Category: reason

The Vaping Panic Is a Major Setback for Public Health

When tainted lettuce causes an outbreak of gastrointestinal disease, the federal government does not issue general warnings about the hazards of eating. Nor does it order a recall of all fresh vegetables. Instead it focuses on the specific products consumed by the people who got sick.

After doctors began to report respiratory illnesses among vapers last summer, by contrast, federal agencies urged the public to avoid all vaping products, including legal e-cigarettes that deliver nicotine, even though it was clear early on that the vast majority of cases involved black-market cannabis extracts. That indiscriminate approach undermined public health in two ways.

First, it did not provide specific guidance to cannabis consumers who might have avoided the products implicated in the lung disease outbreak if they had been adequately informed. Second, it scared smokers away from vaping products that offer potentially lifesaving alternatives to conventional cigarettes. The vague warnings also encouraged a series of panicky state bans that threatened to drive vapers toward illegal products that may pose special hazards.

As of November 5, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had counted more than 2,000 lung injuries associated with vaping, including 39 deaths. In cases where the information was available, the CDC reported, just 11 percent of patients with respiratory symptoms said they had vaped only nicotine. As the CDC noted, some of those patients may have been reluctant to admit illegal drug use. Furthermore, it’s not clear that any of them had used legal nicotine products, as opposed to black-market e-liquids of unknown provenance and composition.

While legal e-cigarettes have been used by millions of Americans for years, the reports of acute, life-threatening respiratory reactions did not emerge until recently. That suggests the problems are caused by relatively new additives or contaminants in black-market THC cartridges, and perhaps also in counterfeit e-cigarette pods or bootleg nicotine e-liquids.

An analysis of lung tissue samples from 17 patients by researchers at the Mayo Clinic, reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, suggested that many of the lung injuries were caused by exposure to toxic chemicals. Another possible culprit is vitamin E acetate, a cutting agent found in illegal THC vapes that is safe to swallow but may be hazardous when inhaled, leading to a rare form of pneumonia caused by fat particles in the lungs.

Despite the evidence pointing to black-market products (and THC cartridges in particular), the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continued to suggest that people “consider refraining from use of all e-cigarette and vaping products.” At the same time, both agencies cautioned former smokers who are now vaping against returning to their old habits.

The reason for the latter recommendation is plain: E-cigarettes, which do not contain tobacco and do not burn anything, are much less dangerous than the conventional, combustible kind. Studies of biomarkers in smokers who have switched to vaping find that they are exposed to far fewer hazardous substances, at far lower levels, than people who continue to smoke. As David Abrams, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at New York University, noted in a September interview with CBS News, “e-cigarettes are way less harmful than cigarettes, and they can and do help smokers switch if they can’t quit.”

A controlled, randomized study reported last February in The New England Journal of Medicine found that e-cigarettes are nearly twice as effective in smoking cessation as alternative nicotine replacement products. The harm-reducing potential of e-cigarettes has been recognized by a wide range of public health agencies and organizations, including the FDA, the Royal College of Physicians, the American Cancer Society, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. In 2015, Public Health England said “best estimates show e-cigarettes are 95% less harmful to your health than normal cigarettes.”

That point was lost in government warnings that implied all vaping products are potentially deadly. “It seems there’s too much conflating these tragic lung injuries with store-bought brands of regulated, legal e-cigs like Juul and NJOY,” former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb observed on Twitter in late September, “and far too little blaming THC, CBD, and bootleg nicotine vapes—where so far, the only available hard evidence points.” A week later, Boston University public health professor Michael Siegel noted on his tobacco policy blog that “there are no cases that have been shown to be associated with the use of store-purchased nicotine e-liquids, and it seems extremely unlikely that these products have any involvement in the outbreak.”

Washington, D.C., psychiatrist Sally Satel, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, made the same point in congressional testimony on October 16. “The lung injury problem is a story of the dangers of the black market, not of vaping,” she said. “Consumers have been using commercially available vaping devices and nicotine products for 10 years without a single recorded death or any surge of illnesses…until this summer. What we are observing today is consistent with a relatively acute contamination.”

That’s not the message Americans have been getting from public health officials or news outlets influenced by the government’s framing of the issue. A Morning Consult poll conducted in September found that 58 percent of respondents, based on what they had “seen, read, or heard on the news lately,” believed people had “died from lung disease” caused by “e-cigs, such as Juul.” By comparison, 34 percent said the cases involved “marijuana or THC e-cigs.” Only 22 percent of respondents understood that e-cigarettes are less hazardous than the conventional kind, down from 36 percent in a June 2018 poll.

Muddled messages about vaping also have influenced policy makers. While Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) cited underage vaping as her justification for unilaterally banning flavored e-cigarettes in September, the governors of Massachusetts, Montana, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington subsequently mentioned vaping-related respiratory illnesses while imposing similar “emergency” bans.

As Satel noted, “Eliminating flavored nicotine e-liquids will not prevent further cases of lung disease, because those products had nothing to do with the outbreak.” Meanwhile, such bans deprive former smokers of the legal e-liquids they overwhelmingly prefer. Surveys find that supposedly kid-friendly flavors are highly popular among adult vapers, who say they are important in the process of giving up smoking. After those options are eliminated, some vapers may return to smoking, while others may start buying potentially tainted black-market e-liquids.

If every smoker in the United States switched to e-cigarettes, NYU’s Abrams estimates, it would prevent as many as 7 million smoking-related deaths. No wonder Gottlieb, when he was running the FDA, called e-cigarettes “a tremendous public health opportunity.” But that opportunity is threatened by misleading warnings about the hazards of vaping and bans on the e-liquids that former smokers demonstrably want.

“There’s no question public health would benefit dramatically if everybody switched completely to e-cigarettes,” Abrams told CBS News. “If we lose this opportunity, I think we will have blown the single biggest public health opportunity we’ve ever had in 120 years to get rid of cigarettes and replace them with a much safer form of nicotine.”

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Brickbat: Taste the Feeling

Chattooga County, Georgia, Commissioner Jason Winters has banned cameras and recording devices from his offices after his wife poured a soda on a reporter’s head during a budget hearing. Winters was caught on video during the incident appearing to say the reporter deserved it. Abby Winters, his wife, has been charged with simple battery and disorderly conduct. She claims she tripped and accidentally poured the soda over the reporter’s head.

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Brickbat: Taste the Feeling

Chattooga County, Georgia, Commissioner Jason Winters has banned cameras and recording devices from his offices after his wife poured a soda on a reporter’s head during a budget hearing. Winters was caught on video during the incident appearing to say the reporter deserved it. Abby Winters, his wife, has been charged with simple battery and disorderly conduct. She claims she tripped and accidentally poured the soda over the reporter’s head.

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Was 2019 the Year of Peak Entitlement Mentality?

Looking back at 2019 is incredibly disorienting. The country is horribly divided. In fact, the president of the United States was just impeached along partisan lines. The government is running $1 trillion (and growing) annual budget deficits, even though the economy is doing well. Still, listening to many politicians and pundits, you’d think the nation is doing terribly and the government isn’t spending a dime. That’s 2019 in a nutshell.

The economy is entering its 11th year of expansion. Poverty is at an all-time low; so are African American and Hispanic unemployment rates. The 3.5% overall unemployment rate hasn’t been that low since 1969. The unemployment rate for women hasn’t been this low since 1952. The employment rate for workers ages 25 to 54 is finally back above its pre-Great Recession level. Wages are on the rise, especially at the bottom of the income distribution. The stock market is on fire. Small businesses and many industries are complaining that they can’t find enough workers to fill all the jobs they have.

Not everything is perfect, of course. There’s still relative poverty, but that’s an immutable fact of life—and of the way we define poverty. Many economists are concerned that productivity isn’t growing as fast as it could. This matters because productivity growth is an important source of rising living standards. Manufacturing isn’t doing great, either, thanks to the president’s self-destructive trade war. Farmers are hurting badly due to the tariffs, as are many of the companies downstream of the tax. Yet the economy continues to show resilience in spite of this.

So what explains the gargantuan budget deficits? During good times, spending on many programs meant to alleviate poverty and economic hardship typically goes down. But not as much anymore. Ever-easier eligibility for programs like food stamps has deviated from the program’s original intent. Medicare and Medicaid expansion have guaranteed that the programs will continue growing and adding to the deficit, whether times are good or bad.

Both political parties are carelessly spending on a whim. They just passed a spending package of $1.4 trillion alongside $500 billion in irresponsible tax breaks. And Democrats are actively trying to restore the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, a handout to rich people in high-tax states.

More intriguing is the political discourse. Listening to Democratic presidential candidates, you’d think that Americans are living in abject poverty that can only be remedied by government taking over all student debt, all medical costs and boosting the incomes of a politically powerful group who are already overrepresented in the top income quintile—namely, seniors. Listening to Republicans, you’d think that it’s never been as hard to be a woman or raise a family in America. In fact, GOPers today call for programs like mandated paid leave—which they assert is an idea whose “time has finally come”—and large increases in the child tax credit. Others condemn the free-market system as if it hasn’t delivered anything but grief to low-skilled workers and destruction to the environment.

The truth is quite different. When the economy is doing well, most people do well, including women and their families. More importantly, it’s the same free-market economy that Republicans and Democrats today so vociferously condemn that has produced the wealth that everyone takes for granted.

According to research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in order to get the standard of living that ordinary Americans enjoyed in 1975, today we would only have to work 23 weeks out of the year. To achieve 1950s standard of living now requires a mere 11 weeks of work! People were fairly content back then. In fact, many who complain that the free market has failed us point to those decades as America’s golden age. This is an illusion, of course. Most of us make the choice to work more and acquire a significantly better living standard. Yet, few people realize and appreciate how very much more we have now.

At the end of this year, then, I’d venture to guess that the problem in 2019 isn’t that free markets don’t work but that we may have reached peak entitlement mentality. Let’s hope we come back to Earth in 2020 and start to appreciate that while all isn’t perfect, we’re incredibly lucky to be alive today.

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Was 2019 the Year of Peak Entitlement Mentality?

Looking back at 2019 is incredibly disorienting. The country is horribly divided. In fact, the president of the United States was just impeached along partisan lines. The government is running $1 trillion (and growing) annual budget deficits, even though the economy is doing well. Still, listening to many politicians and pundits, you’d think the nation is doing terribly and the government isn’t spending a dime. That’s 2019 in a nutshell.

The economy is entering its 11th year of expansion. Poverty is at an all-time low; so are African American and Hispanic unemployment rates. The 3.5% overall unemployment rate hasn’t been that low since 1969. The unemployment rate for women hasn’t been this low since 1952. The employment rate for workers ages 25 to 54 is finally back above its pre-Great Recession level. Wages are on the rise, especially at the bottom of the income distribution. The stock market is on fire. Small businesses and many industries are complaining that they can’t find enough workers to fill all the jobs they have.

Not everything is perfect, of course. There’s still relative poverty, but that’s an immutable fact of life—and of the way we define poverty. Many economists are concerned that productivity isn’t growing as fast as it could. This matters because productivity growth is an important source of rising living standards. Manufacturing isn’t doing great, either, thanks to the president’s self-destructive trade war. Farmers are hurting badly due to the tariffs, as are many of the companies downstream of the tax. Yet the economy continues to show resilience in spite of this.

So what explains the gargantuan budget deficits? During good times, spending on many programs meant to alleviate poverty and economic hardship typically goes down. But not as much anymore. Ever-easier eligibility for programs like food stamps has deviated from the program’s original intent. Medicare and Medicaid expansion have guaranteed that the programs will continue growing and adding to the deficit, whether times are good or bad.

Both political parties are carelessly spending on a whim. They just passed a spending package of $1.4 trillion alongside $500 billion in irresponsible tax breaks. And Democrats are actively trying to restore the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, a handout to rich people in high-tax states.

More intriguing is the political discourse. Listening to Democratic presidential candidates, you’d think that Americans are living in abject poverty that can only be remedied by government taking over all student debt, all medical costs and boosting the incomes of a politically powerful group who are already overrepresented in the top income quintile—namely, seniors. Listening to Republicans, you’d think that it’s never been as hard to be a woman or raise a family in America. In fact, GOPers today call for programs like mandated paid leave—which they assert is an idea whose “time has finally come”—and large increases in the child tax credit. Others condemn the free-market system as if it hasn’t delivered anything but grief to low-skilled workers and destruction to the environment.

The truth is quite different. When the economy is doing well, most people do well, including women and their families. More importantly, it’s the same free-market economy that Republicans and Democrats today so vociferously condemn that has produced the wealth that everyone takes for granted.

According to research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in order to get the standard of living that ordinary Americans enjoyed in 1975, today we would only have to work 23 weeks out of the year. To achieve 1950s standard of living now requires a mere 11 weeks of work! People were fairly content back then. In fact, many who complain that the free market has failed us point to those decades as America’s golden age. This is an illusion, of course. Most of us make the choice to work more and acquire a significantly better living standard. Yet, few people realize and appreciate how very much more we have now.

At the end of this year, then, I’d venture to guess that the problem in 2019 isn’t that free markets don’t work but that we may have reached peak entitlement mentality. Let’s hope we come back to Earth in 2020 and start to appreciate that while all isn’t perfect, we’re incredibly lucky to be alive today.

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Progress on Exclusionary Zoning, Regression on Rent Control

The impact of exclusionary zoning.

Housing shortages caused by harmful government policy are a serious problem in many parts of the United States. The good news on this front is that many jurisdictions are making progress towards easing zoning restrictions that are the principal culprit behind many such shortages. After years of seeming stagnation, zoning reform is hot. The bad news, however, is that rent control is also gaining momentum. Even as zoning reform helps alleviate housing shortages, rent control is likely to make them worse.

At this time last year, I wrote about the growing momentum for cutting back on exclusionary in various parts of the country. That trend has continued in 2019. In July, the Oregon state legislature passed a law banning single-family home zoning requirements throughout most of the state, thereby enabling construction of multifamily housing in many areas where there are severe shortages. The city of Seattle has also made some progress here.

The Democratic takeover of the Virginia state legislature in November has led to consideration of a major zoning reform law in my home state. If it passes, it would legalize construction of duplex housing in any part of the state currently zoned for single-family homes, thereby expanding housing availability in the the increasingly expensive northern Virginia region. Other jurisdictions are also considering similar reforms.

A major reform bill stalled for a second time in the California state legislature earlier this year. But the very fact it had a real chance of success bodes well for the future, in a state that has some of the nation’s most severe housing shortages.

These and other recent zoning reforms have mostly been passed in jurisdictions dominated by liberal Democrats. The political left has begun to take notice of and act on the broad agreement among policy experts that zoning is a major obstacle to affordable housing, and also excludes millions of people from job opportunities.  Zoning thereby harm both the excluded  workers themselves and the broader economy, which loses the additional productivity they would have provided.

If zoning restrictions make it difficult or impossible to build new housing in response to demand, basic economics 101 indicates that shortages will result. By contrast, the experience of cities like Houston shows that developers are more than capable of keeping up with rapid growth if they are allowed to build.

Part of the reason why recent zoning reform efforts have been led by liberals is that liberal jurisdictions tend to have  the most onerous zoning regulations in the first place. Still, credit should be given where credit is due. Many on the left are making a real effort to clean up this awful mess.

Republicans, by contrast, have often been on the wrong side of the issue lately, despite the near-universal criticism of zoning by free market economists and housing specialists. For example, the Oregon GOP opposed the recent zoning reform in that state. Some on the right oppose it based on fear that it might “urbanize” suburbs and allow more poor people to move there. On the other hand, Trump administration Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson—whom I’m no fan of on many other issues—deserves credit for his strong advocacy of cutting back zoning.

While the struggle is  far from over, there can be little doubt that we are making progress on the zoning front. That is excellent news.

Unfortunately, the good news on zoning is coupled with bad news on rent control. The same Democratic-controlled Oregon state legislature that recently passed a strong zoning reform bill also enacted a sweeping rent control law earlier this year. California and New York has also enacted  major new expansions of rent control this year. After a long period during which rent control seemed largely moribund, it has once again become a major cause of much of the political left. Bernie Sanders, the favorite presidential candidate of the growing “democratic socialist” wing of the left, has even called for the enactment of a national rent control law.

The expert consensus against rent control is at least as broad as that in favor of zoning reform. Economists across the political spectrum overwhelmingly oppose it. Expert critics of rent control range from the very liberal Paul Krugman on the left to Thomas Sowell on the right. The issue is often used in introductory economics classes as an example of a question on which nearly all economists can agree.

That consensus arises from the simple point that, if landlords cannot raise rent in response to growing demand, they are likely to put fewer rental properties on the market. For similar reasons, rent control is likely to reduce new construction in high-demand areas, and also lead to worse maintenance of existing properties. Real-world evidence backs up these theoretical predictions. Stanford economist Rebecca Diamond summed up the results of recent studies on the subject in an article published by the liberal Brookings Institution last year:

Rent control appears to help affordability in the short run for current tenants, but in the long-run decreases affordability, fuels gentrification, and creates negative externalities on the surrounding neighborhood. These results highlight that forcing landlords to provide insurance to tenants against rent increases can ultimately be counterproductive.

While current tenants get a windfall (at least in the short run), rent control reduces the availability of housing for everyone else, and also reduces economic growth by excluding people from areas where they could find new job opportunities and become more productive. Its effects are actually similar to those of exclusionary zoning. Thus, regression on the rent control front could well offset some of the progress being made on the zoning front, especially in cases—like Oregon—where the same jurisdiction pursues both agendas, despite the contradiction between them.

In addition to having opposite effects on housing shortages, zoning reform and rent control are also based on opposing assumptions about the way housing markets work. The former relies on the assumption that increasing demand will lead to increasingly supply, so long as the government allows new construction to occur. In short, market incentives work. Increases in demand lead to increases in price, which in turn incentivizes new production, thereby alleviating shortages and—eventually -reducing prices.

By contrast, rent control implicitly assumes that landlords and developers will not cut back on the quantity and quality of housing, even if prices are artificially lowered by government intervention. For this to work, either market participants must be irrationally indifferent to prices and profits, or there must be some sort of unusual market failure that makes supply insensitive to demand. Neither scenario is plausible. The many liberal Democrats who oppose exclusionary zoning while simultaneously favoring rent control are implicitly making self-contradictory economic assumptions. In one area, they accept basic Economics 101; in the other, they utterly reject it.

I am tempted to say that simultaneous revival of zoning reform and rent control is a prototypical example of the left hand undermining what the right hand is doing. But, in this case, it is really the left hand working at cross-purposes with itself, since it is the political left that has been the biggest driving force behind both developments. Hopefully, they will resolve the inconsistency in the direction of embracing good economics across the board. That means opposing both rent control and exclusionary zoning.

 

 

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New York legislature enacted a bill to allow all federal judges to officiate at Weddings. Governor Cuomo vetoed the bill because Trump

In New York, a wide range of people can perform marriages, including clergy, elected officials, state judges, and federal judges within the Second Circuit–that is, from New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. The New York legislature passed a bill that would allow all federal court of appeals and federal district court judges to perform weddings. However, Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed the bill, with this message:

“This bill amends the Domestic Relations Law to expand the number of federal court judges who may perform marriage ceremonies in New York. I cannot in good conscience support legislation that would authorize such actions by federal judges who are appointed by this federal administration. President Trump does not embody who we are as New Yorkers. The cornerstones that built our great State are diversity, tolerance, and inclusion. Based on these reasons, I must veto this bill. Based on these reasons, I must veto this bill. [JB: Yes, the same sentence was repeated twice.] The bill is disapproved.”

The approved bill would not have applied only to Trump-appointed judges. It would have allowed all federal judges to officiate at weddings. Yet, Governor Cuomo felt compelled to veto the bill, because the judges appointed by President Trump are not consistent with “diversity tolerance, and inclusion.”

I have doubts about whether the current law is even constitutional. Co-blogger Ilya Somin opined on a similar law from Virginia, in which secular wedding officiants must be state residents. That is, state and federal judges from Virginia could officiate at weddings. But ministers of any faith can officiate, regardless of where they reside. Ilya suggested that this law may run afoul of the Dormant Commerce Clause:

The law might also be vulnerable to challenge under the Dormant Commerce Clause, which forbids state discrimination against out of state sellers of goods or services. Some wedding officiants charge for their services, and there is something of a competitive market in this industry. By banning nonresident secular officiants, Virginia explicitly protects in-state officiants against out of state competition. Although Dormant Commerce Clause law is in a state of flux, such “facial discrimination” against nonresident competitors is clearly prohibited by Supreme Court precedent.

The New York law is even more irrational than the Virginia law. Generally, dormant commerce clause challenges involve laws that limit certain jobs only to in-state residents. The argument goes that the state has some legitimate interest in keeping certain functions local. But under the current regime, federal judges from New York, as well as Connecticut and Vermont can officiate at weddings; they reside in states within the Second Circuit. New York has no control, whatsoever, over Connecticut and Vermont judges. Moreover, federal judges from nearby New Jersey or Pennsylvania, for example, are prohibited. I doubt anyone would challenge this law. It is easy enough to find an officiant in state.

Two related anecdotes.

First, Justice Kennedy refused to officiate at weddings. Why? He offered these remarks in 2013, shortly after Windsor was decided:

However, speaking earlier this month at the University of California Washington Center, Justice Kennedy said the affianced—whether gay or straight –would have to find someone else to do the honors.

“I have a rule: I don’t do weddings,” Justice Kennedy said. The reason has to do more with another doctrine he has championed: federalism.

“I have a theory that federal judges can’t take authority from state laws,” including those that regulate family relations, he said.

Still, on this matter, the Supreme Court’s swing vote emphasized his own judicial modesty. “I can’t figure out whether it’s a valid theory or not,” he said.

Second, Justice Scalia planned to officiate at Bryan Garner’s wedding in Rhode Island. But state law generally prohibited out-of-state judges from officiating. As a result, Garner had to arrange for the enactment of a bill in the state legislature to allow Scalia to preside. Garner discusses this story in Chapter 10 of Nino and Me : 

We pressed our Rhode Island contact, who told us that we must have a special bill enacted by the Rhode Island Legislature authorizing Justice Scalia to conduct the ceremony. Only one day was left in which this could be accomplished, but our contact assured us that they would get it done. In the end, we learned that there was actually debate on the floor of the legislature about the matter. A Republican (!) legislator had stood up and said, “We don’t need an out-of-state judge coming in to Rhode Island to perform a wedding! We have plenty of able judges in this State.” Fortunately, his opposition was summarily squelched. Meanwhile, just as the bill was being voted on, I received an e-mail from Justice Scalia: “No reply regarding my authorization under Rhode Island law. Should I start worrying? Nino.” We were all relieved when we got news that the legislative resolution had passed—only five days before the ceremony.

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Progress on Exclusionary Zoning, Regression on Rent Control

The impact of exclusionary zoning.

Housing shortages caused by harmful government policy are a serious problem in many parts of the United States. The good news on this front is that many jurisdictions are making progress towards easing zoning restrictions that are the principal culprit behind many such shortages. After years of seeming stagnation, zoning reform is hot. The bad news, however, is that rent control is also gaining momentum. Even as zoning reform helps alleviate housing shortages, rent control is likely to make them worse.

At this time last year, I wrote about the growing momentum for cutting back on exclusionary in various parts of the country. That trend has continued in 2019. In July, the Oregon state legislature passed a law banning single-family home zoning requirements throughout most of the state, thereby enabling construction of multifamily housing in many areas where there are severe shortages. The city of Seattle has also made some progress here.

The Democratic takeover of the Virginia state legislature in November has led to consideration of a major zoning reform law in my home state. If it passes, it would legalize construction of duplex housing in any part of the state currently zoned for single-family homes, thereby expanding housing availability in the the increasingly expensive northern Virginia region. Other jurisdictions are also considering similar reforms.

A major reform bill stalled for a second time in the California state legislature earlier this year. But the very fact it had a real chance of success bodes well for the future, in a state that has some of the nation’s most severe housing shortages.

These and other recent zoning reforms have mostly been passed in jurisdictions dominated by liberal Democrats. The political left has begun to take notice of and act on the broad agreement among policy experts that zoning is a major obstacle to affordable housing, and also excludes millions of people from job opportunities.  Zoning thereby harm both the excluded  workers themselves and the broader economy, which loses the additional productivity they would have provided.

If zoning restrictions make it difficult or impossible to build new housing in response to demand, basic economics 101 indicates that shortages will result. By contrast, the experience of cities like Houston shows that developers are more than capable of keeping up with rapid growth if they are allowed to build.

Part of the reason why recent zoning reform efforts have been led by liberals is that liberal jurisdictions tend to have  the most onerous zoning regulations in the first place. Still, credit should be given where credit is due. Many on the left are making a real effort to clean up this awful mess.

Republicans, by contrast, have often been on the wrong side of the issue lately, despite the near-universal criticism of zoning by free market economists and housing specialists. For example, the Oregon GOP opposed the recent zoning reform in that state. Some on the right oppose it based on fear that it might “urbanize” suburbs and allow more poor people to move there. On the other hand, Trump administration Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson—whom I’m no fan of on many other issues—deserves credit for his strong advocacy of cutting back zoning.

While the struggle is  far from over, there can be little doubt that we are making progress on the zoning front. That is excellent news.

Unfortunately, the good news on zoning is coupled with bad news on rent control. The same Democratic-controlled Oregon state legislature that recently passed a strong zoning reform bill also enacted a sweeping rent control law earlier this year. California and New York has also enacted  major new expansions of rent control this year. After a long period during which rent control seemed largely moribund, it has once again become a major cause of much of the political left. Bernie Sanders, the favorite presidential candidate of the growing “democratic socialist” wing of the left, has even called for the enactment of a national rent control law.

The expert consensus against rent control is at least as broad as that in favor of zoning reform. Economists across the political spectrum overwhelmingly oppose it. Expert critics of rent control range from the very liberal Paul Krugman on the left to Thomas Sowell on the right. The issue is often used in introductory economics classes as an example of a question on which nearly all economists can agree.

That consensus arises from the simple point that, if landlords cannot raise rent in response to growing demand, they are likely to put fewer rental properties on the market. For similar reasons, rent control is likely to reduce new construction in high-demand areas, and also lead to worse maintenance of existing properties. Real-world evidence backs up these theoretical predictions. Stanford economist Rebecca Diamond summed up the results of recent studies on the subject in an article published by the liberal Brookings Institution last year:

Rent control appears to help affordability in the short run for current tenants, but in the long-run decreases affordability, fuels gentrification, and creates negative externalities on the surrounding neighborhood. These results highlight that forcing landlords to provide insurance to tenants against rent increases can ultimately be counterproductive.

While current tenants get a windfall (at least in the short run), rent control reduces the availability of housing for everyone else, and also reduces economic growth by excluding people from areas where they could find new job opportunities and become more productive. Its effects are actually similar to those of exclusionary zoning. Thus, regression on the rent control front could well offset some of the progress being made on the zoning front, especially in cases—like Oregon—where the same jurisdiction pursues both agendas, despite the contradiction between them.

In addition to having opposite effects on housing shortages, zoning reform and rent control are also based on opposing assumptions about the way housing markets work. The former relies on the assumption that increasing demand will lead to increasingly supply, so long as the government allows new construction to occur. In short, market incentives work. Increases in demand lead to increases in price, which in turn incentivizes new production, thereby alleviating shortages and—eventually -reducing prices.

By contrast, rent control implicitly assumes that landlords and developers will not cut back on the quantity and quality of housing, even if prices are artificially lowered by government intervention. For this to work, either market participants must be irrationally indifferent to prices and profits, or there must be some sort of unusual market failure that makes supply insensitive to demand. Neither scenario is plausible. The many liberal Democrats who oppose exclusionary zoning while simultaneously favoring rent control are implicitly making self-contradictory economic assumptions. In one area, they accept basic Economics 101; in the other, they utterly reject it.

I am tempted to say that simultaneous revival of zoning reform and rent control is a prototypical example of the left hand undermining what the right hand is doing. But, in this case, it is really the left hand working at cross-purposes with itself, since it is the political left that has been the biggest driving force behind both developments. Hopefully, they will resolve the inconsistency in the direction of embracing good economics across the board. That means opposing both rent control and exclusionary zoning.

 

 

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New York legislature enacted a bill to allow all federal judges to officiate at Weddings. Governor Cuomo vetoed the bill because Trump

In New York, a wide range of people can perform marriages, including clergy, elected officials, state judges, and federal judges within the Second Circuit–that is, from New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. The New York legislature passed a bill that would allow all federal court of appeals and federal district court judges to perform weddings. However, Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed the bill, with this message:

“This bill amends the Domestic Relations Law to expand the number of federal court judges who may perform marriage ceremonies in New York. I cannot in good conscience support legislation that would authorize such actions by federal judges who are appointed by this federal administration. President Trump does not embody who we are as New Yorkers. The cornerstones that built our great State are diversity, tolerance, and inclusion. Based on these reasons, I must veto this bill. Based on these reasons, I must veto this bill. [JB: Yes, the same sentence was repeated twice.] The bill is disapproved.”

The approved bill would not have applied only to Trump-appointed judges. It would have allowed all federal judges to officiate at weddings. Yet, Governor Cuomo felt compelled to veto the bill, because the judges appointed by President Trump are not consistent with “diversity tolerance, and inclusion.”

I have doubts about whether the current law is even constitutional. Co-blogger Ilya Somin opined on a similar law from Virginia, in which secular wedding officiants must be state residents. That is, state and federal judges from Virginia could officiate at weddings. But ministers of any faith can officiate, regardless of where they reside. Ilya suggested that this law may run afoul of the Dormant Commerce Clause:

The law might also be vulnerable to challenge under the Dormant Commerce Clause, which forbids state discrimination against out of state sellers of goods or services. Some wedding officiants charge for their services, and there is something of a competitive market in this industry. By banning nonresident secular officiants, Virginia explicitly protects in-state officiants against out of state competition. Although Dormant Commerce Clause law is in a state of flux, such “facial discrimination” against nonresident competitors is clearly prohibited by Supreme Court precedent.

The New York law is even more irrational than the Virginia law. Generally, dormant commerce clause challenges involve laws that limit certain jobs only to in-state residents. The argument goes that the state has some legitimate interest in keeping certain functions local. But under the current regime, federal judges from New York, as well as Connecticut and Vermont can officiate at weddings; they reside in states within the Second Circuit. New York has no control, whatsoever, over Connecticut and Vermont judges. Moreover, federal judges from nearby New Jersey or Pennsylvania, for example, are prohibited. I doubt anyone would challenge this law. It is easy enough to find an officiant in state.

Two related anecdotes.

First, Justice Kennedy refused to officiate at weddings. Why? He offered these remarks in 2013, shortly after Windsor was decided:

However, speaking earlier this month at the University of California Washington Center, Justice Kennedy said the affianced—whether gay or straight –would have to find someone else to do the honors.

“I have a rule: I don’t do weddings,” Justice Kennedy said. The reason has to do more with another doctrine he has championed: federalism.

“I have a theory that federal judges can’t take authority from state laws,” including those that regulate family relations, he said.

Still, on this matter, the Supreme Court’s swing vote emphasized his own judicial modesty. “I can’t figure out whether it’s a valid theory or not,” he said.

Second, Justice Scalia planned to officiate at Bryan Garner’s wedding in Rhode Island. But state law generally prohibited out-of-state judges from officiating. As a result, Garner had to arrange for the enactment of a bill in the state legislature to allow Scalia to preside. Garner discusses this story in Chapter 10 of Nino and Me : 

We pressed our Rhode Island contact, who told us that we must have a special bill enacted by the Rhode Island Legislature authorizing Justice Scalia to conduct the ceremony. Only one day was left in which this could be accomplished, but our contact assured us that they would get it done. In the end, we learned that there was actually debate on the floor of the legislature about the matter. A Republican (!) legislator had stood up and said, “We don’t need an out-of-state judge coming in to Rhode Island to perform a wedding! We have plenty of able judges in this State.” Fortunately, his opposition was summarily squelched. Meanwhile, just as the bill was being voted on, I received an e-mail from Justice Scalia: “No reply regarding my authorization under Rhode Island law. Should I start worrying? Nino.” We were all relieved when we got news that the legislative resolution had passed—only five days before the ceremony.

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How To Fight the ‘Power of Bad’ and the ‘Negativity Effect’

It’s not just in your head: When it comes to how we all experience life, “Bad is generally stronger than good.” 

We remember trauma more than joy, we’re brought down by criticism more than we’re elevated by praise, and we pay more attention to bad news than good. 

A new book called The Power of Bad, by journalist John Tierney and psychologist Roy F. Baumeister, explores “the negativity effect,” or the “universal tendency for negative events and emotions to affect us more strongly than positive ones.” The negativity effect shapes everything we do, from our personal relationships to our careers to how we vote to what media we consume.

But The Power of Bad isn’t one more cause for despair. Its subtitle is How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It, and it offers practical tips on all sorts of ways to approach life so that we can be happy, productive, and well-adjusted.

Nick Gillespie sat down with Tierney, a contributing editor at the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal and a former New York Times columnist and reporter, to talk about the root causes of the negativity effect and how to combat it.

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

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