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In this podcast, Alberto Mingardi talks with the Wall Street Journal‘s Mary Kissel about the unfortunate rise of populism.

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy correctly argues that the GOP is no advocate of small and limited government.  A slice:

Led by a president who doesn’t appear to understand basic economics and who insists that the long-term drivers of America’s unsustainable national debt—Social Security and Medicare—can’t be touched, the mainstream GOP has proven that the grumbling about big government under Obama was mere political posturing. After years of swearing to repeal the Affordable Care Act, unified Republican power has instead come with a noticeable new taste for Medicaid expansion and support for other provisions of the law.

Republican apologists always seem to have an excuse for federal expansions on their watch. They argued, for instance, that Bush’s prescription drug subsidy for seniors was noble as well as politically savvy. But it’s getting government out of the equation that would actually make health care more affordable. Instead, Republicans delivered the biggest enlargement of the welfare state since the creation of Medicare in 1965.

My former GMU Econ colleague Omar Al-Ubaydli asks if attractive workers should subsidize unattractive ones.

Brittany Hunter warns of the unseen ill consequences of the greedy, grasping hand of Seattle’s city government.  A slice:

And while the city has yet to acknowledge the detrimental impact this minimum wage increase has already had, they are also ignoring the potential consequences of this new tax. But if the city is not careful in considering both the seen and the unseen repercussions of this new employment tax, they might soon find that all the job creators have had enough.

My old teacher Randy Holcombe reveals a hidden cost of inflation.

My GMU Econ colleague Alex Tabarrok rightly ridicules the magical thinking of too many people who see government as the ‘solution’ to problems, both real and imaginary.

Chris Edwards isn’t impressed with the TSA.

George Will applauds the good work being launched by Nicole Neily’s Speech First to thwart intolerance on American college campuses.

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