Wealth Taxes are Economic Failures

The Economic Standard | Wayne Winegarden and Kerry Jackson
March 11, 2022

Simply put, confiscatory tax rates are economically destructive. As we documented in our study on California’s outmigration problem, the outflow of people, businesses, and wealth from the state is troublingly large and accelerating. It is why for the first time in history California lost representation in Congress. A massive tax hike on the rich would further incentivize them to leave, costing California billions in revenues.

Newsom's education agenda: More of the same means more failure

The Bakersfield Californian | Lance Izumi
March 11, 2022

Even before the pandemic, 82 percent of low-income California eighth graders failed to perform proficiently on the 2019 National Assessment for Educational Progress reading exam. Further, 53 percent of non-low-income eighth graders also failed to score proficiently.

Unsurprisingly, California has the nation’s lowest literacy rate.

Newsom proposes allocating $500 million in grants to high-needs schools to train and hire literacy coaches and reading specialists to help struggling students. There are several problems with this proposal.

Read more. . .

How NIMBYS and CEQA Undermined a World-Class California University

Times of San Diego | M. Nolan Gray
March 3, 2022

After all, CEQA abuse doesn’t just hold up student housing—on the contrary, it makes virtually everything harder to do in California, from renovating elementary schools to expanding hospitals to transitioning to renewable energy. As a team of environmental attorneys recently pointed out in a report for the Pacific Research Institute, a handful of modest reforms to CEQA could prevent bad actors from abusing environmental review for myopic purposes.