Oren Cass
Oren Cass is the executive director of American Compass and author of The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America (2018). He is a contributing opinion writer for the Financial Times and his work also appears regularly in publications including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
From 2005 to 2015, Oren worked as a management consultant in Bain & Company’s Boston and Delhi offices. During this period, he also earned his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was elected vice president and treasurer of the Harvard Law Review and oversaw the journal’s budget and operations. While still in law school, Oren also became Domestic Policy Director for Governor Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, editing and producing the campaign’s “jobs book” and developing its domestic policy strategy, proposals, and research. He joined the Manhattan Institute as a senior fellow in 2015 and became a prolific scholar, publishing more than 15 reports for MI and editing its popular “Issues 2016” and “Issues 2020” series, testifying before seven congressional committees and speaking on dozens of college campuses. He founded American Compass at the start of 2020.
AEI’s Michael Strain on Projects Like Ours Share This
Re: The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg
On the most recent episode of Jonah Goldberg’s podcast, The Remnant, AEI director of economic policy studies Michael Strain delivers a harsh assessment of projects like American Compass. According to Michael, “the arguments that they put forward just aren’t well developed,” “they aren’t supported by evidence, they aren’t convincing,” and “the work they’re doing just […]
Private Equity Captures Rather Than Creates Value Share This
NEWSWEEK—American Compass’s Oren Cass debates University of Chicago professor Todd Henderson over the question, “Does the private equity industry create substantial social value?”
Ivanka Teams With Apple, IBM to Push Job-Skills Schooling Share This
REAL CLEAR POLITICS—RCP talks with American Compass’s Oren Cass about a new White House initiative to connect Americans with education and training programs that can be accessed immediately without requiring the time or money of a bachelor’s degree.
Beware “Social Insurance” Salesmen Share This
Re: Social Conservatism and the “Small Government” Straightjacket
Redistribution is a vital topic for conservatives as we question stale orthodoxies and reexamine how first principles can help to address modern challenges. In this respect I agree entirely with recent comments by Sam Hammond, both here on The Commons and at The American Conservative, insisting that the right-of-center must get beyond “hostility to anything […]
The “Enormous Social Value” of Private-Equity Fees Share This
Re: Populists Don't Know Much About Private Equity
The Wall Street Journal’s defense of private equity (“Populists Don’t Know Much About Private Equity”) is an impressionist masterpiece of market fundamentalism, relying on the unexamined assumption that fees paid to private-equity partners represent “social value.” One can simply step back and gawk in amazement, but true appreciation requires poring over each brushstroke.
An Industrial Policy By Any Another Name… Share This
The opinion pages of both the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal have featured calls for industrial policy in the past week, an encouraging trend toward realism about the necessary role for government in a free-market economy. In the Times, yesterday’s editorial warned against “the absence of a proactive industrial policy” and argued that “quick […]
The Fight On The Right: A Pre-Trump Or Post-Trump Future? Share This
THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE—American Compass’s Oren Cass describes the parameters of the fight on the right and makes the case for a Post-Trump conservatism.
Does Aggressive Policing Create Its Own Cycle of Dependence? Share This
I was jolted by the familiar echo, reading Chris Arnade’s “Cops and Teachers,” of an argument I’ve made a thousand times. It was an obviously conservative point, turned suddenly into a refutation of a popular conservative stance. Speaking in the context of safety-net policy, I often try to distinguish between policies that maintain households in poverty […]
Balanced Trade, Robust Industry, and Rising Productivity: Pick All Three Share This
Professor Dan Drezner is again illustrating how we ended up with a misbegotten consensus on globalization built upon inadequate assumptions and shallow analysis. A couple of weeks ago, we encountered him badly mischaracterizing a study about the supposed value of trade liberalization. Breezing past that issue, he is back now with a more outlandish claim, […]
On Regulatory Reform Share This
Outdated environmental regulation poses an irrational barrier to reshoring efforts.
Is It Time for an American Industrial Policy? Share This
PAIRAGRAPH—American Compass’s Oren Cass participates in a written debate with Duke University’s Michael Munger over the need for American industrial policy.