May 2020
Cover Story
Student Loans Aren't Working
But free college won't fix this slow-moving catastrophe.
Features
Can't Afford Your Rent? Blame Herbert Hoover.
The feds pushed cities to implement zoning restrictions. High prices and social inequality were the inevitable results.
There Is No China Crisis
Unless we cause one by overreacting to Asia's changing political and economic landscape
Earth Day Turns 50
Half a century later, a look back at the forecasters who got the future wrong—and one who got it right
Interview
David French: 'I Think the Protection of Liberty Is a Common Good'
The Dispatch senior editor on the value of liberalism and the problems with the new nationalist right
Topics
Is the American Dream Dead?
When Americans feel like the future will be worse than the past, reactionary and socialist ideologies ascend.
Government Involvement Drives Up Costs
"The more government gets involved, or the more government regulation, the greater are the increases in prices over time."
GOP Debt Hypocrisy
The Trump-era GOP lends credence to the idea that Obama-era Republicans cared about deficits only as a means of hampering a Democratic president.
Trump's School Lunch Changes Lead to a Pointless Food Fight
"It's unconscionable that the Trump administration would do the bidding of the potato and junk food industries," noted one critic. But Trump's changes are relatively minor.
The Constitutional Case Against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Will the Supreme Court question the underpinnings of the modern administrative state?
Condemned to Death by a Split Jury in Florida
Requiring unanimous juries underscores the gravity of a death penalty sentence.
Your Recyclables Are Going to the Dump
Rising rates of contamination, among other problems, have left material processing facilities with no willing buyers.
Is Passover the Most Libertarian Holiday?
The annual retelling of the Exodus story reminds us not to take freedom for granted.
Mayor Pete's 'National Service' Plan Was a Nationalist Fantasy
Buttigieg doesn't realize that using the blunt force of government to forge national unity will forever disappoint.
Culture
Books
The Late Murray Rothbard Takes on the Constitution
A lost volume of American history finds the light of day.
How We Lost the War on Poverty
Amity Shlaes concludes in her new book that grand governmental schemes to broadly reorder society are doomed to fail.
Reviews
Curb Your Enthusiasm
The focus on seemingly minor everyday questions of propriety makes the show's 10th season as insightful as it is funny.
Secondhand
Adam Minter's book reminds us that a lot of "value is created when less affluent people are given the opportunity to parse the goods of the wasteful affluent."
Learning To Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl)
Boys skateboard in the streets of Kabul, one student explains in the documentary, but girls would risk reprisals for daring to do so.
ETC.
Michael Strain Wants You To Believe in the American Dream
The economy is broadly healthy and that it's benefiting nearly everyone—including the lower-income households who need it most.
Brickbats: May 2020
News of politicians, police, and bureaucrats behaving badly from around the world
