Posts filed under “Policy/Politics”
How to Densify
Let me make one other quick point on the topic of density and productivity. If you read Ed Glaeser, you see him arguing, in compelling fashion, that dense collections of human capital are the secret to innovation and growth. And I believe him. From this position, he’ll argue against foolish restrictions on new housing supply. [...]
Do Neoliberals Believe in Ritual Worker Sacrifice?
Mike Konczal quotes me writing about the highly progressive nature of neoliberalism, internationally speaking, and he says: Of course, traditional lefty are very concerned about international views of development in human welfare – very much so.  This reminds me of the “trade†that one of the CEO’s in Chrystia Freeland’s Atlantic Monthly article The Rise of [...]
Neoliberal Me
The blogosphere has been swept with talk of this jeremiad on the lack of a true left wing in America’s political discourse. All the most popular lefty bloggers, says Freddie, are neoliberals like Matt Yglesias, Kevin Drum, and Jon Chait. Freddie’s essay is long and touches on many themes, but I’d like to put down [...]
Red Train, Blue Train
Yesterday, Megan McArdle tweeted: Okay, I like trains and all, but the bemoaning of America’s lack of high-speed rail seems out of proportion to any possible benefits. Of course, many folks who support new investments in high-speed rail would no doubt say that the number of angry denouncements of rail programs seem out of all [...]
High-Speed Rail is Cheap
Like Matt, I love this attack on HSR: Federal taxpayers can’t afford high-speed rail in California or anywhere else. A Cato essay on high-speed rail points out that the cost of California’s HSR could be $81 billion and a national system could cost $1 trillion. Samuelson is right: the Obama administration’s HSR dreams “represent shortsighted, [...]
Try it, You’ll Like It
Not long ago I posted some research analyzing congestion pricing and developing a model in which people are skeptical of congestion pricing before it’s put in place but dig it after it’s up and running. A commenter from a British motorist group committed to opposing congestion pricing wrote to say that in London and Stockholm [...]
Divided City
If you want to know why many Fenty supporters supported Fenty, look no further than Courtland Milloy’s sad op-ed in the Washington Post today. It’s not the racial animus. Rather, it’s Milloy’s suggestion that city government should be used as a jobs program for local residents rather than as a means to deliver quality public [...]
Innovation, and the Gas Tax
I’m not sure why anyone would argue that the imposition of a carbon price, even a relatively modest one, wouldn’t spur innovation. Price increases — the market’s signal for scarcity — lead to a range of human responses, among the most important of which is invention. The opinion that a price increase will likely lead [...]
Ideas
I have in mind a fairly detailed set of policy ideas that fit into the package I’d label “ideal climate policy response.” I also have in mind changes I’d accept to this package that would correspond to “second-best”, “third-best”, “fourth-best” policies, and so on down the line. And at this point, we’re well down the [...]
Is Congestion a Good Thing?
That’s the argument Frank McArdle makes here: Congestion is actually a good thing. It tells us that many people see great value in being someplace at the same time. We really don’t want it to go away, since it also reflects the higher values in the economy of places where there is congestion. We know [...]