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The thing I see most now is just the extraordinary bounty of what’s in a grocery store. We tend to walk by so many different things without thinking of them, just grabbing what we typically grab, but now I see the bewildering variety of foods that are available to us not just occasionally but seven days a week, pretty much whenever we want them. It’s something of a miracle that we created a system like this where we have nutritious food available to us all the time, at a relatively low, reasonable cost. I didn’t expect to appreciate grocery stores as much as I do now.
George Will rightly bemoans the obstructiveness of state hubris [3].
R [4]yan Bourne looks rationally at spending on infrastructure [5].
Sarah Skwire again draws timely lessons from history [6].
Brittany Hunter applauds the Museum of Failure [7].
Xingyuan Feng, Weisen Li, and Evan W. Osborne survey classical liberalism in China [8].
Kevin Williamson, who’s always been good, just keeps getting better. Here’s Williamson on housing [10]. (HT Warren Smith) A slice:
How this works in the real world is obvious to everybody who doesn’t write for the Washington Post: The median cost of a new car in the United States is about $34,000, which is well out of reach for most minimum-wage earners. You know how minimum-wage earners get around that problem? They buy cars that cost a heck of a lot less than the median — or they buy used cars, share cars, take the bus, etc. Minimum-wage workers solve the problem of relatively high rents by choosing accommodations that are well under the 50th or 40th percentile — or by having roommates, living with their families, etc. The relationship between the minimum wage and the median or near-median rent is an entirely artificial problem cooked up by organizations that want more federal spending on low-income housing (NLIHA) or by politicians arguing for a higher minimum wage. The latter is especially popular during campaign season.