Is each American generation doing better?

From Tyler Cowen. 

"We construct a posttax, posttransfer income measure from 1963 to 2023 based on the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement that allows us to consistently compare the economic well-being of five generations of Americans at ages 36–40. We find that Millennials had a real median household income that was 20% higher than that of the previous generation, a slowdown from the growth rate of the Silent Generation (36%) and Baby Boomers (26%), but similar to that of Generation X (16%). The slowdown for younger generations largely resulted from stalled growth in work hours among women. Progress for Millennials younger than 30 has also remained robust, though largely due to greater reliance on their parents. Additionally, lifetime income gains for younger generations far outweigh their higher educational costs.

That is from Kevin Corrinth and Jeff Larrimore in Demography.  Via the excellent Kevin Lewis."

From Fatal Conceit to the Friendly Skies: How Deregulation Made Flight Affordable

By Jeffery L. Degner AIER. Excerpt:

"With FDR’s creation of the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) in 1938, its designers claimed that it would centrally administer, “safety-related rulemaking, accident investigation, and economic regulation of commercial airlines.” Eventually, it would go far beyond such broad claims and do far more than that, engaging in price-fixing and the prevention of new entrants, just to name a few. Ultimately, the hubris of social engineers led them to declare what “fair” prices were across the airline industry.

In a 1975 report, no less than liberal senator Edward Kennedy admitted that “the Board’s experience suggests it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to develop a cost-based ratemaking system that uses fair procedures and keeps fares in such an industry low.” In a more damning admission, “This is not to say that inherent defects are the only cause of the CAB’s failings. These may, for example, also reflect the human tendency to listen more closely to representatives, such as those for the industry, who are powerful, well-informed, and can reward regulators with future jobs or contracts.”

The ultimate effect of this centralized planning was to “control prices, restrict entry, and confer antitrust immunity.” In brief, the CAB was used to create a government-backed cartel in the interest of existing large carriers. In what amounted to a public confession of crony-capitalism, the CAB’s days were numbered. 

In the wake of the report, American Airlines was allowed to discount its fares up to 45 percent in an attempt to see whether airline travel could be “made available at a price all can afford.” Once this mild form of price competition was allowed, rivalrous competition showed suspicious legislators and regulators that allowing competition did indeed create greater value for consumers. Eventually, Senator Howard Cannon along with bipartisan supporters including Ted Stevens and Wendell Ford helped pass the Airline Deregulation Act in February of 1978. 

Since industrial leaders at the time, like Delta Airlines, had grown accustomed to the many protections they received under the CAB, they lobbied against the deregulatory move. They made claims that “free entry” and “free exit” were “untested concepts” that would result in the concentration of the industry into the “hands of only a few carriers…causing service deterioration at smaller cities and in smaller markets.” Delta’s doom-mongering didn’t materialize in either the short or long run. 

In the nearly 50 years since the abolition of the Civil Aeronautics Board, routes and flexibility have proliferated, and prices have declined continually. In fact, the last three decades have seen inflation-adjusted domestic airfares fall from $614 in 1995 to $397 in 2025. Further, the industry continues to grow, nearly doubling the number of employees since 1990. Prior to deregulation, air travel was undoubtedly a luxury good. Now, it has become so affordable that 80 percent of Americans with annual household income below $50,000 have taken flight at some point in their lives." 

 

 

 

BART's new fare gates have led to a 1,000-hour decline in clean up time; 41% drop in crime; and $10 million increase in projected revenue

Tweet from NX Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic.

 

The Human Progress Index (HPI) shows an even more dramatic improvement in human well-being since 1990 than either the UN’s HDI or the Augmented HDI

Tweet from Chelsea Olivia Follett. 

 

The WTO Isn’t Dead, but America Is Breaking It

Reform can’t happen if the U.S. keeps pretending it didn’t help cripple the institution it’s now eulogizing

Letter to The WSJ. 

"Jamieson Greer’s frustration with the World Trade Organization is understandable, but his op-ed ignores how the U.S. unwisely accelerated the organization’s decline (“Another Fish Story From the WTO,” April 8).

The American middle class has prospered in the era of open trade, and U.S. manufacturing job declines—driven mainly by productivity gains—long predate China’s WTO accession. The U.S. was the WTO’s chief architect and reaped significant economic and geopolitical value from the system. Its retreat, which began before the administration, ignored these realities and instead prioritized U.S. farm subsidies and trade remedies, often resisting the disciplines Washington demanded of others.

Fealty to these and other insular political issues stymied multilateral negotiations and motivated four separate U.S. administrations to neuter the WTO dispute settlement by blocking Appellate Body appointments. Washington’s participation in disputes has also ground to a halt. You can’t complain about the rules of the game after you stop playing and strangle the referee.

Worst of all, the U.S. has been a bad-faith abuser of the rules it helped write, blowing through tariff bindings and invoking narrow WTO exceptions for national security and balance-of-payments crises to maintain President Trump’s global tariff wall.

Mr. Greer is right to decry the WTO’s consensus problem and the abuse of certain rules by other WTO members. The institution does need reform. But members’ continued participation shows the institution isn’t dead. And reform can’t happen if the U.S. keeps pretending it didn’t help cripple the institution it’s now eulogizing.

Clark Packard and Scott Lincicome

Washington

Mr. Packard is a trade policy fellow and Mr. Lincicome is Vice President for Economics and Trade at the Cato Institute."

Dr. Makary and Mr. Hyde at the FDA

The agency kills a therapy for melanoma despite the evidence of progress against deadly tumors

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"Patients with metastatic melanoma who stop responding to other immunotherapies typically die in less than a year. In Replimune’s trial, tumors shrank in nearly all patients and vanished in one of six. About a third went into remission. FDA staff were so impressed by the results that the agency designated RP1 a “breakthrough therapy” in November 2024 to expedite its review."

"As we’ve reported, Dr. Prasad last summer overruled career staff to reject RP1. The agency’s main criticism was that its trial lacked a control arm, though this would be unethical in late-stage patients who failed to improve on other therapies."

"Start with the claim that the tumor-shrinking effects of RP1 could not be disentangled from that of another immunotherapy that patients were taking concurrently. But all patients had previously relapsed or failed to respond to other immunotherapies. RP1 is intended to help these refractory patients by boosting their response to other therapies."

"cancer in responding patients advanced after a median 30.6 months when they also got RP1, versus 4.4 months of being treated with other immunotherapies."

"The FDA implicitly concedes that the RP1 results are impressive by contriving ridiculous reasons to argue they could be exaggerated." 

Virginia Is for Higher Taxes—and Gerrymanders

Gov. Spanberger’s popularity takes a hit as she abandons the center

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"Unlike in private industry, collective bargaining in government isn’t adversarial. Public unions sit on both sides of the table since they fund the campaigns of the politicians with whom they “negotiate.” The incentive is to give away the store to union allies"

"Wisconsin Republicans in 2011 ended this cycle by limiting government collective bargaining, which has saved taxpayers some $35.6 billion, according to the MacIver Institute. Studies have also found that the law improved student test scores, in part by allowing schools to pay teachers more for performance."