By Chris Edwards, Cato at LibertyMarch 24, 2025.
Extract:
There are two sides to the inefficiency of federal editions. Expenditure is financed by taxes that disrupt the work, investment and entrepreneurial choices of private individuals and companies. Each extra dollar in income tax causes around 40 to 50 cents damage to the private sector outside the tax amount itself. That damage is called deadweight loss. Republicans seem to understand this side of the tax comparison and they urge to lower taxes.
However, many Republicans do not seem to understand that the expenditures themselves cause distortions and losses of deadweight. Government bureaucracies waste resources and the subsidy programs they carry out cause unproductive answers from private individuals and companies. Most federal programs are not worth the costs, as discussed In this study.
by David Friedman, David Friedman’s SubstackMarch 25, 2025.
Fragments:
What I am currently worried about is the potential for the current political situation to make America a much worse place, in one of different directions. The obvious is the one that the left is crying for a long time, the development of a right -wing dictatorship. The current government claims the right to deport people in a foreign prison, without having to prove that they are guilty of something, even illegal immigration, based on a highly stretched interpretation of an 18one Ecity law. They are wise, starting with the most unsympathetic victims they could find, but nothing in their interpretation of the law would prevent them from doing it to someone else – on their opinion they are obliged to show that their claims about the victims are true.
I expect that the courts rule against them, the Supreme Court by a considerable majority. But there are vague murmur among their supporters of the idea of ignoring the courts, sympathetic references to Andrew Jackson’s (probably Apocryphal) “John Marshall has made his decision, let him enforce it now.” Continued election success could bring them further in that direction and, even if this is not the case, the composition of the judiciary would eventually change.
And:
The less obvious danger is in the opposite direction, a risk that is discussed in a Previous post. Suppose the administration of Trump is going poorly, serious economic problems caused by rapid change, increased uncertainty, an increase instead of decreasing the deficit, serious reversal of foreign policy, perhaps disasters. The Democrats end with the presidency, both houses of the congress, many angry supporters. They have demonstrated all their willingness to face Wetsfare against their enemies. The claim that everyone commits three crimes a day is undoubtedly an exaggeration, but a sufficiently dedicated public prosecutor who draws jury members from a sufficiently biased locals can, as already shown, receive several crimes for a crime on which the status of limitations has already been led. Even without a biased jury to condemn, prosecution can only impose very large costs – and everyone can be prosecuted for something, a problem I have discussed in a Previous post.
by Alex Nowresteh and Creat Chanwong, Cato at LibertyMarch 25, 2025.
Ezra Klein recently interviewed David Shor, a data scientist at the Democratic consultancy Blue Rose Research. Shor made two important immigrant -related points. Firstly, the part of the population born abroad was strongly correlated in a province with a shift to Trump. Secondly, Trump probably won the immigrant voice. Naturalized immigrants continued from Biden in 2020 27 points To favor Trump on one point.
This abrupt change destroys the common argument for immigration returns that more open immigration policy will tilt the country on the left, an argument that is often made by Elon Musk That explains why he decided to support Trump in the 2024 elections.
By Matthew Petti, Reason, April 2025.
Extract:
Although the United States has the power to seriously disturb economic life in other countries, the book argues, the consequences do not always serve American interests. Sanctions damages the prosperity and political status of the pro-American middle class of Iran the most. They also make the government more paranoid and remove important incentives to play fun. Everyone seems worse off.
The US has tried to wash its hands from the consequences of the policy for ordinary Iranians, giving their poverty blaming for the domestic “corruption and economic maladministration“Instead of sanctions. But the data is clear. The Iranian economy was from 1988, the end of the country of the country with Iraq, until 2011, the start of the intensive sanction campaign of former President Barack Obama.
DRH NOTE: The article “Sanctions” in David R. Henderson, ed., The concise encyclopedia of economics is excellent.