Tweet [1]
There are a lot of bad arguments used to prevent the spread of legal online gambling, which mostly consists of poker. The biggest of these is the moral argument, which is basically that gambling is bad and, therefore, nobody should be allowed to do it. But in a free society, the real moral outrage is those who would prevent individuals from freely engaging in activity that does not violate the rights of anyone else.
My support for liberalizing immigration into the United States for all immigrants, regardless of their skills levels, does not prevent me from endorsing – as I do here with GMU Econ student Jeffrey Mason [3] – a specific plan to liberalize immigration into the United States of high-skilled immigrants and their families.
Pres. Trump’s hostility, unquestionably inexcusable, at least is not hidden. This hostility, therefore, is well-known. The same cannot be said about Pres. Obama’s inexcusable hostility to immigrants [4].
George Will writes about Germany’s young but growing populist party, the AfD [6].
T. Norman Van Cott recalls his stints working for the U.S. government [7].
Bruce Yandle looks ahead to 2019 [8]. A slice:
A second foundational problem relates to White House leadership efforts to control major elements of economic activity through unilateral executive branch action. This includes not just tariff and trade policy but also undue and uneven influence on private-sector decisions to expand, contract, or relocate investments.
Jonah Goldberg takes accurate aim at the surging hostility to free markets by right-wing populists such as Tucker Carlson [9]. (HT Ross Kaminsky) A slice:
But it seems to me the new rightwing anti-market populists are going to need to do a lot more thinking about what they are actually advocating here. The left has used economic regulation as a façade for cultural regulation for a century — and it wants to do a lot more of it. And people like my friend Tucker Carlson have gotten famous and wealthy denouncing elites for their nanny-statism. If I’m going to take the idea that the free market is solely a tool seriously, I’m going to need to hear a hell of a lot more about why rightwing nanny-statism is philosophically distinguishable from the leftwing variety. I haven’t heard anything like that from him or his fellow-travelers, at least not yet.