Once the trust fund is empty, Social Security can pay out only what it collects. Yet few candidates are talking about this in any serious way.
Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Allegory of Good and Bad Government presents a bustling city where prosperity comes from voluntary cooperation and leaders know their place.
Some safety recommendations are treated as essential—while others become negotiable once influential people object.
Raise the price of an activity and people do less of it or restructure how they report it. Mobility was never the sole issue.
No poor country has ever achieved decent living standards without first getting richer.
Thomas Piketty's plan is a comprehensive program for global managed decline dressed up in the language of climate justice and equality.
Vermont passed single-payer legislation in 2011 and abandoned the plan after three years of failure. Why?
One upcoming ballot measure would expand the state's taxing power. A lesser-known measure would limit it. Which will win?
They cost each American household roughly $1,000 in 2025, with more coming in 2026.
Central planning from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, President Donald Trump, and others reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes private markets work.
The fiscal objection is serious. But the deeper problem is that the proposal misunderstands the saving behavior of the households it aims to help.
Every dollar of well-intentioned government assistance comes with a behavioral price tag that we've largely refused to count.
And the government's "solution" is making it worse.
The United States has the most progressive income-tax system in the developed world.
It would be easy to wave it away and move on. But that's how the U.S. got in such a dire fiscal situation.
The reversal wasn't because the economics changed. It is because their biggest shareholders turned toward industrial policy.
Lawmakers used to offset its emergency spending. They don't anymore.
The state's funding crisis is driven by a third-party payment system in which roughly 90 cents of every American health care dollar is paid by someone other than the patient.
The problem is not that the government collects too little. It's that the government spends too much.
The employer insurance exclusion has chained workers to their employers, practically eliminated consumer price sensitivity, and suppressed wages.
American businesses and consumers absorbed nearly 90 percent of the 2025 tariffs' economic burden, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found.
The cost of paying the interest is now the central story, and it's a grim one.
Inflation is a silent tax—and the most painful way to finance government promises.
Across advanced economies, they have repeatedly been narrowed or even repealed after delivering disappointing revenue, tax avoidance, capital flight, and costly administrative battles.
Such attempts try to engineer outcomes while acting like political favors can substitute for market incentives.
Many Republicans are now openly embracing ideas from the progressive playbook. Call them "Depublicans."
The real squeeze comes from government-distorted markets, not economic decline.
Medicaid fraud has been endemic at the state and federal levels for decades. Focusing on a single official or state misses a deeper lesson.
Yes, the status quo is unsustainable. But Romney's proposed solution risks making those problems harder to fix while foreclosing opportunities for the next generation.
History shows clearly that the societies most capable of generosity and liberalism are not those trapped in poverty but those that have escaped it.
Social insurance programs are compatible with a basic safety net. But what we have now is a slow-motion generational fleecing.
The strange new alliance between democratic socialists and nationalist populists isn't a sign of political healing. It's a sign that people have lost their grip on basic economics.
Panicked about holiday shopping? Reason staffers and contributors are here to save the day.
When voters believe they're living through an economic apocalypse, they're willing to embrace the very policies that would create one.
Most countries emerged from a shared language, lineage, or ancient heritage. The United States built a state first and then had to discover what it meant to be a nation.
Real industrial policy has been tried—in many countries, by governments of every ideology. It fails every time for the same reason.
Neither side, however, has a good plan to bring down prices.
Over the last decade, roughly one in every 10 dollars of budget authority has worn an emergency tag.
Democrats defend every entitlement and dream up new benefits. Republicans demand more defense spending and still more tax cuts.
Socialism is government control of the means of production. When the government becomes your largest shareholder, that's a strong first step.
The evidence is clear that we are paying more, U.S. firms have lower margins, and exports are collapsing in flagship industries.
Four ideas that are better than extending Obamacare subsidies and a government shutdown.
This time, Democrats turned the most basic government housekeeping into hostage drama.
Markets thrive on predictable rules, but when the president takes equity stakes or pressures firms at will, investment and risk-taking give way to hesitation.
The expenditures are often costly privileges for special interests that mask the true size of government and fail to deliver the promised bang for the buck.
Some policymakers now say the federal government's stake in Intel should be a "down payment" on a U.S. sovereign wealth fund. The idea is terrible.
The president's clear attempt to interfere in the Federal Reserve is not a one-off crisis.
They are among the worst taxes imaginable—narrow, arbitrary, unstable, and regressive.
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