Noah Smith
Immigration fuels economy
In response to President Donald Trump’s moves to curb immigration, economists and pundits have spilled a lot of ink on the topic of whether...
How to slay the patent trolls
In a recent episode of HBO’s sitcom “Silicon Valley,” a lawyer tries to extort money from a struggling startup by threatening to sue it...
A warning sign for the economy?
Many economists and pundits take it on faith that weak business investment is a bad thing. It’s well-known that over the course of the...
Americans seem to like universal health care
Americans, in general, support government-provided universal health care.
A Pew Research Center survey taken in January found that 60 percent say that it’s the responsibility...
Tax cuts for rich don’t boost economy
Economists who lean toward the free-market side of the ideological spectrum often say that tax cuts help the U.S. economy by encouraging people to...
Value in manufacturing
Discussions about manufacturing tend to get very contentious. Many economists and commentators believe that there's nothing inherently special about making things and that efforts...
Immigrants are making the U.S. economy stronger
Immigration is the topic of the day. The political right, after once embracing a laissez-faire policy toward immigration -- President Ronald Reagan signed an...
Cutting murders is a job for government
President Donald Trump talks a lot about murder rates. He's wrong that homicides are the highest in 47 years; in fact, the national rate...
Immigration works fine when newcomers can integrate
The U.S. would be nothing if not for immigrants. It was mass immigration that gave the U.S. the power to win the World Wars...
Fight opioid addiction to give the economy a boost
One of the worst U.S. social problems might also be one of its chief economic woes. I’m talking about the epidemic of opioid and...
