An informed argument for an economic policy based on bridges of preparation and adaptation rather than walls of protection and exclusion "When technological change and globalization in recent decades brought frustration over the resulting losses to jobs and communities, there were no guardrails to get these workers back on track. As this compelling book shows, our nation is going to need bridges to help people get through the unavoidable transformations."--Edmund Phelps, 2006 Nobel Laureate in Economics and author of Mass Flourishing Free-market economists often have noted that there are winners and losers in a competitive capitalist world. The question of how to deal with the difficult real-life consequences faced by the losers, however, has largely been ignored. Populist politicians have tried repeatedly to address the issue by creating walls--of both the physical and economic kinds--to insulate communities and keep competition at bay. While recognizing the broad emotional appeal of walls, economist Glenn Hubbard argues that because they delay needed adaptations to the ever-changing world, walls are essentially backward-looking and ultimately destined to fail. Taking Adam Smith's logic to Youngstown, Ohio, as a case study in economic disruption, Hubbard promotes the benefits of an open economy and creating bridges to support people in turbulent times so that they remain engaged and prepared to participate in, and reap the rewards of, a new economic landscape.

This is an edited volume reviewing the major means-tested social programs in the United States. Each author addresses a major program or area, reviewing each area’s successes and recommending how to address shortcomings through policy change. In general, our means-tested programs do many things well, but some adjustments to each could make the system much more effective. This book provides policymakers with a broad overview of the issues at hand in each program and how to address them.

Argues that the Obama administration has used the economic crises to move away from free enterprise and offers a way back via sound public policy.

A leading conservative intellectual argues that to renew America we must recommit to our institutions Americans are living through a social crisis. Our politics is polarized and bitterly divided. Culture wars rage on campus, in the media, social media, and other arenas of our common life. And for too many Americans, alienation can descend into despair, weakening families and communities and even driving an explosion of opioid abuse. Left and right alike have responded with populist anger at our institutions, and use only metaphors of destruction to describe the path forward: cleaning house, draining swamps. But, as Yuval Levin argues, this is a misguided prescription, rooted in a defective diagnosis. The social crisis we confront is defined not by an oppressive presence but by a debilitating absence of the forces that unite us and militate against alienation. As Levin argues, now is not a time to tear down, but rather to build and rebuild by committing ourselves to the institutions around us. From the military to churches, from families to schools, these institutions provide the forms and structures we need to be free. By taking concrete steps to help them be more trustworthy, we can renew the ties that bind Americans to one another.

From Stupefied Youth to Dangerous Adults Back in 2008, Mark Bauerlein was a voice crying in the wilderness. As experts greeted the new generation of “Digital Natives” with extravagant hopes for their high-tech future, he pegged them as the “Dumbest Generation.” Today, their future doesn’t look so bright, and their present is pretty grim. The twenty-somethings who spent their childhoods staring into a screen are lonely and purposeless, unfulfilled at work and at home. Many of them are even suicidal. The Dumbest Generation Grows Up is an urgently needed update on the Millennials, explaining their not-so-quiet desperation and, more important, the threat that their ignorance poses to the rest of us. Lacking skills, knowledge, religion, and a cultural frame of reference, Millennials are anxiously looking for something to fill the void. Their mentors have failed them. Unfortunately, they have turned to politics to plug the hole in their souls. Knowing nothing about history, they are convinced that it is merely a catalogue of oppression, inequality, and hatred. Why, they wonder, has the human race not ended all this injustice before now? And from the depths of their ignorance rises the answer: Because they are the first ones to care! All that is needed is to tear down our inherited civilization and replace it with their utopian aspirations. For a generation unacquainted with the constraints of human nature, anything seems possible. Having diagnosed the malady before most people realized the patient was sick, Mark Bauerlein surveys the psychological and social wreckage and warns that we cannot afford to do this to another generation.

By one reading, things look pretty good for Americans today: the country is richer than ever before and the unemployment rate is down by half since the Great Recession—lower today, in fact, than for most of the postwar era. But a closer look shows that something is going seriously wrong. This is the collapse of work—most especially among America’s men. Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist who holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, shows that while “unemployment” has gone down, America’s work rate is also lower today than a generation ago—and that the work rate for US men has been spiraling downward for half a century. Astonishingly, the work rate for American males aged twenty-five to fifty-four—or “men of prime working age”—was actually slightly lower in 2015 than it had been in 1940: before the War, and at the tail end of the Great Depression. Today, nearly one in six prime working age men has no paid work at all—and nearly one in eight is out of the labor force entirely, neither working nor even looking for work. This new normal of “men without work,” argues Eberstadt, is “America’s invisible crisis.” So who are these men? How did they get there? What are they doing with their time? And what are the implications of this exit from work for American society? Nicholas Eberstadt lays out the issue and Jared Bernstein from the left and Henry Olsen from the right offer their responses to this national crisis. For more information, please visit http://menwithoutwork.com.