Romina Boccia and Tyler Turman The ongoing government shutdown—now the longest in US history—has brought renewed attention to Washington’s biggest non-healthcare welfare program: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or food stamps. With a shutdown deal in sight, legislators are planning to fund SNAP for the entirety of this fiscal year, while other parts of the federal government could face ...
James A. Dorn Fifteen years ago, Weiying Zhang, a distinguished professor of economics at Peking University, published a path-breaking book, The Logic of the Market: An Insider’s View of Chinese Economic Reform (Shanghai People’s Press). In 2015, the Cato Institute brought out an English edition of his book translated by Matthew Dale. The key idea that Zhang espouses is that, if ...
Jeffrey A. Singer Patient Autonomy in the Age of AI Autonomous adults have always sought to conduct their own research to inform their health care decisions, independent of health care professionals’ advice. As mentioned in Part 1 of this series, AI-driven symptom checkers and chatbots are the next evolution of that impulse, helping patients triage, diagnose, and make preventive choices ...
Colleen Hroncich When the first Chesterton Academy opened its doors nearly two decades ago, there was no grand plan to build a national network. It was just a few parents who wanted an affordable classical Catholic high school for their children. “The network was never a planned thing,” says Brenie Bowles, vice president of the Chesterton Schools Network. “It just ...
Jeffrey A. Singer On November 6, President Donald Trump announced that the government will refrain from tariffs on Eli Lilly’s and Novo Nordisk’s imported products and active pharmaceutical ingredients and that Medicare and Medicaid will subsidize the use of their drugs. In exchange, the pharmaceutical companies will significantly cut prices for their GLP‑1 weight-loss medications, Zepbound and Wegovy. Medicare and ...
Jeffrey Miron States and cities never seem to tire of hiking their minimum wages, with predictable effects: On April 1, 2024, California raised its minimum wage from $16 to $20 per hour for fast-food workers employed at chains with more than 60 locations nationwide.… This was one of the largest one-time minimum wage increases in US history, and one of ...
Jennifer Huddleston and Christopher Gardner Over the past year, several heartbreaking accounts of young people who have had tragic and damaging experiences with AI chatbots have emerged. Whether it’s concerns about AI conversations leading young people into overly sexual content or about those who have taken their own lives, both parents and policymakers are asking if these tools are safe ...
Norbert Michel and Jerome Famularo It is a mistake for policymakers to push homeownership as an investment strategy. The long-term, wealth-building effect of homeownership is often less than that of renting and investing in the diversified market. Increasing homeownership rates, nevertheless, has been federal policy for nearly a century. Whether buying or renting and investing is a better strategy for ...
Nicholas Anthony A new bill responding to debanking has appeared. After months of deliberations, on October 30, Sen. Thom Tillis (R‑NC) introduced the Ensuring Fair Access to Banking Act. The 90-page bill aims to create “a strong federal fair access standard to [ensure] that no American or lawful business is denied banking services for political or ideological reasons.” Although the ...
Colleen Hroncich It’s always interesting to see the mental gymnastics employed by people who argue against parental choice in education. A recent Brookings Institute commentary, based on a report in Education Policy Analysis Archives, is a good example. The authors ground their criticisms in a distorted history of school choice and a public school-based definition of how to measure success, ...