It’s frustrating to see homelessness documented in my beloved Silicon Valley, not only because homelessness is regretable, but because of the way it’s documented in this Bill Moyers piece.

Homelessness exists “in the shadow of Google, in the shadow of Oracle, in the shadow of Apple Computer,” says AP writer Martha Mendoza, whose story inspired the Moyers video. And there’s certainly editorial in the video’s images of wealthy neighborhoods and manicured corporate campuses: Wealth causes poverty, it appears.

But would Teresa Frigge really be doing better if Larry Ellison had been held to middle class wealth? In an alternate universe where Larry Page and Sergey Brin co-own the McDonalds at El Camino and Santa Cruz in Menlo Park, how is Teresa better off?

Rather than dumb juxtaposition, look for actual causes of inequality. Is it the loss of chip manufacturing? That was already declining in 1987.

Housing is hard to find in the Valley. Fifteen years ago, “for every five jobs they were adding, they were building two units of housing,” Mendoza reports.

Disambiguate “they.” For every five jobs Silicon Valley businesses were adding, Silicon Valley builders were building two units of housing.

The reason why? Zoning laws are strangling Silicon Valley. (Liberals agree.) The cap on housing artificially raised the cost of labor, driving chip manufacturing out of Silicon Valley, which still designs chips for manufacture elsewhere. The result is class striation.

But zoning reform is nowhere to be found in the reporting on this issue. Instead, Mendoza features San Jose’s increase in the minimum wage—from $8 to $10. That means that people who cannot provide well more than $20,000 in value per year to prospective employers may not work legally in that city.

The laws say that you may not work in this area if you’re not skilled, and you may not live there if you’re not rich. I don’t think it’s wealth that’s causing this homelessness.

For many people, Margaret Thatcher’s resignation (and now her death) will be one of those moments that they will never forget. Like the Kennedy assassination for the previous generation, many will always remember what they were doing when they heard the sad news. 

It was November 22, 1990 and I was about to leave my parents’ apartment in Zilina, Czechoslovakia, to meet a friend. Walking out of the door, I heard the radio announce the shocking news — Margaret Thatcher has resigned. How could it be? Wasn’t she a great success at home and a titan on the world stage? To us — the people of Eastern Europe who were enjoying their first year of freedom — she was much more than the first female British Prime Minister. 

She was an outspoken voice against communist oppression and a fearless promoter of the free markets. The communist media in Eastern Europe (and socialist media in Britain, one might add) spewed poison against her with obsessive regularity. For us that was very reassuring: if they hated her, she must have been good. 

Growing up behind the Iron Curtain, I never thought I would leave my hometown, let alone travel abroad and meet her. But meet her I did. It was October 5, 2002 and I was on a layover in London. Next day, I would board a plane for Washington and begin my work at the Cato Institute. 

My friends — Roger Bate, now at the AEI, and Richard Tren, now at the Searle Foundation – invited me to a dinner celebrating the launch of the Frederic Bastiat prize for free market journalism. One of the winners, coincidentally, was Amity Shlaes, whom I will have the pleasure of introducing at a Cato event this Thursday. As Margaret Thatcher arrived – descending the stairs together with Denis — there was a sudden hush followed by great applause. By that time, she no longer made speeches and her public appearances were increasingly rare. Still, her presence added gravitas to the proceedings and launched a great prize that continues to this day. 

My friend Veronique De Rugy sat next to Mrs. Thatcher throughout the dinner and so, at some point, I walked over to say hello. Thatcher shook my hand and asked where I was from. When I said that I came from Czechoslovakia, she seemed genuinely delighted. I reminded her that people of Eastern Europe had a genuine affection for her and were grateful for what she did to bring about the end of communism. “You know,” I said, “the communists really hated you.” “Good, good,” she laughed, “I’m glad they did.” Then she gave me one of her piercing looks and said, “We won in the end.”

Yes you did, Margaret.

As part of their regulation of alcohol sales, an estimated 33 states maintain so-called At Rest laws, which require that bottles spend time in an in-state warehouse before being sold to consumers. The laws limit competition, drive up prices to consumers, and make it harder to special-order less common labels. Now, as the New York Post revealed in a Sunday exclusive, New York may join the list following generous donations to Gotham politicians from an in-state wholesaler. State Sen. Jeff Klein (D‑Bronx) alone got $33,000 from Empire Merchants LLC.

David Waldenberg, of BNP Distributing Co., said 180 small-and medium-sized New York distributors will hurt by the measure.

Those businesses have offices in New York that employ hundreds of people, he said, but use New Jersey storage facilities.

If their warehousing costs go up, these businesses will die and jobs will ultimately be lost, he said.

“The price of wine — it’ll go up $7 or $8 a bottle,” warned wine connoisseur and writer Jesse Nash. “The consumer is going to get nailed.”

In an (alas) still-relevant 1985 article (PDF) in Cato’s Regulation magazine, Federal Trade Commission attorney David Spiegel analyzed how anti-competitive state liquor laws exploit consumers. [adapted and expanded from Overlawyered]

Update: Tom Wark at WineIn​ter​view​.com (via Michelle Minton, CEI) believes the New York bill as of this point is “going nowhere” following a vigorous campaign against it by small wholesalers who would be hurt by its provisions.

A headline in Roll Call, the newspaper and website that has been “the source for news on Capitol Hill since 1955,” over an article by long-time journalist and editor David Hawkings, reads

D.C. Could Take Lessons From Hartford on Gun Control Deal

What’s the lesson? That when legislators buckle down and work hard, they can pass “the strongest gun control law in the nation.”

This reflects two articles of faith that seem to be devoutly held by mainstream journalists:

1. Passing laws is good. Passing more laws is better. The purpose of a legislative body is to pass laws.

2. Gun control is good.

On the first point, just consider the large number of stories, especially this past December and January, on “the least productive Congress in history.” The assumption is that “productivity” for Congress is passing laws—laws that in most cases will raise taxes, raise spending, increase regulation, and/​or intrude the federal government into more aspects of our lives. 

As for gun control, the enthusiasm of the national media for such measures is pretty obvious. I was struck by NPR’s hourly news roundup last week, which began: 

More than 100 days after the shootings in Newtown, Connnecticut, that killed a total of 28 people including 20 elementary school students, Congress has still not passed new gun registration legislation.

“What are they waiting for?” the news anchor implies. I suppose the news report could have begun:

Just five years after the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects the individual’s right to bear arms, members of Congress are seeking to pass gun control legislation.

But I’m not holding my breath. It’s just a reminder that the language used even in straight news stories can frame the issue in the minds of readers and listeners.

Groups concerned about the environment have long been skeptical of trade liberalization. From what I understand, they view pollution and the depletion of natural resources as the inevitable consequences of unregulated economic growth. But what if that growth is driven by trade in environmentally friendly products? Is trade still bad then? Apparently so.

The United States has attracted negative attention from a number of environmentalists by bringing a formal challenge at the World Trade Organization against Indian trade barriers on solar panels. India provides subsidies to developers of solar power plants only if they purchase solar cells from Indian manufacturers. This is called a “local-content requirement” and such schemes are generally illegal under WTO rules. 

It seems to me that these groups should be skeptical of the Indian program and supportive of the U.S. challenge. Making it more difficult to use imported solar cells just makes it more difficult to build solar power plants. The policy benefits the domestic manufacturers of these solar panels, but it burdens the purchasers. The burden is there even if the plants purchase domestic panels, because the now-less-accessible foreign panels were presumably a better value. 

If the Sierra Club and Greenpeace want people to buy more solar panels, then open markets for those panels is the best policy. The only reason I can see why they would oppose free trade in solar panels is because they want every country in the world to promote “green jobs” as part of an environmentally conscious industrial policy. If that is their prefered policy then these groups should probably advocate for transparent restrictions like tariffs and quotas instead of local-content requirements. But the fact is that industrial policy and protectionism are just as bad for solar panels as they are for steel or clothing or sugar. Industrial policy promotes rent-seeking and entrenches inefficiencies. If you truly love solar panels, then you must set them free.

Dave Kopel has a new piece over at NRO. Here’s an eye-catching excerpt:

Public-opinion polls about “universal background checks” for gun sales show widespread support. While President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg talk about “gun sales,” the actual legislation moving through Congress aims to regulate far more than sales. It would turn almost every gun owner into a felon. The trick is that the language under consideration applies not only to sales but also to “transfers,” which are defined to include innocent activities such as letting your spouse borrow your gun for a few hours.

For this libertarian policy analyst, the annual release of the president’s budget proposal is like the day after your team loses the Super Bowl: everyone’s talking about it, but you’d rather curl up in bed with a fifth of Old Grand-Dad.

Alas, it’s that time of year—albeit a couple months late. The budget won’t be released until next week, but some of the details have leaked out to the press. As Dan Mitchell notes, the Washington Post is “predictably regurgitating” the White House’s spin that the president’s latest budget will be an olive branch of sorts to Republicans.

Why?

The president will apparently propose modest measures to slow the growth in entitlement spending in exchange for more tax increases. That would raise hopes for what the Beltway class likes to refer to as the “grand bargain,” but for those of us who are looking for considerably less government in our lives it would hardly be cause for enthusiasm.

Nor are any of the other ideas being reported:

• Sequestration would be replaced with an alternative deficit reduction package. Expect for that to be higher taxes combined with a promise to cut spending somehow, some day in the future.
• Funding for a new pre-kindergarten program—because (not much of a) Head Start apparently isn’t enough.
• Funding for some initiative to map the human brain. (I would advise against using a politician’s for the model.)

I’m guessing there will be a package of proposed rinky-dink spending cuts—a now-annual tradition started by the previous big spender in the White House. But, of course, overall spending would continue to grow and the government would still remain involved in every facet of our lives.