Energy and Environment

Why the U.S. Can’t Afford a Green New Deal

As the list of Democratic presidential candidates grows, so do their promises. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and others have all backed the Green New Deal, which promises to address climate change and inequality by providing universal health care and creating millions of jobs. However, while the GND has lots of warm and fuzzy language, the climate change-curbing veneer amounts to a Trojan horse for a bigger nationalization of the economy than seen under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Cato scholars have discussed the plan’s fatal flaws.

Zoning, Land-Use Planning, and Housing Affordability

Local zoning and land-use regulations have increased substantially over the decades. These constraints on land development within cities and suburbs aim to achieve various safety, environmental, and aesthetic goals. But the regulations have also tended to reduce the supply of housing, including multifamily and low-income housing. A new study from Cato scholar Vanessa Brown Calder shows that rising land-use regulation is associated with rising real average home prices in 44 states and that rising zoning regulation is associated with rising real average home prices in 36 states.

Cato Studies

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Of Special Note

The Inclusive Economy: How to Bring Wealth to America’s Poor

The Inclusive Economy: How to Bring Wealth to America's Poor

The Inclusive Economy: How to Bring Wealth to America’s Poor energetically challenges the conventional wisdom of both the right and the left that underlies much of the contemporary debate over poverty and welfare policy. Author and national public policy expert Michael Tanner takes to task conservative critiques of a “culture of poverty” for their failure to account for the structural circumstances in which the poor live. In addition, he criticizes liberal calls for fighting poverty primarily through greater redistribution of wealth and new government programs.

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Cato Pocket Constitution

To encourage people everywhere to better understand and appreciate the principles of government that are set forth in America’s founding documents, the Cato Institute published this pocket-size edition.

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Home Study Resources

The Cato Institute offers a wealth of online educational audio and video resources, from self-paced guides on the ideas of liberty and the principles of economics, to exclusive, archived lectures by thinkers such as Milton Friedman and F. A. Hayek. Browse through some highlights of our collections, for personal study or for use in the classroom.

Sphere Summit: Teaching Civic Culture Together

For more than four decades, the Cato Institute has introduced people, including millions of young people, to the ideas of freedom. Many Cato books are already taught in high school curricula across the country. To advance the ideas of liberal democracy and the rule of law, Cato has developed the Sphere Summit for educators. The opening Summit seminar, “Teaching Civic Culture Together,” will be held at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC, on July 14–18, 2019.