We don’t have as much housing as would be necessary to keep housing costs low because it’s illegal. Governments manufacture scarcity by wrapping building permissions in red tape. It’s absurd, for example, that so much space is zoned for single family detached housing. Many lots where apartment complexes and towers would fit are, unfortunately, limited to single family detached housing: 75 percent of residential land in LA, 77 percent on Portland, 79 percent in Chicago, 81 percent in Seattle, 84 percent in Charlotte, 94 percent in San Jose, and 38 percent in San Francisco. He states his point clearly on page 64, and I paraphrase: the status quo closes off some options, which wastes land, which makes all the options more expensive.
Political liberalism ensures our freedom to participate in self-governance. Economic liberalism promotes the freedom to innovate, produce and exchange goods and services for our mutual benefit. Epistemic liberalism encourages freedom of thought and expression, as well as respectful exchange of conflicting ideas. And cultural liberalism encourages us to respect the choices of others so long as they don’t violate anyone else’s rights.
As usual, Democrats don’t want to eat their own lousy cooking. Gov. Newsom this spring also signed legislation to carve out fast-food restaurants on government property from California’s new $20-an-hour fast-food minimum wage, which kicked in last month. Democrats don’t want the mandate interfering with government concession licenses.
California’s wage minimums are another illustration of how progressive mandates boomerang. Average weekly earnings for leisure and hospitality employees in California have declined by 2.6% over the last year owing to a steep drop in hours worked. By contrast, those average weekly earnings rose 3% nationwide, 3.2% in Florida and 5.2% in Texas.
Tom Savidge warns about the explosion in so-called “entitlements.”
GMU Econ’s Alex Tabarrok explains that the FDA is blocking your access to effective sunscreen. A slice:
Americans visiting beaches in France, Spain or Italy often do something that’s illegal back home: They purchase and use European sunscreens for better protection against sunburn and skin cancer. Many dermatologists argue that American sunscreens are far behind the scientific frontier, and they worry that the Food and Drug Administration’s decadeslong delay in approving new sunscreens for purchase in the U.S. is contributing to rising rates of skin cancer.
David Friedman asks if climate catastrophe passes the giggle test. Here’s his conclusion:
The claim that we have good reason to expect climate change on a scale that will produce not merely problems for some but catastrophe for many is one that no reasonable person should take seriously.
