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The growing national debt and the future of federal transportation spending

In Politics by Michael Rae

The national debt is going to affect the future of transportation funding, and the public-private partnership community needs to understand why and what the implications for P3s may be.

The most recent parts of the story began on Aug. 1, when Fitch Ratings downgraded the federal government’s bond rating from AAA to AA+. For a company, that might not be a big deal, but for the government of the world’s largest economy, the downgrade was a shot across the bow. This was the second time a rating agency took such an action with the federal government’s bond rating, with S&P doing

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Surface Transportation News: Reducing car travel, Maryland express lanes, and more

In Politics by Michael Rae

In this issue:

Is reducing car travel a wise policy for GHG reduction?

Express toll lanes back on Maryland’s agenda

Miami toll road provider taken over by state

A new metric for comparing transit project cost-effectiveness

What electric vehicle chargers will cost America

Amtrak’s costly climate alternative

News notes

Quotable quotes

Is Reducing Car Travel a Wise Policy for Greenhouse Gas Reduction Goals?

California is one of a handful of states that have set targets for reducing the amount of driving, as measured by vehicle miles of travel (VMT). An Aug. 18 Streetsblog article headline put it this way, “Caltrans Carbon Reduction Strategy: We Must Drive Less.”

According to the California Transportation

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Massachusetts’ proposed cigar tax increase would not improve health outcomes

In Politics by Michael Rae

The intent to limit tobacco use among youth is to be applauded. However, given Massachusetts’ already extremely low rates of youth smoking and the unintended consequences stemming from the state’s recent ban on flavored tobacco products, S.1848 should raise concern that the state will enlarge the already substantial illicit tobacco trade, push sales and tax revenue to other jurisdictions, and punish premium cigar stores and lounges that have almost no appeal to youth.

The Illicit Market and Youth Smoking

Massachusetts’ ban on flavored tobacco products went into effect in June 2020. Jacob James Rich, a researcher with the Center for Evidence-Based Care

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Canadians know more money won’t fix our health-care problems

In Research by Michael Rae

Authors:

Mackenzie MoirBacchus Barua

Canada ranked dead last on timely access to specialists and surgical care.Read more about Canadians know more money won’t fix our health-care problemsTags: healthcarehealthcare costshealthcare expenditureshealthcare performancehealth care costshealth care spending

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President Biden’s Fiscal Train Wreck

In Analysis by Michael Rae

On 2023’s Labor Day, President Biden boasted of cutting the U.S. government’s budget deficit at a speech in Philadelphia.
“Unlike the last president, in my first two years—all this stuff, guess what?—I cut the deficit $1.7 trillion, cut the debt $1.7 trillion.”
There’s just one problem. President Biden’s fiscal policies are exploding the U.S. government’s budget deficit during his third year in office. Here’s the Washington Post‘s Jeff Stein’s introduction to that hard truth:
The federal deficit is projected to roughly double this year, as bigger interest payments and lower tax receipts widen the nation’s spending imbalance despite robust overall economic growth.
After the

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Divorcing Ourselves From Akhil Reed Amar (Part IV)

In Analysis by Michael Rae

The following is the final post in a four-part series on Yale’s Akhil Reed Amar’s criticism of Thomas Jefferson. Follow these links for Part I, Part II, and Part III.
My argument is rather than jettisoning Thomas Jefferson as Amar demands, we should ditch Amar, who is a darling of the Federalist Society and has no trouble persuading the “conservative” editors at NR to give him space. Amar’s popularity among Conservatism, Inc., to borrow a term from Paul Gottfried, is a symptom of why the right is content to simply follow the left and occupy the ground that the left abandons as it moves in a more radical direction. 
In this

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Elisabeth Elliot and the Mystery of Divine Providence

In Opinion by Michael Rae

With over 24 books to her credit, renowned biographer and New York Times bestselling author Ellen Vaughn is out with her second volume on the life and work of Elisabeth Elliot, the noted Christian author, speaker, and philosopher who died in 2015 after a 10-year struggle with dementia. Continue Reading…

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Divorcing Ourselves from Akhil Reed Amar (Part III)

In Analysis by Michael Rae

This is the third post in a series on Yale’s Akhil Reed Amar’s criticism of Thomas Jefferson. Follow these links for Part I and Part 2.
In the two previous posts, I dealt with Amar’s criticism of Jefferson related to the Virginian’s opposition to the national bank and his advocacy of nullification. This post deals with Jefferson and secession, which Amar blasts as follows: “He played footsie with the plainly unconstitutional idea that a state could unilaterally secede. (At one point he nonchalantly declared that whether America remained united or instead divided into two parts was “not very important” to American ‘happiness.’

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Yet Another Reason Why Minimum Wage Studies Might “Fail”

In Analysis by Michael Rae

Last year, I wrote about why empirical minimum wage studies might fail to find a disemploying effect. In this post, I want to explore yet another reason why it might seem like raising the minimum wage is a free lunch. The reason concerns economics going “beyond p’s and q’s”—a theme I’m fond of promoting on Marginalia.
Here’s my idea in a nutshell. In 2023, there are more available “margins of adjustment” as compared with 1938 (the year of the Fair Labor Standards Act). With more margins of adjustment available, employers can adjust to minimum wage hikes by removing those perks from the total compensation package while leaving employment untouched.
What

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