Executive Summary
Nine strategies for retaking global leadership in industry and innovation
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How Should We Regulate the Social Media Companies? Hint: More Competition Might not be the Answer
Donald Trump threatened to close Twitter down a day after the social media giant marked his tweets with a fact-check warning label for the first time. The president followed this threat up with an executive order that would encourage federal regulators to allow tech companies to be held liable for the comments, videos, and other content posted by users on their platforms. As is often the case with this president, his impetuous actions were more than a touch self-serving and legally dubious absent a congressionally legislated regulatory framework.
In Praise of Big Internet: the Economic Importance of Internet Companies
It has become bipartisan sport to attack “Big Tech”, but most of the ire is directed at “Big Internet”: consumer-facing Internet companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Uber.
Private Funds Could Be Your Friends
The basic motivation behind American Compass’s Coin-Flip Capitalism project seems to be scrutinizing the private fund industry—an industry that is indeed poorly understood by most—under the suspicion that, amidst its mysteries and its trillions, it may be detracting from our national welfare. Fair enough.
What Price Will the Conservative Community Pay to Capitalize on the Era of Trump?
Amitai Etzioni includes American Compass among the leading voices in the emerging “communitarian” faction on the Right, alongside Senators Rubio, Cotton, Romney, and Hawley.
Libertarianism for Me, Authoritarianism for Thee
If you spend significant time in poor communities, especially poor black communities, you wonder why they don’t explode in protest more often. The inequality that is a concerning statistic to academics and politicians is their daily commute from cleaning the office of a Wall Street bank to a home surrounded by boarded-up buildings. The oppressive state that Libertarians warn about, is the cops who hassle or arrest them about whatever they do. The declining life expectancy that has generated worried op-eds, is their friends, family, and neighbors dying from a batch of heroin gone bad.
Economies of Scale Versus Big Business
Last week, some very large employers – including Salesforce, Tesla, and Walmart – called for a corporate merger moratorium for hospitals and doctors groups. It’s unusual to have the paragons of big business assert the need for aggressive antitrust, but it speaks to how confused our current economic debates really are.
Marco Rubio Takes on Deindustrialization and Race
The decline in American manufacturing hurt workers of every racial background.
What About the Rotten Culture of the Rich?
We used to joke on Wall Street that you should marry a trader at another firm, trade with only each other, and by end of the year one would have Read more…
Time for a Hegelian Synthesis on Trade and Globalization
German philosopher Hegel postulated that history progresses through thesis, antithesis and then synthesis. Today we are seeing the first two dynamics with trade policy and attitudes towards globalization; we desperately need the third.
Free Trade and the Paradox of Consumption
In a recent post, Rachel Bovard rightly defended the notion that in certain instances national security considerations should supersede free trade considerations. She specifically cited the ban on Huawei in the context of a discussion of a recent Real Clear Markets column by economist John Tamny, who makes a traditional free market case against the ban on Huawei in the US market
GOP Fault Lines Appear as Some Press for More Relief While Others Demand a Spending Pause
Jim Antle quotes American Compass’s Oren Cass on the significant of innovative economic policymaking by several GOP senators.
Is It Time for an American Industrial Policy?
American Compass’s Oren Cass participates in a written debate with Duke University’s Michael Munger over the need for American industrial policy.
Hamiltonian Means, Jeffersonian Ends
My American Compass co-blogger, Michael Lind, likes to portray America’s development as a tug of war between the ideals of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson — nation builders and industrialists on the one hand, and laissez-faire localists on the other.
The Returns Counter (Q2 2019)
Archive of Returns Counter data as of Q2 2020
Private Equity, Hedge Funds Get Unlikely Foe in GOP Think Tank
American Compass’s first special project, “Coin-Flip Capitalism,” was featured by Bloomberg Politics, challenging established economic views on the right.
Yes, We Should Care About Huawei
In a recent Real Clear Markets column, economist John Tamny made the case that Oren Cass’s policy advice is backwards and will result in political doom for, in Tamny’s words, “the hyper emotional Marco Rubio.”
Returns Counter Methodology
Sources and methodology for the Coin-Flip Capitalism Returns Counter.
We Will NOT Run Out of Jobs
This seems like a strange headline given that the economy has recently shed almost 40 million jobs. But at some point with the development of a vaccine or an effective treatment, the economy will come back to normal.
Good Policy is Good Politics
Try as we might, those of us who dare to challenge economic orthodoxy within the GOP are unlikely to prevail on policy and moral grounds alone. But the politics of today offer us another course that is just as powerful: offering a prescription to protect from impending electoral doom of the party if the course isn’t corrected. Rejecting economic orthodoxy within the GOP and embracing the largest jobs program in American history may be the only antidote to saving the Senate majority and the Trump presidency.
