Expanding crude oil production did help lower gas prices. Nicolas Loris writes:
When gas prices topped $4 per gallon in May 2011, President Barack Obama said, "We can't just drill our way out of the problem." [...]
More than seven years later, human ingenuity, technological innovation, and the power of the free market have proven him wrong. To the benefit of American families across the country, the United States is now the largest global producer of crude oil.
According to a report from the federal government's Energy Information Administration this week, U.S. crude oil production surpassed that of Saudi Arabia and Russia. When Obama made his statement in May 2011, U.S. monthly production was 174 million barrels (5.67 million barrels per day). In June 2018, monthly production stood at 320.23 million barrels (10.67 million barrels per day). [...]
Domestic extraction has lowered gas prices for millions of drivers and saved them hundreds of dollars a year at the pump. A number of factors contribute to the price of gasoline, but crude oil is the largest.
In 2017, crude prices made up 50 percent of the price of gas, with federal and state taxes (19 percent), distributing and marketing (17 percent), and refining (14 percent) accounting for the rest. Over the past decade, crude oil accounted for 61 percent of the total cost of a gallon of gas.
[Nicolas Loris, "Obama Was Wrong on Oil. We Did 'Drill Our Way Out of the Problem.'" The Daily Signal, September 14]
The economy is doing alright. Mark Perry reports some data from the latest Census Bureau report on Income and Poverty in the United States:
Median household income last year of $61,372 was an increase of 1.8% from 2016 and brought median income for US households to the highest level ever, above the previous record level last year of $60,309. The income gain last year was the fifth consecutive annual increase in real median household income starting in 2013, following five consecutive declines from 2008 to 2012 due to the effects of the Great Recession. The last period of four consecutive gains in annual median household income was during the late 1990s at the end of the longest economic expansion in US history (120 months from March 1991 to March 2001). Although it doesn't get as much attention as median income because it's influenced by outliers on the high-end, average household income also increased to a new record level last year of $86,220, which was an increase of 1.5% from 2016 and the seventh consecutive annual increase starting in 2011. [...]
Both the average and median income per person in the US reached all-time highs in 2017 of nearly $34,000 (in 2017 dollars) for average income per person, and $24,160 for median income per household member last year. Compared to 1975, the average household income per US household member has increased by 74% from $19,500 to $34,000, while the median household income per person has increased by 45% from $16,600 to $24,160.
[Mark J. Perry, "Census Data Released Today Show Continued Gains for Middle-Class Americans and Little Evidence of Rising Income Inequality," American Enterprise Institute, September 12]
Building a conservative Facebook is easier said than done. Unmoderated platforms are not the solution to liberal bias in content filtering, because those will fail economically, explains Iain Murray:
Recall back in 2006, conservative activists created online encyclopedia Conservapedia in reaction to allegations of liberal bias on Wikipedia. Conservapedia hasn't exactly caught on. It's dominated by fringe religious issues to the point Christian conservative thought leaders like Rod Dreher and Damian Thompson scorn it (Thompson said in his book Counterknowledge that Conservapedia was there to "dress up nonsense as science"). What happened?
Gresham's Law is a maxim of monetary economics that states that bad money drives out good. That is, debased or counterfeit money will circulate more than money with a high commodity value such as gold or silver. Its truth has been demonstrated repeatedly. The same effect seems to apply to speech. [...]
Firms that allow Gresham's Law of Speech to take hold and lose (or never find) their advertisers will always be playing catch-up. Ironically, they will almost certainly have to rely on the technological innovation of the other tech firms.
None of this is to say that a start-up cannot replace Facebook or Twitter — or even Google or Amazon — if it has the right breakthrough. The underlying architecture of the free and open internet allows for endless possibilities for the right challenger. Just ask where AOL, Yahoo, and MySpace are now. Unfortunately, creating the "conservative Facebook" will be easier said than done — and the laws of free market economics are the main reason why. Conservatives have proven adept at building new media forms in the past — talk radio springs to mind. If they are to build a new platform for their views it will require really innovative thinking. A "conservative Facebook" isn't innovative, just imitative. If they can find a new model that combines quality, revenue, and continuous innovation, they'll have the winner they want.
[Iain Murray, "If a Conservative Facebook Is Such a Good Idea, Why Hasn't It Happened?" Competitive Enterprise Institute, September 6]
Letting Fannie and Freddie live was a missed opportunity. "Americans don't need the GSE system or anything remotely similar," writes Norbert Michel:
Robust mortgage financing exists in virtually every developed nation of the world without the same degree of government involvement found in the U.S. Yet, the U.S. homeownership rate is about average among developed nations, and Americans pay among the highest mortgage interest rates.
The U.S. is the only major country in the world with the trifecta of a federal mortgage insurer, government guarantees of mortgage securities, and GSEs in housing finance. Comparing the U.S. with 11 other industrialized countries: only two have a government mortgage insurer (Netherlands and Canada), two have government security guarantees (Canada and Japan), and two have GSEs (Japan and Korea).
From 1998 to 2009, which includes the heyday of the GSEs, volatility of home price and home construction in the U.S. was among the highest in the developed world (5th out of 16 countries).
And the U.S. homeownership rate stabilized long before the government became a major player in housing finance. Statistically, the rate is currently no different (64.3 percent) than the rate of 63 percent achieved in 1964. Yet, prior to 1968, the year that Fannie Mae was allowed to purchase non-government-insured mortgages, all government-backed mortgages never accounted for more than 6 percent of U.S. mortgages in any given year.
[Norbert Michel, "Nobody in Congress Is Ready to Fix Housing Finance," Forbes, September 11]
There is no such thing as a free lunch. John Miltimore:
A year ago, Denver Public Schools put an end to "lunch shaming." No longer would students have the stigma of receiving a sticker reminding them to pay if they had not settled an outstanding lunch bill.
Denver promised that all children would receive lunches whether they paid for the lunch or not.
The price tag of the policy was recently revealed. Denver Public Schools reports that lunch debt ballooned from $13,910 in the 2016-17 academic year to some $356,000 last year, a 2,400 percent increase.
[Jon Miltimore, "Denver's Anti-'Lunch Shaming' Initiative Increased Debt by 2,400%," Foundation for Economic Education, September 12]
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