Sacramento California’s legislative analysts and Capitol staffers do a remarkably thorough job summarizing proposed bills in their publicly available reports, but it’s still unusual to see them cite the work of free-market economists. It’s obvious why. Almost every new measure…
In an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal last week, Phil Gramm and John Early made a convincing, fact-supported case that, contrary to what is repeatedly asserted and widely believed, income inequality in the U.S. is lower now than it was 50…
Folks like me try to coexist peacefully with others. We all presumably want to raise our kids right, earn a slice of the American dream, and enjoy a bit of leisure. Too often though, we find ourselves in defensive postures…
Spain is the latest country talking about adopting a universal basic income, or UBI, program in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many libertarians, including myself, have always been open to the idea of moving away from traditional welfare programs to…
Sacramento I was thinking of heading to the gas station to see how much the local retailer will pay me to fill up my tank. As the Washington Post explained this week, an oil glut caused “sellers holding U.S. crude…
Acting with uncharacteristic urgency, Congress passed a $2.2 trillion spending bill to address the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. The measure includes a patchwork of cash payments to individuals and aid for some businesses. The bill calls for spending…
In the dystopian 2006 cult classic film Idiocracy, the collapse in humanity’s collective IQ 500 years hence is explained by a narrator describing how in the early 2000s, evolution no longer rewarded the human species’ most noble and salutary traits. Two…
The road to hell, as we know, is paved with good intentions. And perhaps no one has better intentions, or a faster car, than Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang. The Asian entrepreneur’s sense of humor and cheery disposition are a…
Sacramento Officials in Stockton, Calif., a hard-pressed agricultural and industrial city 75 miles northeast of San Jose, are enjoying the glow of media attention from their ongoing, first-in-America program to provide residents with a Universal Basic Income, or UBI. The…
With Labor Day just around the corner, now is a good time to discuss (and, more than that, to take up the cudgels against) a bad idea popularized by leading figures in Silicon Valley. It is really a two-part idea….