Category: Regulation
Posts about government regulation
2022: The Year the “Lodger Evil” Came to Kansas and Made Housing Less Affordable
Housing restrictions might be politically inevitable, but they are almost always economically silly. To top it off, they reinforce the privilege and power of the already privileged and powerful…
Beware the Regulatory Storm over FTX
Fraud is always possible no matter the regulatory environment. Thus a false sense of security is worse than none at all.
https://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2022/11/tgif-beware-regulatory-storm-over-ftx.html
Tax Increases and the Great Depression
Did tax increases deepen and extend the Great Depression?
Laffer and coauthors argue that the “chief cause of the Great Depression was taxation.” That is a bold claim because policymakers made many mistakes during the 1930s. Aside from adverse monetary and tax policies, the government undermined the economy with regulatory interventions, labor union laws, and a general antagonism toward businesses and high earners.
The False Face of SBF, FTX, and ESG
The vast majority of ESG funds and firms are similarly misdirective. Freewheeling use of terms like “sustainable” obscure a wide variety of investment activities, some decidedly at odds with common public notions of “green” investing. Between 2019 and June 2022, some 65 US funds were re-branded as “sustainable,” without any consensus as to the meaning of the term.
Washington Has Been Much More Successful Than California in Displacing the Black Market for Pot
Lighter regulation is one likely explanation.
California’s striking failure to shift consumers from illegal to legal dealers is largely due to a combination of high taxes, onerous regulations, and local retailing bans. While Washington has a relatively high retail marijuana tax (37 percent, plus standard sales taxes), in other respects the state has made it easier for licensed suppliers to compete with illegal sources.
Go With the Regs or Go to Jail
The Miller’s Organic Farm Case: Part 1
Last summer, armed federal agents sent by the USDA demanded that Miller cease operations and prepared to hit him with more than $300,000 in fines. … The farm was ordered to pay the fine within 30 days or face further penalties “including imprisonment of Amos Miller.”
What We Knew In the Early Days
We certainly live in an age of short attention span but many these signs and warnings came weeks or months before the world locked down and they chronicled the damage as it was happening. Why all this came to be completely ignored remains the burning question.
The Vast Collateral Damage of Zoning
Robert C. Ellickson exposes in convincing detail the deleterious impact of restrictions on new housing.
“Local zoning measures may be the most consequential regulatory program in the United States. Local barriers to housing production elevate housing costs and distort household migration decisions. Nonetheless, members of the mass media tend to regard anything that happens at a city hall as unworthy of attention.” He characterizes zoning’s reach into private life as “Leviathan gone Local.”
https://www.city-journal.org/the-vast-collateral-damage-of-zoning
My New The Hill Article on How Arlington, VA Battle over “Missing Middle” Housing is a Microcosm of Broader National Struggle Against Exclusionary Zoning
Barack Obama could have been referring to our community, when he said that “[t]he most liberal communities in the country aren’t that liberal when it comes to affordable housing.”