1. Arnold Kling proposes alternatives to the regulatory status quo at the FCC and FDA, respectively: a spectrum arbitration board and prize-grants for medical research.
2. Robert Litan calls for more high-skill immigration and higher pay for teachers in exchange for an end to tenure.
3. Douglas Holtz-Eakin provides an overview of structural reforms needed to reduce government debt levels and restore growth.
4. Lee Drutman argues that tripling the budget for congressional staff can lead to improved policymaking.
The links go to our essays. More essays will be posted every day. This is all part of a run-up to a conference in December.
Never mind the idiocy of paying for more teachers with legalized pot (hasn’t he gotten the memo on Colorado?), this is just howlingly delusional:
” Let’s not forget that these are real people, with the same distribution of native talents as the rest of the population. But apply a poor educational environment with poor teachers (on top of a difficult socioeconomic and often dangerous physical environment), and the whole distribution shifts to the left: far fewer “stars” will make it out of this system to generate the next wave of innovations that could power growth…. In economists’ speak, the nation suffers a huge opportunity cost.”
I love teaching. I work in Title I schools for the same money as teachers who work with wealthy kids. But the whole premise of education “reform” is based on the belief that each demographic has the “same distribution of native talents”.
Teachers know better. Very few will ever trade tenure for money when the people promising money think that all students represent the same distribution of talent.