Reason magazine - January 2023

In this issue

The Labor Market Is Broken - KATHERINE MANGU-WARD.

California Wants To Run Out of Gas - SCOTT SHACKFORD.

Biden’s ‘Marijuana Reform’ Leaves Prohibition Untouched - JACOB SULLUM

THE LABOR MARKET IS BROKEN

INFLATION IS UP. The stock market is down. Unemployment is just 3.5 percent. Yet labor force participation remains stubbornly low, with only 62.3 percent of the civilian population working or actively looking for work-well below pre-pandemic levels. And even before the pandemic, that figure had been steadily declining for years.

5 mins

Biden's 'Marijuana Reform' Leaves Prohibition Untouched

According to the New York Times, the "marijuana reform" that President Joe Biden announced in October represented "a fundamental change in America's response to a drug that has been at the center of a clash between culture and policing for more than a half-century." If only.

3 mins

THE NEW DEAL AND A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN

THE U.S. SUPREME Court's ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, has raised the possibility of a future Republican-controlled Congress seeking to ban abortion nationwide. If that happens, the resulting courtroom battles will likely center on a New Deal-era precedent that vastly expanded the scope of congressional power.

2 mins

ONE FOOT OFF THE GRID

WHEN OUR WATER was turned off one morning last January, we assumed it was due to the sinkhole slowly expanding across the width of our single-lane street in South Philadelphia. But we could only guess, as no one answered the phone at the Philadelphia Water Department, and the first city employee didn't show up on our street until four hours after the taps died. When one of my elderly neighbors asked how long it would take to restore service, the city guy said his crews were swamped. It took 27 hours.

3 mins

HIGHER COSTS FOR HIGHER ED

WHEN PRESIDENT JOE Biden announced in August that he was canceling thousands of dollars in student loan debt for most current borrowers, he explained that his plan was partly a response to the rapid rise in the cost of higher education.

3 mins

Immigration: America Needs 'Low-skilled' Workers

At a moment when even modest immigration reform is politically contentious, several Republicans in Congress are open to letting in more "high-skilled" immigrants. But that approach overlooks the fact that the country would benefit from admitting workers at all skill levels.

2 mins

California Wants to Run Out of Gas

In late august, California air regulators announced that the state would ban the sale of most gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035, a policy aimed at encouraging a shift to electric vehicles (E.V.s). A week later, amid a massive heat wave, California officials begged E.V. owners not to recharge their cars during peak evening hours so as not to overload the state's energy grid.

1 min

RELIGION: AGAINST GAME OF THRONES CHRISTIANITY

FOR MANY MEMBERS of the so-called New Right, one thing is clear: Classical liberal principles are not getting the job done.

3 mins

PUERTO RICO INCHES TOWARD SELF-DETERMINATION

REP. RAÚL GRIJALVA (D-Ariz.), chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, was pissed. The prominent progressive had just left a July 26 committee meeting on the Puerto Rico Status Act, a legislative compromise negotiated by the territory's nonvoting House member, Rep. Jenniffer GonzálezColón of the New Progressive Party (PNP).

4 mins

In Defense of Algorithms

They’re good for us. They might even be good for democracy.

10+ mins

PROSECUTORS SHOULDN'T BE ABOVE THE LAW

BY GIVING POWERFUL LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS ABSOLUTE IMMUNITY FROM CIVIL LIABILITY, THE SUPREME COURT LEAVES THEIR VICTIMS WITH NO RECOURSE.

10+ mins

GOVERNMENTS SCRAMBLE TO MANAGE REGULATE, AND THROTTLE CRYPTO

MOST DANGEROUSLY OF ALL, THEY'RE STARTING TO MAKE THEIR OWN CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL CURRENCIES.

10+ mins

D.C. METRO GOES OFF THE RAILS

PUTTING WASHINGTON’S TRAIN SYSTEM BACK ON TRACK WILL TAKE MORE THAN BETTER BUREAUCRACY.

10+ mins

JOHN CLEESE ON HOW WOKENESS SMOTHERS CREATIVITY

IN A CAREER that has spanned seven decades—and included such classic shows and movies as Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers, Life of Brian, and A Fish Called Wanda—the comedian John Cleese has relentlessly satirized politics and religion while stretching the boundaries of decorum and good taste.

10+ mins

Stop Spazzing Out About 'Spaz'

SOCIAL MEDIA, STREAMING, AND A NEW ERA OF DIGITAL SELF-CENSORSHIP

10+ mins

Psychiatrists Do Not Know What They Are Treating

AS A BOY, especially while lying in bed or suffering a fever, I was periodically troubled by harshly critical voices that vaguely charged me with misconduct and failures of character. As I grew up, the murmuring Greek chorus was replaced by a single voice, which by then I recognized as my own.

6 mins

How Venture Capital Made the Future

LIBERATION CAPITAL,\" AS investor Arthur Rock called it, \"was about much more than keeping a team together in the place where its members happened to own houses.\" In 1957, Rock took a gamble on the \"traitorous eight\"-a team of promising engineers at Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory-and counseled them to free themselves of their authoritarian boss by quitting en masse and striking out to form Fairchild Semiconductor.

5 mins

THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST

Otto Frank-father of Anne, the teenager whose posthumously published diary became standard reading for students learning about the Holocaustfled with his family from Germany to Amsterdam in 1933. But the Nazis eventually followed him there. One target of their 1940 bombing campaign was the U.S. consulate in Rotterdam, where Frank's visa application was destroyed along with everything else.

1 min

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