Afternoon roundup

The notables from the lunchtime closing of the browser tabs:

• Nancy Maclean thinks there's some kind of Koch - George Mason conspiracy to subvert democracy. To make her case, she misquotes Tyler Cowen and James Buchanan in ways that reverse the meaning of what they'd written. And here's more on Buchanan and racism. John Small takes issue with my liking James Buchanan; I don't trust a single thing in MacLean's book to be accurate, so I see no reason to go through the book and debunk it. 
• Seattle's $15 minimum wage reduced earnings among low-wage workers by cutting their hours. Here's the NBER paper.
• Dave Lane has an interesting suggestion: get tech students in high schools to provide the tech support. 
• Ontario has a messed up alcohol system. The Liquor Control Board runs all retail sales of hard liquor, and they're up against the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. One union's fight with one government monopoly retailer almost shut down Ontario's access to the good stuff. One might expect that unions have inordinate bargaining power in that kind of scenario. 
• Tim Harford has a great roundup on intellectual property issues. 
• The usual suspects are mad that there isn't a ban on having cartoon characters on cereal boxes. I don't know how you explain rising obesity with a fixed effect: cartoon characters have been on cereal boxes at least since the 1970s. Mum generally refused to buy the ones with the cartoon characters, taking it as a signal that they weren't as good for us. I can still hum the tune from the ads for Count Chocula and Frankenberry though. 
• Does inequality hurt economic growth? Maybe in less developed countries, otherwise not. Note too that where the route to riches is rent-seeking, you expect more inequality and less growth. 
• America moves a step closer to enabling supersonic passenger transport. Letting supersonics conform to the noise restrictions on older subsonic planes rather than the requirements on new planes would reduce fuel burn by allowing more aerodynamic engines. New Zealand should do the same if it wants to be ready when the new generation of supersonic passengers planes is ready. 
• Decentralisation doesn't work as well without fiscal equalisation. I liked this piece in National Affairs. I'll likely use it in the coming semester's Public Finance course I'm teaching at Victoria University.