“In January, Delaware Rep.-elect Sarah McBride will also make history in congressional representation, becoming the first openly transgender individual to serve in Congress. But once again, being a trailblazer has come with challenges.
In response to McBride’s election, South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace introduced a resolution last week intended to ban transgender women like McBride from using women’s bathrooms in the Capitol. House Speaker Mike Johnson initially equivocated on the issue, but under pressure from fellow Republicans like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, he issued a statement that all single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House offices “are reserved for individuals of that biological sex.” Mace has since followed up with an even more sweeping proposal, a bill that would apply a transgender bathroom ban to all facilities on federal property.”
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“56 percent of Americans said they agreed more that “transgender rights have gone too far, infringing on the rights of women and children,” compared to 32 percent who said they agreed more that “protecting transgender rights is essential to ensuring equality for all Americans.” And in another YouGov poll last week, a plurality of 43 percent of Americans said they’d prefer their congressional representatives to focus more on upholding traditional definitions of gender, versus 30 percent who wanted them to focus more on protecting the rights of transgender people (12 percent said neither, and 15 percent were unsure).
When it comes to specific policies, about half of Americans in that poll (including 78 percent of Republicans and 29 percent of Democrats) seemed to agree with Mace on bathroom bans, telling YouGov they think transgender people should use bathrooms that correspond to their assigned sex at birth, while 34 percent thought they should use bathrooms that align with their current gender identity, or either option.
Slightly more voters also seem to favor bans on sports participation, while opinions are split on banning gender-affirming care for youth. In an October UMass Amherst poll, a plurality of Americans, 47 percent, supported bans on transgender individuals’ participation in school sports teams matching their gender identity, compared to just 25 percent who opposed them (the rest were undecided). In a Morning Consult poll of registered voters from Nov. 6-7, 56 percent said they would support and 30 percent said they would oppose banning transgender girls and women from competing in high school and college sports. Meanwhile, 39 percent in the UMass Amherst poll said they would oppose policies to ban gender-affirming care for trans youth, while fewer, 35 percent, said they would support them. And in the Morning Consult poll, more were still in favor of the bans: 46 percent, compared to 39 percent opposed.”
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“in an October CNN poll, registered voters were asked if they supported federal policies that were more supportive or more restrictive of transgender rights: Their answers were about evenly split between those options, but a plurality, 42 percent, said they “don’t have strong feelings either way.” That indicates that these issues may not be as pressing or important to many Americans as they are to politicians hoping to fan the culture war flames.”
“In a rare instance of agreement, Republicans and Democrats have converged on the idea that “Buy American” provisions should be expanded in order to increase American jobs. But a new paper finds that existing federal rules impose high costs on consumers.
A September 2024 working paper published by the National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER) found the Buy American Act has created more than 50,000 jobs. Just one catch: Each one of those jobs costs the economy more than $100,000.”
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“The economists say “they find scant evidence of the use of Buy American rules as an effective industrial policy.” The BAA does not promote economic growth; it’s a costly “employment measure” that benefits a few by robbing all.”
“three-year pilot of Sam Altman’s that provided $1,000 a month to 1,000 people in Texas and Illinois and compared that group to a control group of 2,000 people who got $50 a month. Every participant was between the ages of 21 and 40.”
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“”saturation” pilots where entire communities receive basic income instead of only individuals spread across a large area. When basic income is provided to people here and there, local economies aren’t stimulated by the spending of the money and new jobs aren’t created by employers needing to hire more employees to meet higher demand. It’s one thing to provide money to an entrepreneur. It’s another to do that and also provide their business lots of customers with money to spend.”
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“Employment can increase or decrease along two measures: the binary state of working a job or not and the number of hours worked. On average, those who got basic income were two percentage points less likely to be employed and worked about 1.3 fewer hours per week.”
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“The employment of both groups greatly increased.”
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“A weekly drop of 1.3 hours works out to about 15 minutes a workday. That’s an extra break or a slightly longer lunch. On an annual basis, it’s equivalent to 8 days a year. That’s a week-long paid vacation.”
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“there were no significant decreases in employment status and hours worked among childless adults or those over age 30.”
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“”Recipients who were single parents at the time of enrollment were about 3.9 percentage points less likely to be employed and worked an average of 2.8 hours less per week than single parent control participants. For recipients who were not single parents at enrollment, we do not find statistically significant effects on employment or hours worked.””
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“The reason that parents respond differently should be obvious. They aren’t working less. They are switching from paid work to unpaid work. They’re putting their kids first.”
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“”There was no statistically significant effect on employment or hours worked for recipients over 30. In contrast, recipients under 30 were roughly 4 percentage points less likely to be employed and worked an average of 1.8 fewer hours per week compared to control participants. We also observe larger effects on formal education among those in this age group, suggesting younger adults may be more likely to use the money to enroll in post-secondary education and work fewer hours while in school, though this alone would not account for the observed differences in employment.””
“big study gave 1,000 low-income people $1,000 per month for three years—no strings attached. What happened?
Not the great things that were promised. After three years of getting $1,000/month, UBI recipients were actually a little deeper in debt than before.
Why? Because they worked less. Their partners did, too.
Some recipients talked about starting businesses, but few actually tried it. Most who said they did start a business waited until the third year of the study—when their free money was about to end.”
“According to brand-new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) numbers, the 2024 budget deficit is around $1.8 trillion. It’s heading to $2.8 trillion in 10 years, assuming a very rosy scenario. Worrisome too is that interest payments on government debt will eat up over 20 percent of revenue in 2025. As the Hoover Institution’s Joshua Rauh noted, if you remove the revenue earmarked for the Social Security Old Age and Disability Insurance program, that number jumps to 27.9 percent and rising.”
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“Three months into the term and four months after the last $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill, the Biden-Harris administration pushed through another $1.9 trillion bill. This spending was so out of proportion with the state of the economy, which faced an output gap of only $420 billion, that we suffered the worst inflation in 40 years. This wasn’t just a serious hit to the deficit—it also cost the typical family more than $10,000.
The administration then decided to push several large, unpaid-for bills. Riedl lists some: “$1.4 trillion in new spending in omnibus appropriations bills, $620 billion in student loan bailouts, $520 billion for new veterans’ benefits, a $440 billion infrastructure law, a semiconductor bill, and $360 billion in new [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] and health spending forced through by executive order.”
Some economists wrongly insisted that adding debt is no big deal as long as interest rates are low. This condition certainly doesn’t apply to the Biden-Harris spending spree. Add it all up, including interest payments on the debt, and you get $5 trillion on top of what was already there.”
“Last fall, Milei eliminated what The Wall Street Journal termed one of the world’s “strictest” rent-control laws. Per its report: “The Argentine capital is undergoing a rental-market boom. Landlords are rushing to put their properties back on the market, with Buenos Aires rental supplies increasing by over 170 percent. While rents are still up in nominal terms, many renters are getting better deals than ever, with a 40 percent decline in the real price of rental properties when adjusted for inflation.”
With price controls, businesses flee the market because they cannot get a sufficient return on investment. As a result, supply for whatever is controlled falls even as demand stays steady or rises. That’s why price controls on gasoline lead to long lines at gas stations. If prices can’t adjust to reflect supply and demand, then people simply can’t get the items they want.
Sure, removing controls initially raises prices—but then new businesses jump into the fray to capitalize on the market and the boost in competition then reduces prices. By contrast, tightening up government price controls just leads to increasing levels of scarcity and misery.”
“The short-lived pandemic-era child tax credit expansion cut child poverty by more than a third. And the bolstered social safety net from Covid relief bills nearly halved child poverty in a single year — the sharpest drop on record. Once those programs expired, however, the child poverty rate bounced right back.”
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“Homeowners are told that their homes are the key to building wealth, so they reasonably want their property values to keep rising. For renters, on the other hand, any increase in housing costs is a loss. So while renters might want lawmakers to make room for more housing, homeowners often resist any change that could make their home prices stagnate.”
“Take Trump’s record on the H-1B program, the largest U.S. temporary work visa program for high-skilled workers. Jorge Loweree, managing director of programs at the American Immigration Council (AIC), described the program to Reason as a “critical tool for us to attract talent from abroad” and to continue “our leadership role in the tech sector around the world.” Every year, it provides 65,000 visas for “highly educated foreign professionals,” with an additional 20,000 reserved for “foreign professionals who graduate with a master’s degree or doctorate from a U.S. institution,” according to an H-1B visa factsheet by AIC.
“During his prior term in office. His administration implemented a series of policy changes that made obtaining and maintaining [H-1B] status significantly more challenging,” Loweree stated.
Trump increased regulation on the program, starting with the Buy American and Hire American Executive Order which instructed agencies to “propose new rules and issue new guidance…to protect the interests of United States workers in the administration of our immigration system.”
This increased denial rates for H-1B applicants and made the process of applying costlier, according to Forbes. In FY 2015 denial rates for H-1B visas were six percent. By FY 2018 they rose to a high of 24 percent, according to AIC. Attorney fees for filing an H-1B visa increased between $2,000 and $4,500 per applicant. Wait times for spouses of H-1B applicants also increased, taking up to two years, in some instances, for them to receive their H-4 dependent, which allows them to live in the U.S.
Prior deference, which allowed current H-1B recipients to avoid going through the time-consuming interview process and paperwork to extend their H-1B visa, was also eliminated by Trump, according to Loweree. It was later reinstated by President Joe Biden.”
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“H-1B workers impact the U.S. economy in many ways. Highly skilled immigrants who use the H-1B visa “directly increase the production of knowledge through patents, innovation, and entrepreneurship,” according to the Cato Institute. And, because they primarily specialize in STEM fields, foreign-born workers increase productivity, employment, and wages for native-born workers.
While Trump’s promise on the All-In podcast is encouraging, his record shows that it will unlikely be kept. A calculated attack on H-1B visas by a second Trump administration would hurt U.S. innovation and the native-born workers who benefit from the skills that legal immigrants bring.”
“Mostly, the economy spins ever onward because individuals show up for work and produce something that other people—their employers, customers, clients, donors, etc.—value and are willing to pay for, and then they do it again the next day.”
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“If nothing changed, Springfield would simply experience an ongoing slide into oblivion. The city has been losing population since the 1960s and more than a fifth of those who remain are below the poverty line. Translation: Anyone who had better economic prospects somewhere else was already gone, or on their way out.
“The real story is that for 80 years we were a shrinking city, and now we’re growing,” a local pastor told NBC News.
In other words, immigration isn’t the cause of Springfield’s problems. Stagnation is.
Is the influx of thousands of foreign-born workers going to be smooth? Of course not. Some culture clash is inevitable. More workers willing to pay market rates for housing and a more competitive local economy might make life marginally more difficult for, as Williamson writes, “a reliable Trump-voting constituency: marginally employed white people on the dole.”
Vance and former President Donald Trump have rushed to amplify those culture clashes—and knowingly exaggerate them too, as Reason’s Jacob Sullum explained yesterday. In doing so, they’ve demonstrated how little they understand about what make an economy work and what makes a place successful. Thriving cities, even small ones, are home to a constant churn of cooperation and competition between newcomers and natives. Places that don’t grow are doomed to die.”
The U.S. needs to pull together its different resources in different domains to successfully compete against China, including not just militarily, but taking an active diplomatic and economic role in Asia.