Some Links

Tweet ^[1]

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy wisely warns of unintended ill-consequences of the rising restraints on vaping ^[2]. A slice:

Don’t get me wrong. I am all in favor of leaving adults free to experiment with all sorts of things. But the FDA’s action has driven the experimentations underground. These should instead be in the light in order to give companies the strongest possible incentives to not kill their consumers.

Veronique – writing in National Review – warns also against the trap that is Elizabeth Warren’s proposed tax on wealth ^[3]…

… while Chris Edwards warns against Bernie Sanders’s proposed tax on wealth ^[4].

George Will sees upsides to the impeachment inquiry into Trump’s behavior, but concludes ultimately that it is too likely to unleash more harm than good ^[5].

Art Carden laments the wicked cronyism of Trump’s punitive taxes on Americans who purchase imported cherries ^[6]. A slice:

Tariffs make us worse off, but they are relatively easy to implement and hard to repeal because of the incentives inherent in the political system. Understanding a problem is the first step toward fixing it, however, and with the 100th birthday of the economist James M. Buchanan ^[7] coming up, maybe we should be hopeful, if not necessarily optimistic, that public understanding of economics will someday advance to the point that tariffs are just a little bit lower than they are now.

Eric Boehm is correct that, whatever the benefits of the recently completed U.S.-Japan trade deal, Americans would have fared better under TPP ^[8].

Bjorn Lomborg reveals how climate policies inspired by today’s environmentalists harm poor people ^[9].

George Selgin recently testified before Congress on improving payments-systems in the United States ^[10].

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