In San Francisco, Government Failure Erases Billions of Dollars of Commercial Real Estate Valuations
ConclusionAn overly energetic lockdown and actions that concentrated violent and unstable individuals in the downtown area have contributed to the collapse of real estate values in San Francisco ’s prime hotel, office, and retail districts. Quasi‐governmental institutions that might have stepped in to provide improved security and street conditions have been enfeebled in part by city policy.At this point, it does not appear that any set of feasible policies can restore downtown San Francisco to the heights it reached in 2019. A more realistic possibility is that it will stabilize at much lower levels of occupancy...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 12, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Marc Joffe Source Type: blogs
What ’s in the Republican Economic Tax Package?
Adam N. MichelWays and Means Committee Republicans recently introduced theAmerican Families and Jobs Act, an economic tax package that addresses significant ongoing tax increases on domestic investment built into the 2017Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Most of the Republicans ’ major proposed changes in theAmericanFamilies and Jobs Act expire after 2025, worsening current tax uncertainty and obscuring the necessary reforms ’ fiscal cost.Other than permanence, theAmerican Families and Jobs Act could be significantly improved by adding Universal Savings Accounts for family savings flexibility and neutral cost recovery for current...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 12, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Adam N. Michel Source Type: blogs
On Investigating Presidents
Patrick G. EddingtonAs you probably have heard or otherwise know by now, the 37 ‐count indictment against former President Trump has beenreleased (WARNING: large file). I ’ve highlighted a number of sections in yellow that I think are particularly telling.For the benefit of those who are not fluent in Intelligence Community (IC) speak, I offer the following translations regarding certain key acronyms contained in the indictment:HCS = Human intelligence Control System. Think confidential, foreign national sources.TK = Talent ‐Keyhole. That’s satellite imagery‐derived information.And I doubt I need ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 12, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Patrick G. Eddington Source Type: blogs
Trade in Real Life: Sorry Charlie (and Senator Warner) for Terrible Tuna Tariffs
Gabriella Beaumont-SmithDuring the pandemic, Senator Mark Warner (D ‑VA) released a video showcasing his tuna melt recipe —complete with a surprising amount of mayonnaise and heated in a microwave (no judgement). The “unhinged” recipe video went viral and three years later,Washingtonian sat down with Senator Warner to have him taste ‐test seven tuna melt sandwiches from DC and Virginia restaurants.Senator Warner ’s tuna‐melt obsession reminded me of a tariff reclassificationcase I read about last year. Starkist Co. is well‐known for its single‐serve pouches of tuna and argued to the Fede...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 12, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Gabriella Beaumont-Smith Source Type: blogs
Hit by Scandal, Petro Can Still Ruin Colombia
Daniel RaisbeckLess than a year ago, I wrote of the almost certain regret that awaited the prosperous, urban, multiple ‐degree‐holding types who voted for Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s Chavista president. They thought they had supported a Nordic‐style social democrat—failing to notice that they had helped to elect a tropical socialist who, given his past as a guerrilla group member and Hugo Chávez supporter, was also a potential autocrat.Caveat emptor (or rathersuffragator) indeed. But I never thought that voter’s remorse would set in so quickly. Or so extremely.According to poll data from June 1...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 11, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Daniel Raisbeck Source Type: blogs
Medicare Is Not Taxing or Coercing Merck, Just Reducing Its Government Subsidies
Michael F. CannonPharmaceutical giant Merck issuing Medicare, claiming new drug ‐pricing reforms that Congress enacted in last year’sInflation Reduction Act coerce the company into selling its wares to the program at below ‐market prices. In theWall Street Journal,attorney Daniel Troyopines that the new rules violate the First and Fifth Amendments. Big, if true.What ’s really happening here is that Merck is making tons of money off the taxpayers and wants to keep the gravy train rolling. So the company is offering whatever bad arguments it can to prevent any reductions in its Medicare subsidies.First, a few...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 9, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Michael F. Cannon Source Type: blogs
High Court Sticks With Flawed Racial ‐Redistricting Standard
Walter OlsonIn a long line of cases on race and redistricting, the Supreme Court has generally ruled thatsome race ‐conscious line drawing is okay in applying the federal Voting Rights Act, so long as things don’t go overboard with crazy lines and such. “Racial gerrymandering, even for remedial purposes, may balkanize us into competing racial factions,” warned Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in the firs t case in this series,Shaw v. Reno (Shaw I, 1993). A 1995 case,Miller v. Johnson, further established that a map will generally be struck down if race was the “overriding, predominant” force in its incept...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 8, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Walter Olson Source Type: blogs
The First Amendment Protects Against Bad ‐Faith Prosecutions
Thomas A. BerryIn 2020, Netflix began streaming the French filmCuties. The film follows an 11 ‐year‐old Senegalese immigrant, Amy, torn between her family’s conservative culture and a more progressive French society. In the film, Amy is shown joining a pre‐teen dance group (the “Cuties”), whose sexualized routines are heavily influenced by social media. The film’s me ssage is critical of the influence of social media on young girls, but the film itself attracted significant controversy for its scenes depicting the dance group’s provocative performances.There is room for reasonable debate as to wh...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 8, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas A. Berry Source Type: blogs
Charting Some of Industrial Policy ’s Opportunity Costs
Adam N. Michel andScott LincicomeIn the last few years, Congress has authorized as much as $2.1 trillion in domestic subsidies for preferred industries such as steel, semiconductors, and electric vehicles —a flood of taxpayer cash that supporters havecheered for boosting U.S. manufacturing and the economy more broadly. As Cato scholarsandothers havelongcautioned, however, a proper assessment of industrial policies’ efficacy requires considering far more than a simple correlation between new government spending and new private investments, jobs, and products. Among the necessary considerations is the spending’s opp...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 8, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Adam N. Michel, Scott Lincicome Source Type: blogs
Surprisingly, the World Is Becoming More Equal
Chelsea FollettReading the news or listening to politicians and pundits speak, one could easily get the impression that global inequality is getting worse. But is the widely held belief that the world is becoming less equal true, or is it mistaken? The overwhelming majority of long ‐term trends regarding living standards—ranging from rising life expectancy to declining rates of poverty and hunger—show considerable improvement, even accounting for recent pandemic‐related setbacks. You can explore the evidence for yourself on websites such asHuman Progress.org. Have those improvements been widely shared, ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 8, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Chelsea Follett Source Type: blogs
Standard Econ Model Bridges the “Unfortunate Events” and “Original Sin” Explanations for Inflation
Jai KediaTwo weeks ago, some of the biggest names in academia and monetary policygathered at Brookings to discuss what factors had contributed to the recentspike in inflation. To that end, Ben Bernanke and Olivier Blancharddesigned a model and found that the primary causes for post ‐Covid inflation were supply shortages, food price shocks, and energy price shocks – the “series of unfortunate events” explanation. However, their paper raises a larger issue with academic approaches to addressing real‐world economic questions.The model used in the paper is niche, designed specifically for their analysis. Con...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 7, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Jai Kedia Source Type: blogs
New Evidence That Prescribing Psychologists Can Save Lives
Jeffrey A. SingerRemoving barriers to prescribing psychologists (RxPs) saves patients the inconvenience and added expense of seeing a psychiatrist or other health care practitioner that states license to prescribe psychiatric medications. Such practitioners include family physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants—even general surgeons like me. Now comes a study showing that it also saves lives.InEffects of Giving Psychologists Prescriptive Authority: Evidence From a Natural Experiment in the United States, researchers publishing in the journalHealth Policy used data from the National Vital Statistics Sys...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 7, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
Not Indentured: Most H ‑1Bs Starting Jobs in 2022 Switched U.S. Employers
David J. BierCritics of the H ‑1B visa for skilled foreign workers often claim that the status amounts to “indentured” servitude. Indentured servitudeis a contract to work for a single employer for a predetermined periodwithout pay. H ‑1B workers are not only paid—they receive wagesin the top 10 percent of wage earners in the United States. As importantly, although they face more obstacles to changing jobs, H ‑1B workers are not tied to a single employer, and they change jobs regularly.In fact, H ‑1B workers are leaving their initial H‑1B employers more than ever. Figure 1 shows the number of H‑1B ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 7, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: David J. Bier Source Type: blogs
Biden Administration Doubles Down on Costly “Buying American” Mandates
James BacchusWhile praising the “new” trade policy of the Biden administration during a recent interview with PBS, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai described this policy as“pro‐competition.” It seems to me, instead, that the Biden policy in international trade is, instead, anti ‐competition. The protectionism of the current administration, now in full display after nearly two and one‐half years, is about insulating domestic producers from foreign competition.In part, this policy is being pursued through conventional tariffs, such as the unilateral tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars in...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 6, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: James Bacchus Source Type: blogs
White House Extends Ukraine ’s Steel Tariff Exemption; Sad Reminder of Steel Protectionism
Clark PackardOn the heels of Russia ’s aggressive war against Ukraine in early 2022, the Biden administration temporarilyexempted Ukrainian steel from the Trump administration ’s bogus “national security” tariffs imposed under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (at the behest of the domestic steel industry). The exemption was set to expire on June 1, 2023, with tariffs snapping back to 25 percent. Last week, the White Houseannounced it would maintain Ukraine ’s exemption from tariffs and expanded it to cover Ukrainian steel processed within the European Union (EU). For free traders battered by ill‐...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 5, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Clark Packard Source Type: blogs
