Sunday Reads...

​An irregular round-up of interesting reads.  Most of these made me go "hmmmmm," none of them imply concurrence:

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

“We shall never prevent the abuse of power if we are not prepared to limit power in a way which occasionally may also prevent its use for desirable purposes.”

From F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom" 

• The latest World Economic Freedom ratings are out.  Spoiler alert, the U.S.A. ranks #5 behind Singapore, Hong Kong, Switzerland and New Zealand. 
• The current White House increasingly adept at covering-up, even minor racist transgressions.
•  America’s national security apparatus is the risk of dementia as threat.
• Fascinating observations.  Things that are likely are correlated to having worse mental health:
  • Parents who had a high level of education.
  • Growing up in a “lower” income household.
  • Being considered / classified as “white.”
  • Living at home.
  • On Obmacare versus private insurance. 
• The value of patience remains high. Teach it.  Practice it. 
• The EV “jobs” myth.  This is such a powerful – and expensive – example of groupthink gone awry. 
• The “cost of healthcare” doesn’t mean what you think it does.  Once again, mantras rarely equip us with insight. 
• Research suggesting that since 2000, US college educated adults have become both economically and culturally liberal while working-class voters have trended the opposite.  If true, this suggest the current realignments are likely to stabilize for a while. 
• Tracing the roots of “zero-sum game” thinking amongst US adults. 
• Thoughts on a truly pro-labor policy agenda.
• The data on which income quartile cheats the most on taxes – and the data is counterfactual to “the narrative.”
• An innovative approach to recruiting law enforcement.
• More evidence that school choice improves academic outcomes and reduces disparities.
• A vicious cycle – the demand/reward incentive – for identity-orientated media content.
• Common sense beats Freud, again.   Suppressing negative thoughts, a key step to better mental health a study concludes. 
• Apparently, the U.S. government’s role in the J6 Affair continues unphased as the FBI admits it lost count of how many informants it had in its crowd. 
• The Left of the Right. 
• Nationalism as a façade for corruption is noted here. 
• China’s debt problem is growing.
• What lit the fires of our current global craze?  Protectionism. 
• Good News!  The U.S. middle class continues to grow. 
• Charting media bias. 
• The original Originalist, Frederick Douglass.