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Selling the Digital Soul

The use and abuse of personal data pose a collective challenge that cannot be solved by individuals.

Freedom from Market Frictions

Digital platforms are but the latest innovation to empower workers and unburden consumers.

Remaking the Modern Market

Gig workers deserve fair labor markets that private platforms cannot provide.

Foreword: Governing After a Revolution

The biggest tech challenges for policymakers go far beyond “Big Tech.”

Social Security Was Supposed to Be Secure

I thought Social Security was supposed to be secure. But we often are warned that the dollars allocated for this purpose are running out. Why are politicians so eager to spend money on everything but maintaining this contract?

What I Wish Our Politicians Knew

When politicians inflame the passions that divide us, it might lead to a boost in the polls, but it leaves us feeling more and more frustrated with our friends, our neighbors, and even our own family members.

Don’t Talk to Us Like We’re Idiots

There’s an easy way to tell when politicians think we’re idiots. They have this way of dancing around the answer when they are asked a question, when even a simple “yes” or “no” would do the trick.

Not Every Family Wants a Big Yard

Striving for “self-sufficiency” through a typical single-family house can mean ignoring the blessings that life in a community can bring and can lead to feeling alone or isolated.

Does Anyone in Power Notice When Government Services Fail?

Take a deep breath and hold it for ten seconds. Imagine doing that over and over again, 31,536,000 times, not knowing where your children were. That’s ten years—or as long as my daughter was separated from her two disabled sons after their non-custodial father abducted them.

How Essential Are the ‘Email Job’ Caste?

Those HR and other middle management types make “busy work” for themselves, though it is darkly ironic that the “busyness” in which they are engaged often results in making my work more difficult and time-consuming.

The Rise of Wall Street and the Fall of American Investment

Confusion over the nature of investment is pervasive among economic policymakers and commentators, has bled into the popular culture, and threatens the nation’s future prosperity.

The Relationships That Don’t Fit on a Spreadsheet

There is no price tag that could be placed on those cherished times. Do our nation’s think tanks consider those moments when devising policy?

A Dream Achieved—Through Mere Luck

My American Dream feels stolen, like I purchased it with the blood of brothers and enemies.

On Family Policy, Proceed with Great Caution

The new American Compass “Home Building” blueprint on policies for buttressing the American family was thrilling to read, and it reminded me of the earnestness and passion of me and my friends 35 years ago.

Do They Even Know Who They Represent?

It would be nice if politicians did their job and represented us. Half the time I don’t even know if they know the first thing about the places they claim to represent, much less the people who live here. What is the point of having a democracy if nobody will listen to you?

COVID’s Toll on the American Dream

The American Dream—people have hung on to those three little words for decades, passed them down for generations. But it’s hard to see how we can believe in the dream right now.

Introducing the Edgerton Essays

The goal of these essays is to help inform policymakers and pundits about what matters most and why to the vast majority of Americans who have no day-to-day connection to our political debates.

Family Policy for the Working-Class Majority

A pro-worker agenda must treat families, not individuals, as the basic units of public policy.

Seeing Like a Pro-Family State

Addressing our fertility and family-formation crises will require us to push the boundaries of family policy and embrace a whole-of-society approach.

Friendly for Which Families?

The experience of “family-friendly” policy abroad makes one lesson clear: no policy is friendly for all families.

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