Rule of law means that there is an objective set of laws that applies to everyone. Nobody is above the law. The alternative is rule by power. Those who have political power determine the rules and enforce them on the masses. Without rule of law, rules are subject to change, depending on the preferences of the politically powerful. Without rule of law, the rules constraining the masses do not apply to the powerful. One criticism sometimes leveled against […]
(NA) On February 24, 2025, Kurt Lash posted 8 pages on SSRN. It was an introduction to a work-in-progress about the original public meaning of the Citizenship Clause. Lash stated his intention to challenge a scholarly consensus which spans the ideological and methodological spectrum, asserting that “children born in the United States to noncitizen parents who intentionally refuse to comply with the legal requirements for entry into United States” are not constitutionally entitled to citizenship. He gave assurances […]
A maior desgraça dos que tentam enganar a fome apressada de informação comendo cortes e recortes de conteúdo é arrotar àquilo que nem sequer consumiram.
The transcript from this week’s, MiB: Jim O’Shaughnessy on Infinite Wisdom, is below. You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here. ~~~ This is Masters in business with Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg Radio Barry Ritholtz: This week on the podcast. What a delight. Extra special guest, Jim O’Shaughnessy, his book that I came […]
Last week, progressive data guru David Shor gave the Democratic Party a major wakeup call. In an interview with The New York Times‘ Ezra Klein, he carefully explained that the Republican Party under President Donald Trump has benefitted from a massive shift of young people into the GOP column. Historically, young voters tend to be more liberal than older Americans, and so these GOP gains are quite astounding—particularly among young men. Vice President Kamala Harris actually lost black male 18-year-olds, […]
California’s decision to expand Medi-Cal, its Medicaid program, to cover undocumented migrants has led to significantly higher costs than expected. The program’s price tag has soared to $9.5 billion this year—way over the $6.4 billion estimate from just last year—with $8.4 billion coming from state taxpayers. Meanwhile, in Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has proposed cutting $330 million from a similar healthcare expansion for the undocumented after a state audit showed costs ballooned to $1.6 billion since 2020, far […]
A quick note on tariffs: Over the past few weeks, I’ve been putting together my quarterly call for clients. The challenge is how to frame the current economic scenario in a way that is useful and informative and not the usual run-of-the-mill noise. It’s easy to get distracted by the chaos of random policies that have been coming rapid-fire at Americans. We see this in the Tariffs On, Tariffs Off, Sell, Buy pattern of news-flow. But […]
As (imo) we near the crash section of yet another Austrian business cycle (unless the fed manages to put it off a year or two by dropping interest rates a lot), one of the most important things to understand is the bad logic that will be used in support of government intervention to try and “fix” the natural and necessary -though painful for some- economic rearrangement that will occur. One of these arguments is centered around the idea […]