Imagine what it must be like for private companies that have invested in a new technology and suddenly find out they have to compete with a tax-supported government agency — the very one that also regulates the industry. That’s what…
At a time when our country seems as divided as ever and many are talking as if the end times are coming, it’s more important than ever to look at what we should be thankful for. Unemployment is at its…
Here we go again. We’re approaching another deadline to pass a government spending bill or risk a government shutdown. Legislators routinely manufacture this sort of “crisis” to ram through provisions that wouldn’t survive scrutiny standing on their own. Congress is…
American politics are nasty and often counterproductive because we have tried to solve too many problems politically, through government programs, rather than socially, through civil society. We have substituted bureaucracies for individual and community initiatives. Historically, America was built by…
It’s time for the annual congressional fight over the Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS. In one corner sit corn farmers and their representatives, who fight tenaciously not just to preserve the RFS but also to expand it. In the other…
A decade after the 2008 taxpayer bailout, Americans remained skeptical of banks. According to a 2018 survey, one-third of the public had “hardly any confidence in bank leaders” as compared to 10 percent before the bailout. In reality, the rescue…
It’s open season on wealth and those who create it. Candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination like Sen. Bernie Sanders, for instance, say that “Billionaires should not exist” and the wealth disparity in America is “a moral and economic outrage.”…
When one spends any time criticizing the U.S. patent system or those who profit from it while offering dubious benefits to the consumer, one inevitably runs up against a particularly annoying rhetorical tactic employed by those same profiteers. “How can…
There’s a concept in business called the “decoy effect,” whereby crafty marketers present an unfavorable option to manipulate consumers toward a more profitable one. The classic business-school example is movie theaters providing three sizes of popcorn: the price of the…