The Commons
Making Sense of Conservative Economics
Trump’s anti-bureaucracy energy should be directed at regulation as well as waste
It isn’t just about criminal punishments and presidential pardons
The old GOP dictated Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. His new coalition should shape its future.
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Oren speaks on a panel about economic policy in Trump’s second term and more with Jason Furman, Richard Burkhauser, and Kimberly Clausing.
Our Latest
American Compass’s Oren Cass joins a wide range of economists and business leaders to discuss Milton Friedman’s essay, “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” on its 50th anniversary.
Meet Alex and Lance, two blue-collar workers in southwestern Ohio. One had union representation as he sought a foothold in the labor market; the other did not. Their lives remind us that there is still power in a union.
The trade union is a quintessentially Tocquevillian institution and the one that brought down Soviet communism. Conservatives must rescue the American labor movement from Big Labor’s partisanship and restore its community-building purpose.
Much as the Brexit referendum anticipated the rise of the Trump presidency, the current UK Conservative government led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson may now be providing clues as to a possible future path for the post-Trump Republican Party in the United States.
If we do not want to allow a free labor market to set wages, then the only alternative is for the government to directly fix prices—in this case, the prices that employers are to pay workers for particular jobs—by means of a compulsory, rigid and universal government labor code.
