Vice President for Strategy Iain Murray‘s new book is Stealing You Blind: How Government Fat Cats Are Getting Rich Off of You. He explains why the Washington, DC area is the richest in the country, tells the story of the small-town city manager with a tax-free $1 million-per-year pension, and offers some reforms that could bring government down to a more appropriate size.
Comments Off on CEI Podcast for June 29, 2011: Stealing You Blind
Posted in Books, CEI Podcast
Tagged bell, bell california, iain murray, public sector pay, public sector unions, Regnery, stealing you blind
There is a small bit of hyperbole at the end. But aside from that, this is a really good video that explains just how much better off people are in free economies than their unfree variants — especially the poor.
Comments Off on Economic Freedom
Posted in Economics
With the unemployment rate still over 9 percent, regulators have been very busy tending to their own job security. Here are some of their more recent make-work programs:
-In King County, Washington, swimming without a life vest is punishable by an $86 fine.
-New food regulations in New York would make it illegal to cut cheese in farmer’s markets.
-A new California regulation would require retailers to provide seating for cashiers.
-The Consumer Product Safety Commission adopted voluntary new standards for cribs in 2008. Now it has decided to make them both mandatory and retroactive. That means that roughly 100,000 unsold cribs currently sitting in stores will have to be thrown away. Hopefully smaller retailers can survive the hit.
–San Francisco is poised to ban goldfish.
-New EU regulations would require farmers to look after their pigs’ emotional well-being.
–A weakened version of Texas’ TSA pat-down ban passed both houses of the state legislature. TSA agents found guilty would face up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine. The loopholes in this version appear large enough that it would do little to stop the pat-downs. Other states are considering similar measures.
Comments Off on Regulation Roundup
Posted in Nanny State, regulation
Tagged california, crib regulations, cutting cheese, eu, king county swimming fine, new york, pig regulations, texas tsa pat-down bill, tsa
This week, the Brewers will play a series against the Yankees in New York for the first time since 1997. The New York Times used the occasion to profile Ryan Braun. It’s worth a read; very rarely does a player of his caliber stay with a small-market team for an entire career. Braun signed a contract extension earlier this season to stay in Milwaukee through 2020, when he’ll turn 36. This fan wishes there were more like him.
Comments Off on New York Times Profiles Ryan Braun
Posted in Sports
Tagged baseball, brewers, mlb, new york times, ryan braun, Yankees
Bunker fuel is a heavy fuel used by large ships around the world. Oil tankers, container ships, and more rely on bunker fuel because it’s cheaper than other kinds of fuel. Land Use and Transportation Policy Analyst Marc Scribner takes a look at new environmental regulations in California intended to reduce bunker fuel usage. The rules are actually causing many ships to use more bunker fuel, not less. If proposed fixes succeed, the result would essentially be a tariff on most global trade — a $16 trillion industry.
Comments Off on CEI Podcast for June 23, 2011: Bunker Fuel
Posted in CEI Podcast, The New Religion, Trade
Tagged bunker fuel, california, carb, containter ships, environmental regulations, marc scribner, oil tankers, shipping
Russ Roberts with a must-read in yesterday’s WSJ:
The story goes that Milton Friedman was once taken to see a massive government project somewhere in Asia. Thousands of workers using shovels were building a canal. Friedman was puzzled. Why weren’t there any excavators or any mechanized earth-moving equipment? A government official explained that using shovels created more jobs. Friedman’s response: “Then why not use spoons instead of shovels?”
Comments Off on Technology Doesn’t Destroy Jobs
Posted in Economics
The Constitution’s Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to regulate commerce. What does that mean, exactly? Over at the Daily Caller, my colleague Jacque Otto and I explain that regulation is about making commerce regular: no barriers to entry or trade, clear, understandable, and consistent rules, and so on.
Most of what people call regulation doesn’t have anything to with regular commerce. These kinds of rules are more accurately called interventions.
These interventions didn’t appear out of thin air, either:
One important reason regulators intervene is that many businesses want them to — businesses spend considerable effort and resources lobbying Washington to that end. For the most part, American companies compete on quality, price, or other consumer preferences. But on too many occasions, some companies try to use regulatory interventions to dispatch the competition. Sprint’s efforts to squander AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile are emblematic of this troubling trend.
Comments Off on We Need Regulators, Not Interveners
Posted in Antitrust, Economics, regulation
Tagged Antitrust, at&t merger, at&t t-mobile merger, commerce clause, constitution, interveners, intervention, irregular commerce, regular commerce, regulation, regulators, sprint
My colleague Greg Conko has an excellent piece in today’s Wall Street Journal. Greg doesn’t think it’s right that the FDA is denying terminally ill patients access to potentially life-saving treatments.
The latest case in point is a drug called Avastin. It is approved for treating several types of cancer. But the FDA is moving to revoke its approval for treating breast cancer. This has, understandably, upset many breast cancer patients and their doctors.
The heart of the matter is who shall be in charge of treatment decisions. Should it be patients and doctors? Or should the FDA decide for them?
Greg thinks a decentralized approach is better. Different patients will react to the same drug in different ways. A doctor can see if Avastin works or not for a patient, and they can make the right decision from there. The FDA relies on averages and medians for making its approval decisions, ignoring individuals. The trouble with that is, as Greg points out, there is no such thing as an average cancer patient.
A few weeks ago, I interviewed Greg about Avastin and the FDA here.
Posted in Health Care
Tagged avastin, breast cancer, breast cancer treatments, fda, Greg Conko, wsj
Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch have a must-read essay in today’s Wall Street Journal on the rise of independents, and the decline of the Republican and Democratic parties.
Their main point is that duopolies tend to die out when they abuse their customers. That is exactly what the two parties have been doing; no wonder people have been abandoning them in droves.
Comments Off on Beyond Binary Politics
Posted in The Partisan Mind
Inertia Wins! 