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Phil Magness’s new essay on the origins of the vague and derogatory term “neoliberalism” is superb. A slice:

While most versions of the neoliberal label still come from the academic left today, the term has come back into favor within a certain, curious strand of the right. Conservative writers such as Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule, Gladden Pappin, and Sohrab Ahmari pepper their works with complaints about “neoliberalism,” which they blame for a long list of economic and cultural grievances. In doing so, they tapped a growing discontent with the economic wing of the American right, particularly among religious and social conservatives. Rebranding themselves as “Postliberals” in the early 2020s, these thinkers espouse an ultra-traditional and collectivist form of conservatism that explicitly aims to purge free-market thought from the American right on the grounds that it allegedly subverts traditional values and morality with economic consumerism.

There’s not much in the way of sophistication to Postliberal economic theory beyond a visceral distaste for modernity. They aim to resurrect long-discredited economic doctrines such as 18th- and 19th-century tariff protectionism, and map it onto the Trump administration’s own tariff and industrial policy agendas. But that fact itself has given the Postliberals an outsized presence in the political arena. J.D. Vance, for example, considers himself a follower, and has joined in the rhetoric of blaming America’s economic faults on the neoliberal bogeyman.

In an April 2020 essay, Vance bemoaned an alleged donor class on the right who had “gotten rich” off of “neoliberalism and globalization.” Adopting the same conspiracist style that dominates left-wing deployment of the term, he attacked the Covid-era anti-lockdown movement by calling it a political distraction, a sideshow to divert attention from our economic precarity, benefiting those who wanted to keep the “globalization gravy train” flowing. Vance concluded the piece with a call to “thrust more daggers into [the] heart” of the “neoliberal consensus that has dominated the American Right.”

Despite a few passing nods to conservative social issues, Vance’s message was indistinguishable from the incoherent anticapitalist screeds of the academic left that we surveyed in Neoliberal Abstracts. It is difficult not to see history rhyming with itself in this horseshoe-like convergence, a return to the origins of the term as part of a joint assault on economic individualism from the illiberal left and right. And just like its 1920s precursor, today’s attacks on neoliberalism obscure the vacuity of their term of choice by making it a universal scapegoat for everything about the world that they happen to dislike.

Walter Olson is right: “In Minnesota, ICE is assaulting the constitutional rights of citizens.”

BlueBadger2600 tweets: (HT Scott Lincicome):

Positions ICE has taken:

– We can enter your home without a warrant
– You must carry your papers at all times
– But we can ignore them and only our scanner matters
– We can detain you anywhere, no matter your age, situation or status
– Indefinitely with no access to a lawyer
– And basically no right to a day in court
– We can send you to a third world prison if we choose
– But we can’t bring you back if we made a mistake
– And if you interfere with any of this we can shoot you because you are a terrorist

How is this not a recipe for totalitarianism?

Reason‘s Stephanie Slade reports how the Heritage Foundation’s economically clueless president, Kevin Roberts – a man who, when he speaks or writes about economic policy, sounds more like Bernie Sanders than like Ronald Reagan – has effectively destroyed that once-admirable organization. By choosing to carry water for “New Right” politicians and provocateurs, Heritage is no longer what it had long been, namely, an intellectually respectable source of, and haven for, sound American conservative ideas. Two slices:

While the proximate cause of the ongoing staff exodus is a video Roberts recorded in October defending Tucker Carlson’s decision to amplify the white-nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes, the turmoil at Heritage has been brewing for far longer. In fact, Reason has learned, Heritage leadership has been directing employees to read Roberts’ 2024 book, which agitates for a “Second American Revolution,” and to leave if they can’t agree with the positions therein.

Scores of board members, employees, and visiting fellows have opted to depart, variously citing antisemitism, misogyny, retaliation against employees who dare to speak up, and an institutional pivot away from free market principles. In conversations with more than a dozen current and former staffers, I repeatedly heard that Roberts’ belief that he alone should get to determine all of the think tank’s stances has provoked resentment among his own subject matter experts.

“The issue is you have the president of an organization committing everybody in it to his position unilaterally,” one senior staff member told me in November. “Because Heritage has a one-voice policy, when the president goes out and says Heritage Foundation has this position” — be it support for tariffs or support for Tucker Carlson —”he implicates everybody down the chain, and he makes everybody stand for that.”

…..

In theory, free enterprise and limited government are core Heritage principles, and the think tank was historically a staunch defender of free trade. Roberts’ book, on the other hand, comes out swinging against globalization, in which “US firms sought to make profits all over the world by expanding into new markets, sending factories overseas, running money through international tax havens, developing global supply chains, and employing other new strategies,” and calls for using “the immense powers of our federal and state governments” for protectionist ends. It also asserts more than once that President Donald Trump “won” the trade war during his first term.

Roberts is equally hostile to the modern financialized “sham economy,” which he says is guilty of “funneling money to the parasitical enemies of the American way of life.” In his view, the goal of the conservative movement should be to return to an economic system that would allow more men to support families on a single income, and he hopes to “restore the proper use of the government” to bring about his favored outcomes. He’s comfortable with trade barriers, industrial policy, and the aggressive use of antitrust regulations “to rein in globalist corporatism,” he writes. “Especially when it comes to Big Tech and big banks, we need to consider the nuclear option.”

The book acknowledges that all of this would require “short-tem sacrifices, including higher prices for some consumer goods,” but insists the pain will be worth it.

Peter Earle, decrying Trump’s gambit to use protectionist means to acquire Greenland, writes that “if borders become negotiable under tariff pressure, risks rise, investment falls, and fragile global norms further fracture.” Two slices:

Even setting aside valuation, the Greenland proposal fails a more basic test: symmetry. If historical ties, strategic relevance, and latent economic value were sufficient grounds for territorial acquisition, then several European powers could assert claims to US territory with equal legitimacy.

Spain governed Florida, Texas, and much of the American Southwest for centuries. France once controlled the Louisiana territory, sold under geopolitical pressure in 1803, which now represents tens of trillions of dollars in economic value. Britain administered the original colonies and left behind enduring legal and institutional frameworks. Russia sold Alaska in 1867 for a sum that dramatically undervalued its eventual strategic and resource significance, particularly in today’s Arctic context.

Yet no serious policymaker treats these historical facts as grounds for modern claims. The reason is economic as much as legal. Once sovereignty becomes contingent on strategic usefulness or newly discovered resource value, borders lose durability. Risk premia rise. Long-term investment becomes fragile everywhere. The modern economic order depends on the expectation that territorial arrangements are not perpetually renegotiable under pressure.

…..

Finally, Greenland is not some unoccupied resource cache. It is home to a population with political institutions, cultural identity, and stated preferences. Treating territory as a tradable asset abstracts away governance and consent, precisely the factors that determine whether resource wealth becomes long-run prosperity or stagnation.

The Institute of Economic Affairs’s David Frost identifies “three problems with industrial policy.” A slice:

First, how do Kyle or Burnham know what industries Manchester or Britain actually need? They may think they know – but in truth they are just looking at industries that are already successful elsewhere in the country or the world and saying “we want some of that”. It’s not a basis for economic policy. Suppose Manchester industrialists 200 years [ago] had said “British transport depends on horses and canals. What we need is strategic support for a stagecoach and barge industry.” Would anyone have bothered developing the first railway line in the world then? The truth is the industries of the future are not known to politicians: the knowledge is decentralised in the economy, in the entrepreneurs and experimenters. The best thing is to get out of the way and let them find what works.

The second problem is the famous “What is seen and what is not seen” problem first described by the French economist Bastiat in the mid-1800s. Yes, politicians can build a shiny new factory with public money. Everyone says “Great. Look at all the activity and all the jobs created.” That’s what’s seen. But no one thinks about what could have been done if the money had not been paid over in taxes but left in the hands of the people who earned it. That’s what’s not seen. Maybe, left to their own devices, they’d have done better. And at least if they hadn’t, it would only have been their own money they lost. We wouldn’t all be paying for it – as we do when the politicians get things wrong.

Bob Graboyes is turning his grief into flourishing.

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… page 563 of the 2025 Liberty Fund edition (translated by Jurgen Reinhoudt) of Jacques Rueff’s 1945 magnum opus, The Social Order:

Under the liberal system, the laws and regulations – once taxes have been paid – do not prohibit any of the uses allowed by the natural order of things. A strictly liberal society is therefore a society without any laws or regulations other than those that forbid the enjoyment and disposal of other people’s property or that establish tax obligations.

By contrast, under the authoritarian system of government, the laws and regulations subject individual wills to the restrictions that are willed by government authority.

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Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal.

Editor:

Many of Pres. Trump’s supporters continue to insist that his wild policy moves reflect his brilliant strategy at playing 4D chess. Yet in light of Mr. Trump’s new threat to impose 100 percent tariffs on Americans’ imports from Canada – a threat issued in anger at Canada’s efforts to increase its trade with China – it’s clear that, even in the standard two-dimensional version of chess, Mr. Trump plays, not with skill, but with obliviousness and myopia (“Trump Threatens New Tariffs on Canada Over China,” January 24).

Skilled chess players, when pondering their moves, anticipate other players’ future moves in response. In contrast, sloppy players consider only the immediate and most-obvious consequence of their next move. Just as the sloppy chess player is surprised when, after triumphantly capturing an opponent’s pawn with a bishop, that opponent captures that bishop with one of her pawns, the president was apparently surprised that his earlier tariff hikes on (and generally shabby treatment of) Canada prompted that country to trim its economic losses by expanding trade with China.

Any competent economics undergraduate could have predicted Canada’s response to Mr. Trump’s tariffs. And that same undergraduate would now tell the president that this new tariff threat will only drive Canada and other allies further away from the U.S. and, in turn, weaken America’s economy.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

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In this letter in the Wall Street Journal, Vance Ginn explains that “it is troubling to see the president flirting with policies straight out of the Sanders-Warren playbook in his second term.” A slice:

Price controls on credit card interest rates may sound populist, but decades of evidence show they reduce access to credit, especially for lower-income and higher-risk borrowers.

Banning institutional investors from single-family housing would reduce capital flowing into housing markets, shrink supply and ultimately raise costs for renters and buyers. Housing affordability improves when we build more homes, not when we restrict who can finance them.

George Will finds relevant wisdom in G. Edward White’s new biography of former U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson. A slice:

In 1952, the court and Jackson again confronted the task of reconciling constitutional principles and a president’s claim of urgency. With the Korean War raging, Harry Truman said an impending nationwide steelworkers strike would “jeopardize national defense,” so he issued an executive order for government to seize and operate most mills. The companies sued, arguing that no act of Congress or constitutional provision validated Truman’s action.

Truman’s lawyers argued that his authorization “could be implied from the aggregate of his powers under the Constitution,” especially as commander in chief. The court disagreed, 6-3.

Concurring, Jackson said that Truman’s action flowed from neither an express nor implied authorization by Congress, and was against Congress’s will as expressed in a 1947 labor relations law that made no provision for such presidential action. It would be “sinister and alarming” to say that the president, enjoying vast discretion regarding foreign affairs, can by “his own” foreign commitment “vastly enlarge his mastery over” the nation’s internal affairs. This way, the president “of his own volition” can give himself “undefined emergency powers.” Truman’s seizure of the mills originates in his “individual will” and “represents an exercise of authority without law.”

Today, the nation is inured to presidential claims of urgent needs — “emergencies,” “existential” dangers — being used for evasions of the Constitution. Said Jackson, our institutions for keeping the executive under the law might be “destined to pass away,” but “it is the duty of the Court to be last, not first, to give them up.”

The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board decries the Trump administration’s attempted resurrection of the “equal-time” rule. Two slices:

President Trump’s desire to control the public airwaves is verging on the comic, literally. Witness the Federal Communications Commission’s memo this week targeting late-night comedy—yes, the same shows that Mr. Trump claims are irrelevant.

The FCC is resurrecting its “equal time” rule, an artifact of the 1934 Communications Act. The rule requires public broadcasters, if they provide air time to one political candidate, to give comparable time and placement to all other candidates running for the same office. Congress later exempted “bona fide” newscasts, interviews, documentaries and events.

…..

There’s a strong argument that the rule violates the speech rights of broadcasters. It also makes no sense in today’s diverse media market in which public broadcasters account for a shrinking share. Many politicians connect with voters using social media and podcasts. Joe Rogan can host any politician he wants, and so can shows on cable networks, but Jimmy Kimmel gets government supervision.

The rule can lead to absurd results. After Arnold Schwarzenegger declared his candidacy for California Governor in 2003 on Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show,” all 135 candidates were invited to appear. Each was given 10 seconds to shout his ideas—at the same time. Stations also stopped running the actor’s movies during the campaign.

The FCC missive is a regrettable diversion from the yeoman work Mr. Carr is doing rolling back Biden-era regulation. Then again, maybe the goal is to make Mr. Trump’s Presidency the highest-rated comedy on TV.

Steven Greenhut understandably asks: “Where have the ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ Republicans gone?” Three slices:

Based on the troubling goings-on in Minneapolis, it’s hard to describe former GOP Rep. Justin Amash’s post on X as hyperbolic: “They’re building a police state right before our eyes—which will ultimately be deployed against conservative Christians and gun owners and those who refuse the jab—and a lot of ‘Republicans’ with Gadsden flags in their bios are like, ‘Yeah, FAFO!'”

There’s no hope for anyone cheering, but “responsible” conservatives have a rationale for defending these actions: It’s better than having Democrats in charge. Had, say, Kamala Harris won the presidency, she would have imposed socialistic policies, they say. That’s probably true, but have you noticed the latest policy plans from Donald Trump? His economic proposals echo the Democratic platform.

…..

These are the types of easy-button leftist solutions that always make matters worse because they interfere with the workings of the free market. Markets direct goods and services and set prices that reflect supply and demand. When the government meddles, via regulation, taxation, government ownership, and “industrial policy,” companies make decisions based on political preferences. It slows economic growth, stifles innovation, and rewards firms that serve the king rather than the consumer.

…..

A decades-old Catholic social teaching is known as the “seamless garment of life,”which references the tunic Jesus wore at the crucifixion. The faithful are supposed to revere life in a seamless manner by opposing all policies that undermine the dignity of human beings. These days, Republicans are pursuing a seamless garment of big government, from police-state immigration tactics to their interventionist economic policies. With both parties now hostile to limited government, Americans can only expect civic life to get worse rather than better.

David Henderson had a few things to say about Mark Carney, Donald Trump, Howard Lutnick, and free trade.

Harrison Griffiths reports that the economic damage inflicted by Trump’s protectionism falls disproportionately on his most ardent supporters.

Fareed Zakaria mourns the damage that Trump is doing to the reputation of the United States. Two slices:

Trump enjoys using America’s vast strength — built over generations — almost for sport. He placed tariffs on Switzerland, and then raised them sky high because the Swiss president, he said, “rubbed [him] the wrong way.” He relished recounting how quickly the Swiss came to him seeking relief. This was less strategy than a power play.

Last year, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte appeared to jokingly liken Trump to a “daddy” intervening in a schoolyard brawl, and Trump has repeated that line with evident pleasure, including at Davos. He seems to enjoy even insincere flattery because it shows that he is so powerful, people have to fake their admiration for him.

…..

The United States has been the world’s dominant power for close to a century. But its leaders understood that primacy is not only about coercion; it is also about legitimacy, reassurance and voluntary cooperation. They grasped a basic truth: Power is more sustainable when it is exercised with restraint, and influence is larger when allies feel dignity rather than fear.

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, applauds Javier Milei’s latest speech at Davos. A slice from Vero’s post:

Javier Milei’s recent address at Davos is impressive. It’s also a very timely reminder of many important lessons that are often forgotten.

The Argentinian president presents free enterprise not merely as an efficient economic system, but as a moral and institutional order rooted in Western ethical traditions. Rejecting the supposed tradeoff between justice and efficiency, Milei explains that true economic efficiency emerges only from institutions grounded in private property, voluntary exchange, and the non-aggression principle. In his view, policies that reject principles in order to pursue short-term political advantages are not only immoral but dynamically inefficient, ultimately leading to economic and social collapse. Free enterprise capitalism, Milei contends, is the only system that is both just and capable of sustaining long-run growth because it respects natural rights and enables entrepreneurial discovery.

Milei places economic growth squarely within an institutional and values-based framework. Growth depends on dynamic efficiency: the ability of institutions to reduce uncertainty, protect property rights, and allow entrepreneurial creativity to scale through capital accumulation, innovation, and the division of labor. He contrasts this commitment to free markets with socialism and heavy regulation, which suppress increasing returns and kill growth by punishing profits and blocking the diffusion of economic benefits. Argentina’s recent reforms, such as mass deregulation, fiscal stabilization, and a deliberate retreat of the state from economic control, are presented as real-world applications of these principles. For Milei, values are not an ornament to economic policy but its foundation: Societies that uphold liberty, property rights, and moral restraint create the institutional conditions for sustained prosperity, while those that abandon these values invite stagnation and decline.

Also praising Milei’s speech at Davos is the Washington Post‘s Editorial Board. A slice:

Trump is often credited with delivering hard truths to Davos attendees, but it’s Milei’s policies that are actually upending the status quo. Unlike Trump, the self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist has been working to eradicate trade barriers, even with countries like China. “If you look at China’s weight in the world,” Milei said at Davos, “you’ll understand I have to trade with China.”

But what truly sets the Argentine president apart from other leaders is his desire to reduce his own power and control. “The most responsible thing politicians can do is to stop pestering those who are creating a better world,” he said in Switzerland. Few of his peers will agree, which makes his message all the more important.

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… is from page 338 of Chapter 6 (“The Dutch Republic”) of Johan Norberg’s marvelous 2025 book, Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages:

Europeans who used to think that wealth came from land and conquest and that stability came from one unifying faith noticed that the one country without land and religious oppression became the richest in the world and stayed stable when other great powers tore themselves apart in religious war. The [Dutch] republic’s openness to refugees and debate made it the epicentre of the European Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment.

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I am happy to share – and to enthusiastically endorse – this message from Duke University economist (and Hayek biographer) Bruce Caldwell.

The Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University will be hosting another Summer Institute on the History of Economics from June 2-11, 2026. The program is designed for students in graduate programs in economics, though students in graduate school in other fields as well as recently minted PhDs will also be considered.

Students will be competitively selected and successful applicants will receive free housing, access to readings, and stipends for travel and food. The deadline for applying is March 9.

We are very excited about this year’s program, which will focus on giving participants the tools to set up and teach their own undergraduate course in the history of economic thought. There will also be sessions devoted to showing how concepts and ideas from the history of economics might be introduced into other classes. The sessions will be run by Duke faculty members Jason Brent, Bruce Caldwell, Kevin Hoover, and Steve Medema. More information on the Summer Institute is available at our website, https://hope.econ.duke.edu/2026-summer-institute.

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Walker Wright makes clear that “free trade is fairer than you think.” Here’s his conclusion:

Unfairness is one of the most common criticisms leveled against commercial society, often accompanied by claims that it undermines democracy and fosters partiality. The evidence presented here suggests the opposite. Engaging in trade and market exchange teaches us to treat others more generously and impartially. The natural outcome of these values is the institutional protection of certain rights. Fair treatment for all becomes the name of the game. We begin to trust one another’s choices and to believe in our shared ability to build society together.

Norbert Michel debunks Trump’s assertion that globalization has “failed” Americans.

Scott Lincicome tweets:

Just once I’d like protectionists to be asked to reconcile their (contradictory) claims that protectionism DOESN’T raise costs/prices but DOES incentivize domestic investment/production.

It’s magic, apparently.

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, decries the Republican Party’s transformation into the Depublican Party – a party now filled with enthusiasts for economic interventions long championed by the likes of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, AOC, and other far-left, economically clueless ‘progressives.’ Two slices:

For some years now, conservatives who believe in free markets and limited government have been labeled RINOs—”Republicans in name only”—as GOP liberals or moderates have historically been known. The MAGA movement flings this term as an insult and a signal that respecting the realities of supply and demand instead of endorsing price controls is a character flaw.

But after watching the last few weeks unfold, it’s hard not to ask this: If believing in markets makes you a RINO, what exactly do we call Republicans who now openly embrace ideas lifted from the playbooks of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.)?

How about “Depublicans”?

The gradual transformation has been taking place since around the beginning of President Donald Trump’s first term and is now unmistakable. With a few notable exceptions like taxes, deregulations, and the occasional bombing, those in power seem to behave like Democrats in Republican clothing. They have adopted many of their counterparts’ instincts, rhetoric, and policy tools, including industrial policy, trade protectionism, corporate scapegoating, price controls, ownership restrictions, and discretionary federal intervention.

In just the past few weeks, Trump has floated—and senior members of his administration have defended—four policy proposals that would have been loudly denounced as socialist overreach had they come from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. And for good reason. Progressives champion similar big-government policies.

…..

What makes this moment so revealing is that these ideas are not musings or trial balloons. They’re echoed and defended by the administration, promoted in the Senate by the vice president, touted by legislators like Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) and increasingly normalized across the populist right.

Don’t be fooled by the replacement of progressive jargon with nationalist rhetoric. This economic crusade will harm the workers and non-rich it is supposed to help. It will raise prices by restricting supply, reduce market access by imposing controls, and replace opportunity with favoritism and discretion. Worse, it will erode the institutional foundations, capital markets, investment incentives, and predictable rules that enable long-run prosperity.

If believing in free markets makes you a RINO, fine. But let’s at least be honest: The GOP is not becoming more conservative. It’s becoming more comfortable with Democrats’ positions such as bans, controls, and government direction of private economic life. Republicans are becoming Depublicans.

Michael Coon and GMU Econ alum Abby Hall-Blanco reveal the economic flaws of Trump’s proposal to cap interest rates on credit-card balances. A slice:

If credit card interest rates were capped, this would harm the very people such a policy aims to help. Not only would it fail to help borrowers, it would paradoxically make things less affordable. Lenders would only issue new credit cards to people with stellar credit. Those with fair credit would likely see their credit limits fall. And those at the bottom of the credit ladder? Shut out completely or pushed toward payday loans or black-market lending.

If the president were truly serious about helping consumers with affordability, he would do well to eliminate the tariffs he’s imposed his first year in office, which have served to increase the price of goods and services and led to a sluggish economy. The current proposal tries to fix the problems created by the previous policy by doubling down on bad economics.

The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal criticizes the Trump administration for maintaining Joe Biden’s irresponsible laxity, as the Journal writes, in putting “a pause on the collection of defaulted student debt, Joe Biden-style.” A slice:

Incredibly, only about 26% of some $1.7 trillion in student debt is being repaid. Nearly 20% is delinquent. Most of the rest is in forbearance or deferment. If the Federal Student Aid office were a bank, it would have failed long ago.

Yet when the Trump team reiterated last month that it would begin collecting on defaulted loans, progressive groups said it would harm struggling middle-class Americans. This is what they always say when a government subsidy lapses.

But the endless reprieves have discouraged student borrowers from repaying debt. Now they’re getting another break. The Administration says it is pausing collection to give borrowers more time to rehabilitate defaulted loans while it sets up a new income-based repayment option authorized by the GOP tax bill.

The more honest explanation is that the White House is worried that garnishing wages and tax refunds will hurt Republicans in the midterm elections as the GOP House majority hangs on a thread. But waving away student debt didn’t help Democrats in 2024.

Many Americans who repaid their loans or didn’t go to college will resent serving as collateral for deadbeat borrowers and subsidized colleges—especially when Mr. Trump promised the opposite.

Observing Zohran Mamdani’s first days as mayor of Gotham, the Washington Post‘s Editorial Board rightly reaches this conclusion:

Mamdani is behaving more like an activist at Bowdoin College or an organizer for the Democratic Socialists of America than the leader of a city of more than 8.5 million. Success in this job depends on improving people’s lives. As mayor, it’s Mamdani’s job to help deescalate tensions between businesses and workers and find pathways to compromise. Yet he remains in campaign mode, putting out videos to advertise summer internships and going on ABC’s “The View” to express support for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Performative acts of “solidarity” may feel good, but they don’t solve problems.

Pity us Virginians, for the Democrats who just took control in Richmond are about to burden us with “affordability” policies that we cannot afford – as Judge Glock explains.

But despite her focus on affordability, [Gov. Abigail] Spanberger’s plan amounts to a series of expensive mandates that will drive costs higher. Spanberger has provided a disquieting preview of progressives’ affordability agendas elsewhere.

Most of Spanberger’s proposals would drive up expenses for one group of consumers in order to benefit another group deemed more deserving—what economists call “cross-subsidization.” For example, Spanberger supports a bill that will ban health insurers from charging higher premiums to smokers. This will almost certainly raise costs for nonsmokers—as outgoing governor Glenn Youngkin noted in vetoing the bill last year.

Spanberger also wants to limit health insurers’ ability to require prior authorizations for medicines or treatments for people with long-term conditions. Complaints about health insurers are often justified, but these authorizations are one of the few ways they have of limiting expenses. The result of Spanberger’s plan would be to increase health-care spending and thus premiums for others with the same insurance.

Even more surprising for an affordability agenda: Spanberger’s first proposal on the website spelling out her plan includes ensuring that “independent and community pharmacies are fairly reimbursed.” This means requiring that insurers and patients pay more for their medicine to make sure that certain pharmacies get sufficient profit. Whatever the reason for such a proposal, it can’t be affordability.

On energy, Spanberger tries to align progressives’ climate obsessions with the concerns of electricity-cost-burdened households. But one of the main causes of higher electricity prices in Virginia is the state’s Clean Economy Act, passed in 2020. The law requires the states’ utilities to be carbon-free within two decades. Dominion Power last year said that it would need to charge ratepayers $220 billion—about $25,000 for every man, woman, and child in the state—to pay for the long-term costs of renewable energy “certificates” to meet the mandates.

Nonetheless, Spanberger wants to go deeper with expensive climate demands. She supports a bill that would require more battery storage to backstop unreliable renewable power sources. Ratepayers will ultimately have to pay these storage costs. Spanberger also wants to require electric utilities to make low-income houses more energy-efficient. But such energy-efficiency programs bring minimal energy savings and, again, it’s other ratepayers who will have to pay for them.

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… is from page 258 of Thomas Sowell’s 1999 book, Barbarians Inside the Gates:

Bad as it is financially for the federal government to be saddled with the runaway costs of “entitlement” programs, it is far worse for the society as a whole to be saddled with millions of people with the “entitlement” mentality and all the social problems that go with it.

DBx: Yep.

And those today with this malignant entitlement mentality are not only people who want what are conventionally thought of as government handouts – handouts such as welfare checks, “free” health care, and student-loan “forgiveness.” Also suffering this malignant entitlement mentality are those owners of American firms and their workers who demand protection from foreign competition. These people believe that they are entitled to a large chunk of their fellow Americans’ incomes – so entitled that, if their fellow Americans choose to buy more imports than these entitled owners and workers think proper, these owners and workers demand that the government force their fellow Americans to change the ways in which they spend their incomes.

It cannot be said too often that, except for the rare legitimate exception of national defense, protectionism is selfish thuggery masquerading as selfless patriotism. It is embraced only by the greedy and the economically ignorant.

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Here’s a letter sent last week to – but not published in – the New York Times.

Editor:

In “Trump Credits ‘Mister Tariff’ for the Country’s Strength. Economists Beg to Differ” (January 14), long-time protectionist Jeff Ferry is quoted as saying that “the aim of the tariffs is to rebuild U.S. production.” The implication is that American industrial production declined as trade became freer. This implication, however, is mistaken.

Helped by U.S.-led post-war efforts to open global markets, American industrial production rose steadily, during non-recessionary times, from the end of WWII until the first Trump administration. This production hit its all-time high in September 2018, just as the first of Trump’s tariffs were kicking in – tariffs largely maintained by Biden. Industrial production was then 18% higher than it was in December 2001, the month China joined the World Trade Organization, 60% higher than it was in 1993, the year before NAFTA took effect, 154% higher than in 1975, the year when America last ran an annual trade surplus, and 650% higher than in 1947, the year before the first round of tariff cuts under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

But since mid-2018, U.S. industrial production has largely flatlined, being today 2.2% below that all-time high.

Informed individuals who wish to spur U.S. industrial production reject protectionism.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030