Source: Washington Post
by Catherine Rampell

“On many dimensions, our ability to attract global talent to our shores is a blessing. But this being an election year, and demagogues being demagogues, right-wing pundits and political operatives have worked to darken these bright statistics. Fox News refers to Bidenomics as a ‘migrant job fair.’ The Republican-aligned Heritage Foundation alleges that ‘Americans have been completely left behind in this economy,’ citing as evidence that fact I just mentioned: that all the net new job growth is accounted for by immigrants. But the labor market is not zero-sum, and native-born workers happen to be doing extraordinarily well, too. … There just aren’t enough of us, in total, to fill all the jobs that employers are creating as boomers retire.” (04/23/24)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/23/immigration-jobs-economy/

Source: The Dispatch
by Chris Stirewalt

“America has long loved its bad men, some badder than others. Some were real heroes, like the privateers who harassed enemy shipping during the Revolution and the War of 1812. Some were just thugs with good public relations, like Al Capone. And some were mostly works of fiction, like Billy the Kid. So what’s Donald Trump? I’ve thought often of my mother’s soft spot for [John] Dillinger as I watched Republicans close ranks around Trump. These are mostly people who wouldn’t tolerate Trump’s conduct in an employee or neighbor. … Yet with Trump they have found a way not just to excuse the bad behavior, but to turn it into a mark of honor.” (04/23/24)

https://thedispatch.com/article/what-kind-of-desperado-is-donald-trump/

Source: Cato Institute
by Norbert Michel

“A fully implemented CBDC gives the government complete control over the money going into and coming out of every person’s account. It’s not difficult to see that this level of government control is incompatible with both economic and political freedom.” (04/23/24)

https://www.cato.org/commentary/there-no-good-version-central-bank-digital-currency

Source: EconLog
by Kevin Corcoran

“Thomas Sowell frequently emphasizes the importance of thinking beyond the immediate and obvious impact of some economic policy and thinking through the larger implications. He actually wrote an entire book dedicated to this idea – Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One. A similar and useful exercise to evaluate an idea is to really try to work out not what will unfold next, but what that idea, if true, should imply for the present situation. Here are two common examples where this would come in handy.” (04/23/24)

https://www.econlib.org/ideas-and-implications/

Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall

“The entire concept of net zero — or even dealing with climate change at all — is based upon the idea that not dealing with climate change is more expensive than dealing with it. Now we’ve just got evidence that dealing with it through renewables — those oh so cheap forms of energy collection — is more expensive than we’d thought. 25 million households, £400 per, that’s £10 billion a year. That’s also £10 billion a year forever. So, dealing with climate change is now more expensive than we’d thought it was. The benefit of dealing with it is exactly the same as before. That changes the balance of how much dealing — rather than suffering from — climate change we should be doing.” (04/23/24)

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/renewables-arent-so-cheap-then

Source: RealClearPolitics
by Jeremy Tate

“The commentary class was collectively shocked when new polling this week showed over 90% of Americans across the political spectrum share core principles. More specifically, the vast majority firmly believe in the importance of fundamental freedoms such as the right to vote, equal protection under the law, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. Students of history – or even of current events in most of the world – know that tribalism is the norm and broad support for the freedoms we have in the United States can hardly be presumed. That Americans agree on such fundamentals in the face of the divisive forces of social-media echo chambers, cable news hyperbole, vitriolic electioneering, and the politicization of culture and commerce is the result of the quietly unifying victory of an otherwise highly politicized force: education.” (04/23/24)

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/04/23/the_secret_force_defending_american_principles_150837.html