’s
The Case Against the Child Tax Credit
Adam N. Michel and Vanessa Brown Calder First introduced by Republicans as part of the Contract with America, the child tax credit (CTC) has won wide bipartisan support as an income‐transfer program to fight poverty, a subsidy to middle‐class families, and
Governments Should Not Fund Research
Jeffrey Miron and Jacob Winter This article appeared on Substack on July 27, 2023. In fiscal year 2022, the federal government spent $76 billion subsidizing nondefense, scientific research. This component of federal expenditure is modest relative to the $6.27 trillion total or
Obama, Biden Have Mislead More Health Insurance Purchasers than Short‐Term Plans Ever Will
Michael F. Cannon A week or so ago, friend and HuffPost reporter Jonathan Cohn emailed me: Consumers frequently don’t understand what they’re buying [when it comes to short‐term, limited duration insurance (STLDI)], or how STLDI might be different from an ACA‐compliant plan.
2SLGBTQ+IA and the Law
The acronym 2SLGBTQ+IA stands for two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, androgynous, and asexual. The 2SLGBTQ+IA community is often described as seeking “rights and equality” for its members. What fair-minded person could object? Increasingly, however, the community appears to
Did Global Population Really Surpass 8 Billion Last Year?
Marc Joffe According to the United Nations, the world population surpassed the eight billion mark on November 15, 2022, and reached 8.045 billion on July 1 of this year. But these figures vary significantly from US Census Bureau estimates which placed the
Has World War III Already Begun?
The world since 1900 has experienced two major world-encompassing wars. Wars cost a lot of money, and countries—even if they were once on a gold standard—usually start printing massive amounts of money to finance their wars. This fact can be