Stephen Moore

School choice is a better way to make schools colorblind

In the first Democratic presidential debates, Sen. Kamala Harris of California defended forced busing back in the 1970s as a civil rights triumph and criticized former Vice President Joe Biden for racial insensitivity for once opposing the policy.

July 7, 2019

The crisis in Washington isn’t revenue, it’s over-spending

The Congressional Budget Office has just released its mid-year update on the federal fiscal situation and it portends a debt avalanche. But don't bother to tell Sens. Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren that. They're busy advocating tens of trillions of dollars in new federal spending.

June 30, 2019

Patients need to know how much their health care costs

Several years ago, I had a shoulder injury and the doctor told me I might need surgery to fix the small tear in my rotator cuff. He said that I was borderline whether to have the surgery or not. So I asked: "Doctor, if I have this surgery, about how much will it cost?"

June 23, 2019

Renewable energy will only be possible with massive increases in the supply of critical minerals

The recent threats by Beijing to cut off American access to critical mineral imports has many Americans wondering why our politicians have allowed the United States to become so overly-dependent on China for these valued resources in the first place.

June 16, 2019

The Federal Reserve’s logic on growth, inflation is faulty

I've been shouting from the rooftops for six months that the Federal Reserve is too tight on money, and that this lack of dollar liquidity has cut into growth. So it is somewhat vindicating that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell seems to finally coming around to that idea. The betting markets are now predicting at least one rate cut this year and perhaps two.

June 9, 2019

Are men becoming economically expendable?

Almost all of the economic discussion of late has been on the "wage gap" between men and women. A case in point: California Sen. Kamala Harris wants to create a federal bureaucracy which will ensure that the government has more influence over workers' pay than workers and employers themselves. This will open up a Pandora's Box for trial lawyers as employers find themselves deluged with lawsuits over pay "gaps" real and imagined.

June 2, 2019

The Fed hurts farmers more than China does

There's no question that many farmers are struggling this year with incomes down and bankruptcies up. Though some of the more dire reports on the farm sector recorded in the media are exaggerated, what is indisputable is that prices for major commodities such as corn are on a downward trend and are significantly lower than they were less than a decade ago, when prices were at or near record highs.

May 26, 2019

The Trump immigration plan is pro-America, pro-growth

When I used to talk to candidate Donald Trump about immigration, I would tell him, make sure your "big, beautiful wall" has plenty of gates for people to come here legally. President Trump's new immigration initiative would achieve both goals — border security and a new system to admit the immigrants America needs most.

May 19, 2019

Trump’s policies help Ohio shatter economic records

I recently took some flak from Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown for saying in a speech at the Heartland Institute several years ago that the "only place to live in the midwest is Chicago." He was particularly upset that I took a tongue-in-cheek swipe at Cleveland and Cincinnati as "armpits" and this was supposedly evidence that I hate Ohio.

May 12, 2019

Let the sunshine in at the Federal Reserve

I'm disappointed that I had to withdraw from the nomination to be a member of the Federal Reserve Board, because I do believe the Fed needs to change the way it operates. In the last month I started investigating how it makes its decisions that have such a dramatic impact on jobs, wages, interest rates and the overall well-being of the country. How does the board make its monetary policy decisions on setting interest rates, buying bonds and regulating our financial institutions?

May 5, 2019

Any climate change ‘solution’ that makes America poorer is not a solution

Every time a reporter asks me if I would support a carbon tax, I always say that I might if it led to a dollar-for-dollar reduction in income or payroll tax rates. And the new energy tax would have to replace onerous greenhouse gas regulations. And everytime I say this, the next day a headline reads: "Steve Moore Is For a Carbon Tax."

April 28, 2019

Why the immigration system must move away from family immigrants and more toward skill and merit

Of all America's immigrant visa programs, arguably the most successful for the U.S. economy has been the H1B program. This program admits highly-skilled foreigners that fill vital employment niches to make our Made in America businesses more successful in international markets. Larry Kudlow, the director of President Trump's National Economic Council, calls these immigrants the "brainiacs."

April 21, 2019

Is America running out of workers?

If you want one number that encapsulates the enormity of the economic turnaround under Donald Trump it is this: Today in America so far this year there have been between 7.1 million and 7.6 million unfilled jobs. This number is larger than the entire population of the state of Indiana. That is how powerful and relentless the hiring spree has been under Trump policies.

April 14, 2019

Holding commodity prices stable will help to avoid economic carnage

What caused the financial crisis and Great Recession of 20082009? A decade later, economists still don't have a good answer. Of course, the financial bubble in the housing market was the proximate cause, but this begs the question of what inflated the bubble that burst in the first place.

April 7, 2019

Elite universities sit on massive tax deducible endowments, and could be tapped to lower costs

The seething anger that Americans feel over the college admissions scandal with wealthy and well-connected families using money, influence and cheating to bump their kids up in line so they get accepted into elite schools is well-justified. Yet this scheme is small potatoes compared to the real scandal on college campuses from coast to coast. That scam is how much universities are charging families once they do get in.

March 31, 2019

The avalanche of green dollars in Barack Obama’s first term was a colossal waste of money

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal has been widely ridiculed for its massive disruption to the economy and a price tag of tens of trillions of dollars.

March 24, 2019

The Democrats’ $100 trillion agenda could easily tilt the nation toward bankruptcy

Remember when Democrats complained that $5.7 billion for a border wall was too expensive? Well, that's chump change compared to what many of the congressional Democrats and nearly all of those 15 declared Democrats in the presidential race are now rallying behind.

March 17, 2019

The Trump administration rallies behind car tariffs, but the car industry opposes them

In almost every case, whenever a tariff or quota is imposed on imports that tax is strongly supported by the domestic industry getting the protective shield from lower-priced foreign competition. The sugar industry supports sugar tariffs; textile mills lobby for tariffs on foreign clothing. The steel industry and the aluminum makers are getting rich off of the high taxes on imported metals.

March 10, 2019

Why Trump must veto the federal land grab bill

President Trump gave one of his most memorable and impactful speeches two weeks ago when he systematically dismantled the case for socialism. In that speech, he recalled the economic harm and destruction in nations that have adopted socialism, communism or Stalinism. "We will never be a socialist country," Mr. Trump pledged in his speech in Florida.

March 3, 2019

Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey and New York are careening off a progressive cliff

"This is the flip side (of) tax the rich, tax the rich, tax the rich. The rich leave, and now what do you do?" — Andrew M. Cuomo, N.Y. governor (2/4/19)

February 24, 2019