“The Trump administration and its supporters – including the Wall Street Journal editorial page – are working overtime these days to spin the news around the Iran war to make it appear that the US is winning and Tehran had better submit to Washington’s demands before it is wrecked, maybe even ‘annihilated.’ Indeed, Trump is preparing the option of bringing the military hammer down on Iran after the midterm elections if Tehran has not surrendered by then. In effect, Trump and his supporters are waging a ‘maximum pressure campaign’ against Iran in the mainstream media. This campaign is sure to fail.” (10/06/26)
“Capping property taxes isn’t all upside, but California’s Proposition 13 shows how tax limits can protect property owners from sudden increases and provide greater predictability.” (10/06/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Wojciech Wyszomierski
“Since the start of the 21st century, Poland has seemed like a textbook example of sustainable development. The break from a centrally planned economy in the late 1980s, the opening of the market, and relatively low labor costs attracted substantial foreign capital. GDP began to grow rapidly, and for the first time, money appeared in Poles’ pockets. While Western Europe focused on developing the welfare state, Poland consistently reinvested its earnings …. While in 1990, Poland’s GDP per capita did not exceed $2,000, 20 years later it had risen to over $12,000. However, not everyone was pleased with this. Poorer residents, bombarded with reports of an improving economic situation, began to voice their belief more and more boldly that they were entitled to a slice of the state’s pie.” (10/06/26)
“Latin America is turning right, and it’s a vindication for President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In some ways, the Cold War never really ended in the Western Hemisphere: socialism has haunted the nations of Central and South America long after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the same Cuban regime the Soviet Union propped up for decades remains in power to this day. The hard left thought it had cemented control over Venezuela, too, thanks to Hugo Chavez and Nicolàs Maduro — until American forces snatched Maduro right out of his bed back in January and took him to New York to stand trial.” (10/05/26)
“Until now, discussions of the potential economic problems created by the AI boom have mostly focused on the future. Will it destroy millions of jobs? Is there a bubble and will it cause a severe recession if it bursts? Will it destroy humanity? While these are doubtless very important questions, attempts to answer them are at best educated guesses. We don’t have to guess, however, about one major effect of the AI boom, because it’s happening right now: Massive spending on data centers is crowding out investment in everything else in the economy.” (10/06/26)
“The world’s highest per-capita incomes are found in small political units—such as Monaco, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Singapore, and the Cayman Islands. Economically, the finding is easy to explain: small political units are not autarkic; they compete internationally for talent and capital. That is why they must treat their residents and firms well and offer attractive living conditions and a business-friendly framework. Above all, small political units must keep the tax burden low, remain peaceful toward their neighbors, and refrain from military adventures. Yet even small political units are not immune to the abuse of state power.” (10/06/26)
“Recently, a speech by former President Barack Obama about his fantasy of having women in charge went viral. ‘If you put women in charge of every government for like two years and then just kind of saw, alright, how are things going? I have a strong belief that things would — they wouldn’t be perfect — but they’d be better,’ he said in a discussion with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin at Salem State University. This is not the first time he has expressed his fantasy that if women ran every country, living standards would improve and we’d have fewer wars. … I did my best, and could find no scientific evidence that if women ran the governments of the world, we’d have more peace and/or a higher standard of living. The reality of it is, though, that to achieve these things, we need less reliance on gender and race, and more a focus on ideology.” (10/06/26)
“University City is facing significant budget problems this year, driven in large part by costs associated with things the city does itself that private companies could better handle. As a resident of University City who works for a free-market policy organization that often supports government privatization, you can imagine my reaction to being given the opportunity to put my knowledge to work for my hometown. ‘Like a kid in a Delmar-Loop candy store’ would be the quickest analogy.” (10/05/26)
“At first, it seemed like a large terror attack on a British air base had been thwarted. Then the story turned stranger. The five men arrested last week had been traveling in white vans in the middle of the night near a base in southern England that the U.S. has used in its war against Iran. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had warned over the summer that ‘any base used to launch attacks on Iranian territory’ would be ‘a legitimate target.’ The arrests suggested that threat had materialized. But the details we’ve learned since then have been confusing. The men in the white vans? Not radicalized ideologues or hardened operators, but ‘unwitting chumps,’ one official said. … British security officials have warned for years about the dangers of these sorts of plots. Russia pioneered them; Iran has since taken up the mantle.” (10/05/26)
