INFLATION IS ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE A MONETARY PHENOMENON: Prof. Steve Hanke has a suggestion (probably behind a paywall) for how Erdogan can save the Turkish Lira – institute a currency board. I’m not holding my breath.

THE KIDS AREN’T ALL RIGHT: Sean Malone of FEE looks at the conflict between what we know about motivation from neuroscience and what today’s trendy philosophies tell kids. As Shawn says,

I contend that a lot of these ideas ultimately serve to destabilize young people’s sense of their own individuality and wreck their ability to deal with reality in ways that are most likely to leave them depressed and despondent.

Sounds right to me.

SICK MAN OF EUROPE: Turkey is failing primarily because strongman Erdogan doesn’t understand basic economics.

LET THERE BE AFFORDABLE LIGHT: The Department of Energy is proposing ending the Obama-era ban on incandescent light-bulbs.

RICHARD TRUMKA PLAYING KING CANUTE: The AFL-CIO President claims unions are back in a big way. My colleague Trey Kovacs points out the flaws in his stance.

ETA: Yes, I know about Cnut. If you’d like to know more about the history of the story of Cnut and the waves, may I recommend A Clerk of Oxford? Her blog is a treasure trove of information about Anglo-Saxon England.

PLANNERS LOVE IT; NO-ONE ELSE DOES: Warren Meyer provides yet more evidence that investing in light rail kills transit systems.

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY MAOISM: Among all the complaints about the administration’s China trade policy, it’s often overlooked that Xi is no Deng, and is happy to warp international trade for domestic purposes. AEI’s Derek Scissors looks at the implications:

Xi will be in power indefinitely, leaving little hope for genuine change and leading to broader American antagonism as his personal dictatorship persists.

American policymakers demanding the PRC abandon much of its industrial policy can seem naïve. It’s more likely they have come to accept a painful trade conflict because they don’t believe China is truly willing to become a good partner. After 25 years of enormous expansion, the US-PRC economic relationship is going to shrink, sooner or later.

More on this from Derek here.

THE INTERNET SALES TAX PAPERWORK AVALANCHE: “It’s killing my business,” says the owner of Barcoding, Inc. (probably a paywall there). Congress has to act. No, really. Stop laughing.

NEWS ABOUT BREWS YOU CAN USE: States without laws requiring brewers to use middlemen to distribute their products have more breweries than those without. Whodathunkit?

BRIT BOYS REJECT UNIVERSAL UNIVERSITY: At Samizdata, Natalie Solent notes that British boys are rejecting the credentialist Blairite ideal of university for all. Why? Well,

The boys have evidently cottoned on earlier than their sisters. It could be that they are smarter, or it could be that British universities show signs of following the US example and becoming places where males are scorned and treated unfairly.

It’s an open question.

DEREGULATION AND RE-REGULATION: One of the Obama era’s most costly rules was the over-regulation of financial/retirement advisers known as the “Fiduciary Rule.” It was rightly struck down by a court and the Trump Labor Department decided to let the issue go. Now the independent Securities and Exchange Commission has come up with its own version of the regulation. My colleague John Berlau says that it’s better than the Obama version, but still has problems.

MORE SWAMP-DRAINING NEEDED: At Master Resource, a two part investigation by Paul Driessen and David Wojick into how Obama-era climate policies are still being carried out at USAID.

SHINING A LIGHT ON ALARMIST POLICY: Bjorn Lomborg has a powerful new essay about how environmentalists want to force people in the developing world without access to an electricity grid to use solar panels instead:

Over the past 16 years, nearly every person who gained access to electricity did so through a grid connection, mostly powered by fossil fuels. And yet donors say that many of the 1.1 billion people who are still without electricity should instead try solar panels.

Compared with expensive grid expansion, providing an off-grid, solar cell is very cheap. But for the recipient, it is a poor substitute. It offers just enough power to keep a lightbulb going, and to recharge a mobile phone, which is better than nothing – but only barely. The IEA expects that each of the 195 million people with off-grid solar will get just 170kWh per year – or half of what one US flat-screen TV uses in a year.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the first rigorous test published on the impact of solar panels on the lives of poor people found that while they got a little more electricity, there was no measurable impact on their lives: they did not increase savings or spending, they did not work more or start more businesses, and their children did not study more.

It’s unconscionable, but it’s a main plank of the global warming alarmist movement’s policy agenda.

INSERT JOKE ABOUT ANTIFA AND BRUTALISM: According to the left these days, if you dislike brutalist architecture, you might be a Nazi.

HAYEK’S REVENGE: Dallas city government imposes draconian fees on bike sharing companies, then is astonished that the companies have pulled out and junked all their bikes. Hint to Dallas: it’s called killing a business model.

As Hayek said, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

STEYN AND SANITY: The Heartland Institute is live-streaming its America First Energy Conference right now. So, for instance, you can watch my colleague Sam Kazman on CAFE standards very soon.

But I’m sure you’ll want to see this from a previous Heartland Conference – Mark Steyn on climate change and free speech:

WTWT (watch the whole thing).

EMBRACE THE POWER OF “AND”: Why Prof. Bryan Caplan is proud to be pro-market AND pro-business.

NO WAY TO RUN A RAILROAD: Senate approves $2.5 billion for passenger rail, including a requirement that any Amtrak station serving more than just 25 passengers a day be fully staffed. Even British Rail didn’t have that level of waste in the 1970s!

For the record, President Trump asked for the Amtrak budget to be slashed in half.

THE GREAT REALIGNMENT: In a two-part essay at Unherd in the UK, Peter Franklin asks whether the old left-right distinction makes sense any more, and looks at what is replacing it (and why the formulation of ‘open’ v. ‘closed’ is self-serving and misleading.) It’s a thought provoking treatment and deserves to be read all the way through. Bonus points to Peter for the discussion of Durkheim.

MORE ON STRAWS: A thorough debunking of the straw man arguments (sorry) from my colleague Richard Morrison.

AMERICA’S FAVORITE DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST USED TO LIKE ADAM SMITH: According to this story, at least. It appears that she changed her mind after contracting malaria in Niger, in Africa, where she was astonished at the different price of drugs.

Life expectancy in U.S.: 79.3. Life expectancy in Niger: 61.8.

REPENT! LEST YE BURN! OR GIVE UP PLASTIC STRAWS, INSTEAD: The New York Times devotes its entire magazine this week to a story asserting that we knew about global warming in the 1980s and failed to act, so we’re all going to die. Manhattan Contrarian takes a sledgehammer to that argument, using evidence from, err, the New York Times.

MAKE CARS GREAT AGAIN: Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler explain how reforms to fuel efficiency (CAFE) regulations will lower the cost of new automobiles and increase safety.

This reform is something my colleagues and I have been advocating for for many years. You can see our reaction and some background here.

MODESTY BE DAMNED ON THIS PLATFORM: I feel obliged to say that the nervous Englishman in the video Mark so kindly recommended below is, in fact, me. I have some more to say on the subject here. And if you’d like a bibliography of books, papers, and articles going into more depth on the subject, you can find that here.

ZERO TARIFFS, BABY: Stephen Moore, Art Laffer, and Steve Forbes on how President Trump can emulate President Reagan by offering zero tariffs to all our major trading partners – and seeing who accepts.