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1 week ago | 
independent.org | Ross Marchand |Phillip W. Magness |K. Lloyd Billingsley |Jonathan Hofer
Mary Theroux and Let Colleges Fail, by Richard Vedder mentioned on KSFO radio’s Armstrong & Getty program
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1 week ago | 
independent.org | Ross Marchand |Phillip W. Magness |K. Lloyd Billingsley |Jonathan Hofer
In this episode Scott welcomes economist John Cochran who specializes in financial economics and macroeconomics. He’s the Rosemary and Jack Anderson senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Previously he was a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and before that at the University of Chicago Department of Economics. He also writes the very popular Grumpy Economist blog.
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1 week ago | 
independent.org | Brady Leonard |Ethan Yang |John Goodman |Phillip W. Magness
Hours after sweeping, near-global tariffs went into effect Wednesday morning, the Trump administration paused nearly all new tariffs, aside from the astronomical 125% tariff placed on Chinese goods. Tariffs that were not temporarily suspended include a near-universal 10% tariff on most imports and a 25% tariff on foreign made vehicles.
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1 week ago | 
independent.org | Ethan Yang |Phillip W. Magness |K. Lloyd Billingsley |Ross Marchand
On March 14, a group of Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives introduced legislation that would ban all student visas for Chinese nationals, sparking controversy and outrage. Although the Stop CCP VISAs Act is unlikely to pass, it signals a growing concern and frustration with Chinese influence in American higher education, particularly attempts at espionage and institutional capture.
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1 week ago | 
independent.org | John Goodman |Phillip W. Magness |K. Lloyd Billingsley |Ross Marchand
Some time ago, my think tank commissioned Dr. Lori Taylor, at that time an economics professor at Southern Methodist University, to do a study of Dallas public schools. The study measured the productivity of the schools by comparing the test scores of students in the current year with the scores of those same students in the previous year.
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1 week ago | 
independent.org | Phillip W. Magness |K. Lloyd Billingsley |Ross Marchand |John Goodman
For Immediate ReleaseApril 15, 2025Oakland, Calif.—The concept of “creative destruction” was introduced by economist Joseph Schumpeter to describe the natural process by which competitive markets dismantle established practices, thus making way for innovation. That process needs to occur in American higher education—but is blocked by regulations and subsidies from government and short-sighted donors.
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1 week ago | 
independent.org | Phillip W. Magness |K. Lloyd Billingsley |Ross Marchand |Ethan Yang
HighlightsAmerican universities are consistently ranked among the best in the world, but their place at the top is precarious. Richard Vedder lists ten major problems plaguing higher education:Enrollments have been falling for over a decade. Public support and confidence in higher education is very, very low. “Unpopular” ideas are often suppressed or ignored. Intellectual diversity is declining—just the opposite of what one would hope for on a college campus.
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1 month ago | 
lawliberty.org | Phillip W. Magness |Helen Dale |Thomas Powers |Scott Yenor
For many Americans, March 11, 2020, was the day when it all became real. For some weeks rumors had been circulating about the “novel Coronavirus” out of Wuhan, China. Cruise ships had been quarantined and sanitizer stockpiled. It was the morning of March 11, however, when Dr. Anthony Fauci told Congress that there were already hundreds of confirmed American cases of Covid 19, making it unrealistic to prevent further spread. At lunchtime, the WHO officially declared a global pandemic.
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1 month ago | 
lawliberty.org | Phillip W. Magness |Helen Dale |Thomas Powers |Scott Yenor
Until the onset of Covid-19, most public health experts explicitly rejected the use of large-scale quarantines, also known as lockdowns, as a viable policy response to a respiratory pandemic. Why then, within just a few weeks of the disease appearing in their countries, did those same officials—in the name of science and expertise—embrace draconian policies that shut down entire societies? The judgment against lockdowns rested on the general failure of such measures in past pandemics.
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2 months ago | 
independent.org | David Henderson |Phillip W. Magness
In his inaugural address, President Trump repeated his call for an External Revenue Service. At other times, he has talked about replacing personal income taxes with high tariffs on imports. Besides the fact that U.S. tariffs on imports are collected from U.S. importers, not external exporters, this idea would not work and would likely result in a higher tax burden for Americans.
Current income tax revenues are about $2.5 trillion per year. Goods imports are just over $3 trillion per year.
