One of the difficulties of assessing the economic balance of power between the United States and China is the Communist regime’s manipulation of GDP statistics. In a new AEI report, Derek Scissors creates new estimates of Chinese national wealth that point to the weaker reality behind Beijing’s official narrative.
In the US on the other hand, narratives of a hollowed-out middle class frequently misrepresent our own economic performance. In a new AEI report, AEI Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility Director Scott Winship and Stephen J. Rose reveal that the only reason America’s core middle class has shrunk is because more families are moving into the upper-middle class.
Since December, national attention has been focused on the more than $1 billion in welfare fraud perpetrated in Minnesota under the noses of Minnesota’s Democratic state government. Writing in The New York Times, Ruy Teixeira warns that this issue could be a massive political vulnerability for Democrats if they don’t get serious about ensuring welfare benefits only go to those who “work hard and play by the rules.”
The rise of populism has displaced conservatism’s predominance on the American right—proponents of individual liberty, free markets, and American leadership now find themselves as just one faction within a broader political coalition. Writing in Financial Times, Michael R. Strain makes clear where conservatives can constructively work with populists—and where they can’t.
