Stock

Jeffrey Miron

This article appeared on Substack on June 22, 2023

Javier Milei is the Argentinian politician who just won the open primary in Argentina’s presidential election. The first round of the general will be October 22nd, with a final round in November, if needed.

Milei describes himself as libertarian, and the media have embraced that label. Should libertarians rejoice? Calm assessment suggests both optimism and caution.

Most of Milei’s policy positions are indeed libertarian: lower expenditure and taxes, privatization of state‐​owned enterprises, legalization of both drugs and organ sales, and reduced restrictions on gun ownership. Certain other positions are not the only reasonable ones for libertarians (eliminating the central bank, dollarizing the currency), but they are not anti‐​libertarian either. Milei is staunchly anti‐​abortion, which sets him apart from many libertarians, but in the company of others.

A potential red flag, however, is Milei’s apparent admiration for Donald Trump (and Jair Bolsonaro). Trump did sign a major tax cut, and his administration slowed the adoption of new regulation. His skepticism about military intervention abroad is also in the ballpark of libertarian views.

On many issues, however, Trump is staunchly anti‐​libertarian: immigration, trade, drug prohibition, Medicare, Social Security, and others.

More broadly, Trump exhibits utter contempt for the rule of law and the Constitutional limits on presidential power.

Thus I remain cautious about how Milei will govern, if he wins election. With luck, his expressed admiration for Trump and Bolsonaro was strategic, not genuine.

Jeffrey A. Singer

Senator Bill Cassidy (R‑LA), joined by four senate colleagues, two Democrats, and two Republicans, sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday, expressing their concern that the Mexican drug cartels have moved into the cigarette smuggling business. The letter stated:

In 2015, the State Department cited activity by terrorist groups, and criminal networks who have used tobacco trafficking operations to finance other crimes, including “money laundering, bulk cash smuggling, and the trafficking in humans, weapons, drugs, antiquities, diamonds, and counterfeit goods.”

Particularly noteworthy, the senators write:

While the primary threat from Mexican TCOs [transnational criminal organizations] come from trafficking in illicit drugs, these organizations have diversified their activities in response to changing conditions. As it has become easier to sell marijuana products in the U.S., Mexican TCOs have prioritized trafficking fentanyl and other synthetic drugs that are cheaper to manufacture, easier to transport, and generate more profit. (Emphasis added)

The letter acknowledges that marijuana, now legally sold in 23 states and the District of Columbia, is no longer as profitable for cartels to sell in the underground market.

Now, new money‐​making opportunities are arising for the cartels as more states and municipalities ramp up cigarette taxes and some ban menthol cigarettes (which disproportionately harms the African‐​American community), seeking to eradicate cigarette smoking.

The senators understand the connection. In their letter, they ask Secretary Blinken:

Does your department have an assessment as to whether any domestic efforts to limit tobacco usage—either enacted or proposed—provide an opportunity for transnational criminal organizations to further their illicit trafficking operations?

The Mexican cartels enjoy prohibition and would oppose efforts to end it. Economist Bruce Yandle, in 1981, developed a theory to explain the demand for and supply of social regulation that he called “Bootleggers and Baptists.” In this brief video, he explained how coalitions form among people who don’t necessarily meet and organize, may have wildly divergent viewpoints, but desire the same outcome. The theory’s name refers to the “unholy” alliance between bootleggers and the temperance movement, who both supported alcohol prohibition.

The senators concluded their letter by urging Secretary Blinken and the Department of State to continue “action to address these threats.”

The letter tacitly acknowledges that prohibition is the problem. First, it mentions that, as marijuana has been legalized in many states, the cartels have shifted to fentanyl and other illicit drugs. Then the letter implies that domestic prohibitionist tobacco policies incentivize the cartels to enter the cigarette smuggling business.

Apparently, the senators get it. Their letter would have been more effective if it explicitly stated the obvious.

Colin Grabow

In the wake of the deadliest U.S. fires in over a century that has left hundreds of structures destroyed and at least $1 billion in damages, Maui is facing a difficult recovery. Making that process even more arduous are protectionist U.S. policies that will inflate the cost of the island’s rebuilding effort.

One such policy that particularly impacts Hawaii is the Jones Act. Passed in 1920, the law restricts domestic waterborne transportation—including between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland—to vessels that are registered and built in the United States as well as mostly owned and crewed by Americans. Such measures significantly raise the cost of shipping.

The requirement that vessels be constructed in a U.S. shipyard, for example, means that the most recent containership built to serve Hawaii from the U.S. mainland had a price tag of over $225 million. In comparison, similarly‐​sized ships can be purchased in South Korea for approximately $41 million. Even the barges that transport goods within the Aloha State, such as between Honolulu and Maui, are unnecessarily pricey.

In addition to being expensive to build, the vessels are also roughly three times more costly to operate than their internationally‐​flagged counterparts. Further aggravating matters is very limited competition. Of the world’s approximately 55,000 commercial ships only 93 comply with the law, and just two shipping companies—Matson and Pasha Hawaii—dominate the Hawaii trade lane.

The inevitable result of mixing expensive ships with limited competition is inflated shipping prices.

That’s no small matter for islands that overwhelmingly turn to ocean shipping for transporting most of what they consume—including building materials. Indeed, Hawaii construction companies have cited shipping and the duopoly they must rely on to provide items such as drywall and screws as a cost driver. A 2020 report released by the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii pegged the Jones Act’s cost of real estate and construction services in Hawaii at between $54.4 million and $255.9 million annually.

Fortunately, there is a way to avoid this de facto Jones Act tax: buying products from abroad. Unlike goods arriving from the rest of the United States, imports can take advantage of less costly international shipping. That means lower costs for consumers and businesses.

Or at least it would, if not for yet further trade restrictions that offset at least some of the shipping savings.

U.S. “trade remedy” laws—antidumping and countervailing duties as well as safeguard measures that increase tariffs—significantly raise the cost of many materials that Hawaii will likely need in its recovery process. Among such measures currently in place: duties on hardwood plywood from China, quartz counters from India and Turkey, and steel nails from a host of countries.

Compounding matters are Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum and Section 301 tariffs on numerous products from China. Imposed by President Trump and continued by President Biden (albeit with some modifications in the case of steel and aluminum), both sets of tariffs have hit the construction industry and homebuilding products particularly hard. In the face of such tariffs, homebuilders are left with an unpleasant choice: continue with business as usual and pass along the added costs or develop new supply chains elsewhere—a process that adds time and costs as trustworthy new suppliers are identified.

On top of all this are the plain old regular tariffs imposed on a range of building supplies including copper nails (5.7 percent), floor and wall tiles (3.9–9 percent depending on material), and ceramic roofing tiles (13.5 percent).

Wherever the people of Hawaii turn, a protectionist policy seemingly awaits that will drive up the cost of rebuilding.

In the weeks and months ahead, there is sure to be plenty of discussion about how Washington can assist Maui’s recovery. A great place for federal policymakers to start would be by identifying government‐​imposed obstacles to the island’s rebuilding effort and seeking their removal. Protectionist trade policies should be high on their list.

Chris Edwards

Congress is scheduled to consider a major farm bill this year, which will reauthorize many U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs, including farm subsidies and food stamps. The legislation could cost $150 billion a year and so presents an opportunity to find budget savings and reduce the flood of red ink in Washington.

Spending reformers will have to battle the farm bill’s special interest logroll. This press release from Republicans on the Senate’s agriculture committee discusses “farmers’ priorities in the Farm Bill” and the need for “producer‐​focused” legislation. But what about taxpayer priorities? And why not restraint‐​focused legislation?

The top Republican on the committee, John Boozman, notes that the USDA has “over nearly 100,000 employees, 29 agencies and 4,500 locations in the U.S. and abroad.” 100,000! Boozman calls for better USDA management, but he should be asking why the bureaucracy is the size of a city.

The table summarizes USDA employment, which encompasses agriculture, food subsidies, rural subsidies, and the Forest Service. The data are from page 111 here, but I’ve retitled some activities.

This USDA employee breakdown looks different than a USDA spending breakdown. For example, the USDA spends four times more on food subsidies than on agriculture, but food subsidy programs require relatively few federal workers because they are mainly administered by the states.

Some USDA activities are in‐​house and some are outsourced. The Agricultural Research Service is a huge operation of more than 6,000 USDA employees in 90 locations, whereas the NIFA funds thousands of researchers at nonfederal institutions across the nation.

We can roughly divide USDA employees into three groups: (i) those supporting private interests, (ii) those supporting the broad public interest, and (iii) those in the general bureaucracy.

The first group includes employees handing out farm and food subsidies. We can downsize this workforce as we cut farm subsidies and devolve food stamp and school lunch programs to the states.

Some activities, such as the NRCS, produce both private and public benefits. The agency hands outs billions of dollars a year in subsidies to farmers but also seeks broader environmental and climate change benefits.

USDA regulatory activities ostensibly benefit the general public, but the federal regulatory process can be captured by some businesses at the expense of other businesses and consumers. Regulations can also raise costs and undermine innovation.

USDA’s research creates benefits for farmers and the general public. But most industries fund their own research even though the benefits often spill over to society more broadly. It is true that the government increasingly subsidizes research in many industries, not just agriculture, but that is a misguided direction. For the farm bill, lawmakers should explore what agricultural and food research can be shifted to the private sector.

Policymakers should downsize the USDA’s general bureaucracy. The USDA has more than 1,200 employees in two economics and one statistics office. These offices produce useful data and reports, but if the government didn’t micromanage agriculture, it wouldn’t need all that information.

The USDA runs 2,300 offices across the nation to advise and subsidize farmers. This website encourages farmers to visit their local offices because the “Farm Service Agency administers more than 50 federal farm programs nationwide. There is literally something of interest to everyone regardless of the size or type of a particular ag operation. Whether you have a row crop, livestock, diversified, niche market, small or large operation, there are likely Farm Service Agency programs for which you may qualify.”

Having federal helpers in every community in the nation is a bizarre feature of the agriculture industry. There is no system of offices across the nation with federal helpers subsidizing, say, restaurant entrepreneurs with 50 programs. Yet restaurants are very high risk, and entrepreneurs face many challenges in food preparation, worker scheduling, cash flow, and marketing.

Reformers in Congress should challenge farm bill supporters. Does the USDA need to be the size of a city? Does it make sense in our online age to fund thousands of brick‐​and‐​mortar offices? Shouldn’t farmers stand on their own two feet in the market economy? Shouldn’t subsidies be cut given today’s huge federal deficits?

Data Notes: The data in the table are full‐​time equivalents. The figures for 2024 are proposed by the Biden administration. Within the Farm Service Agency, about 7,000 individuals are paid for by the USDA but work for nonfederal entities.

Marc Joffe

With the national shortage of doctors and the cost of visiting a physician, policymakers should be offering patients the option to use other qualified medical providers. Aside from nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, and nurse midwives, a category of professionals that can often step in for doctors is pharmacists. Because pharmacists have deep knowledge of drug benefits and side‐​effects, they are qualified to prescribe medications in many cases. Since patients often schedule medical appointments just to obtain or change prescriptions, empowering pharmacists to make certain prescribing decisions can reduce the burden on doctors and healthcare costs.

Many states are now allowing pharmacists to dispense contraceptives, emergency HIV preventatives, and vaccinations without involving a doctor. And, as my colleague Jeff Singer noted last year, the FDA has authorized pharmacists to prescribe Paxlovid to patients suffering from COVID-19.

But with the passage of HB 182 in 2019, Idaho has gone much further, allowing pharmacists to prescribe statin drugs to people who are on diabetes medications (statins have been shown to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease in people with diabetes), short‐​acting beta‐​agonists for those suffering asthma, nebulizers, influenza medications, and several other categories of prescription drugs and devices.

As explained by Alex Adams, formerly Executive Director of the Idaho State Board of Pharmacy, the state’s laws and regulations are intended to facilitate pharmacist prescribing if one of the following four conditions is met:

A new diagnosis is not required;
The condition to be treated is minor and generally self‐​limiting;
The condition has a test waived under the federal Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) to guide diagnosis; or
There is an emergency situation, whereby the patient’s health or safety is threatened without immediate access to a prescription.

The last category could have significant implications for health care costs as well as patient wellbeing. Quickly receiving the right prescription in an emergency may enable patients to avoid costly and time‐​consuming visits to the emergency room. That said, the Idaho law limits the amount of a medication a pharmacist may prescribe in an emergency situation to the quantity a patient needs until he or she can see another provider.

Other states are moving in Idaho’s direction. In 2021, Colorado adopted SB 21–094 which gave pharmacists the authority to change or extend physician’s prescriptions. It also authorized pharmacist prescribing for conditions in the first three categories included in the Idaho law: those involving no new diagnosis, those that are minor and generally self‐​limiting, and those identified by a CLIA‐​waived test.

Colorado‐​based Safeway pharmacies responded by offering “oral contraceptives, EpiPens, glucagon, diabetes supplies and treatments for UTIs, cold sores, acne, strep throat, flu, and migraines” without a doctor’s prescription.

Earlier this year, the Montana legislature passed SB 112, which, like Colorado, allows pharmacist prescribing in the first three categories covered by Idaho’s legislation. The bill passed with large majorities despite opposition from the American Medical Association.

Extending pharmacist scope of practice to include prescribing authority is a commonsense reform that more states should consider.

Daniel Raisbeck

“We are all Peronists,” remarked Argentina’s corporatist strongman Juan Domingo Perón in 1972, the year before he assumed the presidency for the second time. His quip turned out to be more accurate for the 21st century than for his own times; in 1976, Perón’s second wife, Isabel, was ousted from power by a military junta that ruled until 1983, when the Peronist Justicialist Party lost the presidential election in an upset. Since 2003, however, Argentina has been under left‐​wing, Peronist governments for all but four years.

In the 2015 presidential election, Mauricio Macri, a center‐​right businessman, narrowly defeated his Peronist opponent with the promise to cut inflation to a single digit and allow a stagnant economy to grow. During Macri’s four‐​year term, however, inflation doubled (from 27 to 54 percent), the country’s Gross Domestic Product shrank, and the Argentine peso plummeted against the dollar. Having failed to cut public spending, Macri turned to the International Monetary Fund for the largest loan in the institution’s history ($57 billion). In late 2019, Macri lost his reelection bid to the current, Justicialist Party president Alberto Fernández, a Peronist ally of former leader Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The latter was in office between 2007 and 2015, having succeeded her deceased husband, Nestor Kirchner, the winner of the 2003 election.

In theory, this year’s election should have been a rematch of the 2019 campaign. However, neither Fernandez nor Macri will be on the ballot. The former, who has presided over a debt default in 2020 and what is now triple‐​digit inflation—the official, annual rate was 114 percent in June—decided (no doubt wisely) not to run. Macri, who would have faced serious primary contenders in his own party, stepped aside as well. Still, the pundits were expecting their respective successors to face off for the presidency. Voters had other things in mind.

The Peronists are grouped under a coalition called “Frente de Todos” (Everyone’s Front). The main center‐​right opposition, led by Macri until recently, is called “Juntos por el Cambio” (United for Change). Contrary to polling forecasts, neither side obtained the largest percentage of the vote in Sunday’s mandatory presidential primaries. Instead, the overall winner—with 30 percent of the vote— was Javier Milei, a free‐​market economist who was first elected as a Congressman for a newly created party—Liberty Advances— in November of 2021.

Milei came to prominence as an outspoken guest in political television shows, where he lambasted Cristina Kirchner, the current vice‐​president, for economic incompetence and her government’s blatant corruption (last December, an Argentine federal court found Kirchner guilty of appropriating close to USD $1 billion from sham contracts and spurious infrastructure projects). Macri, Kirchner’s successor, fared little better according to Milei, who remarked that the former president’s government merely offered “socialism with good manners.”

A former heavy metal vocalist, Milei has proven to be a skilled showman, with a particular talent for illustrating that, when applied, the theories of classical liberalism benefit the ordinary man. From the outset of his congressional term, Milei announced that he would not accept his due salary. Instead, he carries out a monthly raffle in which anyone can register for a chance to win around nine times the national monthly minimum wage. Whereas his opponents decry a dangerous, self‐​promoting scheme to gather personal data from thousands of participants, Milei explains that he is returning to the taxpayers what is rightfully theirs.

Milei’s idiosyncracies—he thanked his four dogs for helping him to victory— his disheveled, polemical style, and his routinely packed political rallies, which resemble hard rock concerts, all might seem to preclude any ideological coherence. That is not the case. Milei’s platform affirms that “the Argentine state is the principal cause of Argentines’ poverty.” It includes a unilateral commercial opening for highly protectionist Argentina, the privatization of all state‐​owned companies, a universal school voucher program, a 15 percent reduction in public spending as a percentage of GDP, eliminating 17 of 25 ministries or departments of state, and getting rid of utilities, subsidies, and price controls.

Milei’s main mentor is Alberto Benegas Lynch, a respected classical liberal economist. He considers Milei an heir to Juan Bautista Alberdi, the creator of the 1853 constitution, and credits him with having “transferred (classical) liberal ideas to the political sphere after an absence of eight decades.” Benegas Lynch’s father, Alberto Benegas Sr., founded a think tank in the 1950s, the Center for Liberty Studies, which invited Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises—among other scholars— to lecture in Buenos Aires. Milei is thus the product of a rich intellectual pedigree.

Milei’s critics still denounce him as a demagogue with an arsenal of questionable antics, beginning with his trademark profanity, which he routinely aims at particular opponents and the “political caste” in general. Ideologically, left‐​wingers tend to attack Milei for his radical “neoliberal” agenda. The intelligentsia also has tried to associate Milei with nationalist and “populist” right‐​wing figures such as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro. The press regularly describes him as “ultra right‐​wing.”

The problem with that theory is that, although Milei seems not to mind the Trump‐​Bolsonaro associations and even encourages them, he is certainly no economic nationalist. In fact, his trademark policy proposal to tame inflation in Argentina is to dollarize the economy, shut down the central bank, and get rid of the national currency. As my colleague Gabriela Calderón and I argue in a recent Cato Institute policy brief, dollarization is both necessary and long overdue in Argentina. In the primaries, the largest block of voters agreed.

The charges of demagoguery against Milei ring most true in terms of certain policy proposals that seem unachievable. For instance, his platform aims to cut public spending drastically without firing any current functionaries and to eliminate subsidies and price controls without affecting artificially low utility bills. As economist Iván Carrino notes, solving such problems painlessly is highly improbable.

A few days ago, Milei was still an underdog, struggling for relevance in a three‐​way race according to the polls. Now he is the man to beat for both of his main opponents: Patricia Bullrich, Macri’s former Minister of Security, and Sergio Massa, the Peronist candidate and current Minister of Finance. Were he to win the presidency in October, Milei is unlikely to implement all of his ambitious agenda. If he manages to dollarize Argentina, however, Milei will have deprived the political class of any ability to carry out monetary policy, thus breaking the long cycle of currency devaluation, monetized debt, triple‐​digit inflation, and chronically decreasing purchasing power. This alone would be a monumental service to his countrymen.

As things stand, Massa would be eliminated in the first round of voting in October, with Milei and Bullrich proceeding to a run‐​off in November. In which case one thing will be certain: Argentines are all Peronists no longer.

Paul Matzko

My policy analysis of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) is now online.

In a nutshell, the JCPA and similar link taxes in California, Canada, and Australia would be a government‐​mandated cross‐​subsidy from Big Tech to Big Ink. And while link tax proponents say they want to save small, local newspapers from bankruptcy, the actual link tax bargaining mechanism would primarily benefit larger, regional newspapers that have already found a solid footing in the digital marketplace. Instead of saving local newspapers, a link tax would perversely fuel further consolidation in the news industry.

Worse yet, a link tax would create a radical and novel quasi‐​property right in information that targets the basic infrastructure of the modern internet. We take it for granted today, but the “web” in “world wide web” is a reference to the billions of hyperlinks that seamlessly and costlessly bind together discrete websites from around the world into an interconnected whole.

A link tax introduces friction and cost into that process by asserting that those wanting to merely link to the web address of news content need paid permission. It’s a form of digital enclosure, taking information that was once “free as the air to common use” and putting it behind a wall.

While a link tax may return some financial value to the newly endowed rights holder, it will create a far larger informational deadweight loss on consumers. A link tax would mean fewer news articles from fewer newspapers reaching fewer consumers.

The JCPA is a bad idea, but state‐​level “baby link taxes” like that which recently passed the California Assembly (and is awaiting a State Senate hearing) could be even worse:

California’s proposed link tax, the CJPA, would cause that fragmentation to run even deeper. Not only would we see the further devolution of the World Wide Web into various Nation Wide Webs, but the internet in the United States might end up being fractured into 50 different instances, some with aggregated access to news and some without, and 50 different compensation schemes. Were this kind of state‐​by‐​state regulation of the internet to pass muster under the Commerce Clause — which remains to be seen — it would create a precedent for additional transfers from tech companies to favored local industries. Such a patchwork approach to internet regulation would be a recipe for disaster for American predominance in online innovation. It would be ironic if California, the home of Silicon Valley and a birthplace of the modern internet, were ultimately responsible for that failure.

For more, check out the full analysis here.

Jeffrey A. Singer

This month Australian researchers published the results of a population cohort study that followed the 5‑year trajectory of 3.7 million adult patients in New South Wales who were prescribed opioids for pain in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Their conclusion:

Results of this cohort study suggest that most individuals commencing treatment with prescription opioids had relatively low and time‐​limited exposure to opioids over a 5‑year period. The small proportion [3 percent] of individuals with sustained or increasing use was older with more comorbidities and use of psychotropic and other analgesic drugs, likely reflecting a higher prevalence of pain and treatment needs in these individuals.

This study is the most recent one to pour cold water on the prevailing narrative about the cause of the opioid overdose crisis.

H.L. Mencken famously said, “Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well‐​known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” For the past 20 years, policymakers, pundits, and now, filmmakers have locked in on an explanation for the overdose crisis that fits Mencken’s description. Promoted by books such as Dreamland by Sam Quinones and Dopesick by Beth Macy, the myth has taken hold that doctors “overprescribing” prescription pain pills created a generation of addicts that led to the overdose crisis. Doctors were encouraged to overprescribe by greedy pharmaceutical companies, which fed them disinformation about the safety of opioids (Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, is alleged to be the worst offender). This narrative became further entrenched by the miniseries adaptation of Dopesick that ran on Hulu. The series was so popular that Netflix decided to run its version of the same tired narrative called “Painkiller.”

Research shows the overdose rate has been on an exponential growth trend since at least the late 1970s (the Food and Drug Administration approved Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin in 1996), with different drugs predominating as the cause of overdoses at different times. A 2019 U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee report found that the overdose rate began increasing in 1959. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) reveal no correlation between the volume of painkiller prescriptions and the nonmedical use of or addiction to prescription painkillers. Furthermore, the NSDUH indicates that the prescription pain pill addiction rate for persons over age 18 has been essentially unchanged at less than 0.7 percent since the survey began in 2002.

Moreover, a recent study published in the Yale Law and Policy Review found “it is not clear that nonmedical opioid use has significantly changed since 1990” and “only 9 percent of nonmedical opioid users in 2001 reported ever using OxyContin during their lifetime.” Even if it isn’t readily apparent that nonmedical opioid use has changed significantly in the past 33 years, it should be evident that the “iron law of prohibition” made nonmedical opioid use more dangerous during that period.

The opioid overprescribing narrative also doesn’t explain why overdose deaths involving stimulants like cocaine and methamphetamine have risen to record levels. Doctors don’t prescribe these psychostimulants to their pain patients. And it also doesn’t explain why opioid‐​related overdose deaths (mostly from illicit fentanyl) have soared to over 80,000 last year while the opioid prescription rate has dropped 60 percent since its peak in 2011.

I made my case against the prevailing narrative in a Soho Forum debate last year with Dr. Adriane Fugh‐​Berman of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing (PROP).

Policymakers embrace the neat, plausible, and wrong explanation for the overdose crisis because it is easier than accepting this inconvenient truth: the overdose crisis is caused by the intersection of sociocultural and psychosocial developments and the dangerous black market that results from drug prohibition. Unless they face the truth, the overdose crisis will continue.

Colleen Hroncich

Continuing last week’s theme, Stossel in the Classroom (SITC) is another great resource for educators regardless of your schooling model. The program had a very simple origin. John Stossel was a long‐​time consumer reporter who turned his attention to government corruption and waste. After he learned some basic economics, he started doing TV stories that explained economic principles. Soon teachers were writing to him to ask for copies of his shows to use in class. That eventually resulted in Stossel in the Classroom.

For many years, Stossel in the Classroom produced a yearly DVD that included around a dozen short videos, along with a teacher’s guide with discussion questions and a quiz. Teachers or homeschoolers could register to receive a free copy of the DVD by mail. The videos are completely online now, with a convenient library that can be searched for specific topics.

To help students go deeper on specific issue areas, some of the SITC videos are grouped into modules. Categories include “The American Constitution in Our Lives,” “Innovation and Entrepreneurship,” and “Global Issues.”

SITC also has a “Both Sides of the Issue” series to help teachers present balanced lessons on the topics covered by Stossel’s videos. The series includes a video from someone championing one side of an issue like minimum wage, socialism, and climate change, with a corresponding Stossel video that supports the other side. An accompanying discussion guide has questions to help students understand the arguments made in both videos.

When my older kids were in high school, I taught a homeschool co‐​op class using Stossel in the Classroom videos as the foundation. Each week, we’d select a few topics from the DVD, watch the video, and have a lively discussion. We saw a direct impact from the classes. Kids who previously weren’t at all interested in current events started following the news and wanted to get involved with speech and debate. At the end of the year—by student request—we held a small mock trial competition. Some of the former students still mention how much they enjoyed that class when I see them.

While the videos and discussion questions are great, one of my kids’ favorite parts of Stossel in the Classroom has been the essay contest. When my oldest competed in it, there was a different topic each year. She won the contest when she was in 11th grade, and the prize was a trip to New York City to meet John Stossel and film a segment for his show. The contest has changed a bit over the years. There are now three topics to choose from with a top prize of $2,500. There is also a video contest using the same topics. In all, SITC awarded over $25,000 in prizes this year. For parents or teachers trying to encourage students to write, essay contests with exciting prizes can be a great incentive.

Stossel in the Classroom has more than 300 videos and new ones are regularly added. More than 150,000 teachers have used SITC as part of their lesson plans. If you’re looking for a way to get your children or students engaged on the important issues of the day, you might want to check out Stossel in the Classroom.

Marc Joffe

Passing laws, adopting regulations, and spending money to fight climate change are popular activities for both elected and unelected officials in the San Francisco Bay Area. But since they only govern 2.3 percent of the U.S. population, their ability to turn the tide on greenhouse gas emissions is limited. Instead, their costly and coercive policies drive up the area’s cost of living and help drive out residents.

In a previous post I described some of the high cost, low ridership Bay Area transit projects that raise local sales taxes while replacing only a handful of car trips. Since I last wrote, we have learned that San Francisco’s new $2,000,000,000 Central Subway is afflicted by serious water intrusion issues, making the travel experience less appealing for the roughly 1,000 passengers that use the Chinatown station each day.

More recently, local lawmakers have declared war on natural gas, an energy source that used to be popular with some environmentalists because it burns more cleanly than other fossil fuels. But now the intention is to fully embrace electricity even though California is unwilling to add nuclear generating capacity and lacks the enormous number of solar panels and windmills needed to fully power the state.

The war on natural gas started in Berkeley, the birthplace of many ill‐​advised policies. In 2019, the City Council banned natural gas hookups in most new buildings. This law made it effectively impossible to install gas ovens in new construction, whether residential or commercial. The latter triggered concern from the California Restaurant Association, which filed suit claiming that Berkeley’s ban was preempted by federal law. After the Association’s claim was dismissed by a District court, a panel of judges from the Ninth Circuit ruled in its favor. The judges concluded that the Berkeley ordinance conflicted with the Energy Policy and Conservation Act which prohibits “State and local regulations concerning the energy use of many natural gas appliances, including those used in household and restaurant kitchens.” Even though Berkeley did not try to regulate appliances directly, the court found that forbidding their connection to gas lines was a distinction without a difference.

Dozens of other local governments in the Bay Area and beyond have also adopted natural gas restrictions, and it now remains to be seen how these ordinances will be affected by the Ninth Circuit ruling. But attempts to restrict gas appliances at the local, state, and federal level are prompting a backlash from moderate and conservative lawmakers.

The Texas legislature passed, and Governor Greg Abbot signed a law in 2021 that prevents local governments from banning natural gas. Florida adopted similar legislation earlier this year, as have several other states.

At the federal level, the House of Representatives recently passed the “Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act” (HR 1615) which denies the Consumer Product Safety Commission funding to implement any restrictions on gas stoves. Although this bill’s future in the Senate is uncertain, it is notable that the measure received support from several House Democrats.

It is ironic that the debate has focused on gas stoves, since these appliances account for a fraction of one percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. But other gas appliances generate emissions, and these have also come under attack from Bay Area leaders.

In March 2023, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) introduced a ban on furnaces and water heaters that generate Nitrogen Oxide. BAAQMD couched this move as an air pollution reduction measure, noting that gas‐​powered furnaces and water heaters vent their exhaust to the outdoors, unlike stoves which were gas not included in the ban.

But the climate effects of natural gas appeared to be on the district’s agenda as well. It calculated that the ban would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 4,810,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually by 2046. This savings amount to less than 0.1 percent of current U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

While the new regulations will not materially affect global warming, they will impose substantial costs on Bay Area homeowners. After reviewing publicly available installation cost data, the Air‐​Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI) found that the average cost of buying and installing an electric water heater in the Bay Area was $8,577. Electric heat pumps (to replace gas furnaces) were even more expensive, averaging $22,745 per installation. Costs are particularly high for older homes where the main electrical service panel may lack the capacity to power additional 240v appliances, and which may also require ductwork and rewiring.

The new mandate also has implications for tiny houses. A local contractor, Dan McDunn, told me that he used to use exterior mounted, gas, on demand water heaters for the Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) he has been building for Bay Area homeowners in their backyards. ADUs are a favorite of YIMBYs who are trying to increase the local housing stock. Unfortunately, electric water heaters have a much larger footprint, taking up about 10‐​square feet even in a tiny home. While this may seem small, it represents close to five percent of the floor space in a 220‐​square foot ADU.

A better option to reduce nitrogen oxide and greenhouse gas emissions might have been to provide incentives for homeowners to gradually replace their gas appliances, but bans appear to be more newsworthy. And, in the Bay Area, it too often seems that developing a reputation for fighting climate change is more important than doing so cost‐​effectively.