The structure of the United States Federal Reserve is complicated, and the nuances of how it makes policy are even more complex. Thus, most news stories focus on the Fed chairman’s personality or his utterances rather than substantive questions. The…
Let’s lose phone-tax hang-up
Changing policies that no longer achieve their original goals is hard. Failing to make such changes when needed, however, harms society as a whole but it seldom causes controversy. No better example of this is the fact that Americans are…
Tone down ecosystem debate
How people view resource scarcity often depends on how distant they are from the resource. Flying over Brazil from north to south a few days ago certainly drove that lesson home for me. The problem of tropical deforestation is real.…
Most charity tax breaks don’t aid poor
Unintended outcomes often reveal underlying principles. This is certainly true in the responses to Congress’s temporary increase in the proportion of income that can be excluded from taxation through charitable gifts. Intended as an incentive to help the hurricane-battered Gulf…