2018’s Top Three Terrible and Great Things in Policy
Plenty of terrible things happened this year but some great things too!
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Your New Gas Can Still Doesn’t Work
Gas can regulations began in 2000, with the idea of preventing spillage. The notion began in California, spread, and was picked up by the EPA, which is always looking for new and innovative ways to mandate as much human misery as possible.
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Beyond GDP to a New Road to Serfdom
Professor Stiglitz is confident that humanity can be made better; just collect the data, organize and catalog it, and reduce all to a series of statistical indices, and heaven will be a little closer on earth once the right policies are implemented.
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Ideological Blindness on the Right and Left
The rest of us are caught between two brands of ideological fanaticism that begin in a bad idea, deploy government power to realize the goal, and end as a grave threat to liberty and property.
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Hypocrisy Is Baked Into the Policy Process
Inconsistencies are visible when politicians claim that war is the best way to peace, and when they admit that prohibition of alcohol failed in the 1930s even as they insist that the prohibition of drugs today will somehow work.
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Regulators Are Not What Makes Food Safe
It’s one of the most puzzling claims of the pro-regulation ideology: food makers and sellers have a weak incentive to make sure their food is safe for consumption. The briefest look at the dynamics of this food panic reveals the opposite.
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The Inconvenient Truth About the Green New Deal
Nowhere has our public discourse failed us more egregiously than on the environment and climate change.
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The Imperial Presidency Embodies Political and Economic Hubris
What is needed is a much smaller government so that free individuals can be freer to make more of their own decisions in guiding their own lives rather than a big government with an “imperial” president arrogantly attempting to command and control them.
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Indiana Residents’ Proposed Cigarette Tax Hike Will Only Boost the Black Market
But despite the campaigners’ enthusiasm for the idea, smokers are known for not smoking fewer cigarettes when prices rise. Instead, they either ignore the hikes or find different ways to get their hands on nicotine products — and that includes resorting to the black market.
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Why Your White Clothing Is No Longer White
All the essential tools for making clothing super white have been deprecated, mostly by government regulations.
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The WWI Agriculture Boom and Bust
A new NBER working paper uses bank-level financial and county-level agricultural data to show how risky lending might amplify the boom and bust.
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Marijuana and Midterms
Tuesday’s outcome was good for the freedom to consume and not to be jailed for your consumption choices.
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