Only the Rich Can Play: How Washington Works in the New Gilded Age, by David Wessel (PublicAffairs, 352 pp., $14.99)   The rapper T.I. may never have read Kevin Williamson’s infamous suggestion that struggling communities need “real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul,” but he is clearly […]

THE NEW YORK TIMES—The Ethics and Public Public Policy Center’s Patrick T. Brown highlights the American Compass Child Tax Credit Survey in a discussion of what working-class parents want from family policy.

NEWSWEEK—In an adaptation of his conclusion to the Edgerton Essays anthology, Patrick T. Brown discusses what he learned from editing the collection of perspectives from the working class.

These essays captured the unfiltered thoughts of working-class Americans in all their complicated diversity.

Any discussion of the effects of government-subsidized day care for children inevitably turns to Canada. In 1997, the province of Quebec introduced a universal child care program, offering parents a child care spot for five (Canadian) dollars per day (now Can$8.50). Heralded by some as a success – it brought an estimated 69,700 moms into […]

To Americans, the idea of a professional sports league with the same slate of teams competing each year is normal. In Europe, it might lay bare how an unthinking application of market logic to cherished traditions and institutions can kill the golden goose.

There’s a simplistic way to talk about the history of American associational life that goes something like this: Neighbors used to help each other raise barns, churches provided much-needed charity, and benevolent societies covered costs due to injury or untimely death. Then the New Deal or the Great Society stepped in and Americans began bowling, […]

One way of reading a story of American discontent is in its newspapers. Not just in their pages, but in how their ongoing decline illustrates broader tendencies fueling popular frustration. Local newspapers used to be the only game in town. National news came off the wires, opinion columns were syndicated, and each town was its […]

Effective family policy begins from the institution’s ultimate roles and purposes.

Image: Steve Cukrov – stock.adobe.com Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, by Anand Giridharadas (Alfred A. Knopf, 304 pp. $27) The HBO series “Westworld” was set in a futuristic theme park that featured life-like humanoid robots offering wealthy guests an immersive experience without any fear of lasting consequences. A 2018 book […]