Nobody is talking about schools resuming completely to normal this fall, but the economic problems caused by the pandemic would not be solved even if they did. In an analysis that we authored and that was discussed last weekend by education ministers of the G-20, we find the cohort of K-12 students hit by the spring closures has been seriously harmed and already faces a loss of lifetime income of 3 percent or more. The nation also faces a bleaker future.
In Choose Economic Freedom, a book George Shultz and I published this year, we explained why one must choose a path that opposes socialism. Economic freedom, or free market capitalism, the term of art used in the Hoover Institution’s important Human Prosperity Project, means a rule of law, predictable policies, reliance on markets, attention to incentives, and limitations on government. Socialism, on the other hand, means arbitrary government actions replace the rule of law, policy predictability is no virtue, central decrees can replace market prices, incentives matter little, and government does not need to be restrained.
The American public has grown war weary, with no enthusiasm to return to a grand agenda for the Middle East. This reluctance is the major constraint on future policy, and it has multiple causes.
I was driving in Northern California on Labor Day, contemplating the 1-2 mile visibility in thick smoke through the Central Valley, and listening to NPR, when an enticing story came along.
After a recently concluded bill-drafting session considered remarkable only in the remarkable job that lawmakers did in avoiding a host of weighty matters, what could California’s State Legislature do for an encore?
Scott Horton is a well-informed foreign policy analyst who interviews people mainly about foreign policy. Because of the potential foreign-policy implications of my recent Defining Ideas article on China, Scott interviewed me last week. His interview is titled, “David Henderson on the Supposed Economic Threat from China.” It goes about 42 minutes.
Hoover Institution fellow Lanhee Chen talks about children engaging in online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chen discusses the social, emotional, and economic toll that is problematic for families in our country, as children are beginning the school year – many of them at home.
Eric A. Hanushek, the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow in Education and Distinguished Visiting Fellow Ludger Woessmann at Stanford’s Hoover Institution released an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) analysis on The Economic Impacts of Learning Lossesincurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. This groundbreaking OECD analysis was presented at the G20 Education Ministers virtual meeting on September 5, 2020. While not addressing when or how schools re-open, it points to the long-run harm to students and to the nation of the accumulating learning losses.
“President Donald Trump isn’t an isolationist, but a realist,” Victor Davis Hanson said in a speech at Hillsdale College on September 3. Hanson, an author and historian whose latest book is “The Case for Trump,” spoke about foreign policy under the Trump administration at Plaster Auditorium Sept. 2 at 8 p.m.
H.R. McMaster is one of the most celebrated modern military leaders in America. His achievements include serving as a captain during the Gulf War, being responsible for fighting the Iraqi insurgency during the war in Iraq, writing the widely-read book Dereliction of Duty, and most recently serving as national security advisor under President Donald Trump.
The Trump administration has helped broker a deal between Serbia and Kosovo, two former arch-enemies that were part of the former Yugoslavia. The agreement is receiving scant attention from the mainstream media for reasons I’ll address below.
