Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Diyar Kasymov

“Is building more homes not enough? Recently, there have been more and more Gen-Z memes about boomers selling their overvalued houses to Blackrock instead of to young couples, and then the corporation rents the house to the couple for 2x the price. The housing crisis is not a false alarm. The median rent price went up 25 percent in just 6 years. This is a serious economic problem for America. Many young people are already being radicalized by this, as they are willing to elect socialist Zohran Mamdani — who called for abolition of private property once — as the mayor of New York City. But what can we do? Are rent controls now relevant, as globalization and financialization changed the rules of the game? Can European-style social-democrats like Mamdani, Bernie, and AOC control the markets elegantly enough to maximize supply?” (11/18/25)

https://mises.org/mises-wire/blackrock-blame-housing-crisis

Source: USA Today
by Joel Burgess

“For at least a century, American businesses have been using charm pricing to fool us into thinking that a $9.99 meal is much cheaper than $10. One study says the practice increases sales by 24%.” (11/18/25)

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/11/18/pennies-discontinued-price-whole-numbers/87275333007/

Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger

“Many years ago, when I was practicing law in Texas, I learned that there were, generally speaking, two types of lawyers …. The first type of lawyer would carefully research the issue and give his honest, independent-minded opinion as to the legality of the proposed action, even if it wasn’t what the client wanted to hear. … The second type of lawyer would instead come up with whatever legal reasoning was necessary to please the client …. When it comes to President Trump’s and the Pentagon’s extra-judicial drug-war killings in the Caribbean, there is little or no doubt that the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice falls into the second category.” (11/18/25)

https://www.fff.org/2025/11/18/legal-nonsense-to-justify-non-judicial-killings/

Source: Niskanen Center
by Matthew Burton

“Last spring, as I was ending my time at the U.S. Treasury as an oversight official monitoring the IRS’s IT modernization efforts, one initiative by the Trump administration gave me hope that progress would be made after I left: trimming federal contracts with large consulting firms. … after decades of dependence on outside firms to do their work for them, many government agencies can no longer even function without them. They are suffering from something called ‘vendor capture,’ and it’s one of the most underexamined barriers to meaningful change in federal operations.” (11/18/25)

https://www.niskanencenter.org/vendor-capture-and-the-limits-of-fast-government-reform

Source: TomDispatch
by Tom Engelhardt

“When I began TomDispatch in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan, believe me, the world did not look good. But I guarantee you one thing: if you had told me then that, almost a quarter of a century later, the president of the United States would be Donald J. Trump (and had explained to me just who he was), I would have thought you an idiot first class or totally mad! Donald J. Trump as president of the United States, not just once, but twice? In what century? On what planet? You must be kidding! (And what a dreadful joke at that!) Now, of course, I would have to put all of that in the past tense (and probably add yet more exclamation points)!!” (11/18/25)

https://tomdispatch.com/trumps-greatest-skill/