In today’s age of polarization, the executive branch has essentially unchecked control of the government. Legislators of the president’s party currently exist to rubber-stamp his appointments and initiatives. Even under the best of conditions, whenever Congress passes a law, the responsibility of implementing that legislation ultimately falls to the agencies (under the control of the president). We’ve seen what this looks like with Homeland Security changing the rules on asylum such that the tired, poor huddled masses yearning to breathe free now must do so on the other side of the Mexican-American border. We’ve seen the results of this: thousands…

This isn’t a time for moderation. After four years of terror, we finally have the chance to replace the devil in the White House with someone willing to put the interests of the country over his own personal enrichment. The problem is that Joe Biden looks ready to put bipartisanship and conflict avoidance over the needs of minorities and the American public in general. What we do not need right now is a return to normalcy. This should not be a referendum on decency, but instead a referendum on decades of failed policy and centuries of oppression.

I love to…

This has been a very hard week in what was already a very hard year. We watched with horror hundreds of thousands of people die worldwide from an invisible disease, only to see an unarmed black man killed in a very visible act of police brutality. This wasn’t the first time we’ve seen excessive use of force or its deadly effects. This wasn’t the first time we had to listen to someone in pain cry out “I can’t breathe.” This wasn’t the first time we have had to mourn as a nation and wonder how and why we have consistently…

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) were all the rage this summer raking in an ungodly amount of money that made entrepreneurs, advisors, and celebrity endorsers lots of money. The issue is that for every great opportunity, there are a dozen fake scams trying to take your money, and both good and bad are advertised on popular websites that list upcoming ICOs. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t money to be made. With the SEC still slow to respond to this paradigm shift with clear guidance and rules, there is a small window to make outsized gains through investing “speculating” on ICOs…

It is an easy and obvious argument to make that transfer payments do not increase total wealth. How can moving money from one person’s pocket to the another’s actually do anything? A transfer payment such as medicare, medicaid, social security, or any other form of entitlement or social welfare program, is essentially a way to move money from someone who is rich to someone who is poor. If you’re poor this is an easy system to like because it inherently means you benefit by receiving “someone else’s” money, and if you’re rich this seems terrible as you are losing your…

The past two weeks have had me very very confused. Every Tuesday and Thursday I sit in FNCE 101 (intermediate macroeconomics) attempting to understand how interest rates affect the GDP, why taxes may not shift consumption, and why Bernanke says it’s great to run a current account deficit. The trouble is I’m a skeptic, and for the past couple of weeks I haven’t believed half of what I am being taught. What I haven’t been able to grasp so far is why GDP even matters, how it’s okay for the US to run what looks like a ponzi scheme, and…

If you were to ask me what I did this summer, and I were being honest, I would have to say I spent the summer regretting. I regretted the classes I took, the time I wasted, the clubs I joined, and more. What I regretted most of all though was not listening to Nate Rush. Nate is a fellow M&T who lived a floor below me who also happened to be UPenn’s Ethereum evangelist and blockchain guru. I can’t tell you how much time I spent wishing I bought Ethereum when Nate said I should have. Every day, every night…

Part of the beauty of finishing my freshman year of college is that now I have time to think. When life doesn’t revolve around “What questions are going to be on the BEPP Final?” “What do you think you got on the management final?” and “Whom did X take to formal?” the world opens up a bit. Spurred on by a 3 hour hallway political discussion with Wesley Sheker, I spent a lot of today thinking about what kind of America I want to live in when I grow up, and what policies I would enact given the choice.

The…