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The Leaner Welfare State

Should American workers fear the economic future? As recently as the early 1990s, many academic and political elites were convinced that the United States was doomed to become a backwater, an economic...

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Mobility Impaired

What’s the most important issue in American politics? In a narrow sense, the sputtering economy and ballooning deficits are likely to dominate the 2012 election season. But while every election has its...

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The President’s Suspect Statistics

In early December, in Osawatomie, Kan., President Obama delivered the sort of fiery populist speech his base had been demanding since the start of his administration. The speech as a whole strongly...

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Making Sense of Inequality

Not long ago, a former colleague asked me to recommend the best accessible reference on income inequality. I immediately suggested Timothy Noah’s 2010 series of essays, “The Great Divergence,” written...

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Not Poorer, Not Gloomier

Paul Taylor is correct that I misattributed the specific claim that the middle class has grown poorer over 40 years to the Pew Research Center report, and I apologize for the carelessness. As I wrote...

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Inequality and the Fate of Capitalism

Thomas Piketty topped the Amazon.com charts in America just shy of 150 years from the publication of volume 1 of Das Kapital.Karl Marx would have scoffed at the possibility that by the turn of the...

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A Response to Michael Hiltzik on Reforming SSI

I recently participated in a vitally important project that produced the YG Network’s new reformocon policy book, Room to Grow. I contributed a chapter on antipoverty policy, in which I made the case...

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Are Democrats Out of Data Analysts?

Ezra Klein recently took up the question of whether the Democratic party is out of ideas. I tend to agree with Yuval Levin that both the Left and the Right haven’t modernized their agendas. But there...

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Are Democrats Out of Data Analysts?

Ezra Klein recently took up the question of whether the Democratic party is out of ideas. I tend to agree with Yuval Levin that both the Left and the Right haven’t modernized their agendas. But there...

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For Shame: Catherine Rampell and the Debate We’re Not Having Over Halting the...

‘Judge a little more, blush a little more, and all of society’s ills will be cured.”With this deeply flippant bit of sarcasm, Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell succinctly expresses the lack...

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Does the U.S. Have Lower Economic Mobility than Other Countries?

I’ve been focused on writing a 5,000-word take-down of a piece by the New America Foundation’s Phil Longman that claims each successive generation in the U.S. has been poorer in recent years, but over...

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Being a Member of the ‘Hollowed Out’ Middle-Class Never Felt So Good

I received terrible news last week from the Pew Research Center: I am not a middle-income American. You see, the middle class has become “hollowed out” -- and I am just one of tens of millions...

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Trumpism: ‘It’s the Culture, Stupid’

“You’re working harder. Your wages aren’t going up.” — Hillary Clinton“Make America great again.”— Donald TrumpIn 2004, Thomas Frank scored a hit with What’s the Matter with Kansas?, lamenting that...

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The Middle Class Is Doing Okay: No Need for Gloom and Doom

The Atlantic’s cover story this month is a piece by writer Neal Gabler in which he relates his personal tale of financial distress, using it as a frame for what he takes to be widespread insecurity...

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Why the 1996 Welfare Reform Benefited Poor Children

Twenty years ago last week, Congress passed legislation overhauling the nation’s cash welfare system. In a new paper, “Poverty after Welfare Reform,” I attempt to discern how hardship has changed among...

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Yes, the ’96 Welfare Reform Helped Reduce Child Poverty

Last week, I took an epistemological look at what it means to say that the ’96 welfare reform was a success. In this essay, I want to lay out a specific empirical case affirming the success of welfare...

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The American Dream Abides

Is the American dream on life support? That’s the perennial claim of “declinists,” who are convinced that the American spirit of opportunity is at death’s door. That claim was recently bolstered by...

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