Oren Cass
@oren_cass
Chief Economist, @AmerCompass. Editor of "The New Conservatives." Subscribe to the Understanding America Substack: http://understandingamerica.co
1/ Why is American Compass launching Commonplace, a new magazine about what matters in America? (Follow: @commonplc) For the same reason we launched @AmerCompass: to do the work of revitalizing conservatism, which legacy institutions have proved themselves incapable of. 🧵
Coming in January: Commonplace. A new magazine from American Compass about what matters in America. Edited by Helen Andrews and Drew Holden. @AmerCompass @herandrews @DrewHolden360
I think the commentary on efforts by universities to screen applicants for "civility" with essay prompts and peer-scored Zoom sessions is mostly missing the salient point. Yes, the tools are absurd. But the bigger problem is the category error of treating civility as something…
I wrote about the civility mania sweeping elite college admissions for @nytopinion nytimes.com/2025/07/15/opi…
Wall Street editor for @TheEconomist ⬇️
I now think in a few years, certainly after the next presidential election, cross-party elite opinion will have gravitated towards a soft consensus that the Trump tariffs, while slapdash and sometimes misdirected, were net good and trade barriers should have been higher earlier.
Mike Lind tackles a great topic for @commonplc today -- how Social Security's trust fund structure, intended to be its political protector, actually puts it first on the chopping block. Why can Social Security "go bankrupt" but the Pentagon cannot? commonplace.org/2025/07/11/don…
I must confess: We kept going hunting for more bison meat than our wagon could carry because shooting bison was fun, not for what it taught us about fragile prairie ecosystems and weight-to-calorie ratios. understandingamerica.co/p/bring-back-t…
“In a world where Russia has raw materials, and China dominates manufacturing, an economy centered around McKinsey and DoorDash will not cut it,” Mike Needham, counselor to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, told the crowd from the main stage. nytimes.com/2025/07/20/us/…
Read this piece, but also what were your summer jobs commonplace.org/2025/07/16/are…
This was an excellent speech by @jamiesongreer @USTradeRep at the @reindsummit in Detroit, articulating the three imperatives of reindustrialization: ✅Manufacturing strengthens the economic foundation of our communities. ✅Manufacturing drives innovation and productivity…
I really enjoyed this @herandrews @commonplc reflection on summer jobs, which ignores the "kids these days" Boomer-talk to dissect the underlying (Boomer-promoted!) forces that are pushing young people away from a vital opportunity. commonplace.org/2025/07/16/are…
This was a very interest discussion of transatlantic common ground and conflict with @SanderTordoir, hosted by @Caffar3Cristina on her new Escape Forward podcast: escape-forward.com/2025/07/16/ame…
It's almost like the economics profession doesn't fully understand tariffs
PPI in June came in lower than all 50 forecasters in Bloomberg’s survey predicted.
A modest uptick in inflation is a typical knee jerk reaction from the outsourcing industrial complex. The much more important metric is wage growth, which has far exceeded any increase in prices. Sadly, destroying our industrial base and decimating working Americans is somewhat…
“Tariff inflation” is an oxymoron. Raising a price via an explicit policy choice is not inflation, and resulting relative price changes in the economy are not a cognizable subject of monetary policy. A Fed holding rates higher in response is politicizing its role.
Making Illegal Employers Pay Immigration enforcement has to hold businesses who illegally undercut American workers accountable. commonplace.org/2025/07/14/mak…
Today at Understanding America: Something Is Rotten at the Federal Reserve understandingamerica.co/p/something-is…
Is there a good explanation anywhere for how Abundance differs from Obama-style liberalism? That’s OK if it doesn’t… Just not sure if that would solve the problems that became prevalent roughly between the 2008 financial crisis and the election of Donald Trump in 2016.
Obama weighs in on Abundance:
As long as American employers get off scot-free for hiring illegal labor, tracking down aliens one by one will hardly solve the problem. It's time to cut off the invasion of America at its source. New from me @commonplc:
Excellent @DeclanLeary @commonplc on the absurd failure to enforce immigration law against the employers abusing the system, exploiting the immigrants, and leaving American workers behind. commonplace.org/2025/07/14/mak…
Read @oren_cass: “With the border secure, the administration should focus on a predictable process of enforcement against employers of illegal immigrants.”
We are hiring a new editor @AmerCompass to lead the rapid growth of @commonplc. If that's you, please get in touch. Job description ⬇️
If you are a talented editor who is aligned with the @AmerCompass mission and ambitious to help build something from the ground up, check out this job listing: americancompass.org/editor-commonp…