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Restoring The California Dream, Not Nailing Its Coffin
Virtually everyone, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, is aware of the severity of California’s housing crisis. The bad news is that most proposals floating in Sacramento are likely to do very little to...
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Why Social Justice Is Killing Synagogues and Churches
“If it turns out that there is a God … the worst that you can say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever.”—Woody AllenIf you go into a Reform or Conservative temple, it’s likely that you...
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The Imperial Presidency
President Trump’s attempted end-run to fund his “beautiful” wall has been widely, and properly, denounced as a naked power grab by both the left and even some on the right. Yet if Trump’s action is...
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Amazon: New York Caused the Divorce – Don’t Go Back
Today’s big news is that New Yorkers are pleading with Amazon to reconsider its decision to halt its HQ2 project in their city. The Wall Street Journal reports that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been in...
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Do Californians Support the State Being a National Security Risk on Imported...
Ships under foreign flags arrive daily at ports of call up and down California’s coastline carrying a precious cargo that the State can produce itself, yet it imports it because the powers that be...
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Millennial Preferences: Not So Different
Economists at the Federal Reserve Board have published exhaustive research on Millennial spending patterns and generally find that they are similar to those of other generations (See: “Are Millennials...
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INRIX 2018 Congestion Scorecard
INRIX has released its 2018 traffic congestion numbers for more than 200 urban areas around the world. Unfortunately, the company changed its methodology from previous years, so the numbers aren’t...
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The State of Jefferson
Last year a neighbor began flying a State of Jefferson flag on the side of his house that faces mine. I had no idea what it represented, so I looked it up. Short version: the 23 rural northern counties...
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California's Message: You Built That, Now Get Out!
The people who build our homes increasingly can no longer afford them. As the state elite and their academic cheering crew celebrate our progressive boom, even the most skilled, unionized construction...
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The City Of Dallas Needs A Homebuilding Boom To Ensure Economic Success
While the North Texas economy is booming, the core city of Dallas faces challenges bedeviling other cities: a dwindling middle class, bifurcation into neighborhoods of haves and have-nots, and an...
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Los Angeles Rail: Ridership Decline Estimated at 42 Percent
The Reason Foundation has just published an important review of transit in Los Angeles County, by transportation consultant Thomas A. Rubin and University of Southern California Professor James E....
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San Bernardino Slams Brakes On Big Solar
The San Bernardino County’s Board of Supervisors slammed the brakes on big solar projects and highlighted a challenge California could face if it seeks to eliminate the use of fossil fuels.When we look...
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A Sprinkle of Stores – Wrestling With Jacobs’s Uncertainty
In her 1961 book, Jacobs made daring observations about how the “good city” works. A good number of passages in the book dealt with safety, such as the following:“The basic requisite for such...
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The Cure for Inequality is More Laissez-Faire
That means less cronyism and more competition.“Inequality is not necessarily bad in itself: the key question is to decide whether it is justified.”____ Thomas Piketty in Capital in the Twenty-First...
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Chinese Sci-Fi Writers Give Us A Glimpse Into China’s Dystopian Present And...
A thoroughly scientific dictatorship will never be overthrown — Aldous HuxleyIn contemporary China, it’s hard to know what people outside the party dictatorship think about the future. As in the former...
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RTD’s Death Spiral
Denver’s Regional Transportation District (RTD) has entered what is known in the transit industry as the Transit Death Spiral. Ridership has fallen 7 percent since 2015. This reduces the funds...
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Economics Needed for People-Based Urban Planning: Alain Bertaud Book Review
Alain Bertaud’s new book, Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities (MIT Press), is particularly timely, because of the rising concern about the challenges facing middle-income households. The...
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Sorry Kids — The Next Energy Alternative Is Not Here, Yet
The thousands of young climate change activists in more than one hundred countries that played hooky to march to save the climate on March 15th were vague on their definition of “renewables”. The mass...
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Escaping the Strait Jacket of "Place"
We like to think of "place" as something positive, something that sets our patterns of living in a good way, but sometimes those patterns and forms become a strait jacket that keep our communities from...
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Impact of California's Housing Prices on Construction Workers
This report takes a close look at the impact of California’s very high residential prices on the ability of construction workers — the very people who build our homes — to afford to live within the...
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