SACRAMENTO — The best way to avoid a life of poverty is to develop work skills that are marketable. That seems pretty obvious. Although I’m financially dependent on the companies that pay me, my job security stems not from whatever…
America is celebrated for its economic dynamism and ample and generously paid employment opportunities. It’s a nation that attracts immigrants from around the world. Yet Americans are bummed and have been for a while. They believe that life was better…
As a new year dawns, it’s customary to reflect on the past and set resolutions for the future. This year, let’s resolve to greet three widespread claims with healthy doses of skepticism. The first dubious claim is that income inequality…
Today’s hyperpartisan and frequently negative news cycle ignores one significant and uplifting story: the precipitous decline of global inequality. It’s a subject that deserves our attention, for it reveals the power of markets, trade, and human ingenuity to lift up…
In an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal last week, Phil Gramm and John Early made a convincing, fact-supported case that, contrary to what is repeatedly asserted and widely believed, income inequality in the U.S. is lower now than it was 50…
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Or do we? At the end of a long, bitter political year, shall we take a look? The Founding Fathers’ abstract commitment to equality — reinforced by…
Politicians are renowned for their shortsightedness. During the post-war period, for example, Republicans have very publicly opposed most tax increases. I like small government, so I’m good with that. Where I part ways with the Grand Old Party is with…
I hope you will understand: I am not an advocate for tobacco. But there’s an ember inside me that flares up just a little for the thoughtful space a puff on a pipe or cigarette allotted us, back when we…
In the dystopian 2006 cult classic film Idiocracy, the collapse in humanity’s collective IQ 500 years hence is explained by a narrator describing how in the early 2000s, evolution no longer rewarded the human species’ most noble and salutary traits. Two…