Author: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Sex and the State
by Cathy Reisenwitz

“In Asia Times, Noah Smith just wrote that standard economic measures can’t really explain why Americans are growing less happy with their lives over time. The problem is that what makes for a happy, meaningful life is much harder to measure than GDP or median income. I agree that standard economic measures alone won’t do the trick. But it’s not because it’s so hard to measure what predicts a happy, meaningful life. That’s actually pretty easy. Connecting economic realities to those measures is also fairly straightforward. What Smith is missing is that relationships predict happiness. And, increasingly, economic conditions predict relationships.” (08/27/26)

https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/bottom-half-families-explain-americas

Source: Cato Institute
by Marian L Tupy

“Cooperation helps us survive, while innovation helps us prosper. How ‘interjurisdictional competition’ can foster the latter.” (08/27/26)

https://www.cato.org/commentary/wealth-taxes-competition-long-term-prosperity

Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall

“You have to have something to recycle. Which, if you’re building Civilisation 1.0, you don’t. It’s only when you’re building Civ 2.0, or 3.0, when you tear down the previous one and now have a pile of something that can be recycled to build the next version. The currently rich nations – US, UK, say – require very little virgin steel and actually export considerable amounts of scrap steel from those previous versions now being torn down. We’ve not checked the numbers but would certainly be willing to believe that demand for primary copper in both places is pretty minimal given the abundance of secondary. It’s places building out an urban environment for the first time – recently China, likely soon India, say – that require vast amounts of the new stuff.” (08/27/26)

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/recyclings-great-but-you-do-have-to-have-something-to-recycle

Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen

“While the tenor of U.S.-China relations cooled somewhat from the hysteria of Donald Trump’s first term and the Joe Biden years, recent events have made clear how thin that veneer of stability remains. President Trump’s May 2026 state visit to Beijing and the planned September 24 White House meeting with Xi Jinping briefly suggested a shift toward ‘strategic stability.’ Reciprocal visits returned to the agenda, and open talk of full decoupling subsided. That moment already looks precarious.” (08/27/26)

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/sino-american-relations-from-fragile-thaw-to-renewed-friction

Source: Checks & Balances
by Bob Corn-Revere

“It is widely said that you are nothing but a political hack who sold out your previously professed beliefs about free expression and the rule of law for the short-term goal of being named FCC chairman, that you corrupted the agency’s nonpartisan purpose by focusing its efforts on punishing perceived critics of the Trump administration, and that you regularly prostrate yourself with cringe-worthy displays of servility to soothe the president’s fragile ego. All these things may be true. But the criticism is terribly unfair because it fails to acknowledge your substantive accomplishments. When the dust settles, it may turn out that you have done more than any FCC chairman since the agency’s creation in 1934 to advance full First Amendment protection for the broadcast medium.” (08/27/26)

https://chkbal.substack.com/p/thank-you-brendan-carr