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Megan McArdle celebrates the fact that, in modern America, innovation that was once pie-in-the-sky is routine. A slice:

The happy ending to this story is that technological change has made pie crust easier — not as easy as cake, maybe, but still something a competent beginner can master with a small amount of effort. Food processors simplify the laborious process of cutting fat into flour, and chef J. Kenji Lopez-Alt has developed not one but two foolproof pie crust recipes for novices who own such a machine. I’d encourage readers who think pies are too difficult to give one a try, roll them out (videos on the internet will show you how to do this), then put them in the freezer to await Thanksgiving morning.

But I’d also ask them to think about how technology might be used to recapture other things they miss. Childhood foods you’ve lost, for example. At the end of my father’s life, I managed to reproduce his beloved snow pudding, a now-forgotten lemon dessert that turns out to be delicious and easy to make with an electric stand mixer. Then think bigger: Could safer self-driving cars revive the once-common sight of children playing in the street? Could a productivity boom driven by artificial intelligence give us more time to invest in our communities? Could manufactured housing make it easier to form families, or might robots reverse our demographic decline by taking over the dreary housework that kids generate?

GMU Econ alum Abby Hall Blanco and her co-author Chrysanthi Skaliotis warn residents of New York City of the economic damage that their Mayor Mamdani is about to inflict on them. A slice:

Rent control offers an immediate political payoff. The new mayor can be viewed as helping renters. The long-term consequences — shrinking supply, deteriorating buildings and hindering construction — are delayed and spread out amongst the population of New York City. They are noticed years down the road, when we come back and it’s even harder to find an affordable apartment. Simply put, it allows Mamdani to claim victory and praise in the short run, while the worst effects will only be realized long after he’s out of office.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown updates us on Lina Khan’s efforts to impose her economically ignorant notions on New Yorkers. A slice:

With Khan’s influence, we can expect the future Mamdani mayoral administration to get creative and, perhaps, unconstitutional—in its application of existing laws and authorities to enact Mamdani’s agenda, which includes things like city-run grocery stores, free child care and bus rides, nearly doubling the minimum wage, and a freeze on raising rents.

Paul Moreno reviews G. Edward White’s new biography of Robert Jackson. A slice:

Jackson’s unhappy career on the Court resulted from his inability to fuse or completely separate the roles of advocate and judge. Though brought up in the world of progressive “Legal Realism,” which conflated law and politics, he retained some sense of the classical belief that law could be separated from politics—the “natural law” belief that law was discovered, not made, which White has called the “oracular” view of judging. White notes that before he was on the Court, Jackson was “not a committed ideological partisan in the same manner as many who served with him in the Roosevelt administration … but he was a team player.” He was as political as Roosevelt needed him to be, ardently denouncing New Deal opponents as plutocrats and fascists. But he knew that the Court was different, and many of his Roosevelt-appointed fellow Justices did not.

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… is from page 158 of Milton Friedman’s 1953 paper “The Case for Flexible Exchange Rates,” as this paper is reprinted in Friedman’s 1953 collection, Essays in Positive Economics:

In brief, it [free trade] is desirable in its own right as one of the basic freedoms we cherish; it promotes the efficient use of resources through an appropriate international division of labor and increases consumer welfare by maximizing the range of alternative on which consumers can spend their incomes; it facilitates international political amity by removing potent sources of conflict between governments.

DBx: Indeed. Seldom has the liberal, civilization-enhancing case for free trade been summarized so succinctly.

Every protectionist intentionally endorses a policy that reduces individuals’ freedoms by giving power to government officials to override individuals’ peaceful choices. Every protectionist, usually out of ignorance, endorses a policy that makes the great bulk of his or her fellow citizens poorer. Every protectionist recklessly endorses a policy that creates greater frictions between governments and, thus, raises the prospects of hot shooting wars.
…..
Milton Friedman died on this date – November 16th – in 2006.

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My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, had Scott Lincicome and me as guests on this latest of her podcasts. We discussed trade and Trump’s punitive taxes – a.k.a. tariffs – on Americans’ purchases of imports.

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George Will continues to decry the U.S. government’s fiscal incontinence. Two slices:

The International Monetary Fund forecasts the U.S. government debt will be above 7 percent of GDP every year until 2029, with the debt reaching 143.4 percent of GDP by the decade’s end. The Congressional Budget Office projects the debt increasing for decades. As a percentage of their GDPs, Italy’s and Greece’s debts are expected to decline, and to be exceeded by the U.S. debt’s percentage in 2030.

…..

With annual deficits approaching $2 trillion even with the economy humming, and with defense spending down to around 3 percent of GDP (above 13 percent during the Korean War; above 9 percent during peak Vietnam), what can cause sustained economic growth of at least 5 percent to cope with the debt’s growth? Artificial intelligence? A risky reliance. Revenue from the president’s perhaps unconstitutional tariffs? A net drag on the economy.

A nation that used to borrow for emergencies now is mired in a perpetual emergency because it is borrowing — $2.6 trillion annually projected by 2034 — to fund current consumption of government goods and services.

John Puri reports on the Trump administration’s punitive taxes – a.k.a. protective tariffs – on Americans’ purchases of pasta. Three slices:

Another week, another imported product the administration thinks Americans consume too much of. The president’s doctrine of protectionism requires that citizens be shielded from their own economic preferences, redirecting their money toward things the government finds more appropriate. Today’s forbidden purchase is Italian pasta.

Under his highly questionable IEEPA authorities, President Trump has unilaterally imposed a blanket tariff of 15 percent on imports from European Union members, including Italy. Now, his administration is slapping an additional 92 percent tariff on 13 companies that supply the bulk of the $770 million in pasta that Italy exports to the United States. In conjunction, these duties will ensure that no American can enjoy Italian-origin spaghetti or macaroni without paying a 107 percent tax.

This staggering tax is expected to function as an embargo, effectively barring Italian pasta from the U.S. market. Chefs and shoppers will be forced to turn to domestic producers. The U.S. pasta lobby (yes, that is a real thing) is no doubt ecstatic that a large chunk of their competition — the birthplace of their product, in fact — is being kneecapped by the federal government. In addition to limiting the inconvenient choices available to consumers, the new pasta tax will likely enable domestic producers to raise their own prices.

…..

Antidumping laws are yet another example of Congress delegating its Article I tariff power to the executive branch. On paper, the president is limited in the duties he can impose by the need for factual determinations — of too-low foreign prices, injury to domestic producers, and calculation of the dumping margin. In practice, however, because Congress vested these fact-finding powers in the executive branch, the president is limited only to what his bureaucracy’s creative accounting can justify.

As anyone versed in public choice theory would expect, antidumping laws are fertile ground for lobbyists and government favoritism — rewarding well-connected firms with dampened competition. Companies seeking protectionism often use antidumping duties as a means to get around international agreements that limit U.S. tariff rates. In fact, antidumping investigations are typically initiated by a domestic company, supposedly “on behalf of” its industry. In the case of Italian pasta, the investigation that led to the 92 percent duty was triggered by two U.S. companies that make pasta domestically.

…..

Any law that empowers a single body — all too often the executive branch — to decide which consumer products Americans are permitted to buy should be incompatible with a republican system of government designed to secure natural rights. Conservatives appreciated this principle when President Obama attempted to unilaterally ban incandescent lightbulbs and functional appliances by regulatory fiat, purportedly for the customer’s benefit. Regrettably, it’s now a Republican administration that is trying to banish Italian pasta from Americans’ kitchen tables.

“Trump plays defense on tariffs as Americans face rising food prices.” Two slices:

Prices on many everyday items, however, continue to soar. Through September, the most recent data available, coffee prices were up 19 percent over the previous 12 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bananas were up 7 percent.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday that tariff cuts would “bring the prices down very quickly.” Bessent previously has said that foreign exporters and U.S. retailers were bearing most of the tariff burden, leaving consumers mostly unscathed.

…..

Having effectively conceded that tariffs are contributing to high prices, the administration has opened the door to demands for further modifications in its strategy, said Ed Gresser, vice president at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington.

U.S. importers this year have paid far more in tariffs on a wide range of consumer products, including automobiles, vacuum cleaners and makeup, Gresser said. Tariffs on imported coffee have cost Americans $358 million so far this year, up from $1.3 million last year, according to U.S. International Trade Commission data.

But tariffs on automobiles have cost more than 36 times as much — amounting to $13 billion.
“There is a heavy price for this policy, and families are paying a lot of it,” said Gresser, who was a trade official in the first Trump administration.

Also writing about higher food prices caused by Trump’s tariffs punitive taxes on Americans’ purchases of imports is Reason‘s Eric Boehm. A slice:

The moves announced Thursday may help make coffee more affordable, but this is ultimately less than a half-measure. As Axios notes, those four countries account for just 7 percent of U.S. coffee imports. Most coffee (and many other items) will still face higher tariffs. Trump’s tariffs are estimated to cost the average American household around $1,800 this year—so some small relief on grocery prices might be appreciated, but that is hardly solving the problem the White House has created.

Samuel Gregg continues, with this new paper, to write insightfully about trade. A slice:

Protectionism, however, is detrimental to America’s economic and national security interests. This paper lays out a framework for how the United States can advance a trade liberalization agenda for the Asia–Pacific that reflects present geopolitical conditions. National security considerations always shape trade policy and a full liberalization of trade throughout the region is unlikely. Nevertheless, American efforts to promote a strategic liberalization of trade with nations throughout the Asia–Pacific region will serve America’s economic interests, as well as strengthen America’s position in its geopolitical contest with China.

In response to Trump insisting that trade deficits are an “emergency” and Thomas Piketty insisting that differences in monetary incomes are an “emergency,” Clifford Asness tweets: (HT Scott Lincicome)

Trade balances are not an “emergency” and shouldn’t be used to arbitrarily imperially impose tariffs.

Inequality is not an “emergency” (that doesn’t mean it’s not a serious issue) and shouldn’t be used by this debunked socialist to try to impose his views through world government.

Horseshoe theory never loses these days.

The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal is correct: “Republicans don’t seem to have any priorities beyond populist stunts.” A slice:

Democrats will run against Republicans next year on the cost of healthcare and enhanced pandemic-era subsidies for ObamaCare. Republicans can dodge the subject and hope voters don’t notice, which is a losing strategy. Or they could offer a health freedom agenda that would create more private insurance options. If any Republicans have been thinking about this, we haven’t heard it.

How about pro-growth tax policy? Republicans have a rare chance to use budget reconciliation again during this Congress to dodge the Senate 60-vote rule for tax and spending bills. The news here is that Republicans don’t seem to have any idea what they would put in such a bill.

They won’t index capital-gains income for inflation because that might be seen as helping the affluent. They won’t cut spending because Democrats will object and call them mean. They won’t try more welfare reforms for, well, the same reason. They won’t even try to reform the budget process that automatically increases spending each year in the “budget baseline.”

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… is from page 251 of the American jurist James Coolidge Carter’s profound, yet unfortunately neglected, (posthumous) 1907 book, Law: Its Origin, Growth and Function:

All the advances in civilization and morality which society has thus far made are due to the cultivation and development of those moral sympathies which find their activity in co-operation and mutual aid.

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This piece by Benn Steil – who is usually great – is disappointing.

Editor, Project Syndicate

Editor:

Insisting that “free trade can’t bring peace” (Nov. 14), the usually astute Benn Steil demands too much of the doux commerce thesis and, thus, unjustly dismisses it. Contrary to Mr. Steil’s suggestion, the doux commerce thesis is not that free trade is sufficient to guarantee peace. Instead, this thesis is that free trade makes peace more likely – no small achievement.

It’s true, of course, that free trade also requires peace. It’s true, too, that Britain in the 19^th century, and America after WWII, did much to keep shipping lanes open, as well as to encourage international cooperation that lowered tariffs and reduced the frequency of other beggar-thy-neighbor policies. But it’s untrue that the causality runs exclusively, or even chiefly, from peace to free trade.

Empirical evidence that free trade promotes peace is abundant, yet Mr. Steil ignored this evidence. He shouldn’t have. Walker Wright, in his contribution to the new Economic Freedom of the World: 2025 Annual Report summarizes much of this empirical research as well as provides many references to it. (See also here.) The doux commerce thesis, properly understood, is alive, well, and valid.

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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Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel decries MAGA conservatives joining with progressives in peddling policies rooted in economic ignorance. Two slices:

It was once a Republican article of faith—mostly because it is true—that government is the cause of most problems. Donald Trump’s GOP is finding a more politically expedient bogeyman. Welcome to the age of the Bernie Sanders-JD Vance coalition against Big Business. Say goodbye to prosperity.

A case in point: The president this past weekend floated a solid proposal. Rather than continue to dump government subsidies into the government-created and government-micromanaged system called ObamaCare—which is failing because of, well, government—why not hand that cash to individual Americans, giving them more choice over their care? “Republicans should give money DIRECTLY to your personal HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNTS,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social.

It’s a smart concept, one that moves toward a free-market system in which consumers control dollars in ways that produce more transparent, portable, cost-effective and results-oriented medicine. Only the president in the same post undermined the premise by asserting that the reason to adopt his plan was to get revenge on the Democrats’ buddies in the “insurance industry,” which is “making a ‘killing’ ” while the “little guy” suffers. That is, move toward a free-market system so as to stick it to business. Work through that logic.

And so it goes. Vice President Vance regularizes the slur “Big Pharma,” trashing on drugmakers with a vitriol to make any socialist proud. The president orders the Justice Department to investigate the “Meat Packing Companies who are driving up the price of Beef through Illicit Collusion, Price Fixing, and Price Manipulation”—a replica of Joe Biden’s accusations. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley introduces the End Airline Extortion Act—a new low in shooting fish in a barrel—making common cause with Elizabeth Warren. The only “Big” the GOP can tolerate these days are their own not-so-beautiful bills.

The most charitable excuse for this is economic ignorance. And it’s true that an alarming number of congressional members—and their staffers—these days think the supply side is a band from the ’90s. Then again, our onetime venture-capitalist veep suggests something more cynical at play. Trashing on wealth creators is an easy way to stoke the furies of the “forgotten man” voter the GOP courts. And it’s easier (read lazier) than explaining markets, intellectual property, prices—or the central and inevitable problem of government policy failure.

…..

Corporate America hasn’t bathed itself in distinction in recent decades, though its sin is hardly an excess of capitalist spirits. The exact opposite. Its failure has been making itself a government extension, working to capture its share of corporate welfare, to slice the regulatory pie to its benefit, to gain “woke” plaudits—rather than to fight interference. Let’s indulge the Biden electric-vehicle fantasy! Let’s work with the feds to censor Covid-19 debate! Let’s ask for subsidies for everything! Let’s roll over to European socialist price controls on drugs! It’s a bit much to ask CYA politicians to stick up for a business world that uniformly fails to stick up for itself.

Yet the Republicans pandering to antibusiness “populism” are already suffering the political and economic consequences. The GOP’s summer reconciliation bill was its best shot at injecting life into an economy still hampered by Biden-era blowouts and now tariff uncertainty. And yes, the party did waylay what would have been a devastating tax hike.

But it completely whelped on the policies necessary to spur growth quickly. Why? Because the panderers forbade all the pro-growth provisions—reducing top marginal rates, repealing the corporate alternative minimum tax, reducing the capital-gains tax—since those might help “the wealthy.” The party also (again) failed to reduce in any meaningful way the biggest drag on the economy—government spending. The bill’s money instead went to gimmicks to win votes, like tax exclusions for tips and overtime pay.

Scott Lincicome explains that “Trump’s China deal is a major indictment of U.S. trade policy.” Two slices:

Other terms of the deal are an expressly temporary return to the summer 2025 status quo rather than a grand resolution of the many issues that have long plagued the bilateral relationship. A one-year suspension of rare-earth restrictions, for example, doesn’t mean much when—thanks to various regulatory restrictions and permitting bottlenecks—it takes years for mining and processing facilities to get up and running in the United States (if you can do it at all). Neither will China be making any systemic reforms to its export-dependent economy, nor to trade or human rights issues that have long aggravated Washington and other U.S. trading partners. So, the best we can say about this deal is that—as Trump himself has acknowledged—it’s a one-year punt that we’ll do all over again next year. That approach might provide sufficient relief for stock traders and certain U.S. importers with orders already placed, but it’ll do little to nothing to improve the uncertainty plaguing U.S. trade policy and, as the latest ISM manufacturing survey shows, the operations of many American manufacturers today.

…..

Surely, there are other tariffs the U.S. could impose to offset some of these new Chinese advantages. For now, however, the combination of lower China tariffs and higher everyone else tariffs has shifted U.S. trade policy away from China hawkishness and toward global isolationism writ large—even if it benefits Beijing in the process. Other terms of the new bilateral deal, such as the United States’ unprecedented reversal of security-related export controls, also benefit China in surprising ways and indicate that Beijing may have more leverage today than the Trump administration is willing to admit.

This highlights the final problem that the China deal reveals: Recent U.S. isolationism has helped tilt the global balance of power toward China and away from the United States. As we’ve discussed repeatedly, the United States is a huge market but still a relatively small share of global trade, thus limiting Washington’s ability to force exporters into eating U.S. tariffs or to coerce the Chinese government into doing its bidding on trade or anything else. One obvious way to counter the latter issue was for the United States to create a voluntary coalition of like-minded countries freely trading with each other—building not only diplomatic goodwill but also a collective industrial base that outmatches even China’s behemoth and decreases dependence on the Chinese economy and exports.

Tim Worstall counsels: “Don’t panic about rare earths.” A slice:

Do not allow yourself to get confused by China having 40 per cent or whatever of rare earth reserves. Reserves are something made by humans — deposits are what God’s Friday afternoon engineer strew about the place. And rare earths are neither rare nor earths, and they are nearly everywhere. The biggest restriction on being able to process them is the light radioactivity the easiest ores (so easy they are a waste product of other industrial processes — monazite say) contain. If we had rational and sensible rules about light radioactivity — alas, we don’t — then that end of the process would already be done. Passing Marco Rubio’s Thorium Act would, for example, make Florida’s phosphate gypsum stacks available and they have more rare earths in them than several sticks could be shaken at.

Merrill Matthews reflects on last week’s oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on Trump’s IEEPA tariffs. Two slices:

[Solicitor General John] Sauer may have done the best he could putting lipstick on the pig that is Trump’s tariffs — but it’s still a pig.

The most ludicrous aspect of Sauer’s Supreme Court argument was his claim that federal revenue from Trump’s tariffs was “incidental.” Sauer claimed Trump was just exercising his constitutional power to manage foreign policy, not raising federal revenue. According to Sauer, “These are regulatory tariffs, they are not revenue-raising tariffs. The fact that they raise revenue is only incidental.”

The problem with Sauer’s claim is that the president and his advisors have repeatedly cited increased federal revenue as one of the reasons for imposing tariffs.

Take, for example, Trump’s inaugural address on Jan. 20. In the speech Trump said, “I will immediately begin the overhaul of our trade system to protect American workers and families. Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”

Does that sound like federal revenue from tariffs was a byproduct of Trump’s plan?

…..

After striking down many of Trump’s current tariffs, the Supreme Court could deliver a broader ruling, outlining what powers the president does and does not have with respect to imposing tariffs. That would be the best way to resolve the issue so that the economy and trade policy can stabilize and taxpayers can be spared paying ever more tariffs.

Pointing out that “Democrats are beating Trump on affordability,” my intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, wonders if he will “keep pretending otherwise.” A slice:

The 2025 food basket is a perfect metaphor for the broader economy. The president insists that “every price is down,” but that’s incorrect. While chicken breasts cost a bit less than a year ago, eggs, bacon, orange juice, and beef are all more expensive. Trump’s policies didn’t trigger these price hikes, but they sure do perpetuate them.

Trump is also wrong to claim that “we’re at a perfect number” on inflation, which no longer dominates headlines. But it’s still affecting people. Since early 2021, average hourly earnings are up about 21.8 percent. Consumer prices have risen faster, with grocery prices up nearly 30 percent since 2020.

When Trump officials say inflation is down, they mean that the latest 3 percent year-over-year Consumer Price Index reading is nothing like the 9.1 percent experienced during the Biden years. They ignore that it’s up from 2.3 percent just this past spring.

At steady 3 percent inflation, a dollar is worth only 74 cents after 10 years.

Still, ordinary Americans are fabulously rich. Alex Tabarrok understandably exclaims that “it’s astonishing that the richest country in world history could convince itself that it was plundered by immigrants and trade. Truly astonishing.”

Kate Andrews points out a harsh truth about the dangers of state-sponsored media. Here’s her wise conclusion:

No single media organization can claim to be the arbiter of truth. Competition makes us all better. American media may be bitterly divided, but hearing things you “do not want to hear” sometimes is, as Orwell identified, far better than the alternative.

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… is from page viii of Brink Lindsey’s and Dan Ikenson’s superb 2003 book, Antidumping Exposed: The Devilish Details of Unfair Trade Laws:

Antidumping laws, contrary to the claims of their supporters, do not ensure a level playing field. Instead, they penalize foreign producers for engaging in commercial practices that are perfectly legal and unexceptional when engaged in by domestic companies. Such discrimination against foreign firms creates an unlevel playing field for imports. In other words, antidumping laws discriminate against imports, and that is the essence of protectionism.

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The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal is understandably dismayed that J.D. Vance’s hostility to immigrants is more intense than is even Donald Trump’s hostility to immigrants. Two slices:

He [Trump] then criticized his Administration’s immigration raid on a Hyundai-LG Energy Solution battery plant in Georgia when hundreds of South Korean nationals were detained. “They had like 500 or 600 people, early stages to make batteries and to teach people how to do it,” he said. Immigration agents “wanted them to get out of the country. You’re going to need” them.

He’s right. Nearly half of the Fortune 500 companies, including Nvidia, Google and Tesla, were founded by immigrants or their children. A quarter of billion-dollar U.S. startups were founded by an immigrant who arrived as an international student. These are often the people who remain in the U.S. after graduation on H-1B visas. Mr. Trump seems to recognize it is self-destructive to train these students and then send them back to India or China instead of building firms here.

***
As for Mr. Vance, he replied to an immigration question at a Turning Point USA event last month this way: “My honest view is that, right now, America, thanks in part to the Biden border invasion, but also thanks in part to a lot of bad immigration policy, right now, we have let in too many immigrants.” He also said legal immigrants “are undercutting the wages of American workers.”

On wages, Mr. Vance is repeating the lump of labor fallacy that American and foreign workers compete for a limited number of jobs. Studies have generally found that immigration raises average wages and employment of native-born workers, in part because their work is complementary. Economists from the University of California, Davis, last year calculated that immigrants increased wages for less educated native workers by 1.7% to 2.6% between 2000 and 2019.

…..

Think of the Irish in the 19th century, Italians in the early 20th, or multiple Asian ethnicities today. The children of these immigrants learn English, attend American schools and most of the time absorb U.S. values. They certainly work hard. More than a quarter of Hispanics are marrying non-Hispanics.

The worst damage to our “common community” owes to the identity politics pressed by the political left, which includes hostility to America’s founding principles. That worldview preaches racial grievance and ethnic division, a la the New York Times 1619 project. The best response to that isn’t an identity politics of the right. It’s a reaffirmation of American principles that unites the country, as well as promoting economic growth and mobility to assure everyone has opportunity.

National Review‘s Jim Geraghty is right that “the Groypers are so wrong about America’s opportunities.” A slice:

There are high-paying jobs that do not require a college degree. As of 2024, aircraft and avionics equipment mechanics and technicians have a median salary of $79,140 per year. Electrical power-line installers and repairers have a median salary of $92,560 per year. Elevator and escalator technicians have a median salary of $106,580 per year.

(Median salary means half the people in the group make more than that number, and half make less than that. Salary levels are influenced by the company, by experience, by location, by skill level, and in some cases, how well the employee can negotiate a higher salary. I know that after this is posted, someone on social media will say the above numbers are a lie because they know an elevator technician who makes much less than $106,000 per year. This also happens whenever I mention the national average price for a gallon of gas.)

Commercial pilots need a high school diploma, FAA certifications, and flight training, which can cost $55,000 to $100,000. But that investment in yourself can pay off; in 2024, the median salary of a commercial pilot was $198,100 per year.

If you can get an associate’s degree, you can work in some jobs in medicine and health care — MRI technologists, sonographers, dental hygienists, nuclear medicine technologists, and radiation therapists have median salaries ranging from $88,180 to $101,990 in 2024.

Bryan Riley tweets these data that reveal that a significant portion of U.S. imports of manufactured goods are inputs used by manufacturers in America or otherwise complement U.S. manufacturing activities: (HT Scott Lincicome)

Ted Zachariadis’s letter in today’s Wall Street Journal is spot-on:

After last week’s elections, Jim LeMunyon writes that Republicans need to wake up and smell the coffee (Letters, Nov. 10). Good idea, but with the effect tariffs are having on the price of java, they might not be able to afford it.

Will Marshall explains that “reindustrialization is just central planning, MAGA-style.” (HT Arnold Kling) A slice:

Trump believes free trade agreements and globalization eviscerated U.S. manufacturing, studding the landscape with shuttered factories — “tombstones” as he put it in his bleak 2017 inaugural address.

In fact, U.S. manufacturing output has grown substantially since 1980. What has declined is factory employment and manufacturing’s share of GDP. That tracks the trend of deindustrialization and rising demand for services in all advanced countries, regardless of trade policies.

Nonetheless, the president is ripping up trade agreements and taxing imports from friends and foes alike, in hopes of generating lots more factory jobs. But building walls around our economy won’t change the fact that automation has severed the old relationship between increased industrial production and blue-collar job growth.

Jack Nicastro rightly criticizes the Trump administration’s hare-brained proposal to introduce 50-year mortgages. A slice:

[Bill] Pulte simultaneously pitched the plan as a “big deal for consumers.” On this point, he’s not wrong—the policy is eerily reminiscent of those that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis; it socializes the risk and incentivizes lenders to issue loans to those who are more likely to default. Anthony Randazzo, former senior fellow at the Reason Foundation (the think tank that publishes this magazine), explains that, leading up to the Great Recession, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “decided to begin taking on riskier mortgages in order to grab a slice of the subprime mortgage market [because] they knew they had a government safety net to back them up.” Adding insult to injury, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged top executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with securities fraud for misleading investors about their subprime exposure.

GMU Econ alum Paul Mueller remembers Frank Meyer.