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Connecting today’s news with the research & opinion you need.
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Housing Boom

What to Know: Oakland will add almost 50 percent more housing units this year than San Francisco, though Oakland has half the population. How? By letting builders build.

The TPPF Take: Cities like Oakland can choose smarter policies to help alleviate their housing shortages.

“The fact is that government has proven to be the problem, not the solution, to housing supply problems,” says TPPF’s James Quintero. “Cities could do far more to address affordability by lightening the regulatory burden and massive fees and taxes they impost on builders and property owners.”
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Climate Anxiety

What to Know: Worries about the climate are churning up a “psychological storm,” according to a new report.

The TPPF Take: Lighten up! The true state of our environment is a cause for celebration, not commiseration.

“There’s a strong case to be made for environment optimism,” says TPPF’s Brent Bennett. “Instead of leading us to environmental disaster, our economic prosperity—made possible by our diversified and reliable energy system—has enabled investments in technologies to improve environmental quality and human health. Fears about future, highly uncertain, climate changes ignore the fact that our air and water are getting cleaner every year.”
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How’s That Working?

What to Know: Rationing—in the form of waiting lists—has left hundreds or even thousands of Canadians to die without surgeries, the Vancouver Sun reports.

The TPPF Take: The lesson here is that single-payer health care systems must use rationing.

“In single-payer systems, the government saves money not by more efficient administration, but by controlling both the budget and by limiting allowable treatments,” says TPPF’s David Balat. “In the U.S., we already have a single-payer health care system, called the Veterans Administration Hospital system. A 2015 internal audit of the VA reported, ‘307,000 veterans may have died waiting for care.’”