Courses

Samuel Hammond

Policy Analyst

Niskanen Center

Samuel Hammond is the Poverty and Welfare Policy Analyst at the Niskanen Center. Samuel graduated from St. Mary’s University with a BA in economics and from Carleton University with an MA in economics. He is currently a second year MA fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. His research interests include the political economics of the welfare state, aviation regulation, and social capital theory.

Blog Posts

The business case for supersonic overland

March 7, 2017
|
Free Markets and Capitalism

Imagine flying from New York City to Los Angeles in two hours, and for the price of a normal business class ticket. It should be possible with today’s technology, and yet a 1973 ban on civil supersonic flight overland has prevented it from becoming a reality. To understand the importance of the overland market to supersonic transport we have to take a step back and relearn some lessons from history. The conventional wisdom, ever since the Concorde’s retirement in 2003, has been that supersonic transport simply isn’t commercially viable. After all, the Concorde sustained enormous losses over

A Proposal to Reform Welfare and Rebuild American Community

September 26, 2016
|
Poverty & Inequality

When Alexis de Tocqueville traveled across America, he was struck by the vitality of its civil society. “Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association,” he wrote. Indeed, “Americans form associations for the smallest undertakings.” Today many fear that civil society is in retreat. Local covenants and centers of community (especially churches and religious organizations) are the institutions that, for centuries, led men and women to voluntarily serve the common good.