The closing of the tabs....
- Free speech used to be a US left-wing value. On American campuses, only conservative students would support allowing a controversial speaker they disagreed with to speak on campus. This is very bad.
- There's some support for free-speech on the NZ left, mostly Chris Trotter and Josie Pagani and Bryce Edwards. The rest pretends that free speech is some American neoliberal imposition and that we need nuanced approaches in which enlightened Wellingtoneans (themselves) would get to tell everyone else what speech is allowed. I wish we had better data on broader preferences.
- The growth of the public sector over the past six years.
- The US National Institute of Justice rated the South Dakota 24/7 sobriety project as promising. Their whole database is likely useful for those keen on approaches that have some evaluation.
- A $1 increase in US minimum wages is associated with a 0.92 percentage point reduction in percentage of employers offering health insurance and a 1.93 p.p. increase in prevalence of plans with deductibles. Always remember that total compensation bundles are more than just wages, and that squeezing one element of that bundle may affect the others.
- The Paul Ramsay Foundation thinks Evidence Institutes, which trawl the lit [like the US National Institute of Justice, above] are a good idea.
- Oh, I'm going to have to come back to this one as a dedicated post or column. Luming Chen's job market paper at UW-Madison. Policy uncertainty around wind energy destroys $5.9 billion in value in the US.
