This week on The Learning Curve, noted constitutional law professor Philip Hamburger of Columbia Law School discusses the legal basis for private and religious school choice, and how American constitutionalism supports parental choice in education.
Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer Institute’s senior Health Care Fellows Dr. Bill Smith and Dr. Robert Popovian about their white paper “Out-of-Pocket Pirates: Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) and the Confiscation of Out-of-Pocket Assistance Programs.” This episode explores what consumers and regulators can do to ensure those with rare diseases are not left without assistance.
Pioneer Institute and First Things Magazine recently hosted an hour-long webinar examining the successes of vocational-technical schools, how education in the trades is faring nationwide, and the prospects for today’s high school graduates as they seek careers and additional training beyond the secondary level.
This week on The Learning Curve, Loyola University Maryland professor and AEI senior fellow Dr. Diana Schaub explores the legacies, speeches, and writings of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, and how knowledge of U.S. history and primary sources can debunk revisionist approaches to teaching history and civics.
Joe Selvaggi talks with York College of Pennsylvania Associate Professor Eric Smith about the disempowering effects of modern anti-racism movement and the challenges for thought leaders who espouse more constructive narratives.
IRS data reveals that net out-migration from Massachusetts is accelerating rapidly and is greatest among affluent residents who pay the most in state taxes, according to a Pioneer Institute analysis. Between 2019 and 2021, Massachusetts rose from ninth to fourth among all states in net out-migration of wealth, behind only California, New York, and Illinois.
A new Pioneer Institute study illustrates how the current system of drug pricing and discounts leads to patients with challenging diseases being charged huge out-of-pocket sums to keep other premiums low, effectively imposing financial penalties on the sick to protect the healthy and wealthy.
Prof. Benjamin F. Jones, former economic advisor in the U.S. Treasury and a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, analyzes data that show immigrants are far more likely to start a business in the U.S. and are innovating at higher rates, benefiting the nation.
This week on The Learning Curve, Morehouse College’s Dr. Marisela Martinez-Cola, JD, discusses her book The Bricks before Brown: The Chinese American, Native American, and Mexican Americans’ Struggle for Educational Equality, and the long struggle for equal opportunity in American education.
Joe Selvaggi talks with financial privacy and digital currency expert Nicholas Anthony of CATO Institute Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives about the potential benefits and risks were the U.S. to adopt a national digital currency.
This week on The Learning Curve, Dr. Howard Fuller, Founder/Director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning (ITL) at Marquette University, discusses education reform, school choice, charter public schools, race, and the ongoing struggle to provide educational opportunity to all children in America.
Joe Selvaggi talks with attorney for Pioneer Public Interest Law Center (PPILC) John La Liberte, about the work he did to successfully gain access to the MBTA retirement fund’s arbitration agreement after a seven-month legal struggle.
The Massachusetts labor force has transformed in recent decades, with some of the biggest changes being the advancement of women, workers getting older and more diverse, and a divergence in labor force participation rates based on levels of educational achievement, according to “At a Glance: The Massachusetts Labor Force,” a white paper written by Pioneer’s Economic Research Associate Aidan Enright.
PioneerLegal has adopted a new name and logo and is now known as the Pioneer Public Interest Law Center (PPILC).
Massachusetts’ net loss of adjusted gross income (AGI) to other states grew from $2.5 billion in 2020 to $4.3 billion in 2021, according to recently released IRS data. Over 67 percent of the loss was to Florida and New Hampshire, both states with no income tax.
More than six years after the failure of a statewide ballot initiative that would have increased the number of charter public schools in Massachusetts, a poll shows that 62 percent either strongly or somewhat favor them, with only 16 percent opposed.
Denzil interviews Chening Duker, founder of GoodPluck, a farm-to-table delivery service that is transforming the lives of Michiganders and is enriched by Duker’s personal heritage and global perspective on organic agriculture.
After a more than seven-month struggle, PioneerLegal—now known as Pioneer Public Interest Law Center—has gained access to an important August 2022 arbitrator’s decision about a dispute between the MBTA and its largest union, the Carmen, over the severely underfunded MBTA Retirement Fund (MBTARF).
This week on The Learning Curve, guest cohosts Charlie Chieppo and Alisha Searcy speak with Dr. Eric Foner, Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University and Pulitzer Prize-winning author on Lincoln, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.
Joe Selvaggi talks with Pioneer Institute’s Economic Research Associate Aidan Enright about his new paper “Debunking Migration Myths.” With this research, Aidan examines the link between Massachusetts’ tax regime and the outflow of high earners to states with more competitive rates.
After a decade of relative stability, COVID has wreaked havoc with Massachusetts public school enrollments, and the U.S. Department of Education projects more declines by 2030, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute. The figures should serve as a warning to vulnerable districts that they must be prepared for the financial, staffing, and facilities impacts that may accompany substantial drops in public school enrollments.
For Miriam Kattumuri, immigrant from India and founder of Miriam’s Earthen Cookware, which manufactures 100 percent non-toxic, cookware made entirely of clay and entirely in the U.S., her innovation conserves the environment while taking on the most basic tool to get food in our bodies: our pots and pans.
This week on The Learning Curve, Dr. Carey Wright, former Mississippi state superintendent of education, discusses the dramatic improvements in fourth graders’ reading scores in Mississippi during her time there, the importance of early childhood education and literacy programs, the role of literature and art, and the inspiration educators can draw from Mississippi’s heroes in the Civil Rights Movement.
Pioneer Institute applauds key tax reform provisions advanced by the Speaker and House leadership, including a reduced short-term capital gains tax rate and implementation of a single sales factor apportionment. But leadership must do more to bolster the state’s economic competitiveness and slow out-migration of wealth and business owners that endangers the commonwealth’s economic future.
A new white paper, “Out-of-Pocket Pirates: Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) and the Confiscation of Copayment Assistance Programs,” examines how the way these programs are implemented is having negative impacts on patients living with serious diseases.
Joe Selvaggi talks with senior health care fellow Dr. William Smith about his new book Rationing Medicine: Threats From European Cost Effectiveness Models to Seniors and Other Vulnerable Populations, and the book’s cautionary warning against embracing European standards for valuing life saving therapies.
As Pioneer Institute’s Aidan Enright explains in a new policy brief, the Bay State’s tax policies are driving out-migration. With high-income earners heading for states such as New Hampshire and Florida that have no income tax, Massachusetts could see a loss of $4.36B in total reported income.
This week on The Learning Curve, Dr. Frank Dikötter discusses Chairman Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist revolution, the Great Leap Forward, China’s economic ascent under Deng Xiaoping, and the realities that the U.S. and the West must understand as they seek to engage with China as a rising superpower.
Pioneer Institute has released a new compilation of research regarding the impact of the Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) methodology on the ability of patients, including some of the most vulnerable patient communities, to access treatments. The Pioneer book, Rationing Medicine: Threats from European Cost-Effectiveness Models to America’s Seniors and other Vulnerable Populations, is authored by Dr. Bill Smith, Senior Fellow and Director of the Life Sciences Initiative at Pioneer Institute, and compiles research and data about the discriminatory nature of the QALY for aging adults, those living with disabilities or rare diseases, and more.
Joe Selvaggi talks with Tim Quirk and Kevin Caulfield, cofounders of Boston based technology startup, Final Offer, about the way in which their recently launched platform disrupts the traditional home buying process by providing a real time transparent auction for each sale.