A new working paper demonstrates that in addition to Michael R. Strain's important contributions as an opinion columnist, he is producing remarkable scholarship. His latest research with Jeffrey Clemens finds that "large minimum wage increases reduced employment rates among low-skilled individuals" by more than 2.5 percent. Smaller increases in the minimum wage, however, have virtually zero effect on employment.    

Scott Winship reports that the pandemic did not increase rates of food insecurity in the United States from 2019 to 2020 and that "poverty fell to an unprecedented low in 2020, despite the public health crisis." Winship attributes these surprising facts "to the extraordinary efforts by policymakers early on in the pandemic" but warns that policymakers have been late to shift their attention to other priorities, such as public health and education policy.

Benjamin and Jenna Storey, political philosophy professors at Furman University and visiting scholars at AEI, spoke to The Wall Street Journal about the troubled state of liberalism in America. The Journal's Barton Swaim praises their new book: "I have read many critiques of liberalism, but none so original as 'Why We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment.'"

Thomas Chatterton Williams' powerful essay in this week's New York Times Magazine recounts his father's first encounter with classical philosophy as a child in the segregated South, the impact this experience had on Williams' own intellectual pursuits, and how Williams passed the same love for wisdom on to his daughter during a recent trip to Greece.

Zack Cooper applauds the Australia–United Kingdom–United States (AUKUS) deal, in which the United Kingdom and the United States agreed to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, and proposes "five practical recommendations to capitalize on AUKUS's momentum."

In the fall 2021 issue of AEI's National Affairs, Thomas P. Miller reflects on lessons from the "exceedingly malleable" nature of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) over the past 10 years. He warns that amid controversies over the ACA, Congress has abdicated its proper role and allowed regulators to make "a mockery of the rule of law."

Adam J. White argues that the controversial details of the new Texas abortion law only make sense — indeed, "are inevitable" — when considered in the context of Roe v. Wade's distorting "gravitational pull."