Tag Archives: Opinion

Fighting Poverty in Rural America

National Affairs, Spring 2025

Rural poverty rates in America have remained high largely because well-meaning attempts to reduce them have involved separate, uncoordinated policies thrown haphazardly at the problem. By instead considering their options in full and recognizing how each might build on the others — especially in light of new developments in the energy sector — policymakers could grasp that they confront a moment of opportunity not to be missed.

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Reclaiming Sovereignty in Financial Regulation

National Affairs, Fall 2024

Christmas of 1989 was a good one for me. I had just secured my first adult job as a credit analyst with a community bank in Klein, Texas. Ronald Reagan had left office less than a year earlier. Global communism was imploding. And deregulation was moving forward in multiple American industries — including a banking system that, thanks to decades of technological and financial innovation, was chafing against the rules imposed by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933….

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Techno-Tyranny of Gilliam’s Brazil is “1984” for 2024

American Institute for Economic Research, July 24, 2024

When I first saw the film Brazil (1985) a decade after its release, I was decidedly underwhelmed. The pacing was slow, the symbolism convoluted, and the humor too British for my twenty-eight-year-old American tastes. But after a recent viewing, this movie that routinely appears on ‘best British film’ lists impressed me with its entertainment value, but even more with how relevant its message has become…

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How the West Won the Money Race

American Institute for Economic Research, March 15, 2024

When Marco Polo arrived in Yuan Dynasty China, among the wonders he found was that money grew on trees. His travelog tells how the Emperor Kublai Khan’s mint in present-day Beijing processed the cambium layer of mulberry trees—a soft, sticky substance found between the wood and the bark—into “something resembling sheets of paper.” These were cut into rectangles and marked with an imperial seal made from cinnabar. Just like that, paper money was born…

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Where Have You Gone, Alex P. Keaton?

American Institute for Economic Research, November 30, 2023

One of the most popular sitcoms of the 1980s, Family Ties, featured two ex-hippies raising a family in the era of Ronald Reagan.  Their eldest son Alex, played by a young Michael J. Fox, was an unabashed, necktie-wearing conservative who idolized Milton Friedman and excelled academically. Alex was, of course, an economics major…

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