Category: free trade & free markets

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free trade & free markets ideological culture

What the Trillionaire Can’t Do

Elon Musk, trillionaire, billionaire, debt, interest, spending

When Elon Musk took SpaceX public, last week, the value of his stock in the company was said to amount to about $866 billion, which — added to other holdings — makes the “world’s richest man” now a trillionaire.

Capitalism’s first. 

So of course nearly every left-of-center journalist, blogger, and social media warrior decried the enormity of the record.

While “it’s hard to even imagine a trillion dollars” is an honest reaction — it is difficult, just as it is to imagine the projected 2026 federal “budget” ($7.4 trillion), deficit ($1.9 trillion), and the ever-increasing debt — immediately moving from awe to anger is less than honest.

Mr. Musk, Metro UK’s Brooke Davies mused, “could give every single person in the United States a share of his cash, with everyone receiving $2,917.32,” while, if he set his sites a little wider, he could “give every person on the planet a gift, they would receive $121.80.”

What’s less than honest? Elon Musk could not do this. 

Mr. Musk’s wealth is in the company that just took on new investors, driving up his shares. If he started selling his shares, the value of the stock would plummet before he found enough buyers. It is Mr. Musk’s managerial genius and technological vision that is responsible for the company’s success, so any step back from control — even by relinquishing stock — would almost certainly spell disaster. 

And if he vanished off the face of the Earth, our global civilization would feel it.

What Elon Musk’s envious haters do not seem to understand is that Musk succeeds by developing products that people, businesses, and governments are willing to pay big bucks for.

He isn’t exploitative in the negative sense, either. “In total, more than 4,400 current and former SpaceX employees” — “from execs to even welders,” says Fortune — “are expected to become millionaires in the IPO.”

Were Elon’s critics a tiny bit consistent, they’d suggest that Space X’s nouveaux riche welders also cough up unearned wealth. Contribute, evil magnates!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets litigation U.S. Constitution

Punish Energy Producers?

global warming, climate, hysteria, courts, litigation, lawsuit, socialism, government

The latest attempt to hamper our ability to do things? A series of lawsuits against oil companies for allegedly committing global warming. The plaintiffs want billions and billions to be extracted from these companies for fueling civilization.

Litigation before the Supreme Court, Suncor v. Boulder County, is “one of the most consequential energy cases in decades,” argue Michael Toth and Sarah Harbison in the New York Post. 

Boulder County is just one of many seeking to make oil and gas companies fork over massive damages. 

To whom? Entities like Boulder County.

The high court’s response will help determine the viability of future such litigation and “whether the United States remains an energy superpower.”

Energy superpower status is not what people trying to drive their cars and heat their homes at a reasonable cost are worried about. If the court accepts the plaintiffs’ reasoning, the sky’s the limit as far as the liability of the energy industry. 

And those new sky-high liability costs for gas and oil providers will result in new sky-high costs for you and me.

Looting all of us is fine with lawsuit supporters like David Bookbinder of Environmental Integrity Project. “This is a rather convoluted way to achieve the goals of a carbon tax,” Toth and Harbison claim. “The people who use the products pay for the damage that they cause.”

The Post’s authors urge the Supreme Court to “shut down” this attempt to circumvent the Constitution. And confirm that U.S. energy policy “can’t be dictated by local lawsuits.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets subsidy

Feed America, Cut Government

safety net, food bank, government, inflation, economics

“More people in the United States are going hungry now than during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic six years ago,” a National Public Radio report tells us, citing a new survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 

The New York Fed “periodically asks Americans whether they’re having to skip meals, having to rely on food donations or receiving federal assistance to buy groceries.” Ten percent of families nationwide reported missing meals because their cupboards were bare.

This isn’t the result of a breakdown in production and distribution of food, for “food insecurity” rates are two times higher in “families earning less than $50,000 a year.”

NPR notes that inflation — especially the rapid increase in prices at the gas pump — has made everything harder for everybody.

Gas prices are even higher than during COVID. Reduce fuel taxes now. To really lower prices, end the wars in the Middle East. And ending the ethanol mandate would nudge farmers back to actually feeding people, at the very least reducing corn prices.

Finally, SNAP program subsidies are being reduced over the next decade, a result of the Big Beautiful Bill. To help these “food stamps” actually feed folks during this period, SNAP should be further reduced.

That is, in scope . . . across all states. 

This is about trade-offs: Restricting these subsidies from paying for sugary soft drinks, candy, and the like, are underway, state by state, but by the end of the year, fewer than half of these United States will have done so. Taxpayers in all states should demand subsidies that actually help folks, rather than sending them on a slow train to the hospital. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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free trade & free markets ideological culture too much government

Unhealthy Kid Stuff

AOC, healthcare, Milton Friedman, education

Julian Shapiro-Barnum is the host and creator of Recess Therapy, where he regularly records conversations with kids. Recently, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) joined his program to discuss healthcare policy. 

“The children agreed with AOC,” a Washington Post editorial noted, “and brought the same level of sophistication to political and economic questions that Americans have come to expect from the four-term congresswoman.”

AOC and the youngsters shown think healthcare should be free, which The Post used as a jumping off point to have an adult conversation about government-run healthcare, specifically the National Health Service in the United Kingdom.

“Despite the government funding and running a universal health care system, private hospital admissions in the United Kingdom reached their highest level ever in 2024,” readers were informed. 

“The number of people opting to buy private health insurance rose to 6.5 million in 2024, the highest number in a quarter-century, according to the Association of British Insurers.”

The Brits “have learned the hard way that the promise of ‘free’ care is only as good as their ability to get an appointment,” wrote the editors. 

The editorial further explained that “government systems can only stay afloat when they are rationed, often with backlogs that can leave people waiting months for serious procedures.”

“America’s health system is a mess,” The Post concluded, “but the belief that a full government takeover would lead to better outcomes is just childish.”

One of the nation’s largest newspapers appears to be growing up. 

AOC? 

Not so much. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies political economy

Stupid About Greed

Representative Tim Burchett, Iran, oil, economics

Tough times. You encounter a politician. He takes your side on an important issue. He speaks eloquently and with apparent sense. But then switch the subject and suddenly he blurts out such stupidities that you wonder about his sanity, the state of the nation’s education, the very meaning of life itself.

Well, not that last one.

Let’s turn the page in our anti-hymnal to Representative Tim Burchett (R.-Tenn.). I’ve quoted him. He’s given off detectable glimmers of hope. Yet now he (in the words of an enthusiastic twitterer) “exposes the price of gas increasing in America has nothing to do with the Iran war.”

But what does he say?

“How much oil does America get from Iran? Zero.”

True enough. But so what? 

Our president’s un-declared war has resulted in conflagrations of oil wells and a cessation of petroleum transportation through the Strait of Hormuz. But while acid rain descends upon Iranians, it’s gas prices that concern Americans. And Burchett is disgusted.

“That’s how much this is a scam,” he said. “And these oil companies, shame on ’em. They’re using this opportunity to make record profits once again.”

We’ve heard this logic before. 

“It’s greed!”

No, it isn’t. Sure, I’m no economist — but I understand that the market for petroleum products is a worldwide one, and if supply collapses on the other side of the world, it’s going to affect prices over here. We may not buy from Iran, but folks elsewhere do, and when they cannot get what they need, they’ll go to competitors, and world prices will be bid up.

To avoid this natural process, we’d have to simultaneously decrease demand. And how would Burchett do that? 

The first casualty of a price hike is common sense.

Not here, though, for this is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets regulation

Alas, Poor Yorick

Australia, regulations, labor, internet

Working from home is a very old idea, becoming new again during this Age of the Internet. 

COVID made telework something of a mania. But there’s been some withdrawal of support for the arrangement from major corporations, and one of the main results of Elon Musk’s DOGE effort in government was to bring government workers back into the office.

Well, sort of. A few months later, some of the measures implemented by DOGE were halted or scaled back.

How goes the trend elsewhere? As soon as something becomes possible, someone in politics wants to make it mandatory. A Reason article by Reem Ibrahim takes a look Down Under: “Do You Have a Right To Work From Home? This Australian Politician Thinks So.”

This politician being Victoria’s Premier Jacinta Allan, who aims to lead Australia into a new era of labor paradise, giving “all employees, regardless of the size of the business, the right to work from home. The legislation — which will be introduced in July as a provision of the Equal Opportunity Act and go into effect in September — does not include exemptions for small businesses.

“Working from home,” Ibrahim writes, “is often a win-win for businesses and employees,” but he fails to say it often isn’t. How do you dig ditches or construct skyscrapers or fish in the deep sea from home? To handle the necessary exemptions and complexity, of course, plenty of red tape would be required, which Mr. Ibrahim does mention.

So, does Jacinta Allan advance this innovation because she is a leader of extraordinary foresight?

Doubtful. A few months ago she had to deal with a mini-scandal: Yorick Piper, her husband, was convicted of drunk driving and had his driver’s license taken away.

Gotta get hubby back to work!

Well, it was a temporary license revocation. But alas, poor Yorick: see what you’ve spawned?!?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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free trade & free markets regulation too much government

Thought Deserts

socialism, Mamdani, grocery store, economics

The U.S. is at war — a war that Trump had warned against; and UFOs/drones are again seen over New Jersey. But Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) has something else on his mind, something a little closer to home: regulating grocery store pricing and marketing.

He has co-sponsored S. 3892, dubbed the “Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act of 2026.”

What is price gouging? Selling or offering items at a “grossly excessive price,” which the Federal Trade Commission is tasked with defining. But Luján’s real focus seems to be his distrust of surveillance in stores, which he fears will be used to adjust prices individually.

He somehow doesn’t mention why stores have increased surveillance of customers.

One word: thievery.

But Lujan isn’t alone, fecklessly fighting the food-market market. In Washington State and elsewhere, socialists and other politicians are trying to force grocers to stay open, even if their corporate owners have good reason to shut down a specific store. Seattle’s new mayor, Katie Wilson, says Seattle must not “allow giant grocery chains to stomp all over our communities, close stores at will, and leave behind food deserts.”

A south Tacoma neighborhood Safeway closed, so a state senator cooked up a bill to “give communities time to respond to grocery store closures.”

Truth is, of course, that grocery stores operate on slim margins. The more regulations piled on, and the more criminals you throw at them, the fewer groceries your community will have.

And the “liberals” who vote for such nonsense? They will not like the Mamdani stores they are left with — the subsidized product deserts that only now look good . . . 

In socialist dreams.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Mamdani Attacks Workers

gig workers, freelancers, New York City, Zohran Mamdani

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is going after gig workers. To do his dirty work, the mayor is using holdovers from the Biden administration (who oppose independent contractors), reports C. Jarrett Dieterle at Reason magazine.

The boss of New York City’s Department of Consumer and Work Protection is Sam Levine, who during his tenure at the Federal Trade Commission was a follower of anti-business FTC chair Lina Khan.

The “Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice,” one Julie Su, was Acting Secretary of Labor under Biden. She has warned delivery apps — the apps that make it easier for gig workers to get jobs and get paid — that they had better “comply with worker protections.”

Su is suing delivery service Motoclick for “ignoring the minimum pay rate.” Also at issue are other sins that amount to contracting with independent contractors who, of course, use Motoclick’s app voluntarily and can stop whenever they find the terms not in their interest. She wants (a) millions in damages for the workers and (b) “to shut the company down completely.”

The Mamdani administration has also “settled with” such gig enablers as UberEats, Fantuan, and Hungry Panda for millions of dollars for not treating independent contractors as hourly workers.

Reason points out that Mamdani’s war on freelancers will be costly not only for gig workers and the companies that help them function but also for customers. “Just recently Instacart instituted a $5.99 regulatory response fee due to a recent extension of NYC’s minimum wage law to grocery deliverers.”

Who will be next to be pummeled by commie Mamdani?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets litigation regulation

Free to Advise

New York, law, lawyers, guilds, AI, labor, licensing

People should be free to talk to each other about whatever they want as long as they’re not thereby conspiring to rob and murder and so forth. They should even be able to give advice.

Including legal advice. 

New York State disagrees. 

The Institute for Justice is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to let the non-lawyer volunteers of a company called Upsolve keep giving advice to people facing lawsuits to collect debt.

As IJ explains, New York State is trying to “protect people from hearing advice from volunteers” who have relevant training. The point is that the First Amendment “doesn’t allow the government to outlaw discussion of entire topics . . . by requiring speakers to first obtain an expensive, time-consuming license.” (That Upsolve’s advisors have relevant training is relevant but also superfluous. Even untrained talkers have the right to talk, obviously.)

In 2022, a federal district court agreed with the plaintiff that its volunteers have a First Amendment right to speak and let Upsolve operate as litigation continued. Then a court of appeals ruled against Upsolve. Now IJ and Upsolve hope that the U.S. Supreme Court will step in and put an end to the nonsense. 

We know what this is about: politicians catering to lawyers who don’t want less expensive sources of legal advice out there competing for customers. 

It’s certainly not about protecting those who would have one fewer resource to turn to were this one taken away.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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A Great Un-Finding

EPA, finding, auto emissions, climate

In 2009, President Obama and the EPA decided that the will-o’-the-wisp of fine-tuning the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere fell under the agency’s purview. They introduced a not-so-thin wedge to pry open a vast new province of regulatory oppression.

Obama had sought congressional legislation, but Congress had balked. 

So he proceeded without any new laws; or rather, as so often happens, told an agency to issue new laws. (According to one explanation of the difference between laws and regulations, regulations are rules to implement laws. This doesn’t cover the case of regulations or “findings” that are tantamount to new laws although no elected representatives passed them.)

“Health” was at stake, the tyrants declared. 

The flourishing of industrial civilization, and thus of human beings, are also matters of health. But no matter.

One consequence of the EPA’s newfound authority was the issuance of other dire “rules,” like the Biden-era mandate that most American-made vehicles be electric by 2032.

Now things may change. 

Bigly. 

President Trump has ordered the EPA to un-find its 2009 “finding” that it has blanket authority to regulate human emission of greenhouse gases.

The change will be challenged in court. 

The Trump administration doubtless expects — perhaps even wants — the litigation. A favorable Supreme Court ruling would block the EPA from re-finding its finding during future administrations. Then legislation — actual, congressional — would be the only way to reimpose the craziness. 

A circumstance in which the people might have a say.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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