Damon Dunn

Business & Economics

ISSUE BRIEF: Damon Dunn Shares Stories from His Rise from Poverty, Makes the Case for Why Socialism Doesn’t Work

Recalling his experiences overcoming extreme poverty, former collegiate and pro football player and successful businessman Damon Dunn makes the case for why socialism doesn’t work in a new brief published by the nonpartisan, California-based think tank, the Pacific Research Institute. Download a copy of “My Rise from Poverty and Why ...
Blog

New Research Shows Link Between Job Losses and a Community’s Social Ills

Despite evidence of a recent slowdown, the American economy is strong according to nearly all traditional economic indicators and has been for multiple years. Nearly a decade of economic expansion has led to record highs being recorded in the stock market, housing prices, and wages. The recent strengthening of economic ...
Blog

Building Wealth 101 – It All Starts with Home Ownership

Home ownership provides basic financial literacy, drives wealth creation, and increases free cash flow for individuals and families.  However, it can be difficult to differentiate between having surplus cash and wealth.   Having surplus cash is having the ability to spend lots of money now; being wealthy is accumulating assets that allow to ...
Blog

CAPITAL IDEAS: Lease-Purchase Model May Provide Solution for Home Affordability Problem

READ THE PDF For a large majority of Americans, their home is their most valuable asset, while also serving as a major portion of their retirement portfolio. For others, owning their home provides a source of stability and community for themselves and their children, granting freedom from worry about rising ...
Blog

Addressing Low Home Ownership Rates Key to Eliminating Inequality, Future Growth

There have decades of bipartisan rhetoric about the virtues of home ownership, with politicians competing with one another to see who can propose the worst ideas for responsible homeownership. Some policies, like preferential tax treatment and credit-enhancements offered through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) are distortionary but benign in their ...
Blog

Helping More Americans Climb the Economic Ladder by Encouraging More Savings

A central theme of my previous columns has been the importance and primacy of the individual. Economic policymakers cling to their blackboard models but forget that even for unambiguously “net-positive” interventions, there are millions of people being actively punished by their supposedly representative government. Government does not legislate prosperity. Achieving ...
Business & Economics

Educational Choice is Essential to a Skills-Based Economy

The skills and education of every American will form the basis of our nation’s long term success, as well as the solution to many of the most divisive issues in American politics. Issues such as wage stagnation, income inequality, unaffordable housing, and income mobility can be directly addressed through a ...
Blog

The Haves vs. The Have-Nots

A dominant narrative in recent American politics, on full display as the Democratic presidential candidates race left to do battle in their upcoming primaries, is that America is a land of inextricably fixed “haves” and “have nots.” The challenge of our generation is to tackle income inequality and social mobility, ...
Business & Economics

Universal Income Isn’t the Utopia It’s Made Out to Be

The long-standing failures of the American welfare state have left politicians and policy wonks searching desperately for answers, including a willingness to consider radical changes to how we as a nation care for the poor. With little to show from billions in spending for traditional social programs, we do need ...
Blog

Well-Meaning Government Anti-Poverty Programs Actually Hurt the Poor

I recently explained in these pages how government welfare programs keep people at a sustainable level of poverty instead of helping people escape poverty. Little of the actual results of welfare policies resemble the promises made by their proponents at their outset. But the insidious effects of persistent government intervention ...
Business & Economics

ISSUE BRIEF: Damon Dunn Shares Stories from His Rise from Poverty, Makes the Case for Why Socialism Doesn’t Work

Recalling his experiences overcoming extreme poverty, former collegiate and pro football player and successful businessman Damon Dunn makes the case for why socialism doesn’t work in a new brief published by the nonpartisan, California-based think tank, the Pacific Research Institute. Download a copy of “My Rise from Poverty and Why ...
Blog

New Research Shows Link Between Job Losses and a Community’s Social Ills

Despite evidence of a recent slowdown, the American economy is strong according to nearly all traditional economic indicators and has been for multiple years. Nearly a decade of economic expansion has led to record highs being recorded in the stock market, housing prices, and wages. The recent strengthening of economic ...
Blog

Building Wealth 101 – It All Starts with Home Ownership

Home ownership provides basic financial literacy, drives wealth creation, and increases free cash flow for individuals and families.  However, it can be difficult to differentiate between having surplus cash and wealth.   Having surplus cash is having the ability to spend lots of money now; being wealthy is accumulating assets that allow to ...
Blog

CAPITAL IDEAS: Lease-Purchase Model May Provide Solution for Home Affordability Problem

READ THE PDF For a large majority of Americans, their home is their most valuable asset, while also serving as a major portion of their retirement portfolio. For others, owning their home provides a source of stability and community for themselves and their children, granting freedom from worry about rising ...
Blog

Addressing Low Home Ownership Rates Key to Eliminating Inequality, Future Growth

There have decades of bipartisan rhetoric about the virtues of home ownership, with politicians competing with one another to see who can propose the worst ideas for responsible homeownership. Some policies, like preferential tax treatment and credit-enhancements offered through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) are distortionary but benign in their ...
Blog

Helping More Americans Climb the Economic Ladder by Encouraging More Savings

A central theme of my previous columns has been the importance and primacy of the individual. Economic policymakers cling to their blackboard models but forget that even for unambiguously “net-positive” interventions, there are millions of people being actively punished by their supposedly representative government. Government does not legislate prosperity. Achieving ...
Business & Economics

Educational Choice is Essential to a Skills-Based Economy

The skills and education of every American will form the basis of our nation’s long term success, as well as the solution to many of the most divisive issues in American politics. Issues such as wage stagnation, income inequality, unaffordable housing, and income mobility can be directly addressed through a ...
Blog

The Haves vs. The Have-Nots

A dominant narrative in recent American politics, on full display as the Democratic presidential candidates race left to do battle in their upcoming primaries, is that America is a land of inextricably fixed “haves” and “have nots.” The challenge of our generation is to tackle income inequality and social mobility, ...
Business & Economics

Universal Income Isn’t the Utopia It’s Made Out to Be

The long-standing failures of the American welfare state have left politicians and policy wonks searching desperately for answers, including a willingness to consider radical changes to how we as a nation care for the poor. With little to show from billions in spending for traditional social programs, we do need ...
Blog

Well-Meaning Government Anti-Poverty Programs Actually Hurt the Poor

I recently explained in these pages how government welfare programs keep people at a sustainable level of poverty instead of helping people escape poverty. Little of the actual results of welfare policies resemble the promises made by their proponents at their outset. But the insidious effects of persistent government intervention ...
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