By Max Gulker Residents of Berkshire County, the mostly rural far-western slice of Massachusetts where AIER makes its home, joke that Bostonians don’t know the final fifty miles of their state exists. Kudos to the Boston Globe, therefore, for gazing past Springfield and Amherst to tiny Housatonic–population just over one thousand–at the edge of that frontier. The … [Read more...] about Private Enterprise Fuels the Community
Max Gulker
Helping San Francisco’s Homeless One Individual at a Time
By Max Gulker “Something must be done about the homeless.” That refrain seems to be the only thing people agree upon with respect to San Francisco’s tragic and intractable homelessness crisis. The city has lurched between the progressive and sometimes tolerant-to-a-fault policies for which it is known and periods of what reads and looks like urban warfare, encampments … [Read more...] about Helping San Francisco’s Homeless One Individual at a Time
The Year in Bad Ideas
By Max Gulker At first glance 2019 was a rough year for anyone in favor of an economy and society guided from the bottom up by people with the freedom to exchange, cooperate, and think as they choose. The highly visible left flank of the Democratic Party, fully embracing socialism in name and approach, erupted with proposals that would drastically change the country in ways … [Read more...] about The Year in Bad Ideas
Massachusetts’ Addiction to Regulation Keeps Most Pot Sales on the Black Market
By Max Gulker Since Massachusetts residents passed a 2016 referendum legalizing recreational cannabis, the fate of the industry has largely been in the hands of the state’s Cannabis Control Commission. Having licensed 23 pot stores across the state, and set rules for individual growers, the commission is now drafting rules for marijuana delivery services. You may be … [Read more...] about Massachusetts’ Addiction to Regulation Keeps Most Pot Sales on the Black Market
New Data Show the Trade War’s Mounting Costs
By Max Gulker The trade war initiated last year by the United States is costing the global economy dearly. As observers around the world digest economic data from the second quarter, the harm manifests itself in different ways around the globe. Distilling a single narrative about why and how the trade war has harmed world economies is nearly impossible. A look through … [Read more...] about New Data Show the Trade War’s Mounting Costs
Universal Basic Income Is Little More Than Smoke and Mirrors
By Max Gulker The U.S. government spends just shy of $1 trillion per year on aid to low-income Americans. This would be enough to give each of the estimated 40 million Americans living in poverty a check for over $20,000 per year. In two previous articles, I showed how the current failed system grew out of a snowballing bureaucracy and misguided paternalism from the left and … [Read more...] about Universal Basic Income Is Little More Than Smoke and Mirrors
How Top-Down Government Fails America’s Poor
By Max Gulker A well-functioning society should provide a safety net for its members struggling the most. The unavoidable role of luck in market outcomes, the variability of circumstances in which people are born, and the imperative simply to alleviate suffering all speak to this need. Our debate about safety nets and responses to poverty hinges on a fundamental fallacy — … [Read more...] about How Top-Down Government Fails America’s Poor
We Should All Regulate Facebook and Google
By Max Gulker Our economy depends on the continued forward march of technological progress. But with this growth come new problems and, inevitably, new regulation. We must ensure that this regulation does not stifle tomorrow’s innovations, whose details we cannot predict in advance. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Kara Swisher zeroes in on the way the large tech … [Read more...] about We Should All Regulate Facebook and Google