Wealth & Poverty Review | Page 36

“What Both the Left and Right Miss About Work in America” with Oren Cass

I believe that growth can benefit all Americans, yet while our GDP has tripled in size from 1975 to 2015, average wages have barely risen. The response from both political parties has been to double down on policies that have failed to address this reality Maybe they're missing something crucial in their economic calculations. A focus on work. Author and scholar Oren Cass explains on my new podcast. Read More ›

Why Talent Trumps Taxes

Lower taxes and less regulation are great for business, but some are thriving in high-tax states like New York and California. On my new podcast, Ralph Benko explains the “Tamny Axiom”. Hint: there’s something more valuable in those states than low taxes. Read More ›
Homeless-on-Bench

The Politics of Ruinous Compassion

Abstract: The City of Seattle has failed to address its current homelessness crisis. In fact, because of ideological capture and poor public policy, the city has created a system of perverse incentives that has only made the problem worse. In order to truly confront the problem of homelessness, the city’s leadership must embrace a policy of realism: dismantle the system of perverse incentives, quickly build emergency shelter, and enforce the law against public camping and drug use. Ultimately, the city currently has enough resources to solve the crisis—it needs to summon the political courage to make the right choices. Read More ›

Trump Calls for a Reform of Perverse Welfare System. Media (Mostly) Ignore It

On Tuesday, President Trump issued an executive order calling on secretaries in eight federal departments to work on reforming their bloated welfare bureaucracies. They are to spend the next month looking for ways to fix the programs under their charge, and report back. You can be forgiven if you didn’t hear about this. Insofar as the media covered it, they mostly painted Trump as a mean old rich guy who doesn’t care about the poor. Check out this “explainer” piece at Vox for one example. In truth, this move is Trump at his best. Reversing Obama But what can he do by way of executive order? Quite a lot as it turns out. President Obama spent his two terms gutting the Welfare Reform Act of Read More ›

A Lively Discussion on Trade and Protectionism

This will go down in history as the episode of “The Bill Walton Show” where economist John Tamny referred to views I presented as utter nonsense and I called his naïve. No, we haven’t descended into a late-night cable TV news catfight. Anyone who has watched this program for any time knows I could not have more respect for Tamny, a senior fellow in economics at Reason Foundation,  and his unique insights into economics, trade, and policy—and that he’s one of my favorite people. But the language we both chose in what was an entirely pleasant conversation perhaps reflects the sharp differences that are emerging even on the pro-market side about the trade practices of President Donald Trump. I had Read More ›

George Gilder and Hance Haney with Bill Walton on Block Chain Technology

George Gilder, perhaps the leading futurist of our day, predicted the rise of the Internet, the decline of television and the explosion of the smartphone. Now he’s predicting another giant step forward – an innovation potentially as consequential as the Internet itself. It is called blockchain technology, and it has begun to challenge the way we buy and sell things. View or listen now on The Bill Walton Show.

Democracy’s Highest Crime and Misdemeanor

In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln reminded Americans that they were uniquely privileged to have a new birth of freedom that was contingent on “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” That was then. What about now? Every week brings new revelations and details about a cabal in the federal government whose actions border on both sedition and conspiracy. The evidence suggests that specific high level officials in the Justice Department and the FBI colluded to violate the law in unprecedented ways for the singular purpose of subverting the will of the people both before and after the 2016 election. Read More ›