|
Education
Research & Commentary: Common Core Math Standards
The United States scores below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average in mathematics literacy, behind 29 other nations. Common Core proponents argue its math standards will yield a deeper understanding of math for students by using more pictorial questions and requiring students to provide elaborate explanations for the way they solve problems. Several math scholars, however, contend this strategy makes simple content appear artificially difficult and can backfire by driving capable students away from math at an early age. Read more
Energy & Environment
Research & Commentary: New Jersey Renewable Portfolio Standard
The New Jersey Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) requires all state utilities serving retail customers to procure from renewable sources 22.5 percent of the electricity they sell by 2021. Legislators added two specific quotas, or “carve-outs,” for solar power and offshore wind power. New Jersey’s RPS is less effective than other states’ at reducing carbon dioxide emissions because of the specific quotas it requires from wind and solar, which the nonpartisan Brookings Institution has found are the two least cost-effective low-CO2 emissions technologies available. Read more
Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate
Research & Commentary: The Export-Import Bank
In this Research & Commentary, Matthew Glans examines the Export-Import Bank, how it works, and why the subsidies it provides are no longer needed. The Ex-Im Bank chooses winners and losers in the U.S. economy and redistributes limited taxpayer-funded resources from the economy and gives them to a select group of clients, a costly example of crony capitalism. “The Ex-Im Bank has done little to improve the trade balance or create new U.S. jobs, while placing taxpayers at risk should the bank fail. The bank has become, as President Barack Obama correctly noted when he was a candidate in 2008, ‘little more than a fund for corporate welfare.'” Read more
Budget & Tax
Research & Commentary: Corporate Tax Inversions
Companies that want to avoid the high U.S. corporate tax have few legal options. One strategy, which recently has come under considerable scrutiny, is called corporate inversion. With corporate inversion, companies reduce their corporate tax burden by relocating their headquarters to a lower-tax nation while retaining the bulk of their operations in the country of origin. Given the loss of tax revenue and the increasing popularity of inversions among corporations, politicians have begun to demonize the practice, calling the deals unpatriotic. In the past month, legislative proposals to discourage the practice began to emerge. This Research & Commentary examines corporate tax inversion and corporate taxes and argues against these proposals. Read more
Telecom
Why Waxman’s FCC Internet Utility Regulation Plan Would Be Unlawful
In this piece for the Heartlander digital magazine, Scott Cleland discusses Rep. Henry Waxman’s plan to reclassify broadband providers as telecommunications services and use the authority under Title I to set bright-line rules to prevent blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. Cleland argues this approach is not the hybrid approach Waxman claims; it is a call for FCC double-regulation of the Internet using both Title I and Title II.Read more
From Our Free-Market Friends
Losing the Future: The Decline of U.S. Saving and Investment
What do saving and investment trends look like in the U.S. over the past 50 years, and what does it mean for the U.S. economy? In this new report from the Tax Foundation, Alan Cole explains why saving and investment are necessary for a society to adequately provide for its future. While he says the U.S. does not adequately save money and relies substantially on foreign investors, “tax reform could help the U.S. become a forward-looking economy that invests and saves at more prudent rates.”Read more
|
