My weekly reading for June 30, 2024

Here are some highlights.

By Fiona Harrigan, RodeJune 24, 2024.

Extract:

Such as population and economic decline hit In many parts of the U.S. heartland, some policy analysts and elected officials have begun to take positions support behind place-based visas that would bring highly qualified immigrants to those areas experiencing decline or stagnation. The idea received another nod this weekend.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors – a nonpartisan organization of mayors and other elected officials representing cities with a population of 30,000 or more –called to federal lawmakers to establish a “heartland visa” that would bring highly skilled immigrants and immigrant entrepreneurs to communities facing population and economic decline.

by Josh Blackman, Rode, June 28, 2024.

Extract:

It’s quite a task! The standards it sets are so byzantine that it is unlikely anyone could ever satisfy them. And maybe that’s the point. Judge Barrett, more than anyone else on the Court, serves as a gatekeeper. She is extremely stingy when it comes to certificate subsidies. She denies all emergency requests on the shadow docket (unless they come from the Fifth Circuit). She no longer believes in certainty before judgment. And she’s forcing lawyers to establish status with a level of certainty I’ve never seen before. Critics often claim that the Roberts Court is slamming the courthouse doors shut. Justice Barrett is the embodiment of that theme.

And:

I’ve made this point before and I’ll make it again. Judge Barrett spent virtually no time in private practice. During her time in academia, she filed zero lawsuits. And she had a very short stint on the appeals court. She simply lacks the experience of an attorney who has attempted to seek expedited relief in a complex case with a fast-moving timeline. To argue that sophisticated litigants have failed to bear a burden not clearly established in case law, introspection would suggest that such a burden is not actually present. I feel like Judge Barrett grades assignments the way she would grade a seminar paper – or worse, provide feedback at a faculty workshop. She has extremely high expectations, which stem from her subjective sense of which cases belong in federal courts and which do not.

Note from DRH: The way I expressed Josh’s point when I explained it to someone at Pickleball yesterday is, “She seems to be grading students’ papers and insisting that they get an A+.”

by Ryan Bourne, AIERJune 28, 2024.

For Americans who are only concerned with British politics, the recent TV debate between Labor leader Keir Starmer and Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak may sound familiar. That’s because the Tory leader’s electoral argument on the economy could easily have come from a Reaganite Republican. “Vote Labour, and your family’s taxes will rise significantly,” Sunak’s paraphrased message read. “Not only that, but your fuel bills will rise as Labor pushes ahead with unnecessarily fast plans to decarbonise the economy.” Here Sunak sounded like Grover Norquist, warning that Britain’s progressive left would raise people’s taxes and push up expensive environmental regulations.

To which a Brit would say: “the copper neck of it!” Yes, Labor will certainly tax, spend and regulate more than the Conservatives. But Sunak’s own government is no stranger to expanding the state’s footprint and aggressively raising taxes. Under the chancellorship of Sunak-turned-prime minister, Britain’s total tax burden has risen by a whopping 3.4 percent of GDP since 2019 to the highest level since the aftermath of the Second World War. The Prime Minister has frozen income tax thresholds amid a climate of high inflation to deliver the biggest secret tax rise in British history. All this to fund a state that has already grown to more than 40 percent of GDP – the largest since the start of the Thatcher revolution – with the Tories pushing for new regulators for digital markets and football, their own net zero target and further state takeover. of childcare for young children, and plans to (eventually) ban smoking completely.

DRH note:

In considering this article, I pointed out to Ryan that I particularly appreciate the fact that he expressed the tax increases as a percentage of GDP; it is an important dose of arithmetic skills. He replied that this happens more often in Britain than in the US

I also just noticed that Ryan put it in terms of tax burden, which isn’t entirely correct. The tax burden includes the deadweight loss of taxes, which would be quite high at that tax level since the DWL of a tax is proportional to the square of the tax rate. A correct statement would be that tax income have increased by 3.4 percent of GDP.

by Heather Haddon, Wall Street JournalJune 17, 2024.

Monique Pizano worked as a general manager for three years and her six-figure income has allowed her to save for a down payment on her house, honeymoon in Japan and support her mother.

The 27-year-old from Ontario, California, feels fortunate: Many of her fellow graduates at the University of California, Riverside, have been unable to find jobs or earn low hourly wages.

I found this article, which is unfortunately closed, very inspiring.

Please note that some regulations apply here:

Less attention was paid to the requirement for chains to increase the remuneration of managers. Major fast-food chains must pay salaried managers at least $83,200 to comply with California rules, up from $66,560. If not, operators must pay their managers an hourly wage, plus overtime if they work more than 40 hours per week.

But in the case of Monique Pisano, that arrangement is clearly non-binding.

By the way, Heather Haddon is becoming one of my favorite WSJ reporters on labor market issues: she calls balls and strikes fair, something WSJ reporters don’t always do.