Mandated Gender-Neutral Toy Aisles Is Another Instance of California's Woke Virtue-Signaling

California started off the New Year with a mandate for retail stores selling toys or childcare items to have gender-neutral aisles. This mandate stems from a 2021 California law stating that any retailer with a physical presence in California and 500 employees is to maintain "a gender-neutral section or area to be labeled at the discretion of the retailer." Retail stores that fail to comply pay $250 for the first infraction and $500 for subsequent infractions. The idea behind this law is to allow children to express themselves without being hindered by traditional gender norms. That might sound congenial, but here are some issues:

• Retail stores are attuned to the supply and demand of its customers. Retail stores not need such a mandate to tell them that California is a Left-of-center state in which there has been an increased demand for gender-neutral consumer goods. Target dropped its gender-specific sections in 2015, and other such stores as Toys 'R Us followed suit. Even toymaker Hasbro removed the "Mr." from its Potato Head line. 
• You would think California has bigger problems to contend with, such as crime (including shoplifting in retail stores), homelessness, preventing dangerous wildfires, a population exodus, or its budget deficit. 
• To properly enforce this law, the State of California would need to hire someone to regularly inspect toy stores to make sure they are compliant with this law. If the law is unenforceable, it ends up being superfluous virtue-signaling at best. At worst, enforcement is a waste of taxpayer dollars that needlessly punishes retailers. 
• Why does the government feel the need to mandate how businesses display and market their merchandise? Such decisions should be left to business owners. 

As I already brought up, there are more pressing matters in the world than gender-neutral toy aisles. I wrote a piece seven years ago as to whether toys should be gender-specific or gender-neutral.  If parents want to buy gender-neutral toys for their children, they should be allowed to do so. The same goes for those who want to buy gender-specific toys for their children. It is partially the absurdity of the law that prompted me to write this blog entry on a solution in search of a problem. After all, satire website Babylon Bee called it before California legislators proposed the bill. What concerns me is not the overall influence this bill will have on the lives of Californians. It is setting an eery precedent and a tone that signals to woke lawmakers that they can feel entitled to manage every aspect of private commerce to their liking. I do not want to live in a world that encroaches on private businesses in such a fashion. Legislators should think twice before imposing their values onto customers and businesses in such a fashion.

San Francisco Reveals the Ridiculousness of Reparations for Slavery

Earlier this month, a committee in San Francisco submitted a 60-page proposal to the City for a one-time reparations payment of $5 million to each eligible African-American resident. While the authors of the proposal acknowledge that San Francisco or California played no part in slavery, they decide to extend the eligibility for reparations beyond being a descendant of someone who was enslaved. Such eligibility requirements include having been incarcerated by the War on Drugs, being a descendant of someone impacted by redlining, or was affected by San Francisco's Urban Renewal between 1954 and 1973.  

Let's start with the price tag of this proposal. Given the broad eligibility requirements, it would not be unreasonable to say that the vast majority of San Francisco's estimated 35,455 African-American citizens over 18 years of age would qualify. Giving $5 million to each African-American in San Francisco would make a price tag of $175 billion. The price tag of the proposed reparations is more than ten times the amount of the City's current budget of $14 billion. As a Hoover Institution analysis on San Francisco's reparation proposal points out, this does not even factor in the other proposed recommendations that would add an additional $25 billion to the price tag. 

The proposal points out some historical wrongs. It should go without saying that slavery is an atrocious crime against liberty and humanity. Redlining was a harmful housing policy started by the Democratic Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration during the New Deal era that exacerbated racial wealth gaps. I have taken issue with the War on Drugs because it created a bloated corrections system incarcerating thousands of Americans while doing next to nothing to lower drug consumption. As for the Urban Renewal, I do not have an issue with improving housing. It is worth pointing out that liberals at the time were in support of the Urban Renewal. 

Where I take issue is with reparations being the solution. I first wrote about reparations in 2014 when I tackled the ethical, economic, and logistical issues with reparations. I will bring up some of those issues up here today, but I want to address the argument for reparations by asking some questions and show how implementation of reparations is nigh impossible. 

Who qualifies for reparations? 

If anyone should receive reparations for slavery, it would be those directly impacted by slavery. At least with Holocaust survivors and the Japanese-Americans who had to endure internment camps, the restitution was primarily made to those who went through the atrocities. It has been over 150 years since this country had a Civil War and slavery ended in the United States. All of those directly impacted by slavery are dead. What should be the percentage of Black ancestry required to receive reparations? Do mixed-race individuals qualify? Should wealthy and successful Black San Franciscans receive reparations? What about recent Black immigrants from Africa or the West Indies? But this avoids a bigger question: Why should people so far removed from slavery be held accountable for the damage caused by slavery? 

When does it end? 

If this were only about slavery, that would be one thing. However, the San Francisco proposal goes beyond slavery, as does author Ta-Nehisi Coates and countless others who bring up the topic of systemic racism. If reparations were only about slavery, the San Francisco proposal would not make any sense because California never partook in the Atlantic slave trade. 

The San Francisco proposal states that these reparations should exist because the "repression and exclusion of Black people were codified through legal and extralegal actions, social codes, and judicial enforcement." Here is the issue with that argument that is widely held by the pro-reparations crowd: Black people were not the only Americans screwed over by the government in such a fashion. 

There were the Chinese who felt a lot of discrimination through the Oriental Exclusion Acts and coolie labor (苦力), particularly in California. Do you hear a call from Chinese-Americans to receive millions in reparations? There were Japanese-Americans who were interred during World War II. Let's not forget the Jews, the Irish, Native Americans, and gay people. This is not to minimize what African-Americans have historically endured in a U.S. historical context. At the same time, it is equally true that there is no shortage of individuals that could claim harm by U.S. government policies or judicial enforcement.

And that is only looking at U.S. history. If we look at world history, injustice is all too common. By this standard, there is no country or government prior to the 21st century that would be able to withstand woke scrutiny. The brutality that countless had to endure over time would make nearly everyone eligible for reparations of some sort. It would be a nonstop litany of grievance politics. Again, when does it end?

Why aren't reparations proponents asking other countries for reparations?  

The United States was not the only country involved in the Atlantic slave trade. There were the European nations of Portugal, Britain, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and Denmark. Multiple African nations have ancestors who played their part, including Benin, Egypt, Morocco, and Cameroon. Slavery was not a uniquely American institution. Slavery existed prior to the Atlantic slave trade; it has been an institution since antiquity. Sadly, it still exists. So why aren't the woke citizens of San Francisco issuing a compensation claim to the nations that kidnapped, detained, and sold people into slavery?

Who is ultimately going to pay for this? 

In the San Francisco proposal, they are asking for an amount that shadows the City's annual budget, as well as the $22.5 billion deficit that the state of California already has. On a national level, we have over $31 trillion in debt and a debt-to-GDP ratio that is higher than it was shortly after World War II. The question of who is going to pay goes beyond the price tag or the solvency issues. San Francisco's population is 51.1 percent White and 37.2 percent Asian (Census). Nationwide demographics are different, but the distribution remains the same: the money would go from non-Black citizens to Black citizens. This brings up some uncomfortable questions to better understand the nuance. 

Should Caucasian-Americans whose ancestors fought for the Union be exempt from paying? What about white people whose ancestors were not even in the United States prior to the Civil War? I can tell you that about three-quarters of my ancestors didn’t immigrate to the United States until the 20th century. What about Black people whose ancestors fought for the Confederacy or were descended from slave traders in Africa? And why should Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans pay for reparations? Was the suffering of their ancestors not enough to merit reparations? These may sound like absurd questions, but that is because refuting an absurd system as reparations requires replying to the absurdity. 

This highlights another issue with this proposal: collective justice. For the social justice crowd on the Left, reparations are fair because they believe in collective guilt, i.e., everyone should be judged the same for being part of a certain demographic, regardless of their individual involvement. For the rest of us, guilt and innocence should be determined on an individual level. By this collective guilt "logic," all Muslims would be responsible for 9-11. All gun owners would be held responsible for mass shootings. All straight people would be responsible for the oppression and stigma of gay people. But we know that such logic does not withstand scrutiny. All non-Black citizens of the United States should not be held responsible for slavery that ended nearly sixteen decades ago. Oversimplifying white people and their lack of involvement in a slave trade that has not occurred for well over a century is not only racist, but it illustrates the intellectual inconsistency of reparations proponents. 

These points get at another issue of trying to give out reparations generations after the incident has occurred. When you go back this many generations, the genealogical answers to who has standing become less straight-forward and more muddled, thereby diminishing the argument for reparations. 

Would reparations help heal or ease racial tensions?

If we look at 2022 Pew Research poll results for reparations specifically, we have a mixed picture. 68 percent of Americans do not approve of reparations. Race demographics is where it gets tricky. 77 percent of African-Americans approve, whereas 18 percent of white people do. There is more approval from Hispanics and Asians than Caucasian-Americans (39 and 33 percent, respectively). As we can see, there is a racial divide on the question of reparations. Per the infographic below, there is an even bigger divide by political affiliation. 

I thought that reparations would do nothing to help race relations back in 2014. Since then, we have had more political polarization and social media amplifying societal contentiousness. Given these poll results and political contention in 2023 America, it is not difficult to foresee the political battles, social disruption, and further racial tensions that such a policy would most likely engender. And the bigger the payout, the bigger the resentment. As former Manhattan Institute fellow Coleman Hughes stated:

If we were to pay reparations today, we would only divide the country further - making it harder to build the political coalitions required to solve the problems facing black people today. We would insult many black Americans by putting a price on the suffering of their ancestors, and turn the relationship between black Americans and white Americans from a coalition into a transaction, from a union between citizens into a lawsuit between plaintiffs and defendants. 

Would reparations disincentivize work? 

That depends on how the reparations are distributed. If the funds are distributed as an income stream, then they would. As we see with unemployment benefits, the larger the benefit, the larger the disincentive. If they are distributed as a lump sum, as is the case with the San Francisco proposal, it would most probably take predatory practices to a whole new level. If payments were made to institutions, it makes me wonder how the funds would be distributed and who would hold the institutions accountable.

Would African-Americans have been better off if there ancestors were not sold into slavery?

This question was brought up by Cato Institute scholar Douglas Bandow. This a controversial question, but it points out a major flaw in the reparations argument. Slavery is an abhorrent practice. There is no moral justification for it. We should not forget the legal or economic progress that minorities in the United States have made, as much as reparation proponents would like to do. We should also ask what would have most likely happened if the slavery did not occur. To quote Bandow:

The U.S., for all its flaws, provides far more economic opportunities than the African nations where those seeking compensation would have ended up if their ancestors had not been transported to the New World. That doesn't justify the crime of slavery, of course, but it vitiates any claim for 'compensation' of the descendants of slaves.

Conclusion

Slavery was and is a despicable infringement of human rights. The treatment of African-Americans following the Civil War was no less excusable. At the same time, reparations are nothing more than a massive redistributionist scheme that does nothing to bring about justice while giving the political Left more money and power. To spend so much money to so little effect is fiscally irresponsible as it is morally egregious. 

When discussing redlining last month, I listed some policy ideas that did not involve costing billions and further dividing the nation. Although I disagreed with Senator Corey Booker's baby bonds plan, it at least avoided the racial tensions that come with reparations. We should be able to talk about tough issues on the topic of race, but we should equally discard such counterproductive measures as reparations.

Why Gas Stove Bans Should Go Up in Smoke

Having a background in political science and public policy, I have learned that anything can be politicized: pronouns, baby formula, art, face masks. Especially in an age with such high political polarization, the most seemingly innocuous item can become an item of political discourse. What got politicized last week? Gas stoves. Richard Trumka Jr., who is a commissioner for the Consumer Product Safety Commission, said that gas stoves are a hidden hazard. Trumka went as far as telling media outlet Bloomberg that "any option is on the table" when it comes to gas stoves. He proceeded to say that "Products that can't be safe can be banned." It caused a political firestorm, especially among conservative media that thought that the Biden administration was coming after everyone's gas stoves. The political contention got heated enough where Trumka had to announce that the CPSC has no intention of banning gas stoves.  

While the federal government claims no intention of bans, there have been local bans in Left-leaning jurisdictions. The state of California has banned gas stoves in multiple municipalities. The state of New York is banning the installation of new natural gas lines. And even if the government is not going after already-existing gas stoves, not allowing for the production or installation of new gas stoves is still a ban. The question I would like to ask today is whether a ban on gas stoves, whether it is only new gas stoves or on all gas stoves, makes sense.

Health Considerations 

The main premise of Trumka's statement was that gas stoves increase likelihood of childhood asthma. This was based on a study released last month finding that about one in eight cases of childhood asthma in the United States is linked to gas stoves (Gruenwald et al., 2022). This finding seems to line up with a meta-analysis showing increased risk of childhood asthma from gas stoves (Lin et al., 2013). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization linked air pollutants from gas stoves to respiratory issues. Nevertheless, there is doubt to believe whether gas stoves cause statistically significant respiratory harm. 

The International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood still is the most comprehensive study to date on the topic. This robust study of 47 countries concluded that there was "no evidence of an association between the use of gas as a cooking fuel and either asthma symptoms or asthma diagnosis" (Wong et al., 2013). If that was not enough, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states that "gas stoves (and gas fireplace inserts) do not require EPA certification. Whether designed to burn natural gas or propane, they burn very cleanly, emitting very little pollution." While there is plausibility in the release of nitrogen oxides from gas stoves causing respiratory issues, the Left-leaning Slate expresses skepticism that gas stoves play a major role in asthma or other respiratory issues. 

Effects on Climate Change

There is a secondary claim that we should convert from gas stoves to electric stoves because of its effects on greenhouse gas emissions, with methane in particular. Let's sidestep the fact that climate change is not an imminent threat. Let's assume for a moment that it is imminent. The net effects of greenhouse gas emissions would depend on where the electricity is coming from. As of November 2022, the Energy Information Administration found that 38.4 percent of electricity in the United States comes from natural gas, 21.9 percent from coal, 18.9 percent from nuclear, 9.2 percent from wind, 6.1 percent from hydropower, and 2.8 percent from solar. 

Right now, 60.3 percent comes from natural gas and coal, both of which emit at least some carbon into the atmosphere. Nuclear is a carbon-free option, which environmentalists tend to dislike. Renewables account for 19.8 percent. Given the current composition of source of electricity in the U.S., the net effects on greenhouse gas emissions are not in favor of a ban. But let's choose California as a counterexample. Yes, they have a higher percentage of electricity coming from renewables, but rolling blackouts are common in California. European countries are experiencing an electricity crunch in light of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Whether electric stoves would help or whether it is desirable to rely on electric grids more is a matter of debate  

Economic Impacts of a Gas Stove Ban 

An estimated 38 percent of homes have gas stoves, which is about 40 million stoves. How much would it cost to remove and replace gas stoves? I will use data from the Porch Group, which is a vertical software company specializing in home improvement and repairs. There is the cost of removing the gas stove and the gas line. There is the cost of the purchase of an electric stove, as well as the installation of that stove. The national average for labor and materials cost is $1,500, whereas the average cost for a new cooktop is another $1,337. Multiplying $2,837 by 40 million stoves amounts to $113.48 billion. 

Keep in mind that this back-of-the-envelope calculation only includes residential areas. Gas stoves are even more widely used in restaurants. According to the National Restaurant Association, 76 percent of restaurants use natural gas. Converting to electric stoves would have an impact on multiple restaurants, especially Chinese and Korean cuisine. Not only would that mean added costs for a restaurant to comply with a ban. In the best of times, restaurants run on thin profit margins. Many are still financially recovering from the pandemic and the lockdowns that harmed the restaurant industry. The cost of replacing a gas stove would set many restaurants back, thereby hobbling the economic progress of the food services industry.

Which Stoves Are Better for Cooking: Gas, Electric, or Induction?  

There is a reason why gas stoves are so widely used: because they are effective. Gas stoves heat up quickly, are easier to control, have greater usability with varied cookware, are easy to clean, offer more space, and have lower maintenance costs. Electric stoves take a long time to heat up and cook unevenly. A 2021 Morning Consult poll showed that 55 percent of people would likely consider a gas stove as their next stove. The major reason cited by survey respondents holding out on going electric is because they have used electric stoves and they do not work as well. 

There is the possibility of induction cooktops: "Induction cooking uses electricity to produce a magnetic field that induces currents in atoms the cooking vessel." In spite of being faster to heat up than electric ovens and having easier clean-up, induction ovens nevertheless require various types of cookware and are more expensive to purchase. We should not understate the importance of quality food in our lives. Food is an essential in life. Not only can it be a way to live healthily, but quality food is a way millions over time and across cultures enjoy life.

Conclusion

If the technology behind induction stoves gets better and cheapens over time or we come up with an even more efficient type of cooktop, that's one thing. That would be an example of market forces encouraging a trend instead of government mandate trying to force the change. But we are not there yet when it comes to the technological progress. Gas stoves are considered a superior option by many chefs and cooks. It is also likely that we reach a moment where most of our electricity comes from carbon-neutral sources. I have stated before that natural gas is a medium-term solution and that we would eventually need to shift more to nuclear power and renewables because fossil fuels will not last forever. But again, we are not there yet.

We should ask if a gas stove ban makes for good policy based on the merits of the argument. Whether we are talking about COVID lockdowns, menthol cigarettes, marijuana, refugees, human organs, trans fats, or plastic straws, bans are almost always blunt economic instruments with negative unintended consequences. The only exception I can recall writing about all these years was a partial smoking ban (keyword being "partial" because of its targeted nature). At the same time, an exception does not contradict the norm that bans are by and large harmful. 

Since gas stove bans are so new and there are no data available on economic impact of gas stove bans, I bring up bans on other consumer goods as a proxy for what the effects could be like. But let's come back to gas stoves specifically. There are serious doubts as to whether a gas stove ban would significantly improve respiratory health or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is clearer that a gas stove ban would have considerable economic costs and affect the quality of food. As such, there is no reasonable justification based on available data or the economics of bans that a gas stove ban would be a net benefit to society.

Rather than have a government bureaucrat intervene in consumer choices, here's a thought: individuals can gather information and make informed choices based on their own risk tolerance. We should be able to choose what sort of stove we want and whether to purchase a ventilator over the stove or simply open a window to improve ventilation in our homes. Treating adult consumers like actual adults. What a novel concept in our time!

Pasadena Voted for the Economically Reckless Policy of Rent Control

Although the midterm elections were a month ago, I still reflect on the results, particularly those of ballot initiatives. This election cycle, I covered Massachusetts' millionaire tax and prison labor reform, as well as a hodgepodge of ballot initiatives covering multiple topics, including marijuana, minimum wage, and sports betting. Another ballot result caught my eye, this time from the City of Pasadena, California. One of the initiatives in Pasadena that was up for a vote was Measure H. Pasadena's Measure H included a mechanism to impose rent control, specifically that rent increases would be limited to 75 percent of inflation every year after tenancy is established. This Measure passed with 53.8 percent of the vote. 

According to proponents of Measure H, the purpose of such rent control is to prevent "massive year after year increases in rent for tenants who already are living in a home, while guaranteeing a fair return to landlords as required by state law." I can understand and emphasize with the fact that the increases in housing prices are real and painful. At the same time, rent control is a terrible way of trying to help out those struggling with housing prices. 

In 2014, I explained the economics of rent control. You can also read what the libertarian Cato Institute wrote about the economic of rent control in 2018 here. In economic terms, rent control is a form of a price ceiling. What happens in the housing market when such a price ceiling is imposed? 

For one, the demand for rent-controlled units will outstrip the supply. This puts pressure on the non-controlled units by decreasing supply, which not only decreases the number of overall units but also increases prices for non-controlled units. This is not merely economic theory. In San Francisco, rent control ended up decreasing rental housing supply by 15 percent, which caused a city-wide rental increase of 5.1 percent  (Diamond et al., 2019). Here are some other examples of where rent control backfired:

• Economists found that removing rent control in Cambridge, Massachusetts reduced crime by 16 percent, which brought an annual benefit of $10 million to the City (Autor et al., 2019). Removing rent control also accounted for a quarter of the property value appreciation between 1995 and 2005 (Autor et al., 2014). As the Left-leaning Brookings Institution points out, these findings suggest that one of the outcomes of rent control is that it reduces the neighborhood's desirability. 
• In Minneapolis, rent control did not fare better (Ahern and Giacoletti, 2022). For one, rent control caused property value to decline 6 to 7 percent. Two, the tenants that gained the most from Minneapolis' rent control was higher-income, economically advantaged households. The goal of this rent control was to help out lower-income households. Imagine that rent control had the opposite effect!
• Rent control is a cap on the amount of money that a landlord can make, which minimizes profit. This disincentives landlords to do upkeep on the property. Ultimately, this does not help the tenant because improper maintenance and poor repairs do nothing to improve the living conditions of the tenants under rent control. One study measured how deterioration of the rental units was a cost of rent control in Massachusetts (Sims, 2007; Pollakowski, 2003).
• In the long-term, poor rental quality has the potential to reduce supply further in part because landlords are then incentivized to invest elsewhere. Going back to San Francisco, rent control accelerated the conversion of rental units to condominiums (Diamond et al., 2019). A similar shift away from rental units occurred with the Massachusetts case study (Sims, 2007).
• When rent control was removed in Cambridge, building permits rose 20 percent and construction spending doubled over the proceeding decade (Autor et al., 2012). This serves an example of how rent control constricts housing supply and discourages new units to be brought to market.
• In the Los Angeles case, rent increased for noncontrolled units at two to three times the rate that controlled units (Murray et al., 1991). Similarly, New York City's 1968 rental market found that noncontrolled units were 22 to 25 percent higher than they would have been without rent control (Caudill, 1993).

There is substantial economic research to point out the multiple negative effects of rent control. It is no wonder that economists are near unanimous in their opposition to rent control. Even Montgomery County in the state of Maryland, which is quite Left-leaning, provided a scathing, unflattering prognosis in its Economic Assessment. Not only does rent control drive up the cost of housing in the long-term (something that Left-leaning economist Paul Krugman pointed out in 2000), but it erodes the quality of living for rent-controlled tenants and the surrounding neighborhood alike. 

In practice, rent control is self-defeating because it does the opposite of what it intends to do: help out renters struggling with housing. The economics behind rent control are so staggering that it makes me wonder how rent control remains popular. Rather than help out the citizens of Pasadena, all Measure H is going to do is add another example to the evidence base showing the folly of rent control.

2022 State Ballot Hodgepodge: My Take on the Results Regarding Taxes, Pot, Civil Liberties, and Other Topics

Another Election Day is behind us. When November takes place, it is not only about which party gains control of Congress or whether there are more governors of one party versus another. I relish the state and local ballots to see what issues matter to the people. It comes with a wide variety of topics and multiple implications for peoples' lives. In 2020, I wrote a hodgepodge of analysis on state ballot initiatives that covered such topics as taxes, the gig economy, marijuana, and minimum wage. Instead of looking at many of these prior to Election Day, I decided to do this year's ballot hodgepodge after the elections so I can reflect on some of the decisions voters made across the United States. Below are some of the notable results. For additional information on the given ballots, you can go to Ballotpedia for excellent coverage. 

Recreational Marijuana Legalization: It should be no surprise that I am for marijuana legalization. That is why last Tuesday was a mixed bag in this category. There were two states that voted in favor of legalizing marijuana in their states: Maryland and Missouri. This brings the count of states that have legalized recreational marijuana to 21 states plus the District of Columbia. The downside of the ballot results is that three states rejected legalizing recreational marijuana: Arkansas, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Even so, I remain optimistic that the United States is heading toward the path of legalizing it across the nation so we do not have to have this debate anymore. 

Decriminalizing Psychedelics: Oregon was the first state to legalize psychedelics. This past Tuesday, drug legalization had another victory. The state of Colorado voted to decriminalize psychedelics. You can read my 2019 piece on why psychedelics should be legalized. 

Millionaire Taxes: California proposed enacting a 1.75% individual income tax on those making over $2 million. This tax revenue would have gone towards providing incentives towards purchasing electric cars, charging infrastructure, and wildlife prevention. Thankfully, California rejected Proposition 30. Given that California ranks 46th on state-local tax burden (Tax Foundation), I'm both surprised and relieved. I wish I could say the same for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Bay State voted to create an additional 4 percent income tax on those making over $1 million. This 4 percent is on top of the 5 percent in state income tax they already pay. As I pointed out in my analysis on Massachusetts' millionaire tax, this is going to have considerable and negative impact on the Bay State's economy. 

Flavored Cigarette Ban: California passed a ballot initiative (Proposition 31) to uphold its ban on flavored cigarettes, which includes menthol cigarettes. In June, I compiled a list of eight reasons as to why we should not have menthol cigarette bans, which included economic, public health, and criminal justice explanations.

Sports Betting: Another reason to be irritated with California voters. California proposed two initiatives on the topic: one to allow for sports betting on Native American lands (Proposition 26) and one to legalize online sports betting with platforms that have agreements with Native Americans (Proposition 27). Both propositions got shot down by the California populace. Setting aside how this affects the Native American population and an ability to make greater revenue off an activity for which there is clear demand, I made an argument a couple of years ago in favor of sports betting. 

Minimum Wage: Nevada will set its minimum wage to $12/hour by July 2024. Nebraska is set to raise its minimum wage to $15/hour by 2026. I have written on the topic of minimum wage multiple times, and I am unhappy with these outcomes to say the least. 

Data Privacy and Due Process: Through Measure C-48, Montana amended its constitution to include electronic data and communication in search and seizure protection. Montana joins Michigan and Missouri as the only states with explicit protections in their state constitutions. As far as I am concerned, this is a victory for due process.

Abortion: Three states voted to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitutions: California, Michigan, and Vermont. Kentucky rejected enshrining the illegality of abortion in their constitution, although it is de facto illegal in Kentucky. Montana rejected a law that would require medical care to infants born alive, which would have included those born in botched abortions. If we look at abortions strictly from ballot initiatives (without factoring in pro-life governors that won their elections), then it looks like a good night for those claiming abortion to be a right. I am a pro-life libertarian, which puts me in an atypical position for a libertarian. I also view Roe v. Wade as shoddy constitutional law, which means that states navigating the topic at least removes the legal and constitutional concerns I previously had. 

Ranked Choice Voting: As of June 2022, only Alaska and Maine have had ranked choice voting on federal or state-level voting. Nevada has become the third state to do so. I understand the appeal of having more options and to have your vote more accurately reflect your preferences. I also understand how this could make counting ballots more complicated. I would need to look further into this topic before having a more defined opinion. 

Enslavement and Indentured Servitude: I am working on a separate piece for this particular topic. Since that analysis is pending, I do not want to say too much at this time. However, there were five states that were looking to modify their state amendments to not allow for forced prison labor. Four of the states succeeded: Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont. The fact that there are fewer places where slavery or indentured servitude is a punishment for a crime is a win for civil liberties.

California Proposition 25: Should Cash Bail Be Replaced with Risk Assessment Tools?

The right to a pretrial bail is so old that it predates the Magna Carta. It is a right that is also protected in the United States Constitution under the Due Process clause (United States v. Salerno, 1987). This upcoming November, the state of California is voting on Proposition 25 in the hopes of doing away with cash bail. Back in 2018, the California legislature passed legislation on replacing cash bail with an algorithm-based risk assessment to determine whether the suspect is a flight risk enough to be incarcerated pretrial. This assessment would result in certain monitoring conditions throughout the trial. Unsurprisingly, the bail industry filed a veto referendum to dispute SB 10. If Proposition 25 passes, then cash bail will be a thing in the past. Here's what I am wondering: if pretrial bail has been such an enshrined right historically, why take issue with it? 

The purpose of cash bail is to provide an incentive for those who are released pretrial to appear for their court dates. For those in favor of Proposition 25, there is the criticism that the cash bail system does not judge an individual based on an actual flight risk. Those who fare better in the cash bail system are those who are wealthier. Most who are wealthy can afford bail with little to no impediment. As for those who are poorer, they are forced to pay a disproportionately large amount of cash to work and be with their family as they await trail, regardless of whether they are minimal flight risk. On top of that, it entails giving the bail companies a nonrefundable premium worth 10 percent of the bail (e.g., a $50,000 bail means losing out on $5,000). For those who cannot afford to pay, they stay in jail. Not only are they deprived of working in while awaiting trial, but those who are stuck in jail are often forced to accept harsher plea deals than those who can fight the charges unincarcerated (Donnelly, 2018).

This brings us to the cost of the California bail system. As of 2014, 62 percent of prison beds (or about 50,000 beds) in California were filled with those awaiting trial, according to the Public Policy Institute of California [PPIC]. A Human Rights Watch report uses an estimate that the daily cost per prisoner is $113.87. Assuming that cost is accurate, that would mean the daily cost of imprisoning unsentenced individuals is about $5.7 million daily (or $2.09 billion annually). If we use the daily cost nationwide of $77.67 found in a December 2018 report from the centrist Brookings Institution, that would still mean an annual cost of $1.4 billion. These calculations would assume, of course, that all the unsentenced individuals would not be incarcerated. The high-bound assumption could be why the California Legislative Analyst Office [LAO] estimated that the reduction in local jail costs would be in the high tens of millions, instead of a higher amount.

This leads to the trade-off of replacing it with a risk assessment system. The aforementioned LAO fiscal impact report estimated that a new system under Prop 25 would cost in the mid-hundreds of millions of dollars, implying that the net cost could be higher under Prop 25. The fact that the LAO does not put a dollar amount on it makes it more difficult to determine net cost. The PPIC had a similar issue of putting a price tag on Prop 25 this past August.

Many Left-leaning individuals have been for Prop 25. However, there are some on the Left (and not just the American Bail Association) that believe that Prop 25 will make matters worse. The Essie Justice Group believes that it will have an even larger, disproportionate effect on minority communities. This seems to have been the case when the state of Kentucky removed its cash bail system (Albright, 2019). New Jersey had mixed results. On the one hand, pretrial imprisonments dropped by 27 percent since it removed cash bail in 2017. On the other hand, racial disparities did not budge. The ACLU of New York released a policy brief this year on how risk assessment tools perpetuate socio-economic and racial disparities. A group of researchers, including those from Harvard and MIT, signed a letter in 2019 saying that these tools do not reduce racial disparities. 

The fact that the cash bail system de facto punishes many by throwing hundreds in jail before being tried, many of whom are low-risk, non-violent offenders, makes the idea of "innocent until proven guilty" a cruel joke or something that only applies to those who can afford it. Bail reform is needed. At the same time, one could argue that risk assessment tools perpetuate past biases of the criminal justice system. While there are issues with both the current cash bail system and risk assessment tools, I think I have a slight preference for Prop 25. I like how the Brennan Center for Justice concludes: If California votes "no," they should go back to the drawing board, get rid of cash bail, and avoid risk assessment tools. If California votes "yes," we should monitor the implementation of risk assessment tools to make sure disparities are not being perpetuated in the criminal justice system. 

2020 State Ballot Hodgepodge: Florida Minimum Wage, Illinois Income Tax Reform, California Gig Economy, and Marijuana Legalization

One of the things I enjoy most about election season is not the presidential election hullabaloo or even when you have Supreme Court justice vacancies. I personally get a kick out of the state ballot measures voted on in November. They are voluminous, they cover a wide range of topics, and they have greater impact on our lives than we can anticipate. Some of the fun ones I have covered in past years have included  single-payer healthcare, condom use in the porn industry, the right to hunt, and labels for genetically modified food. Today, I will cover minimum wage, tax reform, labor market reform, and marijuana. 

Florida Minimum Wage: Florida is looking to increase its minimum wage to $15 per hour by September 2026 (Amendment 2). The legislative branch's research arm, the Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research (EDR) conducted a fiscal analysis of the ballot initiative. The EDR found that by 2027, it would cost the state of Florida $540 million per annum. Proponents argue that Florida needs to increase the minimum wage to account for rising costs in housing and transportation. Aside from contributing to the broader economy, the additional spending would offset the unemployment losses. 

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a study on what a $15 federal minimum wage would look like. CBO found that while 1.3 million would be pulled out of poverty, the same amount of people would become unemployed. That on top of the fact that it would have a net cost of $8.1 billion. Not exactly an economic booster! Data from the last recession also found that minimum wage increases prolong recessions. Not exactly a winning policy if one of the main goals is to pull Florida out of the recession. Generally speaking, minimum wage increases such as these make it more difficult for low-skill labor to find or retain work, it is a poorly targeted policy when it comes to poverty reduction, and adversely impacts business operations. If you live in Florida, vote "No" on Amendment 2. For further analysis on Amendment 2, see the Reason Foundation's analysis here. 

Illinois "Fair" Tax: The main ballot initiative in Illinois this November is for what has been colloquially referred to as a "fair" tax. Essentially, Illinois is looking to switch its income tax from a flat tax (everyone pays the same percentage) to a graduated tax system (the richer you are, the higher percentage you pay). I covered the Illinois "fair" tax last year, but the proposed brackets are the same, so the analysis still applies. Aside from asking what constitutes as "fair when it comes to taxation, I took issue with the following:

• The tax will not close the budgeting gap.
• The tax reform does nothing to change Illinois' atrocious spending habits.
• The "fair" tax does not adequately address the issues of fairness that proponents purport.
• Illinois already has lousy tax competitiveness. Switching to a graduated tax system will simply incentivize more people to move outside of Illinois. 

Illinoisans should vote "no" on the "Illinois Allow for Graduated Income Tax Amendment." If you want more recent analysis on the ballot initiative, here is one from the Tax Foundation.

California Gig Economy: Last year, the California legislature passed Assembly Bill (AB) 5, which applied a three-factor test to determine whether a worker could be classified as an independent contractor under California law. AB 5 had considerable implications for gig workers, but especially app-based drivers (e.g., Uber, Lyft). If it passes this November, Proposition 22 would essentially reverse AB 5. I covered AB 5 last year shortly before it became law this past January. I thought AB 5 was inferior policy because a) it would cause greater unemployment, b) cost the California economy millions, c) increase costs for consumers, and d) eliminate the flexibility in hours that most app-based drivers prefer to the 9-5 work hour. 

Looking at the analysis by the California Legislative Analyst, it would create a minor boost in income tax revenue because drivers would be earning more in income. More to the point, passing Proposition 22 would "would allow the companies to charge lower fares and delivery fees. With lower prices, customers would take more rides and place more orders. This could increase the companies' profits. High profit would increase the companies' stock prices." This analysis points out that AB 5 has been hurting app-based drivers, customers, and companies that hire gig workers alike. In case you need more convincing, here are analyses from Reason Foundation and the American Action Forum. I urge Californians to vote "Yes" on Proposition 22 this November. 

Marijuana Legalization: This November, we have four states looking to legalize recreational marijuana - Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota. Reason Foundation provides analysis on each of these ballot initiatives. There is a reason states have been trending towards legalizing marijuana in recent years. It is because the fears and stigma surrounding marijuana have been overblown, to say the least. Colorado legalized in 2014, and it has not been anywhere near the disaster that naysayers thought it would be. Economically speaking, marijuana legalization makes sense. We're not spending millions to enforce laws (that includes policing, prosecuting, and imprisonment costs), which means we can focus on more serious crimes. There is more government revenue, which means that if government dollars can be spent, it could spent where it could do more good, instead of punishing a victimless crime. Also, we can reduce the size of the underground market. This is great not simply because it expands the legal economy, but because less commerce in the underground market gives criminals and drug lords less power. Let's continue the trend towards marijuana legalization by voting these ballots and making them the law of the land for these states. 

California's Gig Economy Bill Will Cost Consumers and the Employees It Was Meant to Help

In September 2019, the State of California signed Assembly Bill (AB) 5, more colloquially known as the Gig Economy Bill, into law. What AB 5 is going to do when it takes effect on January 1, 2020 is that it will severely limit an employer's ability to classify an employee as an independent contractor. While this bill takes particular aim at ridesharing companies (e.g., Uber, Lyft) since they heavily rely on independent contractors, it can apply to any employer unless they can go through the extensive loopholes to get an extension. In order to determine whether an employee is an independent contractor is based on the ABC test:

• A) the worker is free from control and direction in the performance of services; and
• B) the worker is performing work outside the usual course of the business of the hiring company; and 
• C) the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business. 

If the employee meets the criteria of the ABC test, they are considered an independent contractor under California state law. Proponents of the ABC test contend that employees need such protections in the first place because a misclassification means employers do not have to pay such benefits as unemployment insurance, overtime, or minimum wage. Essentially, those who view independent contracting unfavorably see the classification of independent contractor as a loophole to exploit workers (see analysis from Left-leaning Economic Policy Institute here). With AB 5, fewer employees are to be classified as independent contractors, which means greater labor protections. 

The Left-leaning news and opinion site Vox opined in September that the Gig Economy Bill is a victory for workers everywhere. It might seem like that for those on the Left....until irony strikes. In anticipation of the enactment of the Gig Economy Bill, Vox Media, which is Vox's parent company, had to let go of 200 freelance journalists in anticipation of AB 5. This example with Vox Media reminds us of an observable reality when it comes to labor law. Whether we are discussing paid family leave, minimum wage, or menstrual leave, there are tradeoffs to greater employee benefits. When we look at predictive analyses on AB 5, that's exactly what we see. 

Earlier this week, the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released its report on the impact of AB 5, specifically with regards to ridesharing. CEI's main takeaway was that AB 5 would result in "greater costs for the platforms, reduced pay for many drivers, reduced flexibility for all drivers, and higher fares for customers – as much as 50 percent higher in some cases." You are welcome to read the report for further analysis here on the impact it would have for health insurance, work hours, employee expenses, paid family leave, and state disability insurance. As an independent contractor, an Uber driver costs an estimated $31,776 annually. CEI calculates that costs would go up to $53,008 annually. If minimum wage is an indication of what happens when labor regulations increase labor costs at this magnitude, we will most likely see a combination of fewer hours for drivers, lower salaries for drivers, fewer choices for customers, and increased costs for customers. 

CEI is not the only think tank to have estimated the costs. The R Street Institute, which is a Right-leaning think tank, preliminarily did so in light of the Dynamex ruling of the California State Supreme Court. R Street estimated that if Dynamex's ABC test were to become law, like it has with AB 5, it would cost the California economy anywhere from $1.3B to $6.5B annually. 

A California-based consulting firm, Beacon Economics, looked at the impact from another angle: effects on employment for Lyft drivers. Depending on the scenario, their study found that it could mean anywhere between 219,547 and 300,673 fewer Lyft drivers in California. For context, there were 323,914 Lyft drivers in California in 2018, which could up to a 92.8 percent reduction in Lyft employment in California. Another interesting find was that flexibility was "very important" or "extremely important" for 95 percent of Lyft drivers, especially since the average Lyft driver in California works about 4 hours a week. 

This analysis brings me to another important feature: why people choose independent contracting in the first place. As R Street points out in their aforementioned analysis, independent contractors have the flexibility to dictate their own work schedules and work for multiple firms. Plus, employers like the arrangement because it entails fewer expenses, less risk, and fewer long-term commitments in a labor market in which employees are staying with their employers for less time than in previous generations. 

Not everyone wants the standard "9 to 5" work arrangement that has become standard in U.S. culture. There are those who would rather have the flexibility over the extra benefits. According to a June 2018 survey from the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 79 percent of independent contractors prefer their working arrangement over a traditional employment arrangement. Fewer than ten percent of independent contractors would rather be in a traditional work arrangement. The flexibility also provides a financial benefit. The Right-leaning Heritage Foundation found that worker flexibility generated a worker surplus of 38-51 percent of earnings.

Far from feeling exploited, most independent contractors like the work arrangement they have. When you account for the costs and how independent contractors feel about their work arrangement, it really feels like a solution in search of a problem. We live in the 21st century, a time in which technology is advancing at a rapid pace. We cannot be beholden to working arrangements that worked better "back in the day." We need the flexibility and adaptability of independent contracting to enjoy that growth of on-demand services. Otherwise, states such as California undermine their own progress. 

California Provides an Argument Against Mandated Paid Family Leave

At least in a U.S.-based context, California is known as a state that is at the forefront of trying policies that are heralded by the Left. One such policy is that of mandated paid family leave. Under the California Paid Family Leave (PFLA), employees are provided partial pay to take off of work for up to six weeks to either tend to the serious illness of a close family member or to bond with a new child. Essentially, the premise behind paid family leave is work-life-balance vis-à-vis providing employees to take on a variety of family caregiving obligations without work getting in the way or needing to quit one's job to meet said obligations. If you want more information on paid family leave, please see my analysis on paid maternal leave from five years ago (see here), my analysis on Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), this policy report from the Cato Institute, or you can read this primer from the Congressional Research Service.

Having recently come back from a trip to France and see how they better manage work-life-balance than in the United States in the sense that they work to live (instead of the increasingly common practice in the United States to live to work), it got me thinking about whether it's an important value. Nevertheless, the tricky thing about public policy, especially when it has good intentions, is that it all too often comes with unintended consequences. Looking at the latest study on the PFLA, it seems that paid family leave is no exception. Last week, researchers from the University of Michigan, University of Utah, Middlebury College, and the U.S. Department of Treasury released a study showing that there is little evidence towards the benefits of paid family leave (Bailey et al., 2019). To quote the report:

We find little evidence that PFLA increased women's employment, wage earnings, or attachment to employers. For new mothers, taking PFLA reduced employment by 7 percent and lowered annual wages by 8 percent six to ten years after giving birth. Overall, PFLA tended to reduce the number of children born, and by decreasing mothers' time at work, increase time spent with children.

This finding is significant because one of the arguments used for legally mandated paid family leave is that at least for new mothers, it helps with labor force attachment. Based on these findings, reducing annual wages by 8 percent sure doesn't help with the gender wage gap that liberals are vehemently against (see my analysis on the gender wage gap here, here, and here). And I imagine that reduced employment doesn't do any favors when it comes to trying to get greater female representation in the workforce, nor does it help with make new mothers more likely to stay attached to employers, as proponents predict. While increased time with children is important, there is also the tradeoff of a lower fertility rate, which is problematic for a country that already struggles with a fertility rate below replacement rate.

Yes, this study draws upon robust tax data, has a large sample size, and does so over a relatively long period of time, all of which helps make it methodologically superior to previous paid family leave studies. While case studies have a role in discovering the efficacy of new ideas with little previous empirical data, there are limits to trying to draw general conclusions from this study. For one, PFLA lasts for six weeks. One could argue that six weeks is not long enough (or that it could be too long). Another issue is that PFLA provides 60-70 percent of a worker's wages. Perhaps providing a different amount would create different incentives. Perhaps an automatic enrollment would change the interactions. There could also be other elements within either the culture or economy of California that could make paid family leave less effective than it could be otherwise.

By itself, using this study to rally against mandated paid family leave is inadequate. Nevertheless, it does add to the empirical research showing the unintended consequences of mandated paid family leave. With that being said, here are a few points to consider when thinking of the tradeoffs of mandated paid family leave:

• Paid family leave lowers women's wages. The latest study is not the only one to confirm this point. One study analyzing 21 countries showed that paid parental leave is more effective when the time period is moderate, as opposed to being long (Misra et al., 2011). On the other hand, the same study showed that the same policies contribute to lower wage levels for women relative to men (ibid.). There are also older studies showing the same effect, including those from economists well-known on the Left (e.g., Ruhm, 1996; Gruber, 1994; Summers, 1988).
• Paid family leave affects women labor participation rate. A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research came to the conclusion that paid parental leave was responsible for about 28 percent of the drop of women labor participation between 1990 and 2010 (Blau and Kahn, 2013).
• Paid family leave makes it more difficult for women to receive promotions. A study of paid leave expansions in the United Kingdom not only resulted in fewer female managers, but also exacerbated gender inequality (Stearns, 2017).
• Support for paid family leave is in the details. Much like with so many policies, they sound nice in concept or in theory. That is why support for many Left-leaning proposals has higher support in the abstract. When you ask survey respondents about the details of the Left's latest and greatest policy ideas, support declines (see my analysis on that survey data here). Mandated paid family leave is no different. People assume that paid family leave is a wonderful thing, assuming they don't have to pay for it. When confronted with costs they would have to shoulder (e.g., lower salary, fewer benefits, less promotional potential for women), the support for federal paid family leave diminishes to the point where a majority are opposed (2018 Cato Institute survey).

I will leave you with this thought: whether we are discussing minimum wage, menstrual leave, or other rigid employee protections, they unquestionably come with a tradeoff. That is the economic nature of labor laws, and more specifically, employee benefits. If mothers want to prioritize more time bonding with their newborn children, that's fine. That is a decision they have to make for themselves. But let's not ignore the fact that that choice all too often comes with the tradeoff of less career development potential, a shift in career choices, and lower wages for women. While paid parental leave is becoming more popular, it comes with a price, a price that employers are too happy to ultimately pass either to the customer or their employees. The question is whether the price of a policy such as mandated paid family leave is worth the cost.

The Green New Deal Is More Alarming Than Climate Change Itself

For many years, the Democratic Party has talked about fighting climate change. Sure, there was the Clean Power Plan, but there was nothing on a grand scale...at least not until last week when Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) released the Green New Deal (GND), as well as the FAQ that has since been archived on the Internet before Ocasio-Cortez took it down from her website. For Ocasio-Cortez, addressing climate change is a major issue. She said that the world will end in twelve years, although the UN report from which she pulled that assertion stated that we have twelve years to limit its effects and keep it in check, not that twelve years was when the world was going to end. She feels so strongly about it that she called climate change "our World War II."

I understand that what was released was a non-binding resolution, as opposed to a formal piece of legislation. At the same time, the GND struck me as peculiar. Yes, there were ideas to address environmental issues. However, there were also elements seemingly having nothing to do with climate change or the environment, including "safe and adequate housing," racial justice, creating "millions of good, high-wage jobs," and an economic environment free of monopolies. NPR stated that the GND "combines big climate change-related ideas with a wish list of progressive economic proposals." The GND has many vague, far-reaching goals, but is short on details of how to accomplish its goals. In spite of this major shortcoming, we're going to make do here and do the best to analyze the feasibility of some of the GND's goals that are directly related to climate change and the environment.

Shift 100 percent of national power generation to renewable resources: Part of what makes this untenable is that the GND has this shift taking place by 2030. As of 2017, 11 percent of U.S. energy consumption and 17 percent (7 percent of which is hydroelectric) of electricity generation came from renewables (EIA), which is a far cry from 100 percent. The Union of Concerned Scientists are hopeful that we can reach 80 percent by 2050. A study from the National Academy of Sciences predicts that we cannot reach 100 percent renewable energy until 2059 (Clack et al., 2017).

Removing nuclear power from the equation: The GND is not simply about shifting away from fossil fuels. As the GND's FAQ section stated, the GND will not consider nuclear power as an option. If your goal is to have zero-carbon energy, removing nuclear power is unwise. Why? For one, nuclear power currently accounts for 20 percent of U.S. energy (EIA). Two, as I brought up before, nuclear power is the only zero-carbon energy source with high enough capacity and scale to meet demand for energy. Any realistic plan of zeroing out carbon requires more nuclear power, as a 2018 study from MIT argues. If Ocasio-Cortez truly viewed climate change as an emergency or as catastrophic, she would not want to remove nuclear power from the energy portfolio.

Eliminate air travel with high-speed rail. The resolution calls for overhauling the transportation system, which includes high-speed rail. The GND's FAQ calls for removing air travel, even though it admits that it might not be possible in ten years. Let's forget about Hawaii and Alaska or the need for international air travel for a second. A high-speed rail system sounds fine in theory. At least in Europe and East Asia, they have high-speed rail systems that compete with airplanes. Why can't the United States do that? After all, China is larger than the United States, although China racked up massive debt to pay for the high-speed rail system, not to mention China's population density per square mile is over four times that of the United States (United Nations).

The thing with comparative politics is that what might work in one country may or may not work in another country. Replacing air travel with high-speed rail would mean ensuring that major cities are connected. Let's take a look at an example of a Left-leaning state that has tried to implement high-speed rail: California. California has been trying to build a high-speed rail route from Los Angeles to San Francisco since 2008. As of last year, it could end up costing anywhere between $77.3B and $98.1B. It is a project of a decade's worth of delays and rising costs (L.A. Times), and I say that because the initial cost was supposed to be $33B. Even better is that the Governor of California abandoned the project today, thereby illustrating how difficult it is to implement a high-speed rail system, regardless if it is in a state that is strongly supportive of the idea.

What's even more worrisome is that assuming medium ridership, it would take 70 years to offset the greenhouse gas emissions because high-speed rail is an energy-intensive undertaking (Chester and Horvath, 2010). One study found that for high-speed rail to work, it needs average of 10 million one-way trips, and needs to divert the ridership mostly from airplanes (Westin and Kågeson, 2012).

I wouldn't expect the Green New Deal to replace all 5,000-plus of the U.S.' public airports. At the same time, it is not unreasonable to assume that such an endeavor would cost trillions. I think high-speed trains have the potential to replace airplanes in shorter trips, and I think it makes more sense to try high-speed rail in areas with higher population density (e.g., the Northeast). But trying to develop a nationwide high-speed rail system is not realistic or sensical.

Upgrade buildings to be energy-efficient. Nearly half of commercial buildings in terms of floorspace were built prior to 1980 (EIA). According to the latest American Housing Survey from HUD, the median year in which a residential home was built is in 1977. I point the age of the housing out to show that the prevalence of older buildings will either make it more challenging to upgrade the buildings or would mean knocking down old buildings and replacing new ones. It is difficult to comment without further details, but it is not hard to imagine an astronomical price tag. Plus, if the GND were successful, Ocasio-Cortez would still have to contend with the reality that land-use and zoning regulations are done at the local level.

A word about cost. Yes, this was a resolution, but the lack of details on the authors' part is a letdown. Even so, let's try to estimate costs of some of the initiatives. When running for President in 2016, Green Party candidate Jill Stein had a much less ambitious Green Deal, and she estimated that her plan would cost $700B to $1T a year. This figure could be used as a low-bound estimate, but we know that it would be an unrealistic cost expectation given what the GND has covered.

Engineers from Stanford calculated that meeting power demand through all renewable energy would have capital costs of $14.6T (Jacobson et al., 2015), although another study figures it would be more expensive (Clack et al., 2016). If we take the costs from the study that is more flattering for the GND and spread them out over ten years, that would amount to $1.46T a year. It would be difficult to determine the cost of high-speed rail because, as previously discussed, it costs significantly more than initial cost projections.

If we were to add in the GND programs having nothing to do with reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the cost of the GND would be even higher. Investment management firm Bridgewater estimates that a universal basic income would cost $3.8T a year. The Mercatus Center found that a national single-payer healthcare system would cost $3.26T a year, which is not far off from the Urban Institute's estimation of $3.T. If we use Bernie Sanders' College for All Act as a proxy for the cost of free college tuition, then it would cost $47B a year. Providing affordable housing is tricky to measure. The Left-Leaning Center for American Progress estimated that "Homes for All" would cost $20B a year, but that was only for construction costs.

Just using the cost estimates provided above that are most favorable to the proponents of the GND, the GND would cost no less than $8.53T a year. This does not even factor in the cost of the other initiatives, including sustainable farming, making buildings energy-efficient, and replacing combustible-engine vehicles with environmentally-friendly ones. Given what we have already, the annual cost for such the GND would be easily over $10T annually, and could feasibly reach the equivalent amount of the U.S.' GDP. Compare this to the cost of the original New Deal of $653B [in 2009 dollars] (or $777B in current dollars) that took place over six years, and the New Deal pales in comparison to the GND. And while we're on the topic of the New Deal, when FDR passed the New Deal, the debt-to-GDP ratio was only 40 percent. As of 2018, the debt-to-GDP ratio was at 104 percent, and it is only projected to get higher.

A word about burden of proof. If the United States government was even beginning to consider spending this much money, it better do what is intended in terms of bringing the global temperature. It was not something that the Clean Power Plan could do since it was only projected to reduce the global temperature by 0.2ºC. A similar issue with the Paris Agreement. What would happen if Ocasio-Cortez got her wish, and the United States ceased emitting greenhouse gases? How much would it reduce the global temperature? The Heritage Foundation estimates it at 0.13ºC, which would be consistent with what other estimates show for comparable GHG reductions. Another study estimated that the world would need to reduce oil consumption by a third, natural gas reserves by half, and coal reserves by 80 percent to reach the 2ºC benchmark (McGlade and Eckins, 2015). The burden of proof is on the proponents' side. Since past climate change initiatives could not adequately reduce the global temperature (even if implemented perfectly), it will be more difficult for Ocasio-Cortez to illustrate how implementation of her plan would succeed in reducing the global temperature, even if that is in conjunction with other countries' plans. We cannot simply say "doing something is better than nothing" because that is how we got Obamacare and the damage it caused the U.S. healthcare system.

Postscript. Instead of detail, the GND provides false hope and blind optimism. The truth is that the GND is no plan at all because it is not a remotely actionable blueprint. Additionally, the fact that it adds provisions having nothing to do with reducing greenhouse gas emissions further minimizes the seriousness of the resolution. If the Democrats could take the House, the Senate, and the White House in 2020, there would still be the reality that many politicians come from states that are dependent on oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power. The probability that this would become a resolution, much less actual legislation, is low. Senator majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is going to bring the GND to a Senate vote in the near future, so we'll get to see shortly just how unlikely it is.

If it is not going to pass, why talk about it? Because it shows how the political Left is shifting in this country. The fact that there are already 60 Democratic co-sponsors in the House shows just how much this shift is taking place. Much like I have been perturbed by the Republican's populist shift on such topics as trade or immigration since Trump was elected, I don't like how the Democrats are shifting further to the Left in a populist bent because it will lead to further polarization in this country.

You don't have to lean hard to the Left to care about the environment. I have called for a modest carbon tax to fund research on renewable energy as a solution. If the GND were simply about lowering greenhouse gas emissions, that would be one thing. I would happily have a conversation about that policy goal. But that is not what the GND is. The GND simultaneously is pie-in-the-sky utopianism while playing the fear card by saying "we need to work on this fast or the world is going to end." Yea for false dilemmas! The GND is less about saving the environment and acts as a pretext for shoving progressivism down the throats of the American people. It is a guise for an unprecedented amount of government intervention in the lives of Americans, as is illustrated by the number and types of initiatives listed in the GND, not to mention the amount of government intervention that would be required to make the GND work. Based on the cost and implications of the GND, the GND is the very sort of resolution that embodies the aphorism of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."