The Unbroken Window

From Al Gore:
But what a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands. We could instead celebrate the naysayers who had doggedly persisted [...]

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Now, it is only safe to go sledding on groomed hills intended specifically for the purpose of sledding. This message came from our local Government school district:
Sledding is an exciting pastime when you grow up in Upstate New York. We understand the draw to some of the hills on the PCSD grounds, but we ask [...]

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At 3:52 today, my AP newsfeed is running stories on:

NY Governor decides not to run because of a domestic violence scandal (and of course, it has nothing to do with the fact that his politics are wildly unpopular, even in blue state NY). He is a guy who believes deeply in taxing soda, granting massive [...]

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My wife and I have thought of this as a retirement strategy.
The life of a work-camper, volunteering in places like Falcon State Park in deep South Texas in return for free rent, is not without its bumps. But as Ms. Smith also quickly discovered, the rewards can be deep as well — like making cinnamon [...]

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A common justification for government confiscation of privately produced wealth is that many of us are selfish free-riders. To take one example, let’s think of the charity market. Under one view of charity, the one I espouse, is that charitable activities should remain purely in the private domain. If private individuals wish to contribute to [...]

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Here are some highlights:
What do the data tell us about insurance companies rescinding coverage and refusing to pay claims if individuals fail to list any medical conditions? Here’s what Duggan writes:
A House committee investigation found that three large insurers rescinded nearly 20,000 policies over a five-year period, saving these companies $300 million that would otherwise [...]

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Eliot Spitzer today in Slate “proves” that higher marginal tax rates on the rich do not discourage growth. Of course, he proves nothing of the sort, but I don’t want to try to teach economics to the guy, or any of the lefty faithful. I want to ask the statists if they would sign up [...]

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Well, I guess 6,000 divided by 40,000 now exceeds 50%. After all, when kids spend all their time gardening instead of learning math, should we be surprised that when they become adults, they don’t know what a majority is?
Here is a short video on the forced unionization of daycare providers in Michigan.

This naked theft has [...]

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I am usually a fan of randomized experiments. But not this one:
This paper analyzes a randomized tax enforcement experiment in Denmark.  In the base year, a stratified and representative sample of over 40,000 individual income tax filers was selected for the experiment.  Half of the tax filers were randomly selected to be thoroughly audited, while [...]

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This is a perfect illustration of how government officials think:

Mary Tullius, director of the Division of State Parks and Recreation, doesn’t think so.  She says the state prides itself on giving Utah families affordable destinations like state parks. And if those destinations were made private, the quality would suffer.
“History has told us that whenever you [...]

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