30 January 2018

Democrats didn’t cave on the shutdown

Democrats are funding CHIP for six years and reopening the government without losing their shutdown leverage.

Ezra Klein


23 January 2018

How to deal with the age of celebrity candidates

So here's the proposal: At party conventions, in addition to nominating a president and vice president, party leaders should put together a Cabinet. Party leaders would negotiate over this, a log-rolling process that would give different groups in the party coalition representation in their party's government. The presidential nominee could play an important role in the process, but ultimately it would have to be a negotiation among different groups within the party. Losing candidates might wind up in the Cabinet, bringing their supporters along.

Lee Drutman

18 January 2018

Bitcoin is the new Middle Ages

Bitcoin changes prices too quickly to be a currency and processes transactions too slowly to be a payments system, but it is juuust right for teaching libertarians everything they don't know about economics.

Not that they're paying attention.

Matt O'Brien

Must-Reads of 2017: Debunking Southern Mythmaking

11 January 2018

What Elon Musk Doesn't Get About Urban Transit

The most common falsehood about transit, the one that underlies most of the comments transit agencies receive and many of the worst mistakes in transit planning, is this: “Transit would be better for everyone if it were better for me.”  

A special danger arises when relatively wealthy people take this view, demanding that expensive mass transit systems be designed according to their personal tastes. I call this mistake elite projection, and explore it here. Many poor transit investments have arisen from a too-small group of fortunate people assuming that everyone shares their tastes and priorities. They forget that to be elite is to be a minority, and it makes no business sense to design transit around elite tastes if what you really want are lots and lots of riders.


The uninsured are overusing emergency rooms — and other health-care myths

Carolyn Y. Johnson


10 January 2018

The real cost of the Republican tax bill

Is Trump’s IRS really going to tighten the screws on giant new loopholes?

If I were undertaking a radical re-write of the tax code, I would also provide the Internal Revenue Service with additional resources to make sure they can enforce it properly.

But does anyone believe the GOP is going to be stepping-up IRS funding?

Matthew Yglesias


Do It Yourself

Trump’s quiet attack on the regulatory state is another part of his broader class war.

Jon D. Michaels


05 January 2018