The Best of Reason: Everybody Hates Prices
How much should a Wendy's Baconator cost? Elizabeth Warren thinks the government should help decide.
How much should a Wendy's Baconator cost? Elizabeth Warren thinks the government should help decide.
These two candidates can't even be trusted to explain their own ideas.
There's no evidence that greed is causing inflation.
To give storm victims the best chance at recovery, let local knowledge and markets guide decisions.
A bitter election calls for a cocktail—and a lesson in the lunacy of price controls.
The narrower version put forward by her campaign is still bad, but much less so than the much broader one floated earlier.
If the former president wins the 2024 race, the circumstances he would inherit are far more challenging, and several of his policy ideas are destructive.
Good intentions, bad results.
The host of Why We Can't Have Nice Things returns to discuss the podcast's second season, which focuses on how government makes Americans poorer and sicker.
Both propose awful economic policies that appeal to public ignorance.
The American economy is robustly competitive. The federal government could just mess it up.
The rise of neopopulism means those who prioritize free markets have no political home.
A half-baked idea that is just as dubious as Donald Trump's tariffs.
Democrats are pushing a jarringly disconnected economic message.
Plus: Special guest Ben Dreyfuss joins the editors this week.
Government intervention caused inflation, and it threatens to make matters worse.
Amid rising grocery costs, the FTC's fight against the merger may end up hurting the very consumers it's supposed to protect.
Although former President Donald Trump's deregulatory agenda would make some positive changes, it's simply not enough.
Price controls lead to the misallocation of resources, shortages, diminished product quality, and black markets.
Restricting the price of housing kills incentives to supply places to live.
Protests in the country come from an understandable place. But their demands are divorced from certain unfortunate economic realities.
A Biden administration ploy could give the federal government control over drug prices.
Many who see overdraft protection as preferable to other short-term credit options will have fewer choices as some banks decide the service isn't worth offering anymore.
The new libertarian president believes in free markets and the rule of law. When people have those things, prosperity happens.
Americans will be sicker and deader in the long run than they otherwise would have been.
New legislation would intervene in the credit card market to help businesses like Target and Walmart, who don't like the fees they have to pay to accept credit card payments.
California homeowners are finding out that government-imposed market distortions cannot be maintained forever.
Delayed payments will increase, and companies will respond by raising interest rates—or denying low-income applicants outright.
A responsible political class would significantly reform the organization. Instead, they will likely continue to give it more power.
The higher taxes on small businesses and entrepreneurs could slow growth. Less opportunity means more tribalism and division.
And increase total health care costs to boot.
Hungary's inflation hits 24.5 percent—the highest in the European Union—and Orbán's price controls aren't helping.
Deregulated states may spend more on transmission, but that part of the market is still heavily regulated.
Good intentions, bad results.
No, a big storm does not require big government.
Plus: The editors unpack a philosophical question from a listener concerning foreign policy.
This fiscal irresponsibility throws gasoline on the country's already raging inflation fire.
Government should not penalize investment, thwart competition, discourage innovation and work, or obstruct production.
There are few things more politically popular, and more economically counterproductive, than banning price increases during a shortage.
Democrats are trying to inject a political solution into an economic problem.
Corporations were just as greedy when prices fell in 2019 and early 2020.
The bill would penalize companies for price gouging during times of war, public health emergencies, or natural disasters—which would have encompassed all of the last two years.
Certain politicians would do well to learn that inflation is not caused by corporate "greed."
Higher egg prices are not a crisis in the middle of a pandemic full of supply problems.
Once again, Washington is giving us every reason to believe it's selling favors to cronies even if it means everyone else loses.
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