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Economist unveils blueprint for managed poverty

Writer and philosopher Ayn Rand was often accused of inventing cartoonish villains. Rogues like Ellsworth Toohey in "The Fountainhead" would scheme to seize the global economy's commanding heights in pursuit of a distorted sense of justice. But the people who hold such ideas don't just appear in cartoons or in Rand's novels. Enter Thomas Piketty and company. In early June, Piketty – the French economist whose work on inequality has made him something of a rock star even while being serially challenged for methodological errors, data imputations and cherry-picked baselines ...

Visitors are finding America at its best

The World Cup is kicking off here in the United States and for the next five weeks will bring the rest of the planet to our doorstep. They are already arriving. Germans, Spaniards, Egyptians, Australians, every continent but Antarctica is showing up and something is happening that ought to make us pause. A German named Freddy came to Atlanta and made his way up to North Georgia, went tubing on the Chattahoochee, drove through Chattanooga and on to Auburn, Ala. He has been tweeting it all home in stunned, joyful disbelief. Auburn's eagle flies around the stadium. There was a ...

Humanities strike back

Last year Microsoft Research reported on the 10 jobs most threatened by artificial intelligence. Should I, dear reader, be running scared? Historians are No. 2 on the list. The report says 91% of what historians do is pretty much covered by AI queries. Uh-oh. I majored in history in college and went on to get a master's. In the movie "Animal House," Bluto laments throwing "seven years of college down the drain." I guess the good news is maybe I only wasted six. Eventually, I pivoted to writing, with five novels published and another coming next year. And of course, there's ...

Political parties succeed when understand people

One of the more revealing political developments of recent years has been the Democratic Party's growing concern about its declining support among male voters. After years of watching men drift toward the political right, many Democrats have begun asking a simple question: Why are men leaving? The answer may be simpler than party strategists would like to admit. For many men, politics is not merely about policy preferences. It is also about whether they feel understood, respected and represented. Increasingly, many men feel that modern progressive politics views them less as ...

We cherry-pick past to grade present

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, America is in a pretty foul mood, and I understand why. For starters, Washington is broken, prices are high and rising, and AI is scaring the stuffing out of people. Understanding, however, is not synonymous with agreement. In other words, some complaints about America in 2026 have more empirical weight than others. Crime may be too high, but it's been going down for a while. Actually, let's start there because crime is a good example of how perceptions don't necessarily reflect reality. Since 2000, writes ...

Here to ‘help’ you

Politicians promise they'll "help" us. President Donald Trump says he'll "create the jobs and future you deserve." President Joe Biden liked to say, "Help is on the way." I prefer President Ronald Reagan's: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" An economy runs best when government gets out of the way and lets free market competition work. Economist Donald Boudreaux gets that, and it's why "The Triumph of Economic Freedom" is the title of his new book. Boudreaux explains in my new video: "The more ...