The Social Security Administration announced Thursday that beneficiaries will receive an 8.7% cost-of-living adjustment next year. That’s good news for seniors today who—like all other Americans—are struggling with rising costs, but it comes at the expense of a diminished Social Security system for current and future retirees.

Social Security is funded by current workers’ payroll taxes, but since the average worker’s wages increased only 4.1% over the past year, that means Social Security’s revenues have increased at less than half the rate of its newly announced expenditure increase.

Add in the fact that there are 2.8 million fewer people working today compared with the pre-pandemic employment-to-population ratio, and Social Security’s revenues are almost certainly below trend while its costs are above trend.

There are a few people who talk up ‘populism’ as something good, such as Steve Hilton at Fox News. Many others condemn ‘populism,’ including some classical liberals. A lot of the ‘populism’ talk does not sit well with me.

What is populism? I will consider several meanings and ask whether ‘populism’ is apt.

But first, some preliminary reflections on word usage and meaning.

Plaintiffs combatting government actions are increasingly requesting preliminary relief with nationwide injunctions. Such a trend has started stirring debate concerning how appropriate a legal remedy nationwide injunctions are.

Despite their name, nationwide or national injunctions are not defined by geography. Instead, nationwide injunctions are best understood as a court order against the federal government which instructs the government to act or prohibits the government from doing something.

National injunctions differ from typical court orders between two private parties such as a restraining order. With national injunctions, the injunction provides relief to parties beyond those filing briefs or motions in a case.

Martin Pánek asked me to write a foreword to a new edition of a Czech translation of Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. He gave me permission to post my original English-language text here. The book will be published in 2023 by the Liberální Institut, edited by Pavel Chalupníček, and translated by Hana Rogalewiczová & Vladimír Rogalewicz. 

Going to the grocery store over the past year has been an experience—and not a pleasant one. From inflation to supply-chain shortages that ensure my toddler will have a meltdown because I can’t find the “right” animal crackers, it’s a trip I dread every week.

But there’s been one aisle I’ve blissfully been able to avoid—the baby formula aisle.

There is no dispute that cell phones contain a lot of personal information. The Supreme Court recognized in 2014 in Riley v. California that a cell phone is “not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans ‘the privacies of life’.” For this reason, the Court held that the police generally need a warrant to search one. But what happens when police do get a warrant? Can they look at everything on your phone?

Well, it depends.

You know a government spending project has run off its rails when the New York Times criticizes it.

That’s what happened in its Sunday, October 9, 2022 edition, as reporter Ralph Vartabedian reports how years of mismanagement by state government officials turned California’s proposed bullet train into a zombie project.

If you search the internet for “U.S. national debt,” one site you’re sure to find is the U.S. Debt Clock. If you want to get a sense of how fast the U.S. national debt is changing, it does its job, I suppose. But it’s a mistake to call it a clock.

It is really a dashboard, and a convoluted one at that. It presents about a hundred points of data. Some are directly related to the U.S. national debt, but more than half are not. From a user perspective, it’s on the level of a video gaming machine in a Las Vegas casino. It features lots of motion, but like trying to win money by playing video slots, it takes a lot of time to extract information from it.

The rise of trade over the last few decades between the U.S. and Asia—particularly China—has been great for our ports. Activity has spiked in recent years, with local consumption from the sector increasing from $1.1 trillion to $1.4 trillion in 2018. But growth across ports has not been equal—it is generally higher on the East and Gulf Coast, and lower on the West Coast.

This is odd, since West Coast ports have a straight shot to China. It speaks to the difference in business climates, with the West Coast having tougher labor policy and more hostility to economic growth.

James Bennett’s new book, Highway Heist, offers readers an excellent history of the politics and economics behind the development of the nation’s transportation network. When one reflects on the many activities undertaken by the government, the nation’s network of roads looks like one of the more productive government activities. Yet Bennett shows that the construction of roads has often been controversial and that interest group politics has played a significant role in determining whether they would be built and where they would go.

Readers interested in infrastructure issues will find the book very informative. Bennett offers readers a rich historical background, even going back to the nation’s founding. The book is loaded with facts and case studies. While a book on infrastructure could be dry reading, Bennett is a good writer who will engage readers. The text reads like a good story.