1-27-2022 School Choice

In the current debate over auto choice insurance reform, a formidable critic of the proposal now before Congress has emerged in George Priest of the Yale Law School. Professor Priest, who carries impressive credentials as a market-oriented legal scholar, recently called the federal auto choice bill a "lemon" in a widely noticed Wall Street Journal op-ed. On September 1 he reiterated his critique in a speech delivered at The Heritage Foundation that was televised nationwide on C-SPAN.

Last month, Lady Margaret spoke and the House moved. The remarks of Great Britain’s former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to the World Congress on Information Technology reinforced the idea that information is an essential component of freedom. As such, it should not be heavily taxed.

If you haven’t heard of the "Gore tax," you’re probably missing an important battle over the nature of American democracy and the American economy. The battle has two fronts and the public is losing on both. On one front, the methodical centralization of power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats moves forward. On the other, the burdening of our economy continues. Here are the details of the current skirmish:

America’s health care system is the finest in the world, yet American patients increasingly face higher costs, fewer choices and greater rationing of medical care. A recent news item describes how politicians typically address these problems: Democrats are often more willing to spend money on new or existing government programs and to regulate the insurance market, while Republicans usually prefer to use the tax code as an instrument of social policy.1

Universal service subsidies keep the price of telecommunications service in hard-to-reach and high-cost areas on par with the price of service to inexpensive areas. Substantial reform for this system of wealth transfers is now politically viable. All universal service reform proposals should begin by facing the following economic reality: Consumers pay for subsidies. With this proposition in mind, the policy benchmarks that follow can be utilized to measure reform proposals.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has been an agent of tremendous change. New regulatory burdens, repeating cycles of litigation and few observable benefits to consumers have been its progeny. All of that is about to become history. An agile long-distance company with a ferocious appetite for new customers is prepared to defy Washington regulators.