Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has a plan to deal with tuition loan debt: My plan for broad student debt cancellation will:Cancel debt for more than 95% of the nearly 45 million Americans with student loan debt; Wipe out student loan debt entirely for more than 75% of the Americans with that debt; Substantially increase wealth for Black and … [Read more...] about Doing Something About Tuition Debt
Economics
Carbon Dividend/Carbon Tax
I've fallen behind on my blog reading, so I missed Greg Laden's post a few days ago in which he tries to argue that carbon taxes aren't really taxes. Actually, he seems to prefer to call them a "carbon dividend," which is apparently the trendy new name for this idea. I googled and found this page at the Citizens Climate Lobby which explains it. It's basically a carbon tax -- … [Read more...] about Carbon Dividend/Carbon Tax
Trump and the Art of the Vandal
On Monday of last week, Harley-Davidson announced that it will be moving production of motorcycles destined for the European Union to somewhere outside the United States. The reason isn't hard to understand: In response to U.S. duties on European steel and aluminum, the EU enacted tariffs Friday on more than $3 billion worth of U.S. goods including bourbon, yachts and … [Read more...] about Trump and the Art of the Vandal
Does Safer Heroin Use Mean More Heroin Use?
Megan McArdle is one of my favorite columnists, and she has a new gig over at the Washington Post, where she recently wrote an article about a fascinating just-released economics working paper that caught my eye. The authors, Jennifer Doleac and Anita Mukherjee, studied how the opioid addict population has responded to the drug naloxone becoming more readily … [Read more...] about Does Safer Heroin Use Mean More Heroin Use?
America’s Harvest Box: Socialism for Republicans
About a year ago, my friend Jennifer was mocking our current lack of school choice with this analogy to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP): ...the system we have, wherein people are given food stamps to spend at whatever store they please, is FAR better than a system wherein poor people are only able to get food from ONE specified grocery store in … [Read more...] about America’s Harvest Box: Socialism for Republicans