Society
Corporate Diversity Skates the Legal Line in a ‘Mea Culpa’ Age
Amidst the bullish markets of the 1980s, the corporate governance model drove singularly toward profits, without regard for partisanship or pet political causes. While this gave rise to larger-than-life cinematic...
How America Looked to Space to Revive Its Faltering Soviet Spying
Here’s What You Need to Remember: Remarkable as SAMOS was, it was still pretty primitive. It had limited onboard film supply, limited bandwidth, no way to store or resend an image...
Fact: 18 Million U.S. Children are at Risk of Hunger
Editor’s note: The economic crisis brought about by the coronavirus pandemic has increased the number of Americans who can’t always get enough to eat, including children. The Conversation U.S. asked...
Is It Moral to Feel Equal Empathy for Loved Ones and Strangers?
The year 2020 has been no stranger to suffering. In the midst of a global pandemic, widespread financial hardship and violence arising from systemic racism, empathy for others’ suffering has...
Why Are People So Mad at Police?
Unless you’ve been hibernating this year (for which you could hardly be blamed), you’ve probably noticed that some people are really angry at cops these days, whereas other people—mostly conservatives and members...
To Reduce Marijuana Corruption, Cut Government Regulation
Mona Zhang has a good piece on marijuana and political corruption at Politico. She writes: In the past decade, 15 states have legalized a regulated marijuana market for adults over 21, and another...
Giving Tuesday: US Nonprofits Raised $2.5 Billion This Year
Some 35 million Americans gave a total of US$2.5 billon on Giving Tuesday to causes of all kinds, including $808 million in donations made online. Donations increased overall by 25%...
How Social Security Reform Could Make a Popular Federal Program Better
America’s most popular federal government program—Social Security—will be insolvent within 15 years, leaving older workers and retirees fearful of future benefit cuts. It will also leave younger workers reticent to contribute...
Is There a War on Thanksgiving?
Will Americans still be celebrating Thanksgiving 100 years from now? This year marks the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival in America. The moment, which deserved wider recognition, was celebrated...
High Taxes Don’t Always Mean High-Quality Government Services
As my Cato colleague Chris Edwards documented here a couple weeks ago, interstate migration data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that state tax policy affects where Americans, especially wealthy ones, are choosing...
Why Do the Rich Get Away With Ultra-Low Tax Bills?
People tend to have one of two reactions to the revelation that President Donald Trump has paid little to no taxes in recent years: He’s either an amoral tax cheat...
The Wealthy Want To Raise Taxes on the Non-Wealthy
Ryan Bourne and I examined the economics and politics of wealth inequality in this 2019 study. We considered whether the wealthy tilt our political system in a conservative direction, which many liberals worry...