Trade Divides the D.C. Parties Internally

Among the issues continuing to split the majority (Democrat) party in America is global trade, especially in goods. Today’s report in the New York Times about warnings within the Biden administration of inordinate harm to blacks and the poor from freer trade is further indication that a return to the national party’s international commercial bent

Where Trump Took the GOP Down

One notable casualty of the Donald Trump deadweight that burdened Republicans on Tuesday was a previously safe GOP seat in Michigan that had been held by one of the most libertarian members of Congress, Peter Meijer. The incumbent was defeated in a party primary by a Trumpist after having voted for an impeachment article against

Petrol Defies the Dirges

It’s been said for a few years now that gasoline sales in the U.S. would retreat as better mileage standards applied to combustion-engine vehicles and hybrids and EVs steadily took their place anyway. This has been a frequent rationale for increasing the fuel excise taxes that federal, state and local governments apply on petrol: They

Hamptons Hint: Bigger Is No Longer Better

Even in places that like to think they “live and let live,” it’s possible to get too much in other people’s faces. That’s basically where we are on the East End of Long Island, where the McMansion binge is leading to many new homes being built to the legal limits of size and footprint, often

Cast Your Political Eyes Past 2022, to Kentucky

We’ll soon know what the electoral verdict of 2022 is, but as this Kentucky political newsletter shows, underlying issues are going to carry forward into 2023 and beyond. Kentucky is a useful case study–a (Civil War) border state that in recent decades has trended Republican but where the loss of affluent suburbs has hurt the

Dwindling Ranks of the Unbanked

It turns out that getting a bank account in the U.S. these days is not so difficult after all. That was the news this week, after years of stories about the many unbanked among us and various possible government remedies for this, including having the Postal Service open deposit accounts. But, as this Associated Press

Deconstructing a Case for Re-use of Building Materials

I hate waste, so I’m usually tempted by articles about recycling or reuse. The NY Times has this magazine-length one in print today, primarily about efforts to take down a Dutch office tower but salvage the parts. The theme is that building materials and demolitions account for a huge swath of the carbon footprint, among

When New York Emptied ‘Excess’ Jail Cells

For some time, many libertarians have joined reformers on the left in pushing various decarceration measures, out of conviction that too many people are behind bars in America and that this is both unjust and excessively expensive. In the last five years or so, this cause has led to changed policies in major jurisdictions, including

Frequent Fliers, Please Report to the Counter

One acid test of the sincerity of those who want to seriously reduce carbon emissions to arrest climate change is whether they will support reasonable-cost nuclear power. The rapid onset of new atomic plants would be one way actually to come close to net-zero in emissions without drastically changing first-world lifestyles. The alternative acid test

Consultants Fuel Costs of the College Cream

If one strained to find a core example of what has driven the widely-lamented rise in premium enrollment costs at America’s prestige universities, there’d be no better source than the rising-revenues chart of this Economist article on the big 3 U.S. management consultancies. This three-cylinder engine generated better than 10-fold nominal growth in the decades