Nine of the 15 most expensive metropolitan areas in the United States are in California, and one major reason for this is the state's overregulation problem. The California Code of Regulations contains more than 21 million words, and the residential housing subsection alone has nearly 24,000 restrictions. While some rules make sense, like internationally accepted safety requirements and seismic standards, the state's aggressive environmental and energy standards contribute to staggering construction costs and higher house prices. Allowing more housing, especially in-demand multifamily housing, would promote energy efficiency, as apartment-dwelling families on average use less than half the energy to heat and cool their homes than single-family home dwellers.

While four in 10 Americans think favorably about socialism, it's possible that capitalists are capitalism's worst enemy. Working with a national firm, Matthew D. Mitchell, Scott Eastman, and Tamara Winter surveyed 500 American business leaders. The results showed that capitalists who benefit from government favoritism are more likely to accept interventions into markets. Those that work for firms that benefited from favoritism were 10 percent more likely to say that markets should be generally free and that free markets serve the broader public, but these same leaders were also about 10 percent more likely to say that the US market is currently too free. Capitalists that believe the free market is consistent with favoritism could be an even greater threat to capitalism than those who favor socialism.

While the United States women's national soccer team won the World Cup this week with two goals, America has been losing its trade wars. The Trump administration has imposed tariffs on steel, aluminum, and hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese products, and China has retaliated with tariffs. President Trump also threatened to withdraw from NAFTA if Congress did not approve the USMCA, but countries across the globe are entering into their own free trade agreements. From manufacturers to farmers, the industries downstream of US tariffs have been hurting, and other countries have taken the opportunity to lower tariffs and trade barriers. 

Americans both young and old spend hours online every day, and some say that internet culture is harming children. One proposal to address this problem is to add high school classes on how to use the internet more effectively. Misinformation has been communicated through books over the centuries which lead to teaching students how to use printed material more effectively, and now the same effort is necessary with the internet.