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Free the Economy podcast: Against crony capitalism with Nick Sorrentino
In this week’s episode we cover emergency federal spending, workplace management trends for 2024, suppressing speech about public health, and defending…
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Free the Economy podcast: Protecting your property rights with Betsy Sanz
In this week’s episode we cover slow-moving infrastructure projects, the impact of the conservative boycott of Bud Light, good and…
Citation
Big Business Took A Beating From Conservatives Over Woke Marketing In 2023, But Did It Change Anything?
CEI’s Richard Morrison is cited in Daily Caller on ‘woke marketing:’ “Regardless of what InBev’s senior management or board members believe in their hearts about…
Blog
Liz Warren’s revolving door with Wall Street
There was an interesting development in the world of big government and big business recently. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) declared that “The abuse of…
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Free the Economy podcast: Avoiding a Central Bank Digital Currency with Nicholas Anthony
In this week’s episode we cover the legislative record of House of Representatives in 2023, the proliferation of conferences about ESG investing,…
Blog
No, we don’t want as many new laws as possible
The New York Times recently published an article reviewing what happened in the House of Representatives over the past 12 months, and it gives…
Blog
Even the University of California system has dropped carbon offsets
MIT Technology Review just published an article on one of my perennial favorite topics, carbon offsets. According to senior editor James Temple, the University…
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Free the Economy podcast: (De-)regulating tech and AI with Adam Thierer
In this week’s episode we cover social mobility in the 50 states, Elizabeth Warren’s revolving door with Wall Street, the latest…
National Review
Mass Transit: Preferred over Cars, Except When It Isn’t
For decades, environmentalists and urban planners have been on a mission to get Americans out of their cars and on to buses, light rail, commuter trains,…
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Free the Economy podcast: Making Congress work with Kevin Kosar
In this week’s episode we cover people who fetishize old homes, the big AI risk no one’s talking about, how environmentalist activists…
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Free the Economy podcast: Centers of Progress with Chelsea Follett
In this week’s episode we cover the housing abundance agenda, antitrust concerns about corporate climate alliances, the future of global nuclear…
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Free the Economy podcast: The future of energy and environmental policy with Travis Fisher
In this week’s episode we cover the political path toward abundance, the need for permitting reform beyond the National Environmental Policy Act,…
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Free the Economy podcast: Making college pay with Preston Cooper
In this week’s episode we cover Javier Milei’s election as president of Argentina, how much money it takes to be happy,…
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Free the Economy podcast: Getting out of control with Neil Chilson
In this week’s episode we cover the American Nuclear Society’s Winter 2023 conference, the opportunities and pitfalls of online side-hustles, and the…
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Free the Economy podcast: Personal finance and YouTube with Spencer Johnson
In this week’s episode we cover how states can reform higher education, ways that managers can make their employees happier at work,…
The Hill
The rise and fall of ESG investing
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: The trouble with big-government conservatives with André Béliveau
In this week’s episode we talk about which state has the least-bad business taxes, how many Americans really love America, the continuing…
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Free the Economy podcast: Polling capitalism with Karlyn Bowman
In this week’s episode we talk about the surprisingly low demand for free transit, the demographics of higher education in the U.S.,…
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Free the Economy podcast: Creating the future with Jim Pethokoukis
In this week’s episode we talk about income and tax migration, refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the problem with federal crop…
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Free the Economy podcast: Going into labor with Sean Higgins
In this week’s episode we talk about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s legal fate, rising economic might in India, terrible federal…
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Free the Economy podcast: Financial regulation and ESG with Hester Peirce
In this week’s episode we talk about commuting via bicycle, regulatory reform legislation from Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), the new book…
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Free the Economy podcast: Threats to economic freedom, then and now with Iain Murray
On this week’s podcast we talk about recycled Legos, socially responsible pension funds, pessimistic views about politics, and a special…
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Free the Economy podcast: unemployment that works with Matt Darling
In this week’s episode we talk about banning plastic gift cards in California, the solution to Germany’s energy crisis, the political…
Blog
Will polyester recycling become fashionable?
The Wall Street Journal ran a fascinating article last week on the future of innovation and technology, but it’s not about AI or semiconductors.
Blog
The road to pork product serfdom
There are interesting developments afoot in the world of agriculture and livestock, as recently recounted in the pages of the New York Times. According…
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Free the Economy podcast: Supreme Court preview with Ashley Baker
In this week’s episode we talk about the long history of the Lewis Powell memo of 1971, innovation in textile recycling, how…
Blog
Will COVID-era work-from-home flexibility disappear?
The question of how many Americans are going to continue working remotely, post-COVID, is back in the news again (if, indeed, it ever left).
Blog
The Powell Memo was good, actually
This week the Competitive Enterprise Institute published my study (co-written with my colleague Iain Murray) on the 50-plus year history of the…
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: freedom and conservatism with Avik Roy
In this week’s episode we talk about the future of nuclear power, the possible end of remote work, and the complexities of…
News Release
Leftwing conspiracy theories about 1971 “Powell memo” debunked in new CEI report
A new Competitive Enterprise Institute report debunks a leftwing conspiracy theory that free market interests seek a “corporate domination of America” (as Greenpeace put…
Study
Threats Then and Threats Now
Executive summary In 1971 Lewis Powell, a prominent Republican lawyer who would go on to serve on the Supreme Court, wrote a memo warning about…
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Free the Economy podcast: Defend your points and miles with Bryan Bashur
In this week’s episode we talk about where our doctors come from in the US, what current inflation numbers tell us about…
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Free the Economy podcast: The ESG Agenda with Jack McPherrin
In this week’s episode we talk about job recruiters who lie to applicants, post-Covid reforms to the CDC, debunking socialist takes…
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Free the Economy Episode 34: Permitting Prosperity with Daren Bakst
In this weeks episode we talk about labor union history, demands for a 4-day work week, YIMBY policy wins, and Reason’s…
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Free the Economy Episode 33: Federal Trade Commission Failures with Kimberlee Josephson
In this week’s episode we talk about defending financial privacy, new polling on what Republican voters want, reactions to new employment…
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Free the Economy podcast: Government rules behind a paywall with Patrick McLaughlin
In this week’s episode we talk about banning incandescent light bulbs, mission creep at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, new nuclear capacity…
Blog
Good news about new business starts nationwide
The Economic Innovation Group has a fascinating report out this week on how we’re seeing a boom in new businesses being started – definitely a…
Blog
No, Florida, you can’t sue corporate directors for ‘going woke’
Recently Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called on the Sunshine State’s pension fund manager to consider action against Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev. In a…
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Free the Economy Episode 31: Reforming the States with Carrie Conko
In this week’s episode we talk about the Federal Trade Commission’s takeover of AI policy, shareholder lawsuits against “woke” corporations, an encouraging…
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Free the Economy podcast: Ugh! Capitalism! with Jeremiah Johnson
In this week’s episode we talk about Democrat and Republican myths, corporate welfare in Ohio, scams in the carbon offset market,…
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Free the Economy podcast: School Choice for Everyone with Ed Tarnowski
In this week’s episode we talk about trends in self-employment, how rent control leads to more evictions, empty corporate gestures on…
Blog
Don’t believe the ‘cost-of-thriving’ doom
There has been a lot of discussion in the last several years – and even more so in the last few weeks – about income…
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Free the Economy podcast: teaching capitalism with Allen Mendenhall
In this week’s episode we talk about the cost of thriving in America, the incredible expanding CHIPS Act, and occupational licensing…
Blog
Local zoning boards are not democracy
At the Competitive Enterprise Institute, we have often discussed the need to reform zoning, permitting, and building regulations, so I was intrigued…
Blog
Wall Street doesn’t want to come back to the office
The continuing saga of remote versus in-office work acquired a new data point recently when Bloomberg released its latest Markets Live Pulse survey, which…
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: importing talent with Connor O’Brien
In this week’s episode we talk about the major income tax case going to the Supreme Court, the looming death of ESG…
Real Clear Markets
What Comes After An ESG Craze That’s Not Ready to Die?
Could this year be the end of the beginning for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing? Buzz in the business press suggests …
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: online trust with Taylor Barkley
In this week’s episode we talk about a survey on work trends for finance bros, Delta’s questionable bid to become the first…
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Businesses flocking to states with lower taxes, better regulations
Experts on U.S. economic policy spend a lot of time looking at competition between states and how good tax and regulatory policy can help…
Blog
Younger workers don’t favor full-remote work
Among people who follow the news on workplace (and workforce) satisfaction, the opinions of younger workers are often considered especially relevant, because we assume that…