Kamalacare Is Just Bidencare
https://reason.com/2024/10/20/kamalacare-is-just-bidencare/
Month: October 2024
Deplatforming Doesn’t Make Sex Work Safer
“We don’t need a formal study to tell us that taking away sex workers’ ability to communicate online makes their lives worse—sex workers have been saying that for a decade now, since the federal government started taking down websites where they advertised (RIP MyRedBook, Rentboy, The Review Board, Backpage, and so on). But here’s a(nother) study saying exactly this.
For the study, published in the journal Social Sciences, researcher Melissa Ditmore and her team conducted a national survey of 440 sex workers, asking about how they used online platforms, how the use of these platforms affected their working conditions, and how laws like the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA)—which led to platforms removing and restricting sex worker accounts—affected their work lives. Survey respondents included folks who had engaged in webcam work, phone sex work, strip club work, pornography, independent escorting, street-based sex work, working at a brothel, working at a massage parlor, BDSM/fetish work, working for an escort agency, and other types of sex work.
Ditmore’s team found—unsurprisingly—that “platform policies and practices often remove and/or limit sex workers’ access to them, which, in turn, restricts their ability to earn income and compromises their capacity to live and work safely.””
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Ten percent said deplatforming led to more interactions with law enforcement, and 11.5 percent said it led to more social service interactions.
Around 9 percent said deplatforming led to more interactions with madams/agencies/managers/pimps.
Around 8 percent said they experienced “exploitative work conditions” after deplatforming” and 6.7 percent said they experienced “abusive work conditions.””
https://reason.com/2024/09/04/deplatforming-doesnt-make-sex-work-safer/
Leave U.S. Steel Alone
“the four most prominent politicians in the country (sorry, Tim Walz) agree: U.S. Steel, a private company, should not be allowed to conduct a transaction with another private company unless the federal government agrees.
This is absurd—particularly because the deal is obviously in the best interest of U.S. Steel.
“We’ll admit that the competition for the dumbest economic policy is fierce these days—with prices controls on food, a 10% across-the-board tariff, and national rent control on the table,” opined The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board this week. “But opposition to the Nippon deal deserves careful consideration for this distinct dishonor given the deal’s manifest benefits and nonexistent harm.”
Indeed, Nippon’s plan to buy U.S. Steel gives the legacy steelmaker something that Trump’s tariffs and Biden’s blather about blue-collar jobs never could: A chance to actually become more competitive in the global marketplace. Among other things, Nippon has promised to invest $2.7 billion in revamping U.S. Steel’s plants.”
https://reason.com/2024/09/04/leave-u-s-steel-alone/
The Government’s Permitting Regime Is Choking the Economy
“Permitting reform isn’t just bureaucratic minutiae; it’s a critical, deeply moral issue for anyone who believes in free markets, individual liberty, and economic progress. Our permitting regime is a web of red tape that stifles innovation, slows growth, and leaves Americans poorer, less free, and increasingly frustrated with a government more interested in regulating than enabling prosperity.
This isn’t some esoteric topic for policy wonks; it’s about the real, tangible effects of overregulation on Americans’ daily lives. Housing costs, job availability, energy prices, and technological advancement all hinge on how our government handles permits. And right now, it’s failing miserably.
Take housing. Some areas like California and New York City face a crisis largely due to onerous permitting processes. Builders must navigate a Kafkaesque labyrinth of regulations just to break ground, assuming they are even allowed to build. These delays add years to construction and inflate costs by tens of thousands per unit.
This isn’t mere inconvenience; it’s a genuine disaster for middle- and low-income families priced out of the market. The American dream of homeownership is being strangled by red tape. Worse yet, Americans are priced out of lucrative labor markets because rents are so artificially inflated in job-rich cities.
But that’s just the beginning. Permitting processes are choking the energy sector. Important infrastructure—pipelines, wind farms, grid modernization—is being held up for years by endless environmental reviews, public comments, and lawsuits. Now, two judges have signaled to developers that permits which took years to obtain could be canceled on a whim if subjected to pressure from the climate activists.
This isn’t just bad policy; it’s economic sabotage resulting in higher prices, less reliable supply, and missed opportunities for cleaner, more efficient energy.
What about other infrastructure? Roads, bridges, and transit systems fail to get fixed when approval for repairs takes years or sometimes decades. An outdated, bloated process prioritizes procedure over results, making some projects obsolete before they begin. Meanwhile, the government wastes massive amounts of money on infrastructure subsidies when all we need is to allow people to build.
The free market thrives on innovation and speed, allowing swift responses to societal needs. The current system is its antithesis—slow, cumbersome, and designed to prevent change rather than facilitate it.
It’s not just harming businesses; it’s harming everyone. Imagine what we could achieve with reform: affordable housing, more jobs, lower energy prices, modernized infrastructure. We could unleash a new wave of American innovation and growth. Yet these reforms are repeatedly blocked by bureaucrats protecting their turf, politicians appeasing special interests, or activists who believe halting progress is virtuous.”
https://reason.com/2024/09/05/the-governments-permitting-regime-is-choking-the-economy/
The Netherlands’ Rent Control Disaster
“In July, the Dutch government expanded nationwide rent controls—which had already covered about 80 percent of rental units—to almost all remaining rental properties. Fully 96 percent of Dutch rental housing is now subject to rent caps.
A report from Bloomberg published last week details the results: Owners of rental properties are selling their buildings and getting out of the rental housing market.
The tenants of those units are being forced to try and find one of the few remaining market-rate units or purchase a home in the Netherlands’ hot housing market. In either case, home hunters face spiking prices and limited availability.
These results are what one would expect from rent control. The economic literature is unambiguous that when rent control effectively holds rents below market levels, the result is a shortage of available rental housing.
More honest boosters of rent control will argue that while the policy limits housing supply, it increases stability for tenants. Protected from sudden, unaffordable rent increases, renters are able to stay in their homes for longer.
But in the Netherlands, at least, rent control is having a pro-displacement effect. Tenants who had an affordable rental unit are now being forced to move.
Proponents of rent control like to wave away the problems created by the policy as something that can be fixed with better and/or more sweeping controls of rental housing.
In fact, different rent control designs just produce different problems.
Apply rent control to new construction, and developers build less rental housing. Apply rent control to existing rental housing and landlords sell out to owner-occupiers. Prevent landlords from taking their units off the market, and housing quality deteriorates. (In the long run, this also reduces supply by preventing the redevelopment of existing rental housing.)”
https://reason.com/2024/09/05/the-netherlands-rent-control-disaster/
Voters’ Yearning for a Dictator Is a Danger to the Country
“In the abstract, Americans don’t want a dictator. But if it’s their preferred leader, many are willing to throw checks and balances out the window so favored policies can be jammed through.”
https://reason.com/2024/09/06/voters-yearning-for-a-dictator-is-a-danger-to-the-country/
Why Trump’s Child Care Policy Incoherence Matters
“It may be tempting to simply write this off as “Trump being Trump” and move on. But the Republican presidential nominee’s consistent inattention to the details of policymaking does matter—even if it has no bearing on the election—and the child care issue is a perfect example of why.
This sort of issue is a liability for Trump because he can’t just bluster or pander his way through it. Trump excels when he can turn complex policies into simple, partisan us-vs.-them arguments that allow him to avoid any attention on the specifics. On issues like taxes and immigration, this technique works because one party broadly wants the policy to shift in one direction, so Trump can simply promise to do the opposite—never mind the details.
But no one wants higher child care costs. Both sides want to reduce them. The argument, then, must turn on which side can offer the better plan for accomplishing that goal. As Thursday’s answer makes obvious, Trump has no such plan.”
https://reason.com/2024/09/06/why-trumps-child-care-policy-incoherence-matters/
Drive-Thrus Are Booming. Why Are Cities Banning Them?
“For modern urban planners, walkability is the goal. “The more drive-thrus you build, the more car-centric you become—as opposed to something that has more mobility options,” said Keba Samuel, chair of the Charlotte Planning Commission in North Carolina. “It doesn’t make sense to have this multi-billion investment in light rail and still encourage an auto-centric environment. It’s contradictory.”
In other words, light rail is in, drive-thrus are out. But the reality is more complex. While critics may argue that drive-thrus cater to greedy corporate interests, in truth they are what customers are demanding. For many restaurants, the drive-thru model is the only thing that has kept them alive both during and after the pandemic.
The Kellogg study found that fast service restaurants with drive-thru windows saw a modest 4 percent decline in sales from 2019 to 2022. Meanwhile, those without drive-thrus experienced a devastating 50 percent drop. That is comparable to 25 percent of Starbucks customers—and 50 percent of the chain’s total revenue—transitioning to drive-thru-only outlets.
Drive-thru bans also overlook the market responses already addressing traffic congestion issues. Taco Bell opened its first “Defy” outlet in 2022, which features a two-story layout with four drive-thru lanes and food delivered via tubes. (As The Verge described it: “Think a drive-thru bank but you get a Chalupa and Baja Blast instead of cash.”) Chick-fil-A is rolling out its own elevated drive-thru, designed to handle double or triple the volume of a traditional drive-thru, and utilizing conveyor belts that can deliver food orders as fast as every six seconds.
If policy makers really were concerned about traffic, they’d be embracing these high-efficiency designs. Instead of a drive-thru ban, local governments could institute two-story zoning allowances by right for any drive-thru businesses seeking to open in the area.
A final consideration lost in the drive-thru debate is the vital role many fast-food outlets play in their communities. In some lower- and middle-class areas, restaurants like McDonald’s have become a crucial “third place”—venues where locals gather for everything from Bible studies to bingo.
Drive-thrus might not fit the vision of many urban planners, but the reality is they are becoming more important, not less.”
https://reason.com/2024/09/07/drive-thrus-are-booming-why-are-cities-banning-them/
The Shifting Demographics in Mainstream, USA | America By The Numbers | Full Episode 1 | PBS
The Shifting Demographics in Mainstream, USA | America By The Numbers | Full Episode 1 | PBS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0RSRAlUqSw
Are Teachers Really Underpaid?
“For the 2023–24 school year, the average public school teacher salary was just under $70,000—well over the average for bachelor’s degree graduates ages 25 to 34 (though many teachers have master’s degrees).
West Virginia paid teachers the least, at around $52,000 per year, while California paid them the most, with an average salary of over $95,000. According to the National Education Association, teacher salaries top out at over $100,000 in 16.6 percent of districts. However, salaries have generally stagnated. From 2002 to 2020, inflation-adjusted teacher salaries declined by 0.6 percent while as per-pupil spending increased.
The reality is that teacher salaries vary widely between states and districts, especially when looking at pay adjusted for the cost of living, making it difficult to make generalizations. Adding to the murkiness, pay doesn’t seem to motivate teachers as much as many people think.
According to a December 2023 report from the National Center for Education Statistics, when public school teachers were asked why they decided to leave the profession, only 9.2 percent said it was because they needed higher pay.
A study from earlier this year also concluded that, among teachers who choose to leave their jobs, most don’t earn more in their new position.”
…
“”The biggest relative growth has been in ‘instructional aids’ who assist teachers in the classroom. While teachers were 53.4 percent of all public school system employees in 1990, they were only 47.5 percent in 2022. Aides rose from 8.8 percent of employees to 13.3 percent. It’s not clear why this occurred, but it could be teachers asking for help, regulations requiring more services for kids, or lots of other possible factors.””
https://reason.com/2024/09/10/are-teachers-really-underpaid/