Independent educators who disagree with even a portion of the unions’ agenda need to realize they are funding a megalithic, authoritarian entity working against their consciences, insulting their professionalism, and damaging their students’ interests.
Benoît Malbranque writes about the proud tradition of French liberal economics, 1695-1776.
Alison Somin ponders the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. Two slices:
What comes next? Some universities have already signaled an intent to circumvent the Students for Fair Admissions holdings, likely via proxy discrimination, or using characteristics that correlate with race so closely that they are basically proxies for race. Southern state and local governments infamously used similar strategies to maintain Jim Crow, such as grandfather clauses, literacy tests and (though it’s now prohibited by constitutional amendment for federal elections) the poll tax. In Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp, the Supreme Court developed a test for sussing out such cases of proxy discrimination.
…..
Individuals should be treated as individuals and not on the basis of the color of their skin. The Students for Fair Admissions opinion is a ringing endorsement of this constitutional, legal and moral principle and deserves to be celebrated accordingly.
Kevin Yuill explains that “the end of affirmative action is a victory for racial equality.”
The literature on austerity reveals that the most effective way to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio without affecting the economy too much or for long is to adopt fiscal adjustment packages that consist mostly of spending cuts. Packages based on entitlement reforms are more politically challenging but also yield much better results. Considering that Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security are the drivers of debt growth, reforming these programs must play a significant role.
My GMU Econ colleague Dan Klein talks with Juliette Sellgren about “Hayek and the band man.”
Tony Gill asks: “Why do we rescue when all hope is lost?”
The FTC has abandoned antitrust law’s long-standing focus on protecting consumers and radically expanded the scope of its authority to police “unfair methods of competition” — now effectively defined in terms of a “we know it when we see it” standard. The agency has become the proverbial bull in the china shop, ignoring the bipartisan legal and economic consensus that, over recent decades, helped create a stable legal environment to encourage unprecedented innovation and technological progress.
Mergers can facilitate innovation — just look at Amazon’s recently closed acquisition of One Medical, which will leverage the e-commerce giant’s reach to expand people’s access to a new model of high-quality and convenient healthcare. Likewise, Johnson & Johnson’s acquisition of Abiomed is poised to bring Abiomed’s breakthrough technologies for heart, lung, and kidney support to many more patients.
There is perhaps no better example of the new FTC’s aggression than its continued assault against Illumina, which has begun its appeal of the FTC’s decision ordering the company to divest its acquisition of GRAIL. This deal is another important example of the dynamism that drives American innovation and is now in jeopardy. At bottom, the FTC puts convoluted theories of antitrust ahead of the significant benefits that the acquisition would likely create, including the ability to scale healthcare innovation and help patients around the world.
Illumina, a leading provider of next-generation DNA sequencing platforms, acquired GRAIL, developer of the groundbreaking Galleri multicancer early detection test. Galleri examines fragments of DNA in a patient’s blood sample to identify cancerous cells in asymptomatic patients. It is a generation-defining breakthrough against cancer, and no similar tests are on the horizon. To analyze the DNA in the blood samples, GRAIL uses Illumina’s sequencing platforms. Illumina notes in its opening appeal brief that had the FTC approved the merger, commercialization of GRAIL’s award-winning test would have greatly progressed today, reducing the cancer burden in the United States and worldwide while saving thousands of lives.
Despite all these benefits, the current FTC ordered Illumina and GRAIL, companies that do not compete, to unwind their merger by alleging possible harm to competition in a market that does not exist. In doing so, the FTC overturned its own administrative law judge’s 200-page opinion holding otherwise and ignored the remedy proposed by Illumina and GRAIL to address the FTC’s concerns. Rather than a “careful, intense factual investigation” of possible competition problems, the opinion paradoxically finds harm based on scant evidence while setting an unattainable standard for recognizing the merger’s likely benefits.
No President in memory has exceeded the powers of his office more than Joe Biden, and the Supreme Court keeps telling him he can’t get away with it. The latest rebuke arrived Friday when a 6-3 majority cancelled his unilateral decision to cancel $430 billion in student debt in Biden v. Nebraska.
…..
Specifically, in claiming he can spend $430 billion without Congress’s assent, Mr. Biden is hijacking Congress’s power of the purse, which the Constitution expressly reserves for the legislature in Article I. If a President can do that, he can spend money on anything. Imagine what Donald Trump would do with that precedent if he returns to power.
The @WHO would have more credibility “standing up for science” if it would plainly explain why it redefined herd immunity in Oct. 2020 to exclude immunity after covid recovery and include solely vaccine-derived immunity. And apologize for the lockdowns and school closures.
