President-elect Donald Trump has said that he will balance the federal budget and cut spending. During the election campaign, he complained about “waste, fraud, and abuse all over the place” and promised to “cut so much, your head will spin.” And he said, “We are going to ask every department head in government to provide a list of wasteful spending projects that we can eliminate in my first 100 days.”Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) has created such a list of wasteful spending programs in his new rep...
Nov 30, 2016•52 min
Housing prices are rapidly climbing in many American urban areas, pushing low-income and sometimes even middle-income people out of rental and home buying markets. American homeownership rates have fallen to the lowest levels since 1965, increasing wealth inequality and reducing productivity.Should urban areas respond to this affordability crisis by “growing up,” that is, building higher densities in the existing urban footprint as recommended by a recent White House policy paper? Or should they...
Nov 29, 2016•1 hr 15 min
The Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives invites you to join us at CATO’S 34TH ANNUAL MONETARY CONFERENCE. Leading experts will address the risks inherent in the unconventional monetary policies of the world’s leading central banks and the steps that need to be taken to restore long-run economic growth. The lack of any monetary rule to guide policy decisions has created great uncertainty and increased financial volatility. Zero or negative interest rates and quantitati...
Nov 17, 2016•1 hr 18 min
The Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives invites you to join us at CATO’S 34TH ANNUAL MONETARY CONFERENCE. Leading experts will address the risks inherent in the unconventional monetary policies of the world’s leading central banks and the steps that need to be taken to restore long-run economic growth. The lack of any monetary rule to guide policy decisions has created great uncertainty and increased financial volatility. Zero or negative interest rates and quantitati...
Nov 17, 2016•1 hr 16 min
The Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives invites you to join us at CATO’S 34TH ANNUAL MONETARY CONFERENCE. Leading experts will address the risks inherent in the unconventional monetary policies of the world’s leading central banks and the steps that need to be taken to restore long-run economic growth. The lack of any monetary rule to guide policy decisions has created great uncertainty and increased financial volatility. Zero or negative interest rates and quantitati...
Nov 17, 2016•37 min
The Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives invites you to join us at CATO’S 34TH ANNUAL MONETARY CONFERENCE. Leading experts will address the risks inherent in the unconventional monetary policies of the world’s leading central banks and the steps that need to be taken to restore long-run economic growth. The lack of any monetary rule to guide policy decisions has created great uncertainty and increased financial volatility. Zero or negative interest rates and quantitati...
Nov 17, 2016•1 hr 13 min
The Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives invites you to join us at CATO’S 34TH ANNUAL MONETARY CONFERENCE. Leading experts will address the risks inherent in the unconventional monetary policies of the world’s leading central banks and the steps that need to be taken to restore long-run economic growth. The lack of any monetary rule to guide policy decisions has created great uncertainty and increased financial volatility. Zero or negative interest rates and quantitati...
Nov 17, 2016•1 hr 18 min
The Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives invites you to join us at CATO’S 34TH ANNUAL MONETARY CONFERENCE. Leading experts will address the risks inherent in the unconventional monetary policies of the world’s leading central banks and the steps that need to be taken to restore long-run economic growth. The lack of any monetary rule to guide policy decisions has created great uncertainty and increased financial volatility. Zero or negative interest rates and quantitati...
Nov 17, 2016•45 min
The optimism that followed the end of the Cold War has been replaced by fear and pessimism. Russia is reasserting itself on the world stage, China continues to increase tensions in the Asia-Pacific region, and North Korea is inching toward a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the U.S. homeland. All of this has led many to believe that the world is more dangerous than ever before.Meanwhile, the growth of U.S. defense spending has slowed, leading some to conclude that America’s military has been “g...
Nov 16, 2016•44 min
For-profit colleges have been accused of deceiving students, fueling debt, and producing atrocious outcomes. Many big chains—most notably Corinthian Colleges and ITT—have gone out of business under heavy scrutiny from public officials. Are for-profit schools truly miserable, or are they being targeted for political reasons? And what do the election results bode for them? Join us for a free-flowing exchange about for-profit higher education. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informa...
Nov 16, 2016•1 hr 32 min
Since the Franklin Roosevelt administration, the vision of U.S. trade policy has been to expand global commerce by reducing government-imposed barriers. Ambassadors Kantor and Schwab played significant roles in that effort. Ambassador Kantor finalized the NAFTA, and also the Uruguay Round negotiations that established the World Trade Organization (WTO). Ambassador Schwab concluded trade agreements with Peru, Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. Unfortunately, positions espoused in 2016 by major pa...
Nov 14, 2016•1 hr 31 min
The 2008 collapse of Iceland’s grossly overextended banks added fuel to the conflagration in global financial markets and wreaked havoc with the country’s economy, which at one point saw its stock market lose 95 percent of its value and its unemployment rate rise above 25 percent.Since then the economy has recovered, the country’s unemployment rate today stands at just 2.5 percent, and the government recently paid back a $2.5 billion IMF loan.However, last spring the government announced it woul...
Nov 07, 2016•1 hr 13 min
The bleak prospect of living in a country governed by one of the major-party presidential candidates seems to bolster arguments against voting. Declining to participate in this year’s deeply unsatisfactory election may signal a preference for “none of the above” while denying personal sanction to the many wrongs and injustices governments mete out in our names. Not voting is a time-saver, too. But non-participation in the vote may be an unwise option. Voting doesn’t just elect a candidate: it ma...
Nov 03, 2016•1 hr 6 min
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Nov 01, 2016•1 hr 7 min
Scapegoating trade for problems real and imagined is nothing new. Blaming foreigners for domestic woes ingratiates politicians to excitable elements of the electorate and helps them direct voter anger away from their own records. But this year the rhetoric has been especially disparaging, with candidates from across the spectrum perpetuating noxious fallacies about trade, its purpose, and its beneficiaries. Among the prominent myths in circulation this year are that trade is a national competiti...
Oct 27, 2016•32 min
Recent events in Oklahoma and North Carolina continue to draw the nation's attention to the combustible relationship between police and the communities they serve. Yet despite the national focus, important facts are getting blurred as partisans on both sides square off in an increasingly divisive national debate. Join our panel of Cato scholars to sort out and clarify a broad range of issues, including pretextual stops, police militarization, the use of body cameras and more. Hosted on Acast. Se...
Oct 12, 2016•38 min
Every day we’re bludgeoned by news of how bad everything is—financial collapse, unemployment, poverty, environmental disasters, disease, hunger, war. Indeed, our world now seems to be on the brink of collapse, and yet: We’ve made more progress over the last 100 years than in the first 100,000. Some 285,000 more people have gained access to safe water every day for the last 25 years. In the last 50 years world poverty has fallen more than it did in the preceding 500. By almost any index you care ...
Oct 12, 2016•1 hr 26 min
Throughout history, kings and emperors have promised “freedoms” to their people. Yet these freedoms were really only permissions handed down from on high. The American Revolution inaugurated a new vision: People have basic rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and government must ask permission from them . Sadly, our modern bureaucratic society has turned back the clock, transforming America into a nation where our freedoms — the right to speak freely, to earn a living, to own a...
Oct 11, 2016•1 hr 29 min
Rising premiums, insurer exits, and a shifting mix of plan types has observers questioning the future of Obamacare’s health-insurance exchanges. In many parts of the United States, only one insurer remains in the exchange. In some cases, premiums are rising by an average of 50 percent. Are these just growing pains, or are the exchanges in the throes of a death spiral? A panel of scholars will offer differing perspectives on the performance and prospects for the centerpiece of Obamacare. Hosted o...
Oct 06, 2016•49 min
China’s turn to the free market in goods and services has enabled it to achieve high growth and remarkable material progress for decades, but growth in recent years has slowed markedly. Weiying Zhang, one of China’s most influential economists, will explain why the country needs a free market for ideas if it is to become prosperous. Competing viewpoints, scholarship, and faiths are necessary to test out new ideas and for a society to progress. After 2003, however, the Chinese government has stal...
Oct 06, 2016•1 hr 15 min
China’s eight-fold expansion in steel production over the past 20 years has resulted in a worldwide oversupply. China now accounts for half of global steel output and is the largest exporter. Steel producers in the United States and other countries have faced a rising tide of imported steel. The U.S. reaction has been to impose antidumping (AD) and countervailing duty (CVD) measures to restrict imports. AD/CVD orders have not succeeded in restoring full profitability to U.S. steel mills, but hav...
Oct 05, 2016•1 hr 31 min
Across the political spectrum there is a growing recognition that our current welfare state is unable to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Among the alternatives being explored by scholars on both the right and left is the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), a simple cash payment from the government to every citizen, without other requirements or restrictions. Two new books look at this idea from very different, but overlapping directions. Charles Murray, envisions a UBI as an alterna...
Oct 04, 2016•1 hr 2 min
Are immigrants and refugees critical threats to American security? The Syrian refugee crisis and terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe have prompted fierce debate over how to strike the proper balance between national security, the benefits of immigration, and a humanitarian refugee policy. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has taken the extreme position that the United States should not welcome any immigrants or refugees from Muslim-majority nations because of the threa...
Oct 03, 2016•1 hr 35 min
Law professor James Duane became a viral sensation in 2008 for a lively lecture that explained why people shouldn’t agree to answer questions from the police. In his new book, You Have the Right to Remain Innocent , Duane expands on that presentation, offering a vigorous defense of every citizen’s constitutionally protected right to avoid self-incrimination. By using case histories of innocent persons who were wrongfully imprisoned because of information they gave to police, Duane debunks the cl...
Sep 29, 2016•1 hr 26 min
Six years after its enactment, Obamacare remains one of the most controversial, divisive, and enduring political issues in America. In Unraveled: Obamacare, Religious Liberty, and Executive Power , Professor Josh Blackman argues that, to implement the law, President Obama has broken promises about cancelled insurance policies, exceeded the traditional bounds of executive power, and infringed on religious liberty. At the same time, conservative opponents have stopped at nothing to unravel Obamaca...
Sep 28, 2016•1 hr 23 min
As of 2016 over a million drones have been sold in America—to individual consumers, private companies, nonprofits, universities, and law enforcement organizations at the local, state, and federal levels. New regulatory schemes—some mandatory, others voluntary—have been implemented to help these stakeholders manage the safety, privacy, and operational concerns expressed about the use of drones domestically. But recent developments raise critical questions about whether the full range of the possi...
Sep 27, 2016•1 hr 5 min
As of 2016 over a million drones have been sold in America—to individual consumers, private companies, nonprofits, universities, and law enforcement organizations at the local, state, and federal levels. New regulatory schemes—some mandatory, others voluntary—have been implemented to help these stakeholders manage the safety, privacy, and operational concerns expressed about the use of drones domestically. But recent developments raise critical questions about whether the full range of the possi...
Sep 27, 2016•56 min
So far missing from the presidential campaigns has been a serious discussion of long-run structural issues facing the U.S. economy, especially the large projected budget deficits. Continuing to delay action on fiscal imbalances is not an option for the next administration. Economic and fiscal realities will constrain future policy options, as noted in recent studies by the International Monetary Fund and the Cato Institute. Please join our panel of distinguished economists as they examine and an...
Sep 26, 2016•1 hr 6 min
From Cato Institute Policy Perspectives 2016 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sep 23, 2016•43 min
From Cato Institute Policy Perspectives 2016 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sep 23, 2016•33 min
