Viewing entries tagged
Governance for a Better Tomorrow
This ASBI would target Americans 25-54 who want to update their skills to match ever-changing employer demand. My current version would pay them $1000 a month, no more than $9,000 a year, up to $18,000 total over the age of eligibility, provided they are enrolled students in good standing at approved postsecondary training and education programs…
Income-dependent rent increases create a disincentive to take up employment and reduces overall labour mobility, especially when rent increases are tied to hard thresholds.. Social housing estates often become rundown over time, especially when rents don’t cover ongoing operational costs, leading to deferred maintenance and cost-cutting measures…
No matter what you call it, new social housing is back on the policy to-do list in many countries, especially those with a dearth of affordable housing. Social housing has been around for long time in most of these countries, so the challenges are well-known.
How easy would it be to move for better job opportunities under post-capitalist housing system proposed by Democratic Socialists of America?
In which I ask AI six questions, including Would the post-capitalist society envisioned by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) allow for private entrepreneurs to hire and profit from the labor of employees? and, As an alternative, what if the post-capitalist order allowed small employer businesses and then used tax and regulatory mechanisms to discourage employee growth past a certain threshold? Verified sources for AI responses included.
[This is] “a top-down vision of the state that replaces the decentralized wisdom of millions of entrepreneurs and consumers with the ideological preferences of a few people at the top — people who do not risk losing their money if their decisions result in failure.” - Johan Norberg & Christian Sandström
What’s surprising is how well the No Apologies Right and Faith First Conservatives are doing, given that only a third are college graduates. These are the strongest Trump supporters on the right, by far (90% and 81% approval, respectively) and they seem to be doing okay, financially-speaking. Yet Trump supporters have often been portrayed by the media and academics as “left behind” by the economy, struggling to make ends meet…
Pew Research has just come out with a new typology that sorts the American public into nine groups based on their political values and beliefs. The typology is based on a survey of 10,357 U.S. adults conducted in November 2025. The Pew report draws additional data on the same respondents from 15 separate surveys conducted over the course of 2025 and 2026, as well as records from prior Pew Research election surveys and commercial voter files.
The overall pattern is clear for these 11 countries: greater economic freedom = higher GDP per capita, with a few bumps along the line from Singapore to China. The US is the big exception… I’m not sure why this is the case, but I suspect the American work ethic has something to do with it. Specifically…
To my mind, “business freedom” and “ease of doing business” are very similar ideas. I expected country-level scores to reflect that, which is exactly what I found - at least for the eleven countries I’ve been comparing in this series…Once again, Denmark stands out: higher business freedom and ease of doing business than all the others, except Singapore.
No surprise that the US, France and UK – the worst performers in the above chart - have super-high levels of public debt as a percent of GDP, while top performers Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden have low levels of debt/GDP. But what about Singapore’s debt? A whopping 177% of GDP—second highest after Japan among the advanced economies. And yet Singapore is Number One in overall economic freedom in the Index. How to explain this paradox…
The surprise here is communist China: third best after Singapore and Switzerland*. How does Exhibit A of big, intrusive government manage to rein in spending?
Note that the Nordics - Denmark, Sweden and Finland - rank much higher than the US on overall economic freedom, but they’re also high-tax countries. How do they do it? Long answer short…
Of course, plenty of economists, political scientists, psychologists, and just plain people are less enamored of free markets, economic freedom and small government. I have quibbles myself.
Core values are default values that people rely on to make decisions and to guide behavior in the absence of detailed information. But default values aren’t enough to govern wisely, nor are they enough to know what a good policy or politician looks like.
I'm not interested in reducing complicated policy questions to a matter of rights. The devil's always in the details and that's just way too broad. What does a “right” actually look like in practice?
I’m stumbling in the dark here, but every once in a while I see a faint glimmer of light: this way! I take a few tentative steps forward…
“I long to hear that you have declared an independency -- and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.” - Abigail Adams, Letter to John Adams, March 31, 1776
Causal attributions matter, because policy matters. Attacking the wrong problem makes for bad policy.
The World Happiness Report has identified six variables that account for more than three-quarters of the variation in life evaluation scores: 1) Having someone to count on; 2) GDP per capita; 3) Healthy life expectancy; 4) Freedom to make life choices; 5) Generosity; and, 6) Freedom from corruption.