The world lost one of its most effective academic champions of freedom and free markets when Jim Gwartney passed away on January 7. Jim rarely wrote for popular audiences, so people unfamiliar with his academic work may not realize the influence he has had. Even those familiar with his academic work may not realize the extent of his influence.
Just before the start of 2024, the US Federal debt surpassed a new milestone: $34 trillion. In 2023 the US added $2.65 trillion in debt, the second largest annual increase in history after the 2020 increase of $4.5 trillion. Going back to 1995, Federal Debt has increased by just over $1 trillion per year, but since 2010 that number has jumped to $1.7 trillion annually.
In their recent debate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and California Gov. Gavin Newsom were at odds over the exodus of people from their respective states. Katy Grimes of the California Globe went to a different source for the data.
The word “liberal” has a big history. As a political word, it has a definite beginning. Thanks to digitization, scholarship has proven beyond all question that “liberal” took on a political meaning for the first time in the 1770s. Adam Smith and friends christened their politics “liberal.” Liberalism 1.0 was Smithian liberalism.
Does the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination mean that police cannot unlock your smartphone? It might be concerning to know that the answer to that question is in a legal gray area. However, with a recent ruling in the Utah Supreme Court, it is an issue that is presumably one step closer to finding its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Earlier this year, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) issued a proposed rulemaking on New Source Performance Standards for greenhouse gas (GHG) Emissions from New and Reconstructed Electric Utility Generating Units (EGUs). It is colloquially known as the “Power Plant Rule.”
Chris Mortenson, a San Diego developer, hired an architect to find out what type of SRO (single-room-occupancy) building he could develop for very low-income people, many of them homeless, if unnecessary state and local regulations were ignored. SROs are basically apartment buildings that typically have rooms without kitchens and shared bathrooms at the end of hallways. SRO units are no-frills, but they are safer and cleaner than the streets.
“I got a lot of problems with you people, and now you’re going to hear about it!” That statement announces the traditional opening of the “airing of grievances” part of the Festivus season. In the U.S. Congress, Senator Rand Paul has adopted the spirit of the Festivus holiday as an opportunity to highlight wasteful government spending.
How much does it cost Americans to be subjected to almost 1.1 million federal regulations? Writing in Ten Thousand Commandments, Clyde Wayne Crews Jr. estimates that the cost of all those regulations is more than $1.939 trillion a year. This figure represents the combined cost of complying with all those regulations and their economic losses.
The U.S. Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is the publication where virtually every rule issued by the U.S. government’s bureaucrats is published. QuantGov says it contains over 100 million words and “would take the average person over three years to read.”
