By Vance Ginn, The Every day Financial system, Could 23, 2025.
Excerpt:
In accordance with the US Power Data Administration (EIA), gasoline costs are typically formed by 5 elements: crude oil costs, refining prices, distribution and advertising, taxes, and rules. In California, taxes and regulatory prices alone account for greater than $1.30 per gallon — almost double the nationwide common.
California has the best gasoline tax within the nation, at $0.678 per gallon, not together with further charges and environmental surcharges. Add within the Cap-and-Commerce program, the Low Carbon Gasoline Commonplace (LCFS), and boutique gas blends which can be required solely in California, and it turns into clear why Californians pay extra.
And issues are deteriorating additional. The Mische examine warns that with refinery closures as a result of hostile allowing processes and low anticipated returns below California’s local weather mandates, gas provide within the state may drop by 20 % by 2026, at the same time as demand stays comparatively secure. Fewer refineries and inflexible gas requirements will imply tighter provide and better costs.
by Jeremy Horpedahl, Cato at Liberty, Could 23, 2025.
Excerpts:
President Trump, for his half, appears okay with this, and in two latest interviews he has acknowledged that it’s superb if little women solely have 3 dolls, moderately than 30. This would possibly ring true to folks of younger youngsters that may’t stroll round the home with out stepping on one more baby’s toy, however total, it is a horrible message of degrowth. One of many most important advantages of financial progress is the rising selection and affordability of products and providers.
In some unspecified time in the future, youngsters would possibly get uninterested in the three hundredth doll, however this isn’t one thing for the federal government to dictate. And that is the primary level: shoppers are selecting to purchase 30 dolls, or no matter else, as a result of they wish to and it brings them pleasure. Shoppers can at all times select to purchase much less on their very own, however they’re greatest located to find out what number of dolls and different toys their youngsters can have (regardless that, as a father or mother, it is a fixed wrestle!).
And:
When the Barbie film got here out in 2023, I wrote a light-hearted however nonetheless critical put up about the advantages of financial progress for ladies and younger women. In comparison with when the Barbie doll was first launched in 1959, a lady in 2023 may have 3–4 instances as many dolls with the identical variety of hours of labor. Or as Chelsea Follett put it, the variety of hours wanted to work to purchase a Barbie fell “from properly over an hour to only over 12 minutes.” We must always solely hope that we’d see this progress for items and providers extra broadly. And certainly, for some classes of products, we do see this progress.
by David Hebert and Marcus Witcher, Civitas Institute, Could 26, 2025.
Excerpts:
Reagan’s dedication to free commerce can’t be overstated. Nonetheless, we should additionally perceive the context wherein he made these selections. The US financial system, notably the auto trade, was in a really tough spot when he took workplace in 1981. After many years of low gasoline costs, which made driving large, heavy, much less fuel-efficient vehicles of the kind made in Detroit inexpensive, an oil disaster starting in 1973 and amplifying in late 1978 hit American automotive drivers particularly arduous. The oil disaster was so extreme that it kicked off a sequence of mini recessions in 1980 and once more in 1981.
On the identical time, Japan had begun exporting vehicles to the US, and in 1980, Japanese-made vehicles comprised over 20% of the US market. Their vehicles had three benefits over domestically produced vehicles: they have been extra gas environment friendly as a result of their smaller measurement and weight-conscious building, they have been cheaper than American vehicles on the street, they usually required considerably fewer repairs than their American counterparts. In some ways, they have been superior automobiles. Consequently, they have been rapidly supplanting US vehicles. Detroit’s Massive Three automakers: Ford, Normal Motors, and Chrysler (now Stellantis) have been languishing and have been pressured to put off hundreds of employees.
And:
The home car trade in the course of the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties illustrates this. Free of the pressures of overseas competitors, the home auto trade’s strategies and practices calcified round the concept Individuals would buy mid-size and large-car fashions. In spite of everything, whereas Japanese vehicles have been nonetheless obtainable, they have been changing into tougher and tougher to return by. In contrast, Japanese automakers continued to put money into bettering high quality. By 1990, the standard gapbetween domestically made vehicles and Japanese vehicles (as measured by how incessantly repairs have been wanted) had grown even bigger.
Through the 90s, the Massive Three have been pressured to shut 42 of the 63 automotive meeting vegetation, leading to tens of hundreds of job losses within the trade the VER was supposed to guard. The rationale for that is easy and straightforward to grasp: Japanese vehicles have been already higher and extra inexpensive than their home counterparts in 1981. As a result of the home automotive trade squandered the chance to make essential changes to their fleets, Individuals began shopping for extra imported vehicles. Quite than short-term pains begetting long-term features, the short-term pains of upper automotive costs led to larger long-term pains of lowered employment.
by Benjamin Zycher, The Nationwide Curiosity, Could 29, 2025.
Excerpts:
The local weather litigation recreation is straightforward: attribute any and all injury even remotely believable to “local weather change” after which sue the fossil power producers for purportedly inflicting that injury whereas deceptive the general public about these asserted impacts regardless of understanding about them for many years.
The claims appear easy, and the potential makes use of for the numerous, many billions of {dollars} to be extracted are countless. Alas, the sport is in a slow-motion collapse, the most recent manifestation of which is the determination by Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Courtroom of Widespread Pleas Decide Stephen Corr to dismiss the county local weather lawsuit towards a number of power producers. Decide Corr wrote, “… Bucks County fails to state a declare upon which aid might be granted as a result of Pennsylvania can not apply its personal legal guidelines to claims coping with air in its ambient or interstate points, and, subsequently, we’re compelled to dismiss this lawsuit for lack of subject material jurisdiction.” (emphasis added) And he added, “We be a part of many different state and federal courts to find that claims raised by Bucks County are solely throughout the province of federal legislation.”
And the 2 “cash” paragraphs:
The response of lots of the local weather litigants is that the fossil power producers have recognized all alongside that they have been making a local weather disaster however hid that info from us. Critically? Allow us to summarize what the Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change in its 1990 First Evaluation Report (web page 202) made clear: It couldn’t clarify why temperatures have been increased 5,000-6,000 years in the past regardless of no proof of a rise in greenhouse gasoline (GHG) concentrations.
Quick ahead to the newest Sixth Evaluation Report (2021-2022). The IPCC nonetheless can not slender down the “probably” vary (p. 46) of local weather results of elevated GHG concentrations and is ready to predict (Desk 12.12) varied adversarial future results solely with low confidence and solely below an excessive emissions situation. Did the fossil power trade “know” issues many years in the past that weren’t recognized then and usually are not recognized right now? Clearly not.
Notice: I simply observed the misspelling on my pic. I’m nonetheless studying ChatGPT.