If the younger generation wants to know the keys to success, they need to follow the success sequence published by Bradford Wilcox and Wendy Wang. They say that the millennial generation is “more likely to flourish financially if they follow the “success sequence.” They say, you need to get at least a high school degree, work full-time, and marry before having any children, in that order.

Their recent study at the American Enterprise Institute has the title, The Millennial Success Sequence: Marriage, Kids, and the “Success Sequence” among Young Adults. They persuasively argue if millennials follow this success sequence, they will have a 97 percent chance of not being poor by the time they reach their young adult years. In fact, 86 percent of those studied had family incomes in the middle class or above.

Their study reminded me of another study posted by William Galston. Many years ago, he found that in order to avoid being poor you must do three things: (1) graduate from high school, (2) wait until age 20 to have children, and (3) wait until getting married to have children. He has found that young people who follow these rules have a 92 percent chance of staying above the poverty line. By contrast, a young person who breaks just one of these rules, has a 79 percent chance of ending up below the poverty line.

In a more recent op-ed, William Galston (who served in the Clinton Administration) made it even simpler. Want to know the best poverty cure? Get married. Single parenthood hurts all children, and black children bear the greatest brunt of the harm. He even goes on to say that cohabitation is not a replacement for marriage. Most cohabiting couples only stay together for about 18 months on average.

All of these different studies come to the same conclusion. Marriage is important, and the keys to success are to follow what is now being called the “success sequence.”

It was a grand experiment. Declare a “War on Poverty” and years later celebrate a victory. Unfortunately, poverty won the war. The percentage of people in poverty today is just slightly lower than the percentage in the 1960s when the war to end poverty began. People living in poverty now are doing better than decades ago, but we certainly have not eliminated poverty.

Peter Cove has a bold vision. The title of his book is, Poor No More: Rethinking Dependency and the War on Poverty. He contends that the only thing that really helps end poverty is work itself. That was the foundation of the 1996 welfare reform bill but hasn’t been the focus for some time since.

He understands the problem from the inside. He is the founder of America Works, which is the first for-profit, welfare-to-work company. He has created more than one million jobs for welfare recipients through various endeavors.

He concluded that many of the government programs were not helping individuals because they stressed education and training over work itself. In the end, they had very little real world work experience and were still dependent on government largess.

America Works instead offers employment services to state and local welfare agencies with the aim of placing welfare recipients in jobs quickly. Trainers work with clients on the basics: maintaining a businesslike personal appearance, speaking properly, preparing a resume, and showing up on time. Clients quickly learn that success depends on their own self-discipline and their own motivation and effort.

Given the poor success rate of existing welfare programs, you would think that bureaucrats and politicians would be open to new ideas and concrete suggestions from people who have worked in the field. You would be wrong. Many liberal groups seem like they merely want to “double down” on the failed programs. That’s why Peter Cove’s book and ideas deserve a hearing.

Nicholas Phillips recently wrote about what he called “The Sham of American Centrism.” He tried to explain why former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz would fail as a presidential candidate. While doing that, he cites a report for the Voter Study Group that helps explain the 2016 presidential election and may even predict the 2020 election.

The study plotted a public opinion survey of the 2016 electorate along an X-Y graph. The X-axis represents economic views and the Y-axis represents social views. Voters who are social conservatives and economic conservatives are in the upper-right quadrant. Voters who are liberal on both social and economic issues are in the lower-left quadrant. Howard Schultz (who is a social liberal but a fiscal conservative) would be in the lower-right quadrant were a mere 3.8 percent of the electorate can be found.

Those who voted for Donald Trump were in both the upper-left and upper-right quadrants. He appealed to both traditional conservatives and populists. By contrast, those who voted for Hillary Clinton cluster mostly in the lower-left quadrant. These voters were very liberal both on social issues and economic issues.

This illustrates why so many of the announced Democratic presidential candidates are promoting very liberal policies. Those who voted for Hillary Clinton 2016 are uniformly liberal on social and economic issues often to the extreme. They will be the ones who will select the next Democratic presidential candidates in 2020.

This Voter Study Group graph might become quite useful in predicting both Democratic presidential nominee and even the eventual winner of the 2020 presidential election.

Last year was a significant year in the field of biblical archaeology. One article in Christianity Today detailed “Biblical Archaeology’s Top 10 Discoveries.” Some were recent finds. Others were finds that new technology has helped read inscriptions not previously visible. Here are few examples.

When ISIS terrorists captured Mosul, they blew up the tomb of the prophet Jonah. This uncovered the remains of a palace of the Assyrian King Esarhaddon. As one article put it, “ISIS Accidentally Corroborates the Bible.” Inscriptions found in the old city of Nineveh give an order of Assyrian kings that matches the biblical order.

An inscribed piece of limestone discovered in a tomb along the west bank of the Nile was revealed to be a Semitic abecedary. It dates back to the time of Moses and fits with the statement that, “Moses wrote down everything the Lord had said” (Exodus 24:4). It turns out he wasn’t the only one writing in a Semitic script in Egypt at that time.

A seal impression found in the ancient Jerusalem wall mentions the governor of the city. Governors of the city of Jerusalem are mentioned in the Old Testament (2 Kings 23:8, 2 Chronicles 18:25). One seal impression found apparently says “Isaiah the prophet.” It is with other seals with “King Hezekiah of Judah.”

A ring with the name “Pontius Pilate” on it was excavated decades ago but only could be read recently due to advanced photographic techniques. The ring is not fancy enough to have been worn by Pilate. It was probably worn by someone authorized to act on his authority and would use it to seal official communications.

This is an exciting time in biblical archaeology. These and other finds further establish the historical reliability of the Bible.

In a recent PragerU video, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper talked about two different types of people. He described these two groups in order to explain why Donald Trump won in 2016. I will ignore his explanation and conclusion in this short commentary in order to focus on the impact of two people groups.

He says there are many people who “can live anywhere” and many more people who have to “live somewhere.” David Goodhart makes this important distinction in his book, The Road to Somewhere. He explains there is a key fault line in Britain between the Anywheres and the Somewheres. Stephen Harper believes this explains the populist rising in many countries including the United States.

“Imagine you work for an international bank, computer company, or consulting firm,” says Harper, “You can wake up in New York, London, or Singapore, and feel at home. Your work is not threatened by import competition or technological dislocation — you’re one of those who can live anywhere.”

This is not the case for those forced to live somewhere. “Let’s say you’re a factory worker, small business person, or in retail sales,” said Harper, “If things go badly at your company, or policy choices by politicians turn out to be wrong, you can’t just shift your life to somewhere else.”

The Anywheres are not really that affected by outsourcing labor or cheap labor or even technological imports. The Somewheres are affected by all of these things and have become angry when the elites (in government, media, and business) seem unconcerned about the disruptions that occur because of policies by government officials and decisions by multinational companies. That is why more and more of the Somewheres are making their voice heard in elections and in the populist movement.

In the field of psychology, there is what has come to be known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. Most of us have observed this in people who don’t actually know a great deal but have this ignorant superiority. They don’t have the ability or lack the self-awareness to know they are incompetent.

The phenomenon was named by researchers who described a bank robber who covered his face in lemon juice thinking it would make him invisible to surveillance cameras. I’ve seen this effect when I speak to high school students who confidently comment about subjects that they hardly know anything about.

I thought about this psychological effect the other day while reading Michael Knowles complain about the latest erroneous statements by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He then concludes that, “The seed of Millennial miseducation, which grew from the Tree of the Lack of Knowledge . . . is finally bearing its rotten fruit.” He also points to one survey listing so many historical facts this generation doesn’t know. But that doesn’t keep them from speaking out dogmatically about topics they need to go back and learn.

You can see this in a recent Twitter feud. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made some erroneous statements about corporations that appeared in The Atlantic. Washington Post fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, gave her statement three Pinocchios for its large number of factual inaccuracies. That’s when the member of Congress jumped on Twitter to needle Kessler. You can read the back-and-forth and see that she never accepts his assessment even as he provides more and more contradictory evidence.

What we need today is more humility and a willingness to stop and reflect rather than indignation and ignorant superiority.

Turn on a television or open up a newspaper, and you will be treated to what can best be called climate change alarmism. We are told that we are headed for a climate catastrophe if we don’t act immediately.

Of course we have heard that before. Back in 1970, Harvard biologist George Wald predicted, “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” A few years later, Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich predicting that one billion people would be starving to death by 2020.

Climate change alarmism today succeeds first by discounting any critics and then by warning that dire consequences are just a few years off. Meteorologist Dr. Roy Spencer recently wrote about the first issue. Climate change advocates claim that anyone who disagrees with them is a “climate change denier.” He says this is a “straw man argument” where you argue against something your opponent never claims. Spencer says he “cannot think of a single credentialed, published skeptical climate scientist who doesn’t believe in the existence of climate change.” This includes Dr. Pat Michaels, Dr. Richard Lindzen, and others who have been labeled “climate change deniers.”

And the last two decades have been full of dire warnings. In his Oscar-winning documentary, Al Gore warned that sea levels would rise by 20 feet “in the near future.” So far, his prediction has been off by 20 feet or so. A 2005 conference of climate scientists and politicians meeting in London, warned that the world has as little as 10 years before it would reach “the point of no return on global warming.”

Alarmists and doomsayers have been with us for decades warning us of an environmental catastrophe that still hasn’t happened.

One of the hot ideas in the progressive world is the Green New Deal. It’s a term reminiscent of FDR’s New Deal of the 1930s but is even bolder in its approach. For the next year or so we will hear Democratic candidates talk about it and perhaps even include it in the 2020 Democratic platform.

If people take a moment to sit down and read it, they would reject it. But since most of us don’t have the time, let me summarize two key points. First, the plan would “cut military spending by at least half” and withdraw U.S. troops from overseas. Let me give you the numbers. We have 1.3 million active-duty troops, and another 865,000 reserves and another 680,000 civilian employees. Cutting spending by at least half would put about a million military personnel out of work. Also, do we really think withdrawing troops from South Korea or the Middle East is a good idea?

Second, the plan would require the eventual elimination of all fossil fuels and even nuclear power. Natural gas produces 32 percent of America’s energy. Oil and liquid natural gas produces an additional 28 percent. Coal provides nearly 18 percent, and nuclear produces another 10 percent. In about a decade, we are supposed to replace 88 percent of America’s current energy sources.

Americans might also want to examine the history of the New Deal. Jonah Goldberg reminds us that FDR campaigned to fight the Great Depression with industrial policies and a militarized workforce. The New Deal then, and certainly the Green New Deal now, would have to increase government power over people and their liberties.

Some politicians might like the sound of a Green New Deal. But I can assure you, that you wouldn’t like what these policies would do to you and your lifestyle.