By Chuck Chalberg on Apr 01, 2020 04:00 pm
Are we a less free people, maybe even a far less free people, than we were in 1963? Partial punch-puller that he is content to be, Christopher Caldwell is not about to offer either a tentative or final answer to such questions. But the evidence that he presents strongly suggests that we are certainly ...
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Ross Douthat’s new book examines our cultural disaffection as a problem of absence.
by John H. Cochrane via Grumpy Economist
I just finished Amity Shlaes' Great Society. It's a great book. I warmly recommend it. The US is debating a fourth great wave of US government expansion. Theodore Roosevelt to Wilson the original progressive era and WWI; Frankin Roosevelt's new deal; and the Kennedy-
Richard Burkhauser et al. | AEI Economic Policy Working Paper Series
This paper evaluates progress in the War on Poverty relative to the 20 percent baseline poverty rate President Lyndon Johnson established for 1963. No existing poverty measure fully captures poverty reductions based on the standard that President Johnson set. To fill this gap, this paper develops a full-income poverty measure with thresholds set to match the 1963 official poverty rate. While the official poverty rate fell from 19.5 percent in 1963 to 12.3 percent in 2017, this full-income poverty rate based on President Johnson’s standards fell from 19.5 percent to 2.3 percent over that period. Today, almost all Americans have income above the inflation-adjusted thresholds established in the 1960s. Although expectations for minimum living standards evolve, this suggests substantial progress combating absolute poverty since the War on Poverty began.
By George Weigel on Dec 11, 2019 03:19 pm
Resist the twitterization of thought — give books for Christmas! The following titles will delight, instruct, edify (or all of the above): Churchill: Walking with Destiny, by Andrew Roberts (Viking): There seems to be no [...]
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