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free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

Detonators in Place

You must place explosives a certain way when demolishing a building to avoid damaging surrounding structures. But if you just want to destroy, you can forget about such precautions.

Could this be the perspective of those demanding national rent control?

They forget — or ignore — the destruction of living space inflicted by incentive-​incinerating rent controls in places like New York City and Santa Monica.

Rick Moran perceives that President Biden is making a “first move toward a radical national rent control law,” telling agencies to find ways to stop rent increases. Biden is doing so at the behest of 50 congressional communists who have implored him to take executive action to save tenants from rising rents.

According to their letter, “rent is too high and millions of people across this country are struggling to stay stably housed as a result.” Meanwhile, landlords are “increasing the rent for their own profit …”

Profit? In a market economy? 

Rising rents! Caused by … ?

But if you just want to “solve the problem” and have been trained to be heedless of the destruction regulation can cause, you needn’t think about cause and effect — who did what and how and why. In the interventionist mentality, when oil or food or housing prices zoom upwards, only one cause is possible, and it has nothing to do with politics and policies already in place.

Even if the government’s central banks have been zanily pumping up the supply of money and credit while city and state bureaus have been going all-​out to hamper and halt production.

That single cause, they contend, can only be the grasping, grabbing, profit-​seeking capitalists. You know. The bums who make their riches (when they do) by supplying us with what we need.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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general freedom Internet controversy too much government

Regulatory Miasma

Rumors can fly fast. And the Internet not only aids in their spread, but can make even false rumors seem worthwhile.

The gas stove ban rumor, which spurred so many hilarious “memes,” is a case in point.

It appears to have started with a letter from Senator Corey Booker (D‑NJ) and Representative Donald S. Beyer, Jr., to the chair of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission about the risks associated with gas stoves per “indoor air pollution.” According to Rep. Beyer’s defensive tweet, which cleverly enough uses the buzzword “gaslighting,” such risks even include “childhood asthma,” though the word “asthma” does not appear in the politicians’ original letter.

What does appear is extra concern for the “cumulative burden to households that are already more likely to face higher exposure to both indoor and outdoor air pollution” — i.e., “Black, Latino, and low income households.”

Booker and Beyer did not quite suggest a ban; their concern was for more research and regulation. But on Monday, Bloomberg quoted the word “ban” from the lips of a government bureaucrat: “‘This is a hidden hazard,’ Richard Trumka Jr., an agency commissioner, said in an interview. ‘Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.’”

But that’s all very … iffy. More directly, and fueling the reaction, the Governor of the State of New York did propose a ban

Which all goes to show that the “over” in over-​reaction can deflate pretty fast, down to a perfectly apt response, at the speed of … memes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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crime and punishment general freedom too much government

Impending Gifts

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas, denizens of the Sort-​of-​Great State of New York!

It is certainly a time to be jolly. For some time now, Santa and his legislative elves have been striving to give you and yours an ever more overbearing medical regime. 

Take a gander at some of the goodies that have been proposed in the Empire State’s Legislative Workshop:

  • A416 would let governors or health officials detain persons “afflicted with a communicable disease” as long as a state of health emergency has been declared.
  • A279 would institute a statewide vaccine database. If you’re vaccinated, you’ll be in the database unless you make a point of requesting otherwise (who knows, maybe even then).
  • A8398 would eliminate many religious exemptions from compulsory vaccination and limit the ability of local governments and private organizations to issue medical exemptions.
  • A02240 would mandate flu vaccines for children in daycare.

Santa sure has been working overtime the last couple of years.

Will such bills, lapsed at the moment, soon see the light of day? Let’s hope! You people of the State of New York really need this kind of bounty. Especially if you’ve been suffering any delusions about the propriety of independent judgement and personal discretion in such matters.

Did I say Santa? Maybe I meant the Grinch. Or Krampus. The real Santa would be putting moving-​expense vouchers in everyone’s stockings to help them get the heck out of this beleaguered state.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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free trade & free markets property rights too much government

First, Stop Doing That

If a government’s taxes and regulations are making shelter ever more expensive, what should that government do instead?

Stop pushing the disastrous policies, perhaps?

Unlike some other governors who shall remain nameless (one of them rhymes with “DeSantis”), Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin understands that you don’t make things better by making them worse.

In August, Youngkin bluntly told a state senate committee that Virginia homes are too expensive and that a major cause is government interference with the market: “unnecessary regulations, over-​burdensome and inefficient local governments, restrictive zoning policies, and an ideology of fighting tooth and nail against any new development.”

The many bottlenecks include low-​density zoning rules that permit only a single house per property. Arlington County, Virginia, is one local government working to reform zoning so that more houses can be built on a property.

In November, Youngkin proposed a Make Virginia Home plan to unravel many regulations. City Journal notes that although the plan is “short on details,” it’s a good start.

Under the governor’s plan, the state would streamline environmental reviews, investigate how to liberalize the state’s building codes and land-​use and zoning laws, impose deadlines on local governments to speed up approvals of development, and give local governments incentives to adopt their own market-​liberating reforms.

This agenda is indeed only a beginning. But it does recognize a major cause of sky-​rocketing housing costs and what must be done to begin to reduce those costs.

That’s just Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets

Allowed to Make a Living

In 2014, Sally Ladd started a service to help clients in the Poconos rent out their vacation homes. She posted notices on Airbnb, arranged for cleaning, and performed other chores.

But then, in 2017, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs — one of the many government agencies in the world that should not exist — told her that she was operating in Pennsylvania as a real estate broker without a license and must get one or shut down.

The obstacle was senseless. Ladd was already satisfying her customers. And getting the license would have entailed more than 300 hours of schooling, two exams, three years of apprenticeship, and opening an office in Pennsylvania. (Ladd lives in New Jersey.)

She had to shut down.

But she didn’t give up. 

She teamed up with Institute for Justice, which filed suit, arguing, in IJ’s words, that “forcing her to get a full-​blown real-​estate license violated her right to earn an honest living under the Pennsylvania Constitution.”

At first, a lower court would not even consider the case, a decision overruled by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2020. Finally, on October 31, 2022, a trial court affirmed that the “licensing requirements are unreasonable, unduly oppressive, and patently beyond the necessities of the case,” and therefore unconstitutional.

Once again, it’s IJ to the rescue! 

In a world filled with government agencies that shouldn’t exist, the Institute for Justice exists to check them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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tax policy too much government

For a Thousand Years

Time for a gas-​tax holiday. 

When the people lie prostrate, when the people groan under heavy burdens, when the people just can’t take it anymore — and when an election is coming up — that is the time for politicians to relieve everyone’s burden.

A bit.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen favors considering a temporary gas-​tax holiday to emulate some of the states. Reviving the Keystone oil pipeline — no, not something to consider, she says. But she’s okay with a brief gas-​tax break.

Let’s do better.

I propose a millennium-​long gas-​tax holiday, government-​barriers-​to-​drilling holiday, regulation-​of-​all-​industries holiday. Under my plan, government gets all the way out of the way of all markets so we can all be as prosperous as possible, whether or not a big economic crisis is underway.

But would there be any such crises — long-​term and intractable economy-​wide crises, I mean — if my plan were enacted?

When government does everything possible to injure the economy and prevent recovery, it takes a long time for markets to bounce back from shocks. If ever.

Un-fetter the markets, though, and economic actors would be able more rapidly to adjust to major jolts. If gas imported from overseas plummets, producers could then quickly adapt by expanding production. They cannot readily do so now because government imposes so many barriers.

The politicians’ preference for modest, namby-​pamby reprieves are not only substantially weak, they send the wrong signals. They get doled out as if government were doing us a special favor … by not beating us up so badly for a very little while.

We need freedom. On an ongoing basis.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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