The Declaration of Independence states that our inalienable rights include “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Life and liberty are easy to understand, but that last phrase is less intuitive. How can people have a right to strive for happiness?
Learn More
Uniting to Fight Poverty: A TED Talk
How do we solve problems like poverty with so much political polarization?
Welcome to the Pursuit
To pursue our happiness, to achieve our liberty, and indeed to find fulfillment in our lives, we must start with a moral consensus, a fundamental truth around which we all revolve. Think of an atom. The outer field of electrons is full of chaotic activity. Electrons are rapidly orbiting and moving in a constant buzz. What contains that chaos and gives it structure? The fact that the whole chaotic cloud orbits one central nucleus.
Labor Day Survey: Americans’ Opinions on the Work Environment
Eighty-six percent of employed people said they were completely or somewhat satisfied with their jobs, according to Gallup’s latest. (A decade ago, the response was identical.) Why is satisfaction with work persistently strong? Perhaps having a sense of purpose contributes to one’s personal success.
read more
Uninformed America: Global Poverty Down Nearly 60% in 30 Years
The percentage of the world living in poverty has declined by nearly 60 percent in the last 30 years, from 52 to 21 percent. That is an astounding number, especially as the world population has risen from 4.933 billion to 7.215 billion in 2015, a 31.6 percent...
read more
Pittsburgh Most Affordable Metro Area for Home Buyers: Where Does Your City Rank?
You can buy a median-priced home in Pittsburgh living on a household salary of $32,390 if you put 20 percent down. It’s practically a steal. You’d need five times that to afford a median-priced home in San Francisco, according to HSH.com, a housing market research firm.
read more
Startup Nation: A Ranking of Cities and States With New Entrepreneurs
Americans are very bad at giving up. Fortunately.
Despite just two years ago having the lowest number of new startup companies in a generation, America has rebounded to become a startup nation: postings its fifth most entrepreneurial year in two decades.
read more
Freedom House Records Loss of Freedom, Notably in the United States
Liberal democracies on the whole are on the decline in the world, which may not alarm Americans in their cushy first-world homes but for the fact that the United States is listed among those who are experiencing a downward trend away from democracy and toward a loss...
read more
Online Educational Games Change Principles of Learning
If you’re lamenting that kids are not getting a practical education any more, take heed, technology is leading young people in entirely new directions, with online games that teach kids everything from how to save money in virtual piggy banks to how to run multinational airline scheduling and pricing operations.
read more
Music As Memory: The 19th Amendment, Schoolhouse Rock Song for Suffrage
Music has long been used as a learning tool, whether as hymnals or nursery rhymes, but one of the most entertaining and engaging methods of employing music for memory is through the work of Schoolhouse Rock, which taught an entire generation about American history....
read more
Why the EpiPEN Outrage Could Mark ‘The System’s’ Undoing
Updated Aug. 29, 2016: The makers of the EpiPEN, under intense scrutiny for the increased price of its life-saving epinephrine auto-injector, announced Monday that it would release a generic version of the EpiPEN, which will cost about half of the branded version, now...
read more
Why Drugs Cost So Much, And How to Bring Down the Price
The same goes for the generic drug market. Everyone wants to know that the drugs they put into their bodies are safe and clean and doing the job they’re supposed to do. But generic-drug makers are being held to regulatory standards despite doubts about a proven need for the extra layers of rules. And these extra rules are making it too costly to create lower-priced alternatives to more expensive, brand name drugs.
read more
Are Poor People More Optimistic Than Others About Their Futures?
Poor people are more likely than non-poor people to think that they will be able to pull themselves out of poverty. Forty-eight percent of the poor say most poor people will remain poor for a long time while 41 percent say poverty is a temporary condition. That compares to 60 percent of people who said that the poor will remain poor for some time.
read more
