Utopia, you are standing in it!

My primary job is dealing with misguided public policy in the United States.

I spend much of my time either trying to undo bad policies with good reform (flat tax, spending restraint, regulatory easing, trade liberalization) or fighting off additional bad interventions (Green New Deal, protectionism, Medicare for All, class warfare taxes).

Seems like there is a lot to criticize, right?

Yes, but sometimes the key to success is being “less worse” than your competitors. So while I’m critical of many bad policies in the United States, it’s worth noting that America nonetheless ranks #6 for overall economic liberty according to the Fraser Institute.

As such, it’s not surprising that America has higher living standards than most other developed nations according to the “actual individual consumption” data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

And America’s advantage…

In partnership with the Parliamentary Archives alongside their current exhibition on Parliament and the First World War, we recently held events in Parliament exploring the institution during the war years…

Parliament and the First World War exhibition, Westminster Hall

The Parliamentary Archives exhibition on Parliament and the First World War, still open in Westminster Hall, proved an excellent opportunity for us to gather together historians and discuss the impact of the First World War on Parliament.

Firstly, Dr Mari Takayanagi (Vote 100) spoke on ‘The Girl Porters and the Court Twins: Women Staff in Parliament in the First World War.’ Dr Takayanagi’s research had uncovered several women who had, because of the shortage of labour, had the opportunity to work in occupations within Parliament that had previously been closed to them because of their gender. She spoke of two examples: firstly the ‘girl porters’ who took messages…

It never takes them long to work out that wind power is the greatest economic and environmental fraud of all time. Eco-zealots have attempted to ram wind and solar power down the throats of Third World governments under the auspices of saving the planet and with the purported purpose of dragging millions out of poverty. As the initiated well-know, wind power rates zero on both scores.

Pointless and expensive, wind and solar power is a kind of first world disease being spread by UN endorsed lunatics, across the developing world.

In India, solar power is seen as ‘fake electricity’, by those being forced to use it: The Cruel Hypocrisy: West Drops Wind Power as it Forces ‘Fake Electricity’ on the World’s Poor

With a population of 1.3 billion – and hundreds of millions of those screaming out for reliable and affordable electricity – which promises to lift them out of grinding…

A Short List Of Facts Global Warming Alarmists Don’t Want To Face  by Issues and Insights Editorial Board.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Democrats nearly had a brawl last week in California after the party’s Resolutions Committee rejected a proposed climate debate among Democratic presidential candidates. Global warming so fully occupies the thinking of some that there’s no room for information that will contradict their faith.

If they’d only open their minds they’d see:

The U.S. hasn’t warmed since 2005. America isn’t the entire world. But the alarmists gleefully point out regional heatwaves and the “hottest day on record” when cities endure summer scorchers. So let’s look at the data. The U.S. Climate Reference Network, “a sophisticated climate-observing network specifically designed and deployed for quantifying climate change on a national scale,” has found there’s been no warming in the U.S. going back to 2005.

In fact, says meteorologist…

Ken White is an attorney specializing in free-speech issues, and is the main contributor to the well-known and useful law website Popehat. This week he has a good article in The Atlantic about American free-speech law, which you can read by clicking on the screenshot below:

We talk a lot about free speech on this website, as it’s an important issue in politics, especially on American college campuses. But “free speech” as construed by students often differs considerably from free speech as the courts have defined it under the First Amendment. White’s article aims to let us know what the law really is, not what it should be. As he says:

Here is Reason’s Remy with a parody of the Beatles, with Remy playing the whole band. Making fun of the Left is always great fun, and Remy is good at it.

When it comes to minimum wage research, most folks join one of two teams. First, Team Econ 101 will tell you, sensibly in my view, that when raise the price of something, people buy less of it. Labor is not exception. Second, Team Common Man says that this is misleading. Sensibly, they argue that firms have slack and customers who purchase services offered by low wage workers, such as fast food, can usually pay a little more. To make things worse, Team Econ 101 and Team Common Man love to cherry pick studies that show why they are right.

So what’s the deal? I recently listened to this very long and extensive interview with Jacob Vigdor, professor of public policy at the University of Washington, that sheds light on this issue. He is in a very special position to discuss minimum wage research because he designed the only major…