Biden’s Desperate Vote-Buying Proposal for Nationwide Rent Control
I’m not a political pundit, but I’m guessing that yesterday’s despicable assassination attempt on Donald Trump increases the likelihood that he reclaims the White House. That’s probably not good news...
View ArticleBBB in the NYT
I pitch Build, Baby, Build in today’s New York Times. No illustrations, but a bunch of cool graphs cooked up by Sara Chodosh of the NYT data analytics team. The original title was “The Panacea Policy,”...
View ArticleMICHAEL BASSETT: DEALING WITH TODAY’S SMALL, RAUCOUS, CRAZY MAORI FRINGE
Anyone watching and trying to understand last Sunday’s Q&A where Jack Tame interviewed Debbie Ngarewa-Packer will realise that she seems to be beyond reason. Tame tried to examine bits of her...
View ArticleNot a good case for a CBDC
The Reserve Bank’s latest round of consultation on a possible central bank digital currency (CBDC) closes today. The thick and probably expensive (at least one of the documents was produced jointly...
View ArticleTikanga, law and information asymmetry
Justice Joe Williams in his 2013 paper Lex Aoteoroa made a case for Māori tikanga being recognized as New Zealand’s “first law”. Tikanga existed prior to New Zealand’s development of a legal system...
View ArticleRent Control Reduces New Development: Bug or Feature?
The minimum wage will tend to increase unemployment among low-skill workers, often minorities. To many people that’s an argument against the minimum wage. But to progressives at the opening of the 20th...
View ArticleThe Minimum Wage, Rent Control, and Vacancies or Who Searches?
In an interesting new paper Federal Reserve economists Marianna Kudlyak, Murat Tasci and Didem Tüzemen look at what happens to job vacancy postings when the minimum wage increases. The vacancy data in...
View ArticleJoseph Schumpeter, Capitalism and Intellectuals
See Socialists, Knowledge of History and Agency. These are letters to the editor of The WSJ in response to an article about socialism by Joseph Epstein. The one below reminded me of a 1992 article by...
View ArticleDon’t Mess with Texas: Fifth Circuit Rules Against the Biden Administration...
Texas won a big victory in the United States Court of Appeals in the long struggle over floating buoy barriers in the Rio Grande River to help block unlawful migration. In United States v. Abbott, the...
View ArticleTalking BBB with Veronique de Rugy
Here’s a lively AIER podcast on Build, Baby, Build with the one and only Veronique de Rugy. Best French libertarian since Bastiat? Décider vous-même!P.S. Capla-Con 2024 starts two weeks from tomorrow...
View ArticleCommunism still doing well in Cuba
The Miami Herald reports: A stunning 10% of Cuba’s population — more than a million people — left the island between 2022 and 2023, the head of the country’s national statistics office said during a...
View ArticlePervasive myth of centralisation unravels in NZ
Oliver Hartwich writes – New Zealand’s government sacked the entire board of Health New Zealand (Te Whatu Ora) last week, replacing it with a sole commissioner. The move marked more than just another...
View ArticleFast Takes on *Build, Baby, Build*: David Schleicher
I met Yale Law’s David Schleicher when he was still a law professor at GMU. Back then, we argued about the best model of non-rigged one-party democracy, often seen in major cities… and Singapore. Since...
View ArticleRoots of Climate Change Distortions
Roger Pielke Jr. explains at his blog Why Climate Misinformation Persists. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. H/T John Ray Noble Lies, Conventional Wisdom, and Luxury Beliefs In 2001,...
View ArticleJurisdiction Stripping or Court Killing? The “No Kings Act” is a Decapitation...
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) has introduced the “No Kings Act” with great fanfare and the support of most of his Democratic colleagues. Liberal groups have heralded the measure to...
View ArticleDon’t Invest in a Light-Rail Boondoggle
Last week, I observed that “Transit’s failure to recover from the pandemic is due largely to its downtown-centric orientation in most urban areas.” An op-ed in yesterday’s Baltimore Sun makes a similar...
View ArticleThe (Non) Mystery of Economic Growth
The recipe for economic growth is not complicated. You can put it in very simple terms, as Adam Smith did a few hundred years ago. Or you can develop and utilize data-heavy indexes like the ones...
View ArticleShould the government operate petrol stations?
The extent to which the government should be involved in the provision of goods and services generates a lot of debate. Most of that debate is unhelpful, since it involves small-government,...
View ArticleKamala Harris, Price Controls, and the Contest for the Dumbest Policy...
As a Senator, Kamala Harris embraced all sorts of terrible ideas, such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. But she’s now disavowed those proposals in an attempt to make herself seem more...
View ArticleHow Chlöe Swarbrick struggled to accept the PM’s position on sovereignty
Bob Edlin writes – Historian and former Labour Government cabinet minister Michael Bassett, in an article posted here earlier today, said those who spend time on the web examining the Treaty of...
View Article