Economics

Fewer Teenagers Have A Job, and That’s a Problem 0
- Economics
- September 13, 2019
In the summer of 1995, I took my first full-time job. It was seasonal work at Lake Arrowhead, a golf course about 20 minutes from my parents’ house. I couldn’t legally drive yet—I was only 15—but a friend who had also applied offered to drive us both if we got hired, and we did. That
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Did California Just Kill the Gig Economy?0
- Economics
- September 12, 2019
California may have just passed a death sentence on the gig economy. Late Tuesday night, as many California residents slept in their beds, the state legislature passed a bill that is expected to impact hundreds of thousands of independent contractors across the state. For months now, the state assembly has been debating controversial legislation seeking
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How to Make Health Care Unaffordable and Inaccessible 1
- Economics
- September 11, 2019
Whether it’s Medicare for All or some other variant of a single-payer plan, the leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are in agreement that more government control will make health care more affordable and accessible. The presumption behind these plans is that there is currently too much freedom in the health care industry, and only more
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It’s Light Bulb Liberation Day 0
- Economics
- September 9, 2019
The Department of Energy is putting down its guns and withdrawing troops in the war on the incandescent bulb that began in 2007. It’s pretty late in the day; the last factory to make them in the U.S. shut down in 2010. It’s hard to find them in a store, in which case: thank goodness
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The Myth of Earth’s Overpopulation Crisis 0
- Economics
- September 6, 2019
Shortly after my wife graduated from college, she joined Zero Population Growth. Looking back, she tells me it was an emotional reaction fueled by reading Paul Ehrlich’s apocalyptic claims. In his book, The Population Bomb, Ehrlich wrote: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will
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Karl Marx: Intellectual Father of the 1619 Project?0
- Economics
- September 5, 2019
The New York Times’ 1619 Project seeks to establish the moment the first slave ship landed in Virginia as “a new point of origin for our national story,” because “nearly everything that has made America exceptional grew out of slavery.” The series – which attempts to link American prosperity, our economic system, even our lack of a single-payer healthcare system to slavery – can count
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