“The $7,500 federal electric-vehicle rebate was always likely to be the most endangered of the Biden administration’s clean-energy investments. Tax breaks for building factories at least creates jobs and, perhaps more important, corporate stakeholders. But the EV rebates benefit consumers whose lifestyle choices are coded as liberal. States that didn’t vote for Trump lead the way on EV adoption. This fits with the ‘punish my enemies’ imperative of the Trump administration. But there was a hitch here: Elon Musk decided to become Donald Trump’s biggest and wealthiest fan. For a moment, you could see the EV rebates sticking around. After all, nobody has thrived more off those rebates, including the ones in place before the Inflation Reduction Act, than Tesla. Unfortunately, that is not the logic of the would-be monopolist.” (11/18/24)
“Given a choice between the rule of law and the law of rulers, I’d choose the former every time. That’s even true if I happen to agree with the ideology of the people who are currently in change. Thus I’ve consistently opposed ‘court packing,’ regardless of which party is in power at the time. One little known aspect of Fed rules is that the interest rate on bank reserves is technically set by the seven member Federal Reserve Board (not the 12 member FOMC). The president appoints the members of the Reserve Board, but not the 5 reserve bank presidents that also serve on the FOMC. In practice, the FOMC has a sort of ‘gentleman’s agreement’ to allow all 12 members to vote on where to set the IOR, as it has become the key tool of policymakers, but technically only the Reserve Board members have a vote.” (11/17/24)
“Winning an election with 50% plus a few (or many) voters does not imply the normative conclusion that the winner is justified to impose policies that significantly harm the other 49% (or fewer). In a free society, the political majority rule has three main justifications. First, it allows to change the rulers when their exercise of power is repudiated by a significant proportion of the population—to throw out the rascals. Second, it represents an approximation of unanimity, which is ultimately the only normative justification of democracy. … Third, as argued by Buchanan and Tullock, an approximation of unanimity is necessary only to prevent holdouts from blocking in bad faith widely desired change. One implication of this approach is that a president elected with 50.1% of the popular vote (the tally of the November 5 election as of November 14) does not acquire a license to kill or even to do everything he may have promised.” (11/15/24)
“I’m personally sympathetic to those who prefer social media ‘silos’ curated to their own tastes. Most of us live that way in meatspace — like me, you’ve probably never invited David Duke over for dinner or signed up for a Nazi bar pub crawl — and extending that to a ‘there ain’t enough room on this platform for both of us’ philosophy doesn’t strike me as strange or inherently wrong. On the other hand, nearly every social media platform allows considerable self-siloing, so there really IS enough room on those platforms for various people and groups who don’t care to talk to each other. Follow the users you like, ignore or even block the users you don’t like. ‘Problem’ solved.” (11/17/24)
“After the election results were in, did you start crying, shaking, and screaming? Did you start threatening those who didn’t support your preferred candidate? Did you announce to the world that you are leaving America to escape? Perhaps posting videos of your emotional crisis, whichever form it took, on TikTok? If you’re reading this, probably not. If you did, though, it’s a sign you take politics too seriously and may be allowing a handful of biased national media corporations to make you mentally unwell with their barrage of hoaxes and brainwashing. It’s just a suspicion. Some people say ‘everything is political,’ but if that’s true, it’s only because they make everything political. It’s unnecessary and harmful.” (11/17/24)
“President-elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is getting a lot of buzz, much of it tentatively hopeful. There’s a good reason for that: Untested though it is, the idea of handing responsibility for dismantling government bureaucracy, slashing excess regulations, and cutting wasteful expenditures to a couple of wealthy tech bros might work where nothing else has. Given that the federal government hasn’t balanced its books in decades and the budget deficit just keeps growing and adding to the national debt, it might be our only hope of avoiding catastrophe.” (11/15/24)
“Progressives see themselves as, well, progressive. But they aren’t. Even at their best, in opposing the national security state, they support massive government power in other realms of life. At heart they are social engineers. They seek a ‘moral equivalent of war,’ that is, regimentation without bloodshed. They are even anti-democratic when it suits them.” (11/15/24)
“President-elect Donald J. Trump published his Eleven Point Education Plan through a video on X, on November 10, 2024. … What follows are the 11 points of Trump’s plan. * Respect the right of parents to control the education of their children. * Empower parents and local boards to hire and reward great principals and teachers and fire the bad ones. * Classrooms focused on knowledge and skills, reading, writing, arithmetic, science and other useful skills, not political indoctrination. * Teach students to love their country. * Bring back prayer to schools. … * Give all students access to internships and work experiences to set them on a path to their first job. * All schools provide excellent job and career counseling to match kids to jobs suitable to their talents. * Close the Department of Education and send all education back to the states.” (11/16/24)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Peter Jacobsen
“Why did Trump win the election? The best reason might be the obvious one: he was seen as the better candidate on the one issue that matters the most.” (11/16/24)
“[E]ven though his vaccine rants may be nonsense, RFK Jr. does have a very real point when he complains about the corruption of the pharmaceutical industry. The industry routinely exaggerates the benefits of its drugs and downplays their potential harms. … Government-granted patent monopolies, and other forms of protection, allow the industry to sell their drugs at prices that are often twenty or thirty times the cost of producing and distributing the drug. It’s rare that a drug would sell for more than $20 or $30 per prescription without these monopolies. With patent protection, drugs can sell for hundreds or even thousands of dollars per prescription. With such enormous profits to be made, the industry has an enormous incentive to sell as many prescriptions as possible, even if it means misleading doctors and the public about the safety and effectiveness of their drugs.” (11/16/24)
