“Last year, I wrote that it would be very hard to decrease the number of mentally ill homeless people in San Francisco. Commenters argued that no, it would be easy, just build more jails and mental hospitals. A year later, San Francisco feels safer. Visible homelessness is way down. But there wasn’t enough time to build many more jails or mental hospitals. So what happened? Were we all wrong? Probably not.” (11/12/25)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Laurence M Vance
“Among the many other things contained in the OBBBA, some are good and some are bad. It is a good thing that the OBBBA expands federal work requirements for able-bodied recipients of food stamps, institutes federal work requirements for able-bodied recipients of Medicaid, and tightens Medicaid eligibility requirements, because it means that fewer people will be eligible to receive welfare. However, it is a bad thing that the OBBBA includes a $5 trillion increase in the debt ceiling. But what are we to make of the little-known provision in the OBBBA that creates the nation’s first private federal tax-credit-based school choice program?” (11/11/25)
“What do President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani have in common? Not much, except this: young adults love them. In fact, both men owe their electoral victories in part to Gen Z, my generation. Seventy-eight percent of voters ages 18 to 29 turned out for Mamdani on Nov. 4, according to one breakdown, including 67% of young men and 84% of young women. Just a year earlier, many in this same demographic were heading to the polls to cast their votes for Trump. The president won 46% of Gen Zers last year, including 56% of young men and 40% of young women, significantly improving his standing among this group compared to 2020 and 2016. If this wild swing from right to left has given you whiplash, I don’t blame you. But there is some method to the madness.” (11/12/25)
“Armed conflict’s power to shape societies in unconventional ways means that big wars are often viewed as something uncanny, horrifying, and romantic. Be it through the writings of a figure like Ernst Junger, or perhaps a backdrop to bring heightened stakes to a fictitious setting, these colossal and undeniable struggles have a habit of becoming the dominant archetype of discussion when it comes to trials of both individuals and societies. But what happens when the war does not unfold with much public drama and media coverage? What happens when it remains out of sight and mind, unfolding in the background with little to no public input? Is the effect just as dramatic if less obvious? I would contend that the answer is yes.” (11/11/25)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Ryan McMaken
“The politics behind the new proposal are fairly straightforward. Trump will promote the 50-year mortgage as a more affordable alternative to the 30-year mortgage. This seems plausible at a superficial level. The idea here is that the cost of the home is stretched out over a longer period of time, and therefore the monthly payment will be lower than it would be for a 30-year mortgage. … Unfortunately, the President’s scheme is unlikely to make homeownership more secure or affordable for ordinary Americans. It will further financialize the economy, enable more fiat-money fueled debt, and likely require more monetary inflation and more corporate bailouts down the line. That is, a fifty-year mortgage will require even more government intervention to guarantee loans and to keep interest rates at a politically acceptable level.” (11/12/25)
“In the 1970s, if you wanted to understand a company’s worth, you could literally kick the tires. More than 80% of S&P 500 companies’ assets were, in accountant-speak, ‘tangible’ — buildings, inventory, land, and securities with measurable value. Today, it’s about 10%. The rest is a corporate ectoplasm of code, data, and brand power. Marriott is a hotel company that doesn’t own hotels. Delta Airlines’ credit card partnership is more profitable than its airplanes. This shift from hard assets to soft ones isn’t necessarily bad. It mirrors the broader pivot in the US economy from manufacturing to services, which are more profitable and less vulnerable to outsourcing. … But the wealth being created today is a haze of licensing agreements and magic beans.” (11/11/25)
“The Department of Homeland Security suddenly moved up the implementation of a rule change that gives the Federal Protective Service, the agency charged with protecting federal buildings, more power to charge people with crimes for a variety of activities on or near federal property. The regulation, which went into effect on Nov. 5, prohibits a wide range of activities, including creating a loud or unusual noise, distributing informational materials and flying drones. It makes it illegal for people to wear masks to conceal their identities if they break any federal or state law or local ordinance. It forbids obstructing access to federal property or impeding operations there and specifically calls out photography and videography. Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S./Mexico Border Program, said he’s concerned that vague definitions in the regulations will give officers too much discretion.” (11/12/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mani Basharzad
“As Peter Boettke argues, in a world where all means and ends are known, the only task left is an engineering one. That is, essentially, what students learn in Econ 101—a world of perfect knowledge, known preferences, known prices and calculable costs, where solving equations yields all the answers. But the real wisdom of economics lies in understanding deviations from this perfection.” (11/11/25)
“I recall when then-President Barack Obama was planning to send troops to enforce his ‘Assad must go’ policy in Syria, many Republican US Senators passionately argued that the US President must come to Congress for approval before sending US troops into combat overseas. At the time, they portrayed themselves as brave defenders of the US Constitution. Last week, when the Senate held a vote to remind President Trump that he is required to seek approval from the Legislative Branch before launching an attack on Venezuela, only two Republican Senators stood up to defend the Constitution. Why? Perhaps because a Republican President was now in office. … We fought a war against George III to negate the ability of a king to take the people to war on his whim. Now, Congress scrambles to abrogate that hard-fought achievement in the name of political expediency.” (11/11/25)
“Yes the middle class is shrinking — because people in it are becoming richer. They are not (on average, certainly there are individuals who go up and down) getting poorer because the poorest band on this chart is shrinking even faster than the middle class. This is an enormous freaking victory for most everyone, but yet we are electing radical communists to tear down capitalism. Incredible.” (11/11/25)
