Morbid fascination is a strong motivator for me. Recently it’s brought me around to a renewed study of the first world war. For me, the study of this war (and other terrible things in human history) is about far more than military maneuvers or victories or defeats. I want to understand how and why people […]
The mainstream press has accused Hobby Lobby, a great and beloved American company, of hypocrisy, unchristian behavior, smuggling, stealing, and even funding terrorism. As punishment, and concluding an investigation that has been going on for six years, the US government has extracted from the company a fine of $3 million, and the company is sending to the government property it bought […]
Passions are high in the national health care debate. Some supporters of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have taken to asserting that hundreds of thousands of “people will die” if it is repealed or significantly altered. These claims do not withstand scrutiny, and those who wish their policy arguments to be taken seriously would be […]
If you’re wondering what in Hell is actually going on with U.S. health-care policy, the short version is this: Policymakers in both parties are trying to replicate Swiss policies in a country that isn’t Swiss. The Affordable Care Act was, as thinkers as different as Paul Krugman and Avik Roy both observed, an attempt to […]
Buzzwords come and buzzwords go. Lately, a trending buzzword – or, I guess, buzz phrase – among the politically inclined is “Deep State.” Google News returns 127,000 recent media uses of the phrase. Every time US president Donald Trump finds himself under attack or just stymied in one of his policy initiatives, his supporters blame […]
In the run-up to the Brexit negotiations, there were numerous calls for the Government to confirm that the rights of EU citizens living and working in the UK would be secure. With talks now officially underway the Government has moved to address this with a “big and generous” offer according to Number 10 – or […]
It is obviously going to be difficult to get an economic idea across to Owen Jones – the lad’s a socialist for goodness sake, one who praised Venezuela’s policy loudly for some years – but needs must, eh? In his latest Guardian column, he tells us that Clem Attlee’s government produced the social democratic nirvana powering post-war growth: […]
Red State, Blue State, Independent State, Moocher State: I don’t know if Dr. Seuss would appreciate my borrowing from his children’s classic but given how I enjoy comparative rankings, I couldn’t help myself after perusing a new study from WalletHub that ranks states on their independence (or lack thereof). Ranking the States Being a policy wonk, […]
The Seattle Minimum Wage Study, a study supported and funded in part by the Seattle city government, is out with a new NBER paper evaluating Seattle’s minimum wage increase to $13 an hour and it finds significant disemployment effects that on net reduce the incomes of minimum wage workers. I farm this one out to […]
In the next week or so, the U.S. Senate may vote on a health care bill that would repeal and replace some parts of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. This 1993 lecture in Houston, Texas by FEE president Lawrence Reed (then president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan) is […]
When I write about regulation, I usually focus on big-picture issues involving economic costs, living standards, and competitiveness. Those are very important concerns, but the average person in American probably gets more irked by rules that impact the quality of life. Inferior light bulbs Substandard toilets Inadequate washing machines Crummy dishwashers That’s a grim list, […]
A well-known obstacle to the greater popularity of Bitcoin as a medium of payment is the high volatility of its exchange value. This volatility results from its built-in quantity commitment: because the number of Bitcoins in existence stays on a programmed path, variations in the real demand to hold Bitcoin must be accommodated entirely by […]
Even with all the news of terrorism around the world, there is something especially chilling and horrifying about the case of 22-year-old Otto Warmbier. Hearing the news of his death wounded me, and, I admit, more so than the usual litany of suffering around the world. If there is anything redeeming to come of this, […]
As someone who fights on the side of free speech, I’m the first to tell ya, we do have a tendency to strawman political correctness. You may have heard things like “them snowflakes just don’t like being ‘fended” or “they want to suppress the truth!” and though I agree in PC cultures worst form all […]
Does the European welfare system promote hate by allowing people to avoid learning the lessons of mutual dependence and cooperation that the workplace teaches? All Men Are Brothers Consider for a moment how little we can do for ourselves. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the fuel we burn are mostly obtained through […]