Category: Opinion

Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman

“How to lose friends and influence nothing.” (07/21/26)

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/oy-canada-tariffs

Source: EconLog
by Alex MacDonald

“This month, amid World Cup fever, New York City implemented a new job-protection law. This law forbids app-based rideshare platforms from removing drivers unless they can show they have ‘just cause’ or a ‘bona fide economic reason.’ The new law follows a pattern set by a similar pandemic-era law, also from New York City, which applied the same standards to the fast-food industry. As examples of political sloganeering, these laws are hard to beat: no one will argue with fairness in firing. But as economic policies, they’re nothing short of an own goal. By making it harder to fire people, they inadvertently discourage businesses from hiring those people in the first place. They also make it harder for already-employed people to switch jobs.” (07/21/26)

https://www.econlib.org/econlog/the-high-cost-of-just-cause

Source: Common Dreams
by Jeffrey D Sachs & Sybil Fares

“Eisenhower’s warning that US policy would be captured by a scientific-technological elite supplies a specific reason the US sustains the Ukraine war: Ukraine has become a unique, live-fire laboratory for AI warfare at scale.” (07/21/26)

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-proxy-war-in-ukraine

Source: Cobden Centre
by Ryan McMaken

“The thing we now call ‘conservatism’ in the West largely comes out of a reaction against the French Revolution and other revolutionary movements inspired by it. The Continental conservatives—e.g., Joseph de Maistre, Friedrich von Gentz, Klemens von Metternich, and Juan Donoso Cortés—embraced monarchism, often including its more authoritarian and absolutist varieties, in an effort to avoid repeating the excesses of the French revolution. The conservatives also opposed economic liberalism in the form of free trade and ‘free markets’ because these were associated—wrongly in many cases—with the French revolutionaries.” (07/21/26)

https://www.cobdencentre.org/2026/07/what-the-conservatives-get-wrong-about-the-french-revolution/

Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander

“We didn’t invent liberal capitalism in 2020, so liberal capitalism didn’t cause our current round of unhappiness. The simplest explanation is the pandemic. I’m not sure it’s exactly that simple, because some preliminary results suggest happiness hasn’t rebounded as much as you’d expect after the pandemic ended. I went into this in more in my vibecession post, but I think the lingering national bad mood is a combination of …” (07/21/26)

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-pritchard-on-liberal-happiness

Source: The American Conservative
by W James Antle III

“Recent socialist victories in Democratic primaries appear to be narrowing the party’s lead, with Republicans outrunning Trump’s job approval rating and possessing a real opportunity to defy history. But Republicans cannot forever defy basic math, economics, or gravity. It is now summertime. Public perceptions of the economy will be baked in by Labor Day, with extremely limited opportunities for improvement by Election Day after that. The public’s attitude about the Iran war may already be set, and not to Trump’s or the GOP’s benefit.” (07/21/26)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/trump-can-still-salvage-midterms-if-he-acts-quickly/

Source: Liberal Currents
by Austin Albanese

“Genuine pluralism requires people to act in ways that affirm the dignity and presence of others, even when difference remains.” (07/21/26)

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-work-of-pluralism/

Source: Quillette
by Andrew BUshnell

“In the early 1930s, the Australian government lost a war against emus, and its present war, this time on tobacco, is heading the same way. Excessive taxation in the name of public health has backfired in extraordinary fashion, helping create a massive black market in tobacco products. This has led to an effective transfer to criminal gangs of billions of dollars of revenue previously earned by the legal tobacco industry, and a corresponding significant drop in excise tax revenue collected by the government, unprecedented violence between those gangs as they scrap over money and territory, and, to top it all off, an increase in the consumption of tobacco and nicotine.” (07/20/26)

https://quillette.com/2026/07/20/the-tobacco-wars/

Source: New York Post
by Rikki Schlott

“Young progressives are more likely to consider normal day-to-day struggles — like difficulty sleeping and feeling blue — as mental health problems, per a new analysis. Is it any wonder, given the left-leaning ideology that convinces Americans that the system is simply stacked against them? Data from the US General Social Survey, analyzed by the Financial Times, revealed that younger people and more progressive people were more likely to believe that everything from feeling worried, trouble sleeping and feeling a little sad were symptomatic of a disorder. … This politics of suffering and victimization pairs perfectly with a population eager to identify with their struggles rather than their strengths. In recent years, claiming mental illness has become chic in progressive spaces, conferring socially valuable oppression points in the battle to prove who is most downtrodden.” (07/20/26)

https://nypost.com/2026/07/20/opinion/young-lefties-say-normal-struggles-are-mental-health-issues/

Source: Unherd
by Poppy Sowerby

“Think about it: every day, every person of influence is likely to encounter an army of auxiliaries who at any moment could overhear privileged information. Bank tellers, family counselors, pharmacists. For a nice little earner, wedding planners could short a celebrity marriage, security staff have a flutter on which stars will show up, and soldiers gamble on the capture of a Venezuelan strongman — except that’s already (allegedly) happened. Closeness to major events transforms being ‘in the know’ into possessing insider alpha; with these new incentives, secrets become stranded assets. He who dares is not gambling on uncertainty — his privileged access means he knows the direction of travel — but rather on the likelihood of being rumbled. Taking that risk could set him up for life, and could far outstrip baseline salaries for clerical or flunky work. You can see the appeal. Within the present White House, the temptation would seem to be irresistible.” (07/20/26)

https://archive.is/eDB6r