Photo: Detroit, 1942 via Wikipedia After the 1805 fire that left 600 Detroit residents homeless, territorial Judge Augustus Woodward announced he had copied the plans for the soon-to-be-built Washington, D.C., and he would use them to create an even greater city. That inspired Father Gabriel Richard to bless the plan with the Latin phrase Resuget […]

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(Source: sneurgaonkar/Flickr/Creative Commons) In 1995, we encountered a group of economic advisors to Governor John Engler of Michigan, intent on cutting property taxes. We reminded them of California’s 1979 Proposition 13. After Prop. 13 rolled back and froze property taxes, sales taxes reached crushing levels, budget crises became routine, local services collapsed, and public schools […]

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How’s your 401(k) doing? Working Americans ask themselves this question—and angst about the answer—an awfully lot these days. And why not? For most Americans, retirement has turned chillingly stark: Either you have a robust set of investments in your 401(k) or you’re facing a rocky retirement. This article was originally published in Too Much and […]

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(Source: AP) Sometimes history happens at the moment when no one is looking. On weekends in late August, the president of the United States ought to be playing golf or loafing at Camp David, not making headlines. Yet Barack Obama chose Labor Day weekend to unveil arguably the most consequential foreign policy shift of his […]

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Every American schoolchild learns about the value of the free marketplace. The thrust is that markets create optimal outcomes through a balance in the supply of goods and the demand for them. But there are some serious problems with this sunny view, like how the effects of today’s economic decisions may stretch over long spans […]

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