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Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn writes about “Milton Friedman’s school choice revolution.” [2] Two slices:
The Nobel Prize-winning economist has been dead for nearly two decades. But the moment has come for the idea that may prove his greatest legacy: Parents should decide where the public funds for educating their children go. Already this year, four states have adopted school choice for everyone—and it’s only April.
The most recent is Florida, which just extended school choice to every child in the Sunshine State. When signing the bill into law a week ago, Gov. Ron DeSantis rightly called it a “monumental day in Florida history.” State education dollars will follow the student instead of simply going to the public schools.
Florida is the most populous state to embrace full school choice. It follows Iowa, Utah and Arkansas, which passed their own legislation this year. These were preceded by West Virginia in 2021 and Arizona in 2022.
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No one is more aware of the threat the Friedman Revolution spells for politics as usual than Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. In a speech last Tuesday at the National Press Club, she warned that this year 29 states are considering school-choice measures. As the vampire fears garlic, teachers unions fear giving parents any say in public education.
Max Eden credits Randi Weingarten for inadvertently drumming up support for school choice [3].
April Fools from David Henderson [6].
For starters, recent increases in foreign and Chinese ownership need to be put into proper perspective. While the amount of U.S. agricultural land owned by foreigners doubled [8] between 2009–2019, the latest federal government data (for 2021) show [9] that these parcels still account for just 3.1 percent of all private farmland in the United States (see Figure 1). The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines foreign ownership as both land owned solely by foreigners, as well as land jointly owned by American and foreign investors.
Of this sliver of private U.S. agricultural land, moreover, Chinese entities remain a tiny player. As Figure 2 shows, in fact, Chinese entities own less than 1 percent of all foreign‐owned farmland, while most of the land is owned by companies and individuals located in nations closely allied with the United States, such as Canada (30 percent), the Netherlands (12 percent), Italy (6 percent), the U.K. (6 percent), and Germany (6 percent). Including Hong Kong in China’s totals doesn’t much change these results – it’s still just 1.2 percent of all foreign‐owned farmland. As Tori Smith of the American Action Forum notes [10], China ranks tenth among foreign nations in the value of their U.S. farmland, behind Japan and Sweden, and well behind Canada, the Netherlands, and Germany.
GMU Econ alum Alex Nowrasteh, writing with Sarah Eckhardt and and Michael Howard, describe the fiscal impact in the U.S. of immigration [11]. They summarize their findings:
With some variation and exceptions, the net fiscal impact of immigrants is more positive than it is for native‐born Americans and positive overall for the federal and state/local governments.
Martin Gurri is correct: “Elites are using the threat of “disinformation” to stifle debate and curtail freedom.” [12] A slice:
The Biden White House, the federal bureaucracy, the NGOs, the media and the digital oligarchs can today be found dancing around the same Maypole, all amazingly in sync about the need to control the web. Michael Shellenberger calls this [13] the “censorship-industrial complex” but it’s really more like a protection racket than an industry. There are no smokestacks rising above factories, churning out anti-disinformation tanks and aircraft. Money changes hands, to be sure, but all that gets produced is a torrent of words [14] bristling with dull-witted menace.