Taxes, Transfers, and the Safety Net
3 tier-5 · 4 tier-4
The newsletter's deepest vein: how the US raises revenue and supports households through the tax-and-transfer system, and how the 2025 reconciliation fight (OBBBA/TCJA expiration) reshaped both. Across these pieces the writers treat the EITC, CTC, and dependent-care credits as proven but under-tuned instruments that refundability and indexing could extend much further; show how the One Big Beautiful Bill simultaneously adds trillions to the debt, transfers resources upward, and pushes safety-net costs (SNAP) onto families and states; and unpack the technical levers — the budget baseline, business-tax structure, savings-account design — that quietly determine the system's fairness and fiscal math. The cluster matters because it is where the writer most consistently argues that distributional outcomes are policy choices, not inevitabilities.
TIER 5
Jan 27, 2025
Elena Patel delivers a thorough framework for why the US dual business-tax system (double-taxed C-corps vs. single-taxed pass-throughs) distorts firm choices, complicates the code, and undermines progressivity, then lays out three corporate-integration reform models (CBIT, shareholder-allocation, credit-imputation) with their tradeoffs. Lasting reference value as a clear, comprehensive primer keyed to the TCJA-expiration reform window.
business taxationcorporate integrationTCJApass-throughtax reform
TIER 4
Dec 16, 2024
Elena Patel explains how federal scorekeeping mechanics (budget resolution, reconciliation, the Byrd Rule) and especially the choice between a current-law and current-policy baseline can make a full TCJA extension appear to cost anywhere from $0 to ~$5 trillion without changing the underlying fiscal reality. A clear, durable explainer of a technical-but-decisive lever in the 2025 tax fight.
budget baselineTCJAreconciliationCBO scoringdeficits
TIER 5
May 26, 2025
Wes Yin uses a macro-fiscal (r-g)+d framework to show the One Big Beautiful Bill adds ~$3.8 trillion to debt over a decade, a debt-ratio jump comparable to a typical recession but with no offsetting growth, while transferring resources upward (top 0.1% gets ~$390k vs ~$800 for the typical filer) and cutting Medicaid/SNAP. Connects the regressive transfer and rising debt to weakened economic resilience and even democratic backsliding. Matters as a landmark integrative analysis tying the bill's fiscal math to long-run resilience and institutional risk.
OBBBAnational debtfiscal policytax cutsinequality
TIER 4
Feb 17, 2026
Frames the new Trump Accounts children's savings program as both an experiential financial-education tool against pervasive exponential-growth bias and, more consequentially, a choice-architecture problem. Drawing on the retirement-savings literature, the authors argue defaults, auto-enrollment, low-cost default funds, and portability will determine outcomes far more than financial literacy, and flag the administration's inflated wealth projections. A solid evidence-grounded design critique.
Trump Accountsbehavioral economicsretirement savingschoice architecturefinancial education
TIER 4
Mar 2, 2026
Explains how the 2025 OBBBA reshapes SNAP—expanded work requirements, frozen Thrifty Food Plan updates, new state cost-sharing tied to overpayment error rates, and citizenship restrictions—shifting costs from the federal government onto families and states. Reviews the evidence base on SNAP's health, food-security, and anti-poverty effects and offers state and federal options to strengthen the program. A thorough, well-sourced explainer of a major safety-net change.
SNAPOBBBAwork requirementssafety netfederal-state cost sharing
TIER 5
Nov 10, 2025
A comprehensive reference essay on the EITC and CTC—over $180B/year, more than food, housing, and cash welfare combined—covering each credit's design, history, distributional incidence, and a deep research base on short- and long-run benefits for children. Lays out targeted improvements (childless-worker EITC, full CTC refundability, faster phase-in, lower phase-out thresholds, take-up and Direct File) and debunks the EITC 'improper payment' narrative. Landmark for its lasting reference value across the entire tax-and-transfer debate.
EITCChild Tax Creditrefundabilitychild povertysafety net
TIER 5
Mar 23, 2026
Exploits LA's market for "ready-to-issue" permitted land to produce the first dollar estimate of permitting costs: a ~50% approval premium (~$770k per site), accounting for about a third of the home-price/construction-cost gap, with permit-flippers emerging as a specialized subsector. Frames discretionary, hyperlocal review as a 'tragedy of the anticommons' and argues for as-of-right permitting and centralized authority. Landmark for turning an unmeasurable regulatory cost into a clean empirical number with clear reform implications.
permittinghousingland-use regulationanticommonsregulatory cost
Housing, Land Use, and Permitting
1 tier-5 · 2 tier-4
The writer treats housing scarcity as a regulatory problem more than a construction one, and permitting as its measurable core. The landmark LA permitting study turns an unmeasurable cost into a hard dollar figure; the companion LA affordable-housing piece shows that cutting approval friction alone — no subsidy — unleashes private middle-class supply and that opposition is louder than it is majority; and the Rust Belt essay extends the land-use lens to shrinking cities, where outdated discretionary zoning blocks redevelopment even without a shortage. Together they make a coherent supply-side, deregulatory case anchored in evidence rather than ideology. (The flagship permitting study, issue 0006, is listed under Theme 1 because of its tax-and-cost framing; read it alongside this cluster.)
TIER 4
Apr 27, 2026
Argues land-use reform matters even in depopulated Rust Belt cities, where the problem is not housing shortage but outdated, discretionary zoning that raises development costs and blocks redevelopment of vacant land. Drawing on Detroit and other Midwestern case studies, it reframes the goal as lowering production costs and rebuilding administrative capacity, with federal grants and the ROAD to Housing Act as levers. A useful corrective to the coastal-superstar focus of zoning debates.
zoninghousingRust Beltland-use regulationurban revitalization
TIER 4
Sep 30, 2025
Uses LA's Executive Directive 1 (ministerial fast-track approval for 100% affordable projects) to show that cutting permitting friction alone, with no public subsidy, triggered a surge of for-profit middle-class housing applications. Pairs the supply result with LAQLI survey data showing a silent majority of Angelenos supports apartments on single-family streets and even in their own neighborhoods, undercutting the assumption that opposition reflects majority opinion. Matters as evidence-backed YIMBY case study on selection bias in public input and the politics of zoning reform.
housing policyzoning/permittingaffordable housingYIMBYpublic opinion
Trade Policy and Tariffs
5 tier-4
A tightly argued cluster running against broad-based tariffs and toward narrowly targeted, theory-grounded trade policy. The writers consistently use formal models — general equilibrium, Grossman-Helpman "Protection for Sale," firm-level supply-chain data — to show that sweeping import taxes raise domestic prices, act as a hidden tax on exports, harm allies more than rivals, and that even a celebrated preferential deal can be welfare-reducing through trade diversion. The cluster matters as a sustained, quantified rebuttal to the protectionist case, built on the discipline of trade economics.
TIER 4
Nov 4, 2024
Fariha Kamal argues that broad-based tariffs, intended to boost US manufacturing, instead hurt it because exporter-importer firms (which dominate trade and account for over three-quarters of net manufacturing job growth) rely on imported intermediate inputs, so import taxes act like a roughly 2% tariff on US exports. Concludes tariffs should be narrowly targeted. A well-evidenced trade-policy analysis grounded in firm-level supply-chain data.
tariffstrade policymanufacturingsupply chainsexports
TIER 4
Apr 28, 2025
Kyle Meng runs a multi-sector general-equilibrium trade model and finds Trump's tariffs raise aggregate US prices by 5.4% and lower US real income by 0.8%, while raising input costs for domestic producers. Geopolitically they misfire: despite 145% tariffs, China's real income falls only 0.3% (only ~1% of Chinese output goes to the US) whereas allies Mexico (-0.9%) and Canada (-0.6%) are hit hardest. Matters as a quantified, model-based assessment showing the tariffs harm the US and its allies more than their intended rival.
tariffstrade policygeneral equilibrium modelChinareal income
TIER 4
Jun 2, 2025
Baranga and Cramer argue the proposed US-UK trade deal could make both countries poorer because its narrow, quota-capped preferences for high-cost sectors (UK steel/cars, US beef) generate trade diversion that costs the importer tariff revenue without lowering consumer prices. Grounds the case in Grossman-Helpman 'Protection for Sale' theory, showing the deal effectively has each country subsidize the other's politically favored producers. Matters as a rigorous application of trade theory that turns a touted deal into a cautionary example of welfare-reducing preferential agreements.
trade policyUS-UK trade dealtariffstrade diversionGrossman-Helpman
Financial Regulation, Crypto, and Systemic Risk
6 tier-4
The newsletter's most coherent recurring legal-economic argument: that the boundary of the financial safety net keeps quietly expanding — into private credit, into stablecoins, into crypto-enabled corruption — and that the regulatory frameworks now moving through Congress (GENIUS, STABLE) mistake microprudential safety for systemic safety. The writers draw on Gorton's "information insensitive money" theory, FOIA-backed bank data, and the history of runs to warn that stablecoins are classic runnable debt, that bank–private-capital "shadow ventures" recreate 2008-style interconnections off the prudential books, and that crypto opens a near-automatic channel for political self-enrichment. A sharp public-law-meets-financial-stability cluster.
TIER 4
Mar 31, 2025
Argues that the STABLE and GENIUS Act stablecoin frameworks moving through Congress have deep flaws: weak reserve and capital rules, no banking/commerce separation, a state-charter race-to-the-bottom, and a public safety net backstopping speculative crypto. The thesis is that adequate regulation would make the stablecoin business model uneconomical, which itself reveals its limited social value. Matters as a detailed critique of live financial legislation with conflict-of-interest implications (Trump-family stablecoin).
stablecoinscrypto regulationfinancial stabilityGENIUS Actbanking law
TIER 4
Jun 30, 2025
Zhang and Gorton argue the GENIUS Act mistakes microprudential safety for systemic safety: stablecoins are classic runnable short-term debt, and even fully Treasury-backed issuers can face correlated runs when a common shock (e.g. rising rates) hits all of them at once. Draws on Gorton's framework that money must be 'information insensitive' (opacity aids stability) and that strengthening individual issuers does not panic-proof the system. Matters as a theory-grounded warning that the stablecoin law sets up a recurring crisis, though it builds on the authors' prior posts.
stablecoinsGENIUS Actsystemic riskshadow bankingfinancial crises
TIER 4
Jul 7, 2025
Hilary Allen argues financial-regulation experts underestimate Silicon Valley's distinct playbook: weaponizing technological complexity for regulatory arbitrage, disdaining domain history, tending toward winner-take-all monopoly (relevant to stablecoin legislation), and being driven by VC incentives and anti-democratic 'Network State'/TESCREAL worldviews. Warns this confluence threatens financial stability and that crypto carve-outs will force us to relearn old lessons about runs and fraud. Matters as a sharp conceptual bridge between fintech and financial-stability policy.
fintechfinancial regulationcrypto/stablecoinsSilicon Valleysystemic risk
TIER 4
Nov 24, 2025
Uses unsealed evidence from the mid-2000s tech no-poaching cases to show that the arrival of a common leader between two firms raised the probability of collusion ninefold (an 11-point jump from a 1.2% baseline). Argues this empirically vindicates renewed Clayton Act Section 8 enforcement against interlocking directorates and that effects extend beyond product-market competitors to labor markets, suggesting Section 8's scope is too narrow. A novel, well-identified antitrust finding.
antitrustinterlocking directoratescollusionClayton Act Section 8labor markets
TIER 4
Dec 8, 2025
Argues meme coins and stablecoins create a near-automatic vehicle for political self-enrichment—monetizing allegiance or generating passive reserve income—that slips through narrowed bribery, honest-services, and securities doctrines lacking an identifiable quid pro quo. Warns this model is cheap, scalable, and open to foreign money, risking entrenched 'crypto kleptocracy,' and proposes restoring securities treatment, bright-line bans on official-linked tokens, and disclosure reforms. A sharp public-law framing of an emerging corruption channel.
cryptocurrencypublic corruption lawstablecoinscampaign financesecurities regulation
TIER 4
Feb 2, 2026
Documents a post-2008 'shadow venture' in which banks integrate with private capital via equity stakes, liquidity backstops, and risk transfers outside the prudential perimeter—reaching ~56% of the largest banks' CET1 capital when unfunded commitments are included. Argues these hidden interconnections recreate systemic-risk and safety-net-extension problems and proposes tiered reforms (disclosure, commitment limits, narrowing Volcker exemptions). A substantive, FOIA-backed financial-regulation argument.
private creditbank regulationsystemic riskVolcker Ruleshadow banking
Labor Markets, Wages, and Reading the Data
1 tier-5 · 4 tier-4
Two threads braid together here. One is substantive: rising inequality and the structure of wages are framed as products of deliberate policy choices (eroded unions, frozen minimum wage, CEO pay) and of what workers actually do, not of apolitical technology — so they are reversible. The other is methodological and is the newsletter's signature contribution to data literacy: Jed Kolko's repeated dismantling of the "native-born employment soared" claim by exposing CPS population-control artifacts. The tier-5 Kolko piece is a lasting how-to-read-the-data reference; together the cluster trains readers to separate real labor-market signal from statistical noise.
TIER 4
Feb 3, 2025
Jed Kolko pre-empts misreadings of the January 2025 jobs report, explaining that a 3.5M Census population upward revision will add ~2M to household-survey employment (mostly attributed to native-born workers via a statistical quirk) without meaningfully moving headline rates. His reconstructed historical series shows the labor force actually grew smoothly at roughly the reported average rate. A genuinely useful data-literacy explainer that inoculates readers against predictable bad takes.
jobs reportCPSimmigrationlabor forcedata methodology
TIER 4
Mar 17, 2025
Uses EPI's new State of Working America Data Library to argue that four decades of rising inequality stem from intentional policy choices (eroded unions, frozen minimum wage, exploding CEO pay) rather than apolitical technology, evidenced by the post-1979 productivity-pay divergence. The corollary thesis is that because the cause is political not structural, it can be reversed by policies bolstering worker bargaining power. A substantive, data-rich synthesis with a clear policy agenda.
inequalitylabor marketunionsminimum wageCEO pay
TIER 4
May 12, 2025
Rinz and coauthors use O*NET skill/ability/work-activity measures in a regression framework to explain wage differences across occupations, finding some counterintuitive correlations (e.g. mathematics negatively related to wages once other skills are controlled) and large shifts in which physical abilities pay over 25 years. Job content explains about 31% of wage variation, with barriers to entry (licensing), telework, and benefits accounting for much of the residual in high-paying jobs. Matters as a useful framework for thinking about job quality and the coming AI-driven reshaping of returns to skills.
wageslabor economicsjob content/O*NETskillsjob quality
TIER 5
Aug 18, 2025
Jed Kolko, former Commerce Under Secretary, dismantles the viral claim that native-born employment surged by ~2 million, showing it is a statistical artifact of CPS population controls, the January population adjustment, and weighting that mechanically inflates the native-born count as foreign-born response rates fall. Demonstrates with microdata that the spurious growth concentrates in high-immigrant demographic groups and shows the correct read is the native-born unemployment rate (which rose). Matters as a landmark methodological reference on misusing economic statistics and as a corrective with lasting how-to-read-the-data value.
labor statisticsimmigration dataCPS methodologydata integrityemployment
The Care Economy and Caregiving
2 tier-4
A focused pair on the uninsured financial risk of caregiving and the levers that could address it. One piece treats the existing Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit as a politically feasible but badly tuned instrument that refundability and indexing could turn into a real answer to the caregiving-cost crisis; the other makes the case for adding in-home long-term-care coverage to Medicare as a once-in-a-generation evolution that protects against catastrophic risk and frees (mostly female) unpaid caregivers to work. The cluster matters because it locates the care economy at the intersection of tax policy, social insurance, and labor supply.
TIER 4
Oct 29, 2024
Goda and Van Houtven make the case for adding in-home long-term-care coverage to Medicare (as proposed by Harris-Walz), framing it as a ~$40B/year, once-in-a-quarter-century evolution that would close a major uninsured financial risk, free up unpaid caregivers (especially women) to work, and reduce reliance on Medicaid. Systematically walks through utilization, labor-supply, risk-protection, private-market, and care-workforce consequences. A substantive, well-organized care-economy policy analysis.
Medicarelong-term carecare economysocial insurancecaregiving
TIER 4
Jun 8, 2026
Argues the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit raises paid-care use but is non-refundable, un-indexed to inflation, and largely fails low-income families and adult caregivers. Using policy simulations and the 2021 ARPA expansion as a natural experiment, the author shows refundability and relaxed eligibility rules would sharply widen reach at modest fiscal cost, with states like PA and WI as live models. Matters because it identifies a politically feasible existing lever for the U.S. caregiving-cost crisis.
tax creditscare economyrefundabilitylong-term caresafety net
Industrial Policy, Infrastructure, and Bidenomics
1 tier-5 · 4 tier-4
The newsletter's running assessment of the Biden-era investment agenda and how to evaluate it. The landmark CHIPS piece uses a real-options framework to show that industrial policy shaped behavior well before enactment and to bound its causal contribution to the manufacturing-construction boom. A two-part Furman-vs-Tedeschi exchange turns on the deceptively decisive choice of price deflator for whether highway investment actually rose — yielding the durable lesson that infrastructure aid should be macro-state-contingent. Bernstein defends Bidenomics on its own terms, and the regional-lens essay argues place-based diagnostics must be built into analysis so industrial policy doesn't just enrich already-thriving areas. The cluster matters as a sustained, methods-aware reckoning with whether big public investment worked.
TIER 4
Feb 19, 2025
Tedeschi and Van Nostrand counter Furman's claim that real infrastructure investment fell, showing the answer hinges entirely on the deflator: using BEA's official index (which includes labor costs) real highway spending rose 11% since 2019, while the NHCCI Furman uses is an outlier. Cross-validated with FHWA lane-mile and OpenStreetMap data showing post-BIL construction growth. A rigorous measurement explainer that frames the debate continued in issue 0035.
infrastructuredeflatorsNHCCIreal investmentGDP accounting
TIER 4
Feb 17, 2025
Jared Bernstein, former Biden CEA chair, rebuts Jason Furman's Foreign Affairs critique of Bidenomics, conceding the ARP added to inflation but arguing inflation would have spiked under any counterfactual given the supply shock, and defending the industrial/climate policy as second-best given a politically impossible carbon tax. An insider-perspective defense central to the recurring Bidenomics-legacy debate, though more advocacy than original framework.
Bidenomicsinflationindustrial policyARPfiscal stimulus
TIER 4
Mar 3, 2025
Liscow adjudicates the Furman vs. Tedeschi/Van Nostrand dispute on whether real highway spending rose under Biden, siding with the NHCCI bid-price deflator (what governments actually paid) and concluding real spending likely fell because fixed contractor supply met BIL/ARP demand and prices spiked. The policy payoff: future infrastructure aid should be macro-state-contingent, ramping up when slack is high and down when it would just bid up prices. A careful, expert methodological deep-dive.
infrastructurehighway spendingprice deflatorsfiscal policyBIL
TIER 4
Apr 13, 2026
Contends that national aggregates and household-level inequality metrics obscure widening regional divergence, where GDP growth often fails to translate into local jobs or income. Calls for embedding place-based diagnostics—geographic crosswalks, distress indices, region-aware models—into routine policy analysis so industrial policy doesn't concentrate gains in already-thriving areas. A persuasive methodological case rather than a single empirical finding.
regional economicsinequalityindustrial policyplace-based policypolicy methodology
TIER 5
Mar 9, 2026
Rebuts the skeptical reading that the manufacturing-construction boom predated and was independent of CHIPS by applying a real-options framework: firms accumulated low-cost planning 'options' as enactment probability rose, then exercised them, so policy shaped behavior well before the August 2022 signing. Triangulates subsector and census-division data to bound CHIPS's plausible contribution at up to ~35% of the cumulative spending surge. A landmark, exhaustively documented forensic accounting of industrial-policy causation.
CHIPS Actindustrial policymanufacturingreal optionscausal inference
Immigration, Enforcement, and Public Safety
4 tier-4
A cluster connecting immigration, crime, and the fiscal response to crisis through careful causal identification. Kolko shows local immigration surges did not swing the 2024 vote once you control for demographics — immigration's electoral salience was national, not local. AER-bound research on Secure Communities shows tougher enforcement erodes community trust, suppresses victim reporting, and raises victimization. The "Great Crime Decline" reframes ARP fiscal support as an unplanned public-safety stimulus behind the fastest homicide drop on record. Together they treat public safety as something shaped — for better or worse — by enforcement design and fiscal policy, established with strong empirical methods.
TIER 4
Nov 13, 2024
Jed Kolko constructs three imperfect measures of recent local immigration (Census estimates, ACS microdata, immigration-court filings) and shows that once you control for race, education, density, and prior foreign-born share, local immigration surges had no effect on county vote swings in 2024. The thesis: despite immigration's national salience, its electoral effect was a reaction to national conditions, not local exposure. A careful empirical debunking with reusable measurement methodology.
immigrationelectionslocal datavote swingmeasurement
TIER 4
May 11, 2026
Documents the fastest three-year homicide decline on record and argues federal Covid-era fiscal support—especially the ARP's flexible State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds—functioned as an unplanned public-safety stimulus. Marshals city-level evidence (Baltimore's GVRS), prior natural experiments, and expert views that the money "went everywhere" to explain a nationwide drop. Matters as a template for weighing public safety in the fiscal response to the next crisis.
crimefiscal stimulusAmerican Rescue Planpublic safetystate and local policy
TIER 4
Jan 20, 2026
Presents research on the Secure Communities program showing intensified deportations made Hispanic victims ~30% less likely to report crimes, which in turn raised victimization ~16% (an estimated 1.3 million additional crimes), as lower reporting reduced offenders' apprehension risk. Argues the mechanism—eroded community trust in police—implies today's less-targeted, broader ICE enforcement is likely to undermine public safety even more. A strong, AER-bound empirical contribution to the enforcement-crime debate.
immigration enforcementcrimepublic safetySecure Communitiesvictim reporting
Demographics, Health, and the Long Run
5 tier-4
The newsletter's longer-horizon file: how population, health shocks, and core public institutions shape the economy's long-run capacity. Geruso and Spears reframe low birth rates as a global innovation problem, not just a pension problem. The disability piece tracks Covid's evolving labor-market legacy. Two Social Security explainers cut through the "waste and fraud" narrative to the actuarial reality — a 3.82% payroll shortfall that only revenue or benefit changes can close — and the marketplace-cuts and Medicaid pieces show how the 2025 bill's health-coverage rollbacks hit entrepreneurs and Republican constituents alike, and how the postal-service funding model is a stranded piece of national infrastructure. The cluster matters because it ties demographic and health trends to fiscal sustainability and the design of core public programs.
TIER 4
Aug 4, 2025
Shows that the OBBBA's lapse of enhanced ACA premium tax credits plus new administrative barriers will sharply raise marketplace premiums (roughly double net premiums, ~81% for those above 400% FPL) and cause about 5.1 million to lose coverage starting January 2026. Highlights an underappreciated channel: the self-employed and small-business owners rely disproportionately on marketplace coverage, so the cuts raise operating costs and could suppress entrepreneurship. Matters as a focused, data-grounded analysis of an overlooked distributional consequence of the bill.
ACA marketplacesOBBBAhealth insuranceentrepreneurshippremium subsidies
TIER 4
Apr 14, 2025
Geruso, Mahoney, and Posthumus map the shifting political geography of Medicaid, showing enrollment in Republican districts grew 8.46 million (32%) from 2013-2024 and grew fastest (44%) in frontline toss-up seats and in rural, poor, white districts. Argues the proposed $880 billion in cuts to fund tax cuts forces Republicans to choose between high-earner tax cuts and coverage for their own constituents ahead of 2026. Matters as an original district-level data analysis reframing Medicaid cuts as a political liability rather than a partisan win.
Medicaidpolitical geographyOBBBA/budgetrural districtsACA expansion
TIER 4
Jun 23, 2025
Documents the Social Security 75-year shortfall (3.82% of taxable payroll, trust fund unable to pay full benefits by 2034) and shows that waste/fraud/administrative cuts are trivial by comparison, while staffing cuts mainly harm vulnerable disability applicants. Argues real solvency requires revenue increases and/or benefit changes, with tradeoffs that worsen the longer action is delayed. Matters as a clear, well-quantified explainer that reframes the political 'fraud' narrative against the actuarial reality.
Social Securityfiscal solvencywaste/fraud mythdisability benefitsbenefits/transfers
TIER 4
Oct 14, 2025
Argues the USPS self-financing model created by the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act is obsolete given collapsed letter volume and thin parcel margins, and that Congress should treat the postal network as publicly-funded national infrastructure rather than a self-supporting business. Frames the Universal Service Obligation as the defining feature that makes USPS infrastructure (especially for rural America) and argues both privatization and the current Delivering for America cost-cutting plan erode that mission. Matters as a substantive reframing of how to fund a core public service and a critique of efficiency-first reform.
postal servicepublic infrastructurerural accessbudget/funding modeluniversal service
TIER 4
Dec 22, 2025
Tracks a continued rise in reported disability—~4 million more people, driven by cognitive difficulties among younger workers—and links health-related work absences (a Covid proxy) to lasting drops in labor-force participation. Notes the paradox that participation among people with disabilities has risen, possibly via remote work, raising questions about productive capacity and disability-program demand. A clear data-driven update with policy stakes for long-term growth.
disabilityCOVID-19labor force participationlong COVIDremote work
TIER 4
Sep 15, 2025
Geruso and Spears argue the standard fiscal/aging-dependency case for worrying about low birth rates understates the real stakes: a shrinking population means lost scale to cover fixed costs and fewer people generating nonrival ideas that drive long-run global progress. Stresses these benefits cross national borders, that pronatal subsidies have never lifted fertility to replacement, and that the near-term priority is protecting science rather than chasing birth rates. Matters as an original framing (drawn from their book After the Spike) that reframes depopulation as a global innovation problem, not just a pension problem.
fertility/birth ratesdepopulationinnovation/growthdemographicspronatal policy