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Some Non-Covid Links

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Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – but my intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy writes in English [2].

David Simon draws important lessons from falling CO2 emissions [3].

Christian Britschgi reports that reality remains inescapable despite governments’ refusal to come to grips with this fact [4].

George Leef is correct: minimum-wage legislation is even darker than many of its opponents realize [5]. A slice:

What I think is really dark is the way such politicians look at the consequences of their meddling with the price system. First, those workers who are priced out of the labor market just become clients for other Democratic Party programs and, more importantly, part of their voting base of frustrated people who are easy marks for rhetoric about creating “an economy that works for everyone.”

Second, minimum-wage agitation (“Fight for $15!) implants the idea in people’s minds that the way to get ahead in America is through political activism, not personal improvement. The “progressives” want people to look to government for whatever they want, and minimum-wage laws help do that.

If you consider minimum-wage laws from a public choice perspective, they’re a big success for the people they’re meant to help — leftist politicians.

Casey Mulligan asks a question about minimum-wage legislation that that legislation’s proponents largely ignore [6]. (HT Lyle Albaugh)

George Will decries the State of Illinois’s jaw-dropping attempt to indoctrinate school children there [7]. Here’s his opening:

The worst-governed state — Illinois had triple [8] the population loss of the state with the second-highest out-migration between 2010 and 2020 — is contemplating another incentive for flight. On Feb. 16, a joint committee of the state legislature will decide [9]whether to turn into a legal requirement the State Board of Education’s recommendation that — until a hasty and slight rewording [10] last Monday [9] — would mandate that all public-school teachers “embrace and encourage progressive viewpoints and perspectives [9].” If the board’s policy is ratified, Illinois will become a place congenial only for parents who are comfortable consigning their children to “education” that is political indoctrination, audaciously announced and comprehensively enforced.

Ethan Yang explains that economic illiteracy is no virtue [11].

Allysa Ahlgren exposes the bigotry of equity [12]. (HT Mark Perry) A slice:

The philosophy of equity is the true white supremacy — it is rooted in paternalistic condescension, with white people thinking they need to be the saviors of helpless minorities. We see it everywhere. People of color and women are selected for positions of power solely because of their sex and race, which adversely affects minorities who earn positions of power based on merit. This all creates a power dynamic the woke claim to despise — minorities are powerless in their own lives and only whites hold the power to change them.

At noon (EST) on February 11th, the Competitive Enterprise Institute will host a webinar on Bart Wilson’s book, The Property Species: Mine, Yours, and the Human Mind [13].

Here’s part 10 of George Selgin’s important series on the New Deal [14].

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