Trump's Tomato Tax: A Tariff With Predictable Outcomes

If your grocery bill is higher than usual, one place to look is tomatoes. The price of tomatoes is up 23 percent compared to last year (see Rutgers data below). Part of that increase can be attributed to higher transportation costs or fluctuations in Florida's weather. But let's not overcomplicated this. 

The biggest change in the tomato market was not meteorological: it was policy. Last year, the U.S. changed its tariff-free policy on Mexican tomatoes and replaced it with a 17 percent tariff. When 90 percent of tomatoes come from Mexico and you tax those tomatoes, it should not be a surprise when the price of tomatoes increases. 

As a matter of fact, there were many that warned about these negative effects, myself included. It is not complicated what happened here. When the U.S. slaps tariffs on Mexican tomatoes, which is the primary source of tomatoes for the U.S., you are going to get more expensive tomatoes. Not maybe or probably. You will get more expensive tomatoes. 

Tariffs are taxes on imports. Like most taxes, they do not sit quietly in the background doing nothing. They change consumer behavior, such as having tomato imports in 2025 declined by $500 million in comparison to the previous year. The tariffs worked their way through the supply chain and made their way to the consumer, which is also not surprising since 95 percent of tariffs are paid by the consumer. 

None of this is unique to tomatoes. This is how tariffs work. When you tax imports with tariffs, you reduce supply, distort markets, and raise prices. The specifics vary by product and tariff amount, but the mechanism does not change. 

Whether it's tomatoes, steel, or washing machines, the pattern is the same: a concentrated benefit for a small group of well-connected domestic producers while everyone else pays the price. Protectionists can call that "saving jobs" all they want, but consumers experience fewer choices and higher prices. Tariffs don't protect markets. They just make them more expensive. 

Trump's Tariff Exemptions Are Harmful Protectionism with More Holes than Swiss Cheese

Tariffs have been a staple of Trump's trade policy in both of his presidential terms. When politicians propose a tariff, they make it sound like this simple tax rate because they are presented as universally applied. However, reality intervenes in the form of political discretion. As recent research from the American Action Forum (AAF) shows, that discretion creates exemptions.

AAF found that the "Liberation" Day tariffs had an exemption rate of 38 percent. With the newer Section 122 tariffs, that rate went up to 60 percent. The wider exemptions under Section 122 reduced the effective tariff rate from 14 percent to 10 percent. 

You might be wondering why I think this is a bad thing. After all, tariffs are import taxes. If the effective tax rate is lower, you would think that is better for the economy. Think again! Cato Institute trade scholar Scott Lincicome details the hellish labyrinth that tariffs have become. Tariff rates do not vary only by product. They do so by country, by statutory authority, and how multiple tariff regimes interact. 

Because Trump is trying to use multiple statutory authorities to push his tariff agenda, he has increased the number of tariff regimes in the U.S. tariff code from 3 in 2017 to 17 in 2025. More to the point, the percent of imports being subject to a tariff went from 0.02 percent in 2016 to 49.2 percent in 2025.

This has made tariff compliance a legal and logistical challenge of Herculean proportions. Rates stack inconsistently, exemptions are applied unevenly, and the rules change frequently. Tariffs become a hidden tax because firms have to devote time, hire specialists, and navigate trade uncertainty. A Federal Reserve report last year estimated that the compliance costs are the equivalent of 1.4 to 2.5 percent ad valorem tariff. Given that 95 percent of tariffs on U.S. imports are paid by the everyday American consumer, guess who is ultimately paying the brunt of those compliance costs? 

But those costs are not distributed evenly. Large firms can afford trade lawyers, customs specialists, and representation in Washington to do the rent-seeking and earn the exemptions. Smaller firms generally cannot. The asymmetry creates a divide between those who can navigate the rules and those who cannot. What is even more amusing is that the exemptions are a tacit admission from the Trump administration that tariffs are too blunt and harmful. Plus, they undermine the administration's rationales for the tariffs, particularly the rationale about generating government revenue.

While advocated for as a simple, universal tax rate, tariffs are a complex behemoth that incurs additional costs to businesses. The irony is that a policy that is presented as being straightforward ends up being a convoluted, opaque system that benefits well-connected businesses while screwing over the American people the protectionists claimed to help. 

Trump's Assault on Legal Immigration and Why the "Immigrants Should Come the Right Way" Argument Falls Short

During his 2024 presidential campaign and throughout his second term, President Trump's rhetoric on immigration has been framed around border control and illegal immigration. On the surface, he was about unauthorized entry, strengthening the border, and concerns about crime and lawlessness. In that respect, his response was straightforward: get illegal immigration under control. 

Those who self-identify as anti-illegal immigration have this common story to tell: illegal immigration is the problem, legal immigration is the solution, and anyone willing to "come the right way" has a door open to them. Too bad that the data does not support that narrative! The latest research from the Cato Institute shows that since the beginning of Trump's second term, legal immigration has be cut about 2.5 times more than illegal immigration. 

How is this possible? I thought Trump just wanted to go after the lawbreakers. One complicating factor that Cato points out is that border apprehensions were dropping by 80 percent in Biden's last year. In spite of what some might think, Biden actually tightened up border security at the end of his term. This helps explain why Trump cannot get the big mass deportation numbers that he was hoping for. 

With immigration being such a hot-button issue and Trump being so gung-ho on the matter, he grabbed for whatever policy levers he could. As I explained a couple of years ago in my argument against mass deportation, mass deportation involves detecting, detaining, and deporting individuals. Especially with how resources-strapped the U.S. government is to carry out mass deportation of every illegal immigrant, reducing illegal immigration is more operationally constrained. In contrast, the federal government has many levers on the legal immigration front:

• One I discussed last year was the $100,000 fee for the H-1B visa. That fee contributed to H-1B visas falling by 25 percent. 
• In 2025, the Trump administration eliminated the CBP One scheduling app and banned asylum, which is why asylum seekers entering legally dropped by 99.9 percent.
• With refugees, the Trump administration put a cap on refugees at 7,500. During the Biden administration, the cap was at 125,000 refugees. As a result, the number of admitted refugees declined by 90 percent. 
• Due to a visa ban on 75 countries, immigrant visas for permanent visas fell by about half, and visas for fiancé(e)s and spouses fell by 65 percent.
• As for international student visas, Trump used an executive order to cancel about 1,700 and 4,500 student visas, which contributed to a decline of 40 percent in F-1 visas.

Taken together, this shows that legal immigration is being affected through multiple entry ways simultaneously, whether that is work visas, asylum processing, refugee admissions, family-based visas, and student visas. The tools differ, but the result is the same: fewer legal entries into the United States. 

Sadly, this is not a new development. As I pointed out in 2018, Trump targeted chain migration, the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, DACA, low-skilled immigrants, and high-skilled immigrants on the H-1B visa during his first term. The current situation and the past act as a reminder that the U.S. immigration system is not a single, orderly queue, but a patchwork of pathways that each have its own constraints, caps, and eligibility criteria.

I want to bring this to something even more important, which I covered in 2023. Back then, the Cato Institute released a report showing how 99.4 percent of immigrants had no legal realistic legal avenue to do so, in no small part due to the complexity of the immigration system. Remember that 2023 was during the Biden administration, which was relatively more friendly towards immigrants. With all of these bans and caps from the Trump administration, the implication is very difficult to escape: the path to legal immigration to the United States is rapidly vanishing and next to impossible. 

Trump said that he will welcome those who come into the U.S. legally. However, it does not matter what his stated intent is. His policies have considerably restricted legal immigration to the U.S. In practice, telling immigrants to "wait in line" and "come in the right way" rings hollow when the Trump administration's actions actively constrain the queue as much as humanly possible. It makes the American Dream into less of an achievable goal and more of an empty slogan that is detached from reality and borders on the farcical. Meanwhile, would-be immigrants across the world are expected to wait in a line that mostly takes them nowhere except deeper in debt with all the processing fees in an effort towards futility. 

The Fed Finds That Trump's Tariffs Are Propping Up Inflation

In the United States, we have been told a simple story about inflation: the pandemic hit, the government intervened, and prices went up. As I argued before, quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve combined with high levels of government spending set up the U.S. for high levels of inflation in 2022-23. What this does not explain so well is why prices have not come back down. 

According to a recent study from the Federal Reserve, there is a reason why: Trump's tariffs. Even as the pandemic faded in the distant memory, the tariffs kept the inflation hangover lingering beyond the pandemic. This is not a mystery. Tariffs raise consumer prices because they are a tax on imports. Business then pass on the majority of that cost to consumers. As long as the tax remains, the tariffs create a pre-tax and post-tax price, which keeps prices elevated. 

What the Federal Reserve study does is calculate the counterfactual of "what would have happened if there were no tariffs?" The answer is bonkers when you think of the political hoopla about affordability. If Trump's 2025 tariffs were never implemented, consumer prices would be back to pre-pandemic levels (see below). 

As frustrating as this is, this is far from surprising. Last August, I discussed what the economic effects from these tariffs would be. Those costs ranged from a lower GDP and higher unemployment to....you guessed it: higher consumer prices. This is additional evidence to show that it is the everyday American that is paying for Trump's tariffs, not China, Mexico, or any other foreign country. It was lousy government policy that got us into this mess, and it was the tariffs that kept the inflation sticking around much longer than necessary. 

This problem was avoidable as it was predictable. If Congress wants to do something about affordability, it can reclaim its tariff powers enumerated in the Constitution. It turns out that "America First" pricing means that it is the everyday American that first and foremost pays the costs for Trump's tariff folly. 

Europe's Asylum Dilemma and Why Return Hubs Are a Second-Best Immigration Policy

I have spent a lot of time here at Libertarian Jew discussing immigration policy. In concept, I believe that immigration should work more like free trade: people moving across borders, creating value, and making both sides better off through voluntary exchange. In a U.S.-specific context, I still believe in that ideal that immigration is welfare-enhancing. However, that framework is not unconditional or universal. I have serious reservations about that ideal with regards to Europe because of what is observable in that part of the world. I examined this topic of integrating immigrants in Europe at length last December. 

What I discussed in December were a few things. One was that the influx of Muslim immigrants that hold illiberal views can and will shape how voter preferences shape state power in Europe. The second aspect is describing how the U.S. has better capabilities to integrate its immigrants than Europe, whether that is due to institutional, linguistic, economic, or cultural reasons. When these factors of immigrant culture, weak integration of immigrants, political backlash, economic & labor market rigidity, and lax immigration enforcement collide, it is unsurprising that there is considerable tension in Europe. 

This tension in Europe represents a scenario in which conditions are considerably more constrained. In response to that tension, European lawmakers voted for a proposal late last month to deport rejected asylum seekers to return hubs outside of the European Union. Although not official law, this vote in March overcame a major legal hurdle. While awaiting official enactment, five countries (Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, and Greece) are already negotiating pilot arrangements outside of the EU framework. 

This is understandable given the context. Before continuing, I want to say that return hubs are not the same as Trump wanting mass deportation, the latter of which I thought was a terrible idea. For the U.S. context, mass deportation has a high marginal cost because of how much it would need to expand to enforce, low marginal efficiency due to its scale, and the high disruption per unit enforcement. 

With Europe, the return hubs are not about mass deportation. The policy is targeted at asylum seekers that were rejected and decided not to leave. About 20 percent of rejected asylum seekers actually leave Europe. Given that there have been 7.4 million first-time asylum seekers from 2016 to 2025, 80 percent of people staying would mean about 5.9 million people staying. These return hubs be seen as a second-best by attempting to restore enforceability to an asylum system that has been de facto turned into open immigration to Europe.

I do have some concerns about whether this can work. The closest proxy we have to such a policy is Australia's offshoring process in which Australia intercepted asylum seekers at sea and forcibly transfer them to Nauru and Papua New Guinea. It might not have turned out so well. Aside from being costly and violating human rights, it did not necessarily deter asylum seekers, especially after looking at the numbers of arrivals. The Australian case is more border control, whereas in this European case, they have already arrived and might have settled down in Europe. 

I understand the political impetus for this asylum policy, which is why this will likely be part of Europe's approach to immigration more broadly. There has been a greater clash of civilizations between Europeans and immigrant communities. There has been an emergence of the Far Right in Europe, in no small part of Europe's general incapability to control migration. 

And when I say Far Right, I do not mean it like a stereotypical woke person does to insult anyone who disagrees with them. I am referring to a political right that is more nativist, nationalistic, and Euro-skeptic, especially relative to the center or moderate conservatives in Europe. Integration of immigrants is not taking place throughout much of Europe, and the political backlash and the emergence of anti-immigrant sentiment is showing, including through this push for return hubs. 

I personally believe that there are significant cultural and religious frictions that make integration of Muslim immigrants more difficult, if not downright impossible, and that is on top of the institutional constraints of European governments and markets. Whatever what one believes about long-term cultural compatibility, the overall policy direction in Europe indicates that many European countries are not willing to bet their future that these integration challenges are temporary or fixable. 

Irrespective of my take on the political dynamics throughout Europe, I think return hubs could function as a second-best option to the current restraints in the European asylum system. Return hubs operate at the post-adjudication stage. Completing removals makes the designation of "rejected asylum seeker" a meaningful legal endpoint. By externalizing processing arrangements, Europe can restore faith to a system where return enforcement is presently weak. Broadly, this does not reflect an ideal policy choice. It an adaptive institutional response given high migrant inflows, present low enforceability, and rising political backlash.

To reiterate, the European case study is not the same as the U.S. I previously made the case for letting in Afghan refugees in response to Biden pulling out of Afghanistan, and similarly did so for Syrian refugees coming to the U.S. My default belief is that migration can create significant economic and humanitarian gains when properly governed and managed. In Europe, however, there is institutional failure that has made lower-intensity enforcement of immigration law non-credible. Removal of rejected asylum seekers is the exception, not the norm, thereby making the European example one of system-level limitations. 

As much as I support the principle of allowing people to migrate and pursue a better life, the European experience is making it clear that a comprehensive immigration system is only as strong as its enforcement mechanisms. Without basic governance over boundaries, immigration becomes self-sabotage in the guise of compassion.

In Its Conversion "Therapy" Ruling, the Supreme Court Draws the Wrong Line in the Sand

Conversion "therapy" has long occupied a fraught space in public debate, and rightfully so. Historically, it referred exclusively to therapeutic efforts at changing an individual's sexual orientation. Many critics argued that not only they are ineffective, but they actively harm the patient. More recently, the term conversion "therapy" has expanded to include gender identity. Over the past decade, a growing number of states banned such practices for licensed therapists working with children. 

The Supreme Court threw a wrench in that approach. In a decisive 8-1 ruling, the Court struck down Colorado's conversion "therapy" ban, holding that even controversial or disfavored therapeutic conversations are protected by the First Amendment. In other words, the government does not get the ultimate say on what viewpoints a therapist is allowed to express. 

At first glance, this case seems like a familiar clash between freedom of speech and government regulation. Many are inclined to either view this simply as a free speech victory or a rollback of protections for vulnerable children, pick a side, and go on their merry way. Neither of these gets at the core issue here. The harder truth to accept is that this ruling lumped together two fundamentally different issues. Until those are disentangled, it will be hard to draw the line where it actually belongs. 

Stop Messing With Kids' Sexual Orientation

In 2018, I wrote about how conversion "therapy" was harmful for those trying to change sexual orientation. The research for sexual orientation-specific conversion "therapy" spans decades. Multiple studies, including the 2009 APA Task Force review and various retrospective reviews, show that the practice fails to change sexual orientation and is associated with such harms as depression, low self-esteem, and suicidal ideation. 

For minors, the state has a narrow, legitimate role in preventing harm. Just as we intervene in response to murder, fraud, arson, or assault, protecting children from conversion "therapy" is defensible, even under a libertarian framework. 

I have argued that adults should be allowed to make decisions I might not agree with, such as having children before marriage, entering a polygamous marriage, regularly smoking cigarettes, eating fast food daily, or not exercising. I also believe that as long as they are not harming anyone else, adults should make whatever decision, even if it harms themselves. Conversion "therapy" for an adult is not an exception. As for a minor, that is a whole different matter, as previously discussed.  

Gender Identity: Affirmation Isn't a Prescription

Unlike the decades of research on sexual orientation-specific conversion "therapy", the evidence base on gender identity-specific conversion therapy is much thinner and only goes back to 2018. Plus, many studies lump together sexual orientation and gender identity conversion "therapy," which means that research on gender identity-specific conversion "therapy" is scant. Meanwhile, the practices that so many call "affirming," whether that is social transitioning, puberty blockers, hormones, gender reassignment surgery, are experimental, risky, and often harmful:

• A Finnish study released just this week showed that transgender children have increased psychiatric morbidity as a result of gender reassignment surgery. 
• The Cass Review, which is the most comprehensive review on the subject, concluded that gender affirming medical interventions do not improve long-term outcomes, reduce suicide risk, or reliably address gender distress. 
• A long-term Dutch study found that over 80 percent of adolescents grow out of gender dysphoria by adulthood without intervention, which is to say that most adolescents who experienced gender dysphoria were never truly transgender to begin with. 
• England banned puberty blockers because they are shown to have some nasty side effects, like lower fertility, decreased bone density, deteriorating mental health, and a lower IQ.
• The American Society of Plastic Surgeons refused to endorse gender reassignment surgery because of insufficient evidence for long-term benefit, concerns about irreversible harm, and performing these procedures on developing bodies without clear, robust evidence. 

Here's an unpleasant truth. If gender "affirming" "medicine" is untested and harmful, then pressure to delay or question a minor's self-professed gender identity is not inherently evil. If anything, it is most likely a protective measure. Given that gender identity itself is conceptually incoherent, and medical interventions to affirm it carry real risk, withholding affirmation could plausibly spare children unnecessary harm. 

Protecting Children without the U.S. Becoming a Nanny State

Many of the Justices in this ruling framed this strictly as a First Amendment issue, claiming that the Colorado law was regulating speech based on viewpoint. If it were mere abstraction, I would wholeheartedly agree. Some might see my stance on conversion "therapy" in conflict with me defending abstract speech, such as opinions, insults, or political rhetoric. That apparent paradox dissolves once we recognize a core principle: speech is protected unless it is inseparable from conduct that reliably and objectively causes harm. 

Last year, I presented my case that words are not violence because abstract speech by itself does not cause objective harm. In 2018, I argued for the protection of hate speech because "hate speech" is often a cudgel for "opinion I dislike." I even argued for the First Amendment rights of pro-Palestine protesters protesting peacefully, which is quite the litmus test because I view them as the modern-day equivalent of Nazis. Where I drew the line with the pro-Palestine crowd was when their speech crossed over into the realm of harmful conduct. 

That concept applies here. Conversion "therapy" is not abstract speech or merely expressing an idea. It is a professional intervention in which a therapist uses speech as a tool with the goal of changing a child's sexual orientation. Even if conversion "therapy" has a component of speech, it is an embedded professional practice that has a direct, predictable record of causing harm. 

Conversion "therapy" is not the only scenario in which speech is a component of harmful conduct. With fraud, speech is inseparable from the act of taking someone's money under false pretenses. With direct threats and incitement, the harm is embedded into the speech itself. With perjury on the stand, the false statements can cause harm and legal or financial injury. Doctors or therapists giving advice or treatment that foreseeably harms clients is considered malpractice, and conversion "therapy" for sexual orientation falls under that category of malpractice.  

From a libertarian standpoint, this distinction is ultimately consistent. We protect words when they are abstract, subjective, and speculative in harm (which is the vast majority of words), but we allow narrow state intervention when speech is inseparable from predictable, harmful action. Regulating conversion "therapy" is not an attack on free expression. It is a principled defense of vulnerable children against a practice with a long-documented record of harm. At least for sexual orientation, it would sit comfortably alongside other recognized exceptions to the First Amendment.....if the Supreme Court ruled as such. 

The Wrong Line in the Sand

Instead, the Court chose to frame the case purely as a free speech issue while missing the crucial distinction between abstract expression and professional conduct that causes predictable harm. By choosing to protect conversion "therapy" for both sexual orientation and gender identity, the Court drew the wrong line when they should have drawn the line by protecting the speech for gender identity only.  

This decision has another dimension beyond the harm caused to children. It is a reflection of a broader problem in how LGBT discourse has evolved. By lumping sexual orientation together with gender identity in legal, social, and research contexts, the unique experiences and vulnerabilities of gay people ends up being overshadowed. The result is policies, rulings, and societal practices that leaves gay people more harmed, a concept I discussed in 2024 when arguing for the gay rights movement to divorce from the trans rights movement.

For sexual orientation-specific conversion "therapy," SCOTUS' ruling is a missed opportunity to defend minors while protecting libertarian principles, especially when it comes to the intersection of freedom of speech and the nonaggression axiom. It is a reminder that conflating distinct issues can have real-world implications for those who should, even under a libertarian framework, be protected. 

Bread Without Illusion: Rethinking Matzah and Pleasure on Passover

On the Jewish holiday of Passover (Pesach), Jews do something that seems backwards at first glance. To celebrate freedom, Jews do not have the most succulent of food available. Jews greatly constrict their dietary options by cutting out leavened products made from wheat, barley, rye, oats, or spelt. The term for these leavened products is chametz. Instead of eating these leavened products on Passover, Jews eat an unleavened bread called matzah. It is flat, dry, one or two steps above eating cardboard. It is a peculiar choice for celebrating freedom. It fulfills some of the roles of bread without feeling filling. Matzah is many things, but it is far from luxurious. 

An article from Rabbi David Kasher at Yeshivat Hadar about matzah touches on this point. R. Kasher said that matzah is almost an anti-bread, something that is not supposed to be enjoyable. My past experiences with matzah corroborate that there is some truth in that insight. R. Kasher also emphasizes that matzah is eaten because it is commandment (a mitzvah) and even links the word matzah to mitzvah. 

From this perspective, the focus is on obedience and symbolic meaning rather than enjoyment. While that framing captures part of the experience, it also presents a false choice: either eat the bread that is meaningful or the bread that is pleasurable. In fact, matzah can be both, but not because it denies pleasure altogether. 

Bread Without the Hype

Chametz is bread with ambition. It rises, it fills, and it projects abundance. It is, in a sense, a metaphor for ego: it amplifies our sense of fullness, of richness, of our sense of self. Passover throws us out of that paradigm. Matzah is flat, dense, and unpretentious. You can eat a lot and still feel hungry, or at least not overstuffed. By limiting ourselves to matzah for a week, we are recalibrating. We taste the difference between substance and show, between satisfaction and the false fullness of indulgence. We learn to enjoy without needing to swell, impress, or flatter the ego. 

The Ego Problem, Not the Appetite

R. Kasher's take of "matzah is not meant to be enjoyable" or that we do it because it is a commandment is not unique to him. It is one I have come across in the Jewish community numerous times. I found it to be problematic when he created a false dichotomy between doing mitzvahs or enjoying life. Judaism does not ask Jews to reject pleasure the same way you would find in some other world religions. It asks us to discipline it, to refine it, to sharpen it. Matzah reminds us that by temporarily limiting ourselves, we cultivate awareness, discernment, and depth. True freedom is not about mindless or frivolous indulgences, but the ability to make meaningful choices. 

The Joy of Enough

In Jewish tradition, another name of matzah is lechem oni (לחם עוני), which means the "bread of affliction" or the "poor man's bread." It sounds bleak at first, doesn't it? However, upon further examination, I believe it asks us a question about what richness is. We live in a world where material wealth, a prestigious and/or lucrative career, and fame are highly valued. The Sages (Pirke Avot 4:1) put it plainly: "Who is rich? The one who is satisfied with their lot." In a world that constantly sends us the message that we are lacking, whether through social comparison, advertisements, or the rat race, matzah reminds us that wealth is not about accumulation, but rather awareness and connection.

This lesson is not unique to Passover. Last Sukkot, I wrote about how sitting in the sukkah teaches a similar truth: simplicity can liberate us. Without distraction, we can learn what really matters: humility, gratitude, connection, and meaning. Matzah does not extract that pleasure. It teaches us to recognize and bask in the richness already in front of us, and to do so while the ego takes a back seat. 

Conclusion

Passover is a reminder that pleasure is not something to suppress or ignore, but to refine. Chametz, the bread of abundance, has its place the rest of the year. It fuels our bodies, satisfies cravings, and reflects the world of fullness in which we live. For a few days of the year, matzah asks of ourselves whether we can enjoy life without inflating the ego. It asks us to recalibrate our appetites and our awareness. And when Jews return to eating chametz, it is with a renewed sense of appreciation for chametz. In that respect, matzah becomes a portal through which pleasure can be enjoyed more fully and wisely. 

A Misguided Millionaire Tax Comes to Washington State

Governments love to talk about fair taxation. In the State of Washington, lawmakers decided to do something about having what they claimed was the second most regressive tax system in the country to deal with that perceived unfairness. In response, Governor Bob Ferguson signed into law a 9.9 percent excise tax on any income that exceeds over $1 million, which will take into effect in 2028. While the idea of fighting for the little guy while making sure people pay their "fair share" (whatever that means), the unintended consequences are exactly why this sort of tax is ill-advised. 

First, let's tackle the fairness argument. As the Left-leaning Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) points out, the bottom quintile pay 13.5 percent of their income to state and local taxes, as opposed to 4.1 percent for the Top 1 percent. However, that's an incomplete picture. About three quarters of those earning less than $25,000 do not pay federal income taxes. More to the point, as the Washington Policy Center details, the top earners pay way more in absolute dollars than everyone else (see below). 

And then there's the fact that this new tax will make Seattle have the highest de facto income tax rate in the country, which I can tell you will do nothing for tax competitiveness. The lack of a de jure income tax was one of the last few positive features of Washington's tax system. This will take away Washington's tax competitive edge. The Common Sense Foundation estimated that if 5 percent of the millionaires left Washington, it would mean a loss of 8,000 private sector jobs and a decline of personal income of $19 billion from 2028 to 2032. 

Similar to the U.S. federal government, Washington State does not have a revenue problem: it has a spending problem. Washington State passed $9 billion in tax hikes last year, which is the largest in the state's history. The state still managed to create a $2.3 billion deficit that it needs to solve this year. And the proponents wanted to pass this millionaire tax to fund even more money on education, healthcare, and other government services? 

Washington's millionaire tax is an exercise of what it looks like to have an obsessive, singular, narrow focus on "fairness" without looking at the bigger picture. The top earners already contribute more. Yet this risks driving away high earners, deterring businesses to move to Washington, shrink private-sector jobs, and slow economic growth. Rather than solve fiscal problems, this tax will further erode Washington's competitiveness while ignoring the fact that Washington continues to be a state that continues to spend more than it makes. Chasing fairness seems noble until you realize that ignoring the consequences is expensive. 

A Passover Lesson from Song of Songs: The Courage to Keep Going Without Certainty

On the Shabbat of Passover, many Jewish communities have the practice of reading the Song of Songs (Shir HaShirim; שיר השירים) during services. Unlike the Book of Esther for Purim or the Book of Lamentations for Tisha B'Av, this pairing with Passover is not self-explanatory. Passover is a national story about the Jewish people going from slavery to freedom. Song of Songs is a poetic love story celebrating love and intimacy. 

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a class in which we analyzed verses from Song of Songs and compared them to midrashic texts to analyze it further. One of the questions that lingered for me after this class was how these passages about longing and searching have to do with the Passover story. 

In chapter 5 of Song of Songs, the woman is sleeping when she hears a knock at the door. It is her male lover knocking (5:2). She hesitates for but a moment (5:3). When she arrives at the door, he is already gone (5:6). Rather than going back to bed, she goes out in the middle of the night to look for her lover (ibid). 

She does not know where he can be or whether he can be found. She does not know whether her search will yield any results, but she carries on. Upon her search, she was physically assaulted by watchmen (5:7). Even when met with harm and misunderstanding, the search does not collapse. 

Rather, she continues the search. But why? One answer is that she has a reference point: the lover. Not even assault deterred her from finding him. She is already in motion. When people are often in a state of grief, loss, spiritual yearning, or love, people persist and take that momentum, even with the pain. She does not stop to ask if it is worth continuing. She simply presses on. Why?

It is not because the search has been fruitful at this stage. It is because the assault of the watchmen does not resolve the absence of her beloved nor does it change her North Star. Her North Star is not a guarantee of outcome or even a clear sense of direction. It is a relational anchor that persists even when clarity is missing. The beloved is not visible and his location is not know, but he remains meaningful. It is carried forward in spite of the uncertainty.

This echoes a dynamic I explored with Psalm 27, a passage Jews traditionally read during the Jewish month of Elul. Faith is not build because of doubt, but through that doubt. Although the Psalmist's enemies are closing in on him (Psalm 27:3), he has trust even though he does not know the outcome. It is the ability to remain emotionally and spiritually oriented when one is surrounded by uncertainty, instability, and threats. Doubt is not the deterioration of faith. It is often the very thing that makes it stronger.  

Interestingly enough, she continues when she talks with her friends (6:1-3). She does not respond with confusion or despair when her girlfriends ask her where her lover is. She still has no clue where he went or whether he will return. Yet she speaks with confidence and clarity, that he's in the garden looking for lilies and that "I am my beloved, and my beloved is mine" (אני לדודי ודודי לי). In that sense, faith is not the elimination of uncertainty. It is the ability to move forward when that uncertainty remains intact. 

This structure of faith is not confined to the love story in the Song of Songs. It reappears on a far larger scale in the narrative of the Exodus from Egypt. Although they were slaves under Egyptian rule, the Israelites leaving Egypt without knowing the full shape of the journey ahead was scary. That uncertainty was not a minor detail. It was a major underpinning of the emotional and existential difficulty of the journey of the Exodus. It helps explain why the process of leaving Egypt is marked not only by movement forward, but also by such unstable moments as the Golden Calf and multiple episodes of kvetching.

Song of Songs and Passover ultimately reflect the same spiritual movement, although one was intimate and the other collective. In Song of Songs, a woman searches through absence and disruption yet continues forward without certainty of outcome. In the Exodus narrative, an entire people leaves Egypt while still inhabiting uncertainty, fear, and internal resistance along the way. After all, how does a walk that should take a few weeks turn into 40 years? 

Perhaps this is why Song of Songs belongs on Passover. Liberation in the Exodus narrative is not a clean transition from bondage into clarity. It is the beginning of freedom lived inside uncertainty, fear, and unfinished longing. Even after leaving Egypt, the journey is marked by desire for what was left behind and uncertainty about what lies ahead. 

Seen this way, liberation and longing are not opposites are not opposites, but rather intertwined realities within the same act of moving forward. The same people who step into freedom also carry with them hesitation, complaints, memories, and emotional baggage. Becoming free does not give you a clean slate. In this sense, liberation is not the end of longing or searching, but rather its beginning in motion.

Means-Testing Social Security Is a Better Band-Aid, But Still Not a Cure

Social Security was born out of crisis. In the depths of the Great Depression, about half of the elderly in America lacked sufficient income to be self-supporting. The idea was simple: ensure that those less fortunate, the elderly in particular, would not fall into destitution. It was not meant to be elegant. It was simply meant to help people stay afloat during a time of economic crisis. 

Nearly a century later, the program has exceeded its initial scope and is struggling under the weight. Social Security's long-term financing is no longer a concern in the distant future. The Social Security Trust Fund could be depleted as early as 2032. Once that happens, there will be a statutory cut to Social Security benefits up to 24 percent. 

Faced with this fiscal reality, policymakers have proposed increasing taxes, cutting benefits, or some combination of both. Increasingly, politicians have eyed benefits to higher earners, both for political and fiscal reasons. Earlier this week, the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) proposed a Six Figure Limit (SFL). The SFL would cap a couple's normal retirement age (NRA) earnings at $100,000, whereas that cap would be at $50,000 for a single person. For clarification, those caps are for not just Social Security income, but all income, including wages or earnings from work, investment income, pension income, and any other income sources. 

The SFL has a number of benefits. One is that would close at least 20 percent of Social Security's solvency gap. This option would save at least $100 billion over a decade while reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio by at least 2 percentage points. Since debt is a drag on economic growth, this is indeed good news.   

Some might complain that the SFL might weaken the link between benefits and contributions. However, the SFL would bring it back to what Social Security was in its inception: a modest safety net. The fact that Americans receive more in retirement benefits from the government than even the French do is ridiculous (see below). 

A proposal like the SFL that can improve solvency and reduce government debt while scaling back Social Security is definitely an improvement over the status quo. However, I would still contend that the SFL is a second-best option. 

Last year, I criticized Social Security in honor of its 90th anniversary and pointed out how it is structurally problematic. One issue is the pay-as-you-go payment mechanism. This is unsustainable due to demographic shift of fewer workers supporting more retirees, which creates an inevitable shortfall. The second issue is precisely that there is a strong link between contributions and benefits. Higher-income individuals receive disproportionate benefits, which acts more like a redistribution scheme rather than a safety net. 

As much as I can appreciate that the SFL can help mitigate the fiscal woes with Social Security, it does not address or resolve Social Security's structural and systemic issues. The pay-as-you-go mechanism will continue to be untenable, whereas the link between contributions and benefits imposes more costs on those with lower earnings. 

On the other hand, a private social security account would allow individuals to control their own retirement savings while being able to have way more saved for retirement. It is time to stop treating Social Security like a handout and start treating it like an investment. Ditching the Social Security program would put retirement savings where they belong: in the hands of the people, not the government. 

Shock and Oil: The Hidden Economics of War with Iran

About a month ago on February 28, the United States and Israel launched surprise attacks on Iran that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other military bigwigs. Since then, there have been military strikes from both sides. The fallout from this war and how it will end remains to be seen. We have already seen one of the predictable outcomes come to fruition. 

There is about 20 percent of the world's petroleum and liquified natural gas that passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Because of the Strait being all but closed, oil barrels have already increased from $73 a barrel at the eve of the war to around $113 a barrel. What is interesting here is not merely the magnitude of the spike, but its timing. The market did not wait for a sustained disruption in supply. They moved almost immediately after the war started. 

And because energy is a universal input into the economy, the price movement does not stay confined to the oil market. It feeds directly into transportation costs, manufacturing inputs, agricultural production, and electricity-intensive sectors like artificial intelligence and data infrastructure.

But this is more than the immediate shock of the military escalation. It is uncertainty about the future. A study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas finds that even when the increase in the probability of a worst-case scenario rises, the prices start to rise and the output starts to drop. As the conflict progresses, the probability does not disappear; it intensifies. 

The risk becomes more realized with higher insurance costs, higher shipping costs, and increased precautionary behavior. The risk premium driven by expectations blends into a price increase driven by reality. As this other study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas calculates, the longer the conflict persists, the more permanent those price hikes remain and the bigger the impact on the GDP (see below).

The costs go beyond the energy market. As of March 23, there has been nearly $29 billion spent on this war. The Cato Institute points out that this undefined war has no clear exit strategy, which makes it more like the war in Afghanistan. Then there's the fact that when geopolitical risk rises, companies do not invest; they wait. Research from the Federal Reserve shows that heightened uncertainty about wars and conflicts causes business to delay capital spending and hiring, which leads to a sizable drop in investment.  

Taken together, the economic consequences of war extend beyond headline figures. Higher gasoline prices are the most visible cost, but it one of many costs in a long chain of government expenditures, business decisions, and long-term economic growth. As uncertainty rises, investment falls along with economic growth. 

In that sense, war operates like a hidden tax that shows up in the form of higher prices, larger deficits, and a slower-growing economy. It's amazing because it's a tax that no one in the U.S. voted for, that no one in the U.S. can escape, and will get explained away afterwards as if nothing happened. 

When "Flatten the Curve" During COVID Meant Trading One Health Crisis for Another

During the COVID pandemic, "flatten the curve" became quite the mantra. It was the justification used for sweeping lockdowns in order to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. The fear was not merely widespread illness, but a collapse of the hospital system. As I explained last month, that nightmare scenario of hospitals overflowing with patients was more faulty modeling and prediction than reality.  

A recent COVID inquiry from the United Kingdom adds on another unpleasant layer. Not only were governments across the world acting in a draconian manner to a threat that by and large did not materialize. They did so in a way that reorganized healthcare to focus on COVID and incentivized everyone else to stay away, especially with the slogan of "Stay home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives." A few favorites from the inquiry report:

• People were also deterred from accessing healthcare....[because of] the public messaging that was intended to keep them safe ('Stay Home'), the fear of catching COOVID-19 in healthcare settings, a feeling that they did not want to 'overburden' the NHS or because they were worried about attending appointments without a loved one being able to attend with them.
• Some non-COVID-19 patients had their diagnoses and treatments delayed to the point where their conditions became untreatable. 
• There was a decline in attendances at emergency departments and other healthcare settings for non-COVID-19 conditions, even for life-threatening medical emergencies such as heart attacks. 
• This suggests that the public messaging of Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives may have, inadvertently, sent the message that healthcare was closed. 
• Missed and late diagnoses and longer waits for treatment for colorectal cancer...resulted in 1,630 excess deaths from colorectal...cancer. 
• The increased rate of deaths in the community from heart attacks suggested that, during the pandemic, people with heart attacks were less likely to attend hospital and thus did not receive time-dependent heart attack treatments, which led to their death. 

If you read Section 9 of the inquiry, you can read a whole list of how this impacted non-COVID healthcare in the British healthcare system. Upon reading the report, it is tragic that this happened in the first place. It is not as if the cancelled procedures, missed treatments, reduced access, or people trying to avoid care was unpredictable. 

Some might be aghast at these findings, but this lamentably was foreseeable. I noted in May 2020 that the downstream effects of shifting healthcare towards COVID care and away from non-COVID were being severely underweighted. That is why it did not surprise me when it was found that the lockdowns caused excess deaths or evidence in 2022 made it clearer of the costs of delaying preventative care. In 2025, I pointed out how a series of health issues increased in prevalence during the pandemic and had not abated at that time. 

What this UK inquiry does is provide institutional confirmation that people did not seek or receive care when they should have, that diagnoses and treatments were delayed, and that patients in some cases presented too late for effective intervention. It also acknowledges that public messing unintentionally contributed to people avoiding this necessary healthcare. What makes it worse is not only that this occurred, but it persists into 2026. Data from the NHS shows that backlogs are still well above pre-pandemic levels.

There is a tendency to treat this all as unforeseeable, as if no one could see this coming. The sad truth is that it is not. Putting off routine care means that deferred care racks up. That is not wisdom in hindsight; that is basic arithmetic. What makes this outcome so uncomfortable for those who were cheering on the lockdowns is that the governments who were trying to keep their citizens safe latched onto such a narrow definition of safety that they ignored the tradeoffs. 

The result is a familiar and unfortunate pattern: fewer immediate hospital crises followed by years of backlogs, delayed diagnoses, and deterioration of healthcare systems. Once the emergency passed, so did the attention to the disastrous aftermath of the lockdowns, which is another reminder of why something as vital as our health should not be fully placed in the hands of the government, especially during a crisis.

The Trump Administration's Latest Protectionist Trick: Call All Foreign Trade "Unfair"

Modern prosperity relies heavily on international trade. No one single country, even one as resource-rich as the United States, produces everything its citizens want or need. The premise of international trade is that people specialize in what they do well and exchange with others who specialize in something, else, and do so across international borders. It is through international trade that countries prosper. From food and clothing to smartphones and automobiles, international exchange allows producers to reach global markets while consumers gain access to goods that would otherwise be more costly or scarce. 

Yet last week, the Trump's Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) claimed that foreign exports are inherently unfair by saying "U.S. trading partners producing more goods than they can consume domestically...displaces existing U.S. domestic production." By redefining imports as evidence of unfairness, the argument treats the presence of foreign goods as a problem rather than a benefit. This view of economics and trade misunderstands the purpose of trade and risks harming the very Americans it seeks to protect. 

Imports Are Benefits, Not Punishment

A common mistake in the Trump administration's line of thinking is that is treats nations as if they were corporations competing for market share. Under this "logic", every import is portrayed as a concession to foreign producers while exports are celebrated as national triumphs. This narrative might be effective for political optics, but bears little resemblance to how markets actually function. 

This misunderstanding largely stems from the mistaken belief that the economy is a fixed pie in which one country's gain must come at another's expense. In reality, trade expands the pie by allowing individuals and businesses to specialize in what they do best and exchange with others who do the same. Trade allows both sides to become better off because each is exchanging something they value less for something they value more. By expanding opportunities for specialization and exchange, international trade increases overall prosperity rather than simply redistributing a fixed economic pie. 

The Protectionist Redefinition

Calling foreign exports inherently unfair is not an economic argument so much as it is a bastardization of the word "fair." In traditional trade policy debates, unfair trade practices refer to specific policies that distort competition, such as subsidies and state-owned enterprises. As imperfect as it arguably is, it is why a World Trade Organization exists. The Trump administration throws out that entire framework out the window. What is going on is that the administration is asserting that the act of selling goods to Americans is suspect if the seller happens to be located outside of the United States.

It is absurd because this approach eliminates the need for evidence or analysis. The argument uses circular logic in which foreign exports are declared unfair simply for being foreign exports. Such "reasoning" turns market competition into exploitation, success into cheating, and consumer choice into economic wrongdoing. Any successful foreign business can be labeled as "unfair", thereby making the fairness argument meaningless. It is an approach that replaces serious economic analysis with farcical economic nationalism. 

What is more is that this logic mirrors the rhetoric behind "Buy American" or "buy local". If purchasing foreign goods is harmful, then presumably Americans should only buy domestically produced goods. But why stop there? With that same logic, it should be wrong to buy goods and services from another state rather than one's own community or neighborhood. Taken seriously, this reductio ad absurdum "logic" collapses when applied consistently. Economic progress has always depended on the widening the scope of trading partners. Restricting trade based on geography does not create wealth. It merely limits the ways in which prosperity can flourish.

Making America Pay Again

This protectionist mindset is framed as a way to shield American workers and industries from "big, bad foreign competitors." In reality, protectionist measures like tariffs impose broad costs onto the U.S. economy. Tariffs reduce competition and restrict supply, which results in higher consumer prices, fewer jobs, and lower economic growth. What is framed politically as sticking it to foreign countries ends up being a tax on the everyday American. 

Those higher costs ripple throughout the broader economy. Consumers pay more for finished goods, while American businesses pay more for imported components and raw materials that they rely on to produce their own products. In many industries, these inputs are essential to maintaining competitiveness. By raising their costs, protectionist policies ultimately make American firms less productive and less able to compete both at home and abroad. 

Those Who Trade Together Stay Together

Trade does not merely affect prices; it shapes the broader strength of the nation. Declaring foreign exports unfair and erecting trade barriers risks weakening the very economic foundations that sustain U.S. competitiveness and strategic influence. Driving up costs for American firms leaves them less capable to compete in the global economy. A strong economy is a prerequisite for a strong national infrastructure and robust national security, and protectionism undermines both. 

These costs extend beyond domestic production. They also damage alliances and global relations. Tariffs and other protectionist policies often push allies into the arms of rivals, thereby diminishing national security. At the same time, these measures slow domestic production and reduce the efficiency of U.S. firms, which undermines the critical base for U.S. infrastructure and security. In other words, this approach risks making the country less secure, less innovative, and less influential on the global stage. 

Old Trade Fallacies Make a Comeback

Declaring foreign exports "unfair" substitutes political rhetoric for analysis. By assuming that imports are evidence of wrongdoing, the argument ignores the principles that make international trade beneficial: specialization, voluntary exchange, and consumer choice. This is just the latest manifestation of the same idiotic reasoning behind "Buy American' or "buy local" campaigns: restricting trade based on geography or origin does not create prosperity; it limits it. The zero-sum logic of protectionism is fundamentally at odds with how markets work. 

The consequences of these policies extend much beyond economic theory. These protectionist measures raise costs for consumers, increase inefficiencies for businesses, and undermine the strategic and economic advantages of maintaining robust global trade relationships. Far from protecting Americans or making America great again, these measures punish them, reduce prosperity, and weaken the U.S.' ability to adapt in a competitive world. If the U.S. government treats all foreign goods as guilty by default, the ones who will lose bigly will be the American people. 

COVID Lockdowns & School Closures and How the Children Did Not Developmentally Bounce Back

Sometimes it feels like the COVID-19 pandemic was yesterday, but the truth is that yesterday was the six-year anniversary that the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. We were told shortly after that the effects of the lockdowns would be short-lived and we could weather it because nothing was worse than COVID-19. We all know how that safetyism turned out!

In the years following the pandemic, researchers have been trying to discern what the tradeoffs of the lockdowns were. The body of research continues to grow and show how the lockdowns were far from being harmless, especially for children. 

Last December, I wrote about research that indicates that lockdowns may have contributed to language and social-cognitive delays in young children. A new study from the University of East Anglia (Johns et al., 2026) shows how the lockdown's effect on children is much worse than previously thought.

The new study did not simply compare outcomes before and after the pandemic. This study tracked the same children over time, allowing researchers to measure how quickly their cognitive skills developed and how entering school during the lockdowns affected that growth. Not only does the study show that the lockdowns caused lower growth in executive-function skills and that the impacts were more greatly felt by children in low-income households. That gap persists years after the lockdown and those students still struggle to catch up.

This study cannot tell us whether the delays from the COVID lockdowns are permanent because only time can tell. Even so, this study shows something fundamental. Lockdowns slowed the rate at which key cognitive skills developed during one of the most formative periods of childhood. 

Executive function, which includes such skills as self-control, attention regulation, and flexible thinking, normally grows rapidly when children first enter school and begin interacting regularly with peers. When those experiences are interrupted, development slowed. Even if some of that is made up, it is not as simple as doubling down efforts to make up for lost time. It simply does not work that way. And this is not a trivial development because it is executive function that plays a major role in academic and social success down the road. 

That is what makes this whole debate even more striking. Much like I brought up last December, lockdowns that disrupted children's lives so profoundly and had such adverse effects were often justified by people who spoke passionately about income inequality in the pre-COVID era. Yet policies that shut down schools and isolate children from an environment where they normally develop those skills was asking for trouble. 

Studies like this show that the costs of lockdowns were not temporary or merely inconvenient. The lockdowns are such a calamity where they still have caused considerable harm years later. Draconian COVID measures were not simply a matter of children missing a few classes. These children have been deprived of an important part of growing up and what it means to be a kid. 

The Billionaire Blunder: Why Bernie Sanders' Wealth Tax Wouldn't Deliver

Every few years, the idea of a wealth tax resurfaces in American politics. The concept is simple enough. Instead of taxing income, the government would impose an annual tax on accumulated wealth, whether that is stocks, bonds, real estate, or other assets. Last week, Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) introduced legislation for a 5 percent wealth tax on the billionaires. Sanders claims that this tax could generate $4.4 trillion in tax revenue over the next decade, revenue that Sanders would like to use to pay for Medicaid expansion, affordable housing, and a $3,000 in direct payments to households.

The theme of a wealth tax is hardly a new topic here at Libertarian Jew. I first covered it in 2014 when economist Thomas Pikkety proposed a global wealth tax. I did so again in 2019 when Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) proposed a wealth tax. While the details of the proposal can change from one to the next, the evidence consistently shows the problematic nature of the wealth tax. I will use my 2019 argument as the basis for my current argument and update the data as needed. 

Other countries have abandoned the wealth tax. In the 1990s, the number of OECD countries with a wealth tax peaked at 12 countries. Now, the figure is at four countries: Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and Colombia. Much of the remainder of this piece will get into the "why" of this decline.  

The wealth tax is difficult to valuate. As the OECD points out (p. 69), a difficulty with the wealth tax is figuring out assets are worth. Unlike income, which is recorded through transactions, wealth often consists of assets that lack clear market prices, such as family businesses, land, or valuable collections. Determining their value requires subjective appraisals that can be expensive, inconsistent, and easily contested. 

High elasticity. Another question is how sensitive wealthy people are to wealth taxes. This responsiveness to a tax increase or decrease, known in economics as elasticity, gets at how much an individual can tolerate a tax change. In the Spanish case study, tax filers' taxable wealth decreased by 42-51 percent. Similarly in Colombia, a 1 percent decrease in the wealth tax led to an immediate 2 percent increase in wealth for those near the threshold. In Scandinavian countries, a one-percentage point increase in the wealth tax led to a decrease of stocks by wealthy taxpayers by 2 percent. 

It is no mystery: people do not want to pay the wealth tax. People can use the legal system with tax avoidance, whether through moving taxes in tax-exempt accounts, underreporting wealth, inflating liabilities, or claiming deductions strategically. These are the types of responses with lower tax rates. Imagine what it would be like with a 5 percent wealth tax rate!

It is also worth noting that Sanders' rhetoric about "millionaires and billionaires" softened in recent years. He conveniently dropped the "millionaires" around the time he himself became a millionaire. I guess it is easy to champion taxing the rich as long as you get to redraw the definition of "rich" to leave yourself out. 

Rosy estimates and evasion rates. Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman estimated that Sanders' wealth tax would generate $4.4 trillion in the next decade. They were the same economists that calculated the estimate for Elizabeth Warren in 2019. Warren's tax was at 2 percent for wealth between $50 million and $1 billion, and 3 percent for anything above. For Warren's version, the economists assumed a 15 percent tax evasion rate. What I find peculiar is that these economists assume a lower evasion rate with Sanders' version, even though it is a higher tax rate. 

Forget that one of the co-authors, Zucman, co-authored a paper showing that those in the 0.01 percent have a tax evasion rate upwards of 30 percent. Other tax experts are not buying it. As the Tax Foundation points out, if you assume an evasion rate closer to that paper that Zucman co-authored, Sanders' estimate would decline to $3.3 trillion over 10 years. Senior Fellow Kyle Pomerleau at the American Enterprise Institute is even less optimistic. Once factoring in behavioral responses, Pomerleau estimated that it would be $2.3 trillion over the next decade. 

Wealth tax does not generate that much revenue. The issue of unbridled optimism is not confined to these two economists that Sanders hired. Historical experience shows how little revenue wealth taxes truly generate. With Sanders' estimates, his annual average of $440 billion would be the equivalent of 1.4 percent of GDP, given that the most recent GDP figures had it at $31.10 trillion. 

Looking at historical data, it has been quite low. That was a conclusion of that lovely OECD report on wealth taxes (p. 18). The Tax Foundation was kind enough to gather the historical wealth tax data on the few countries that still have a wealth tax to show that with very few exceptions, the wealth tax revenue does not exceed 1 percent of GDP (see below). 

  

Conclusion. All of this adds up to a simple conclusion: wealth taxes are inherently tricky, easy to evade, and historically generate far less revenue than proponents claim. Sanders' proposal may sound ambitious, but experience teaches us that wealth taxes provoke capital flight, creative accounting, and behavioral shifts that shrink the tax base. Let's be real: taxing billionaires at 5 percent is less a sincere fiscal plan and more a social media stunt dressed up as economics.

X Marks the Spot? Why Driver’s Licenses Shouldn’t Be Gender Identity Statements

Last week in Kansas, Senate Bill 244 went into effect. One notable aspect is that this bill mandates that people enter bathrooms in government buildings according to their biological sex. What is interesting is that an individual violating this law can face a civil penalty of $1,000. But that is not the provision I want to cover today. This bill also requires that driver's licenses list biological sex instead of gender identity. 

For transgender individuals, this is not an abstract policy change. It alters a document that they use for multiple activities, which includes driving a vehicle, renting a car, interacting with police, applying for a loan, boarding an airplane, picking up a package, registering at a hospital, checking into a hotel, and signing a lease. Critics of this bill argue that it imposes stigma, creates daily friction, and opens transgender people to harassment and discrimination. 

One criticism of this bill that I will agree with is that there was next to no grace period given for transgender people to acquire a new driver's license. It is true that a retroactive invalidation with no grace period is harmful and an example of poorly drafted legislation. Bureaucracies should do their utmost to not create avoidable chaos, although that might be too big of an ask. 

Yet beneath the procedural misstep is a more fundamental issue, mainly that a driver's license is a form of legal identification, not a canvas for personal self-identification.  As I explained last year, gender identity lacks clear operational boundaries and is not something that the government can consistently or meaningfully verify due to its incoherent and subjective nature. Because gender identity cannot be defined or verified with consistency, it is an unsuitable basis for a legal document and has no practical utility. 

By contrast, biological sex is a stable and verifiable category that reduces ambiguity and keeps administrative processes consistent and secure. While not as crucial as a photo, name, or date of birth, a biological sex indicator on a driver's license still serves functions that gender identity cannot engender (pun intended). 

• Interactions with law enforcement: Driver's licenses are used to confirm identity during traffic stops, match individuals to warrants, and identify suspects from descriptions. Physical descriptions often include biological sex, which correlates with bone structure, facial structure, height and weight distribution patterns, and voice patterns. While an officer may rely most heavily on the photo, name, and date of birth, biological sex remains a verifiable descriptive element that gender identity does not consistently provide. 

• Medical and emergency contexts: Driver's licenses are not designed as medical records, yet biological sex can occasionally aid identification in emergencies and provide context for drug metabolism differences, sex-specific conditions (e.g., ovarian cancer, testicular emergencies), baseline cardiovascular differences, and possible pregnancy. Biological sex has clinical relevance, whereas gender identity does not serve this function.

• Data integrity. Since it acts as an official source for administrative statistics, driver's license data has a downstream effect of feeding into accident statistics, crime reporting, public health research, and transportation safety analysis. Biological sex is empirically measurable and allows accurate sex-based comparisons. Gender identity does not provide such consistency for data analysis.

A driver's license is an administrative document for legal identification. Because the driver's license serves as a foundational identification document in modern civic life, the categories of information it contains should be objective, stable, verifiable, and resistant to self-attestation alone. Since gender identity is a subjective understanding of the self, it has no consistent administrative application. 

In addition to being an objective category, the characteristic should be necessary for identification or administrative purposes. Otherwise, why not add political affiliation, sexual orientation, religion, or Myers-Briggs type on a driver's license? Because legal identification is not meant to capture the fullness of who we are as individuals. 

It serves the narrower purpose of anchoring a person to a stable, administrable record within a broader legal system. The more the state drifts from objective categories toward interior self-conception, the less it identifies and the more it validates someone's self-perception. A driver's license is for identifying people, not a self-affirmation tool. 

When identification becomes affirmation, it stops identifying anything at all. Validating someone's perception of self is not something the government should be in the business of doing because a category that means whatever anyone says it means, especially when it is not grounded in reality, ultimately means nothing. 

Drowning Out Evil: What the Purim Practice of Noisemaking Teaches About Moral Clarity

The news cycle as of late has been filled with reports of Operation Epic Fury, which is the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign targeting the remnants of Iran's military and nuclear infrastructure, as well as various members of Iranian leadership. Regardless of one's political perspective and whether this attack should have been launched, the operation is unmistakably loud. Not only is it loud in the literal sense with explosions and air power, but also in the figurative sense in terms of the Trump administration's foreign policy and how it views its adversaries. 

The idea that evil should not be ignored and should be actively opposed is not a new concept in Jewish history. In synagogues around the world, Jews will gather tonight in a ritualized form of confronting evil: the reading of the Book of Esther, also know as the Megillah. The biblical narrative describes how a Jewish woman, Esther, rises to the queenship of the Persian Empire and thwarts a genocidal plot against the Jewish people. The antagonist of the story is Haman, a royal official who persuades King Ahasuerus to authorize the extermination of the Jews. Through a dramatic reversal, Haman's plan was thwarted and the Jewish people were saved. 

This is where the noise enters the scene. Every time the name of Haman is mentioned in the Megillah reading, synagogues erupt in boos, stomps, hisses, and the rattling clamor of groggers. Although the first documented instance of this practice is in the 13th century, it is derived from the Torah. In the book of Deuteronomy (25:17-19), the Jews are commanded to blot out the memory of Amalek. Haman was the son of Hammedathah the Agagite (Esther 3:1). Agag was the king of the Amalekites (I Samuel 15:8-9), which is why Jewish tradition (Talmud, Megillah 13a).

In an age where moral categories are inverted, Purim is especially relevant. Hamas carried out despicable acts of kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023. If an attack that was equivalent to multiple 9/11 attacks happened to any other country, the international community would have sympathized with the attacked. Instead, much of the world sympathized with an anti-Semitic, homophobic, authoritarian terrorist organization. Entire populations now reframe those who call for the extinction of the Jewish state as "oppressed" and "freedom fighters.”

Then there is the new low society has reached in that more and more are of the opinion that disagreeable ideas are the same as actual violence. We see this not simply in rhetorical terms, but in real-world consequences It was that warped logic that got Charlie Kirk murdered and can continue to justify violence as a response to political disagreement.

These are but two examples to contrast the Megillah. Haman is not perceived as "oppressed," "misunderstood," or "dealing with systemic inequity." Haman sought genocide: full stop. There was no "this situation is complicated" or "the relation between Jews and Persians were complex and nuanced at the time." The Purim story insists otherwise. Power can corrupt, tyranny is real, and genocide is evil. The Megillah illustrates the moral categories unambiguously. 

At the same time, the Megillah models a form of pluralism that does not compromise moral clarity. The Jews lived among foreigners under foreign rule and navigated a world of different beliefs and customs. That diversity does not mean that we ignore when clear wrongdoing is taking place. Just like Jews in the Megillah existed in a different world were also able to recognize Haman's evil. We too must insist on certain basic truths in a pluralistic world. Acts like genocide, torture, and kidnapping are unacceptable. Purim teaches that we can live amidst difference without equivocating about what is categorically wrong or drifting into the idea that evil is "just another perspective." 

The uproar at Haman's name is not just about a tradition. It is about not having evil become normalized. It is about making sure we can distinguish between right and wrong, even in a pluralistic, democratic society. Sometimes it takes a loud, jarring noise to make sure we do not succumb to moral atrophy and indifference.