People in the West want more water than is available. Who should decide who gets the water they want? That really is the wrong question.
Month: February 2023
Supreme Court Decides to Hear Case Challenging State Law Empowering Government to Seize Entire Value of a House to Pay Much Smaller Property Tax Debt
Minnesota law allowed Hennepin County to seize a $40,000 home owned by a 93-year-old widow to pay off a $15,000 tax debt.
Los Angeles Public Schools Are Increasingly Passing Students Who Don’t Meet Grade-Level Standards
The issue is the result of a districtwide policy of de facto grade inflation.
The widening gap between grades and actual academic performance shows the perils of letting concern for “equity” drive educational policy. In a quest to pass more disadvantaged students, Los Angeles public schools may in fact be failing them.
Wage and Price Controls Are Not the Answer to Inflation
Price controls have been thoroughly debunked by history and economic theory. In fact, one of the first lessons in a standard freshman introductory microeconomics class is explaining how controls on prices (and wages, hereinafter, just “price controls”) cause shortages and surpluses.
Freedom Denied Part 1: How the Culture of Detention Created a Federal Jailing Crisis
In 1987… just 29% of people charged with federal crimes were jailed before trial; the rest were released back to their families. But today, pretrial jailing has become the norm, and we conclude that “the culture of detention” is to blame:
Congress Misses Another Chance To Correct Blatantly Unjust Crack Penalties
The legal distinction between the smoked and snorted forms of cocaine never made sense.
As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R‒Ky.) saw it, Garland’s memo usurped congressional authority by shielding crack defendants from mandatory minimum sentences. So instead of asserting that authority by rectifying a blatantly unjust penalty scheme, Congress has once again kicked the can down the road.
New Jersey Town That Sued a Woman for Public Records Requests Now Wants Lawyer Prosecuted for Same Thing
Irvington made national headlines last year when it filed a lawsuit against an 82-year-old woman for filing too many public records requests. Now it says a lawyer for FIRE should be prosecuted.
Baseball, Taxes, and Apple Pie
What economists call the “tax wedge” is the gap between what an employer pays for an employee’s services and what the employee receives after taxes. It causes some jobs to disappear entirely, as employees and employers may not be able to agree on a wage once taxes are taken out of the paycheck. It causes some employees to flee to lower‐tax countries, states, or cities.