This week’s podcast guest is Melanie Kirkpatrick, author of the new book, Lady Editor, a biography of Sarah Josepha Hale. Hale was the editor of the most prominent ladies magazine in her day and responsible for publishing prominent American authors ...
02 August, 2021These days, many of us have been glued to the screen, watching unfold the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. However, there is one human drama that’s getting little attention – Olympic fashion. I don’t mean the gold lamé cape worn by Angola...
02 August, 2021At long last, it’s finally “Infrastructure Week.” On Wednesday, a group of Republican and Democrat senators resolved their final differences with President Biden and reached a long-elusive agreement on a bipartisan infrastructure bill authorizing $55...
30 July, 2021Whether it is investing in infrastructure or addressing the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, President Biden and the Democratic Congress continue to believe that the government is the main driver of growth and innovation. This errant belief threatens ou...
29 July, 2021COVID-19 launched a whole host of trends, from house remodeling to restaurant delivery to working from home. But who knew that tax relief would become in vogue? Thanks to revenue windfalls and the prospect of employees working from anywhere, state ...
28 July, 2021The SEC, under former Chairman Jay Clayton, issued a rule that improved the proxy advisory services market by promoting transparency and holding proxy firms more accountable for inaccuracies. Rather than implementing the necessary improvements to the...
26 July, 2021In this podcast, PRI’s guest is Judge Janice Rogers Brown, former associate justice of the California Supreme Court and a former judge on the DC Court of Appeals. Judge Brown discusses the rise of “woke” ideology and how it threatens our Constitutio...
26 July, 2021A couple of weeks ago, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the White House was working with Facebook and other social media companies to target accounts spreading misinformation. Reaction to her comments and answers from reporters varied,...
26 July, 2021
DOWNLOAD PDF Two waves have rolled through California in 2021. One so hot that high temperature records were set throughout the state. The other so chilling that stores have shortened their hours and even closed altogether to avoid it. By now, the vi...
23 July, 2021The same city that requires employers to pay workers at least $16.32 an hour, far more than twice the federal minimum wage, also limits how much some businesses can charge for their services. It’s enough to send some companies seeking relief from the...
20 July, 2021This podcast features William Voegeli, senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and senior editor at the Claremont Review of Books. Ro and Tim discuss with Dr. Voegeli his recent essay in the Claremont Review on California’s activist government and ...
19 July, 2021The latest Washington buzz has the Senate likely voting on the bipartisan infrastructure deal and the federal budget resolution that will fuel President Biden’s big spending plans by sometime in August. But the debate over the repeal of the state and...
13 July, 2021Next Round features Carol Roth, New York Times bestselling author and PRI fellow and economist Wayne Winegarden. They discuss Ms. Roth’s new book, The War on Small Business, the economic recovery, Federal Reserve policy, and what’s next for American...
12 July, 2021University of Tennessee law professor and Instapundit founder Glenn Reynolds – author of an Encounter Intelligence book on space policy – joins us for a fascinating conversation about America’s future in space, which will be dominated by the private ...
05 July, 2021Student athletes got a big win on Monday, June 21, 2021, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, cannot limit education-related benefits like graduate scholarships, computers, paid intern...
01 July, 2021
This podcast features PRI President Sally Pipes and the Goldwater Institutes Director of Health Care Policy Naomi Lopez in an insightful discussion on health care in America and what lies ahead under the Biden-Harris administration. ...
29 June, 2021Handing out taxpayer dollars in the form of basic incomes is the latest policy rage. The Los Angeles Times reports there’s “a growing enthusiasm for basic income programs.” Vox says “guaranteed income is graduating from charity to public policy.” At ...
29 June, 2021
Ronald Reagan famously remarked that “the most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Eater San Francisco reports that the City by the Bay “became the first city in the country to pass a permane...
25 June, 2021A new state law in Colorado attempted to close gender pay gaps. Instead, the “Equal Pay for Equal Work Act” is excluding Colorado candidates from remote work positions. The main issue with SB 19-085, passed in the Colorado State Legislature in 2019, ...
24 June, 2021In a budget hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Attorney General Merrick Garland assured Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, “I promise you, it will be at the top of my list.” Tops on the Justice Department’s To Do List pledged Garland, is t...
23 June, 2021Gail Heriot, a law professor at the University of San Diego, was co-chair of both the campaign for California’s Prop. 209 in 1996 and the successful campaign to prevent its repeal in 2020. Editor of the new book A Dubious Expediency, she offers compe...
21 June, 2021
DOWNLOAD PDF Not too terribly long ago, the Legislative Analyst’s Office said that to meet demand, each year the state needed 100,000 new housing units in addition to the 100,000 to 140,000 that are expected to be built annually, an impossibility in ...
17 June, 2021We were sixth in line when the banker came outside to address the long line which stretched down the street for half a mile. He spoke in Spanish, “we are all out of money, come back next week!” I shook my head in frustration, wondering......
16 June, 2021This podcast features Debra Saunders, the long-time columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle who turned Trump White House beat reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. These days Debra Saunders is a fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Chapman Cen...
14 June, 2021In this podcast our guest is Anne Marie Schubert, District Attorney for Sacramento County. Ms. Schubert along with 44 DAs are suing Gov. Newsom for his policy to allow 76,000 inmates – including many who committed violent crimes – to attain early re...
07 June, 2021The featured guest for this podcast Erik Jaffe, partner at Schaerr Jaffe, a constitutional lawyer, and a PRI fellow in Legal Studies. Erik takes us through a tour of the major U.S. Supreme Court cases this session and the constitutional issues in qu...
01 June, 2021Back in February, Tim Anaya and I interviewed for PRI’s Next Round podcast Cynthia Ariosta and Carl Dene, small business owners in Napa Valley, to get their perspective on Gov. Newsom’s COVID restrictions on small businesses. This heart-wrenching int...
01 June, 2021By Wayne Winegarden and Tim Anaya After hiring defeated Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs as a special advisor and flush with a $75.7 billion budget surplus, it was probably inevitable that universal basic income would be included in Gov. Newsom’s massive...
27 May, 2021
Inflation is seen as the stock market’s boogeyman as the economy recovers. We asked 3 experts if the fears are warranted – or if concerns are overblown. By Will Daniel On April 29, new data showed that a key measure of inflation monitored...
25 May, 2021This podcast features Venezuelan Jorge Galicia, a lawsuit student who escaped his country and is now speaking to college students nationwide about his experience. Jorge recounts Venezuela’s path, beginning with socialist policies such as free colleg...
24 May, 2021Living in San Francisco is a dollar-burning experience. It’s the most expensive housing market in the country, and the cost of living is higher only in Manhattan. But what about building a business in the city that fancies itself as The City? Don’t e...
18 May, 2021
This week’s podcast features Steve Greenhut, author of PRI’s new book Winning the Water Wars. Steve gives an update on California’s drought and how we got here, after failing to prepare during the previous non-drought years. He discusses current le...
17 May, 2021
DOWNLOAD PDF Even before it was a state, California was the New World’s new world. Everything that the Western Hemisphere promised was condensed and amplified in what became the 31st state. Not only was it arguably the greatest land of opportunity in...
12 May, 2021
This week’s podcast features Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation. Bob Poole, one of the leading transportation policy experts in the nation – discusses Pres. Biden’s so-called infrastructure plan and what’s reall...
10 May, 2021The Biden administration’s multi-trillion-dollar stimulus and spending policies are exclusively demand-side measures aimed at supporting the consumer. But this focus is blinding the Biden team from mounting economic crises that are resulting from thi...
10 May, 2021The New York Times has a summary of the Biden Tax Plan claiming to explain “some of the main provisions included in the plan and how they’re intended to work.” While the Times may have accurately explained how the Administration “intends” for the tax...
06 May, 2021California policymakers have spent years debating how to pay for road and highway repairs. President Biden’s current infrastructure plan brings that debate to the national stage. Like its peers, California relies on a gas tax and registration fees to...
05 May, 2021
PRI’s guest in this podcast is Nolan Gray, an urban planner and currently a Ph.D. student at UCLA. Housing affordability and housing shortages are two key reasons so many Californians are fleeing the state. Nolan discusses why housing is so expensive...
03 May, 2021By Wayne Winegarden and Tim Anaya Last month, Right by the Bay reviewed the findings of a new study touted by former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs reportedly showing the success of the city’s universal basic income scheme. Reviewing the report’s findi...
28 April, 2021This week’s guest is Dr. Henry Miller, PRI senior fellow in health care studies. In addition to being a physician, Dr. Miller was a former official at the FDA and founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Dr. Miller provides an update ...
26 April, 2021Julian Morris, Senior Fellow at Reason and a Senior Scholar at the International Center for Law and Economics, joins us for a discussion on environmental topics as we mark Earth Day 2021. We discuss the Biden Administration's "green infrastructure" ...
20 April, 2021This past week, Politico reported that our fellow think tankers (albeit left-leaning) at the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute were forming unions. I assumed that these think tanks were breaking ground, but it appears that they’re just p...
20 April, 2021The stock market is at record highs. More than 900,000 Americans found jobs in March. Flapper models sashay down the runways of Paris and Milan. In a moment of weakness, even I turned my head at a “For Sale” classic Mercedes convertible (the last an...
13 April, 2021Prominent conservative scholar Charles Kesler discusses his new book Crisis of the Two Constitutions – The Rise, Decline, and Recovery of American Greatness with PRI senior fellow Steve Hayward. Prof. Kesler is the editor of the Claremont Review of ...
12 April, 2021Any comedy lovers and fans of stand-up comedians know that the number one rule of improv, or “improvisation,” is to say yes. The United States Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough is doing her best improv impersonation by saying yes (again) to...
12 April, 2021
According to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, it is important to work with other countries to end the pressures of tax competition and corporate tax base erosion… to make sure the global economy thrives based on a more level playing field in th...
07 April, 2021
The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) promotes itself as “the nation’s drug pricing watchdog.” However, as documented in the first of a series of PRI reports, ICER’s cost-effectiveness analyses contain inappropriate methodologies and...
05 April, 2021Much of the political energy in Sacramento and Washington lately has focused on taxes. Speculation has focused on which taxes liberal politicians will raise, and by how much. While pundits are all but declaring it a fait accompli, two recent develo...
05 April, 2021There’s a great parable relayed in the movie Charlie Wilson’s War between Rep. Charles Wilson and CIA agent Gust Avrakotos, played by Tom Hanks and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. It’s about a Zen master and a boy. The Zen master repeats the phrase, “we’ll...
31 March, 2021
Steven Greenhut, author of the recent PRI book Winning the Water Wars, moderates a panel of water experts and policymakers who preview the course the Biden Administration will likely chart on California water policy. They also highlight potential la...
29 March, 2021Neither political party has been fiscally responsible as of late. The last fiscally responsible President was Bill Clinton who, in his 1996 State of the Union Address, declared that “the era of big government is over”. Today, it is the era of small g...
29 March, 2021On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, a case regarding a California regulation that allows union organizers onto private farm property 120 days a year for three hours a day. The regulation specifies that...
25 March, 2021Joe Biden’s Big Tax Plan: 98% of Americans Won’t Pay More By Rachel Bucchino President Joe Biden has made it clear that he’s going to raise taxes for the most wealthy Americans—specifically, those making more than $400,000—while also pled...
24 March, 2021It was just a matter of time. Last week, President Biden announced his intention to hike the taxes of the “rich” to fund his progressive agenda. But will it? History has shown that revenue projections from tax increases don’t often turn out to be the...
23 March, 2021Despite the success of charter schools, they have come under attack on multiple fronts. State lawmakers have enacted state laws that handicap the establishment of charter schools and their operation. Additionally, charter school opponents have used...
22 March, 2021Tidal Wave of ESG Funds Brings Profit to Wall Street By By Michael Wursthorn March 16, 2021 Sustainability has been good for Wall Street’s bottom line. Exchange-traded funds that explicitly focus on socially responsible investments have 43% higher fe...
17 March, 2021California progressives’ plan to impose a wealth tax on state residents died in committee last year. Right by the Bay’s Kerry Jackson and Tim Anaya wrote about why it would hurt everyday Californians far more than its rich and famous. Unfortunately,...
17 March, 2021Pacific Research Institute’s Wayne Winegarden sits down with The Roth Effect with Carol Roth to discuss his new gig economy study, “The Small Business Gig,” the Biden administrations $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, and what the future ...
16 March, 2021In this podcast, Kerry Jackson and Wayne Winegarden preview their new book No Way Home: The Crisis of Homelessness and How to Fix it with Intelligence and Humanity. The panel discussion was recorded from PRI’s annual Sacramento Policy Conference in ...
15 March, 2021Here is the simple truth, that is in the richest country in the world we can no longer tolerate millions of our workers being unable to feed their families because they are working for starvation wages. Senator Bernie Sanders Senator Sanders asserts ...
15 March, 2021With Congress on Wednesday giving final approval to President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan, who is the biggest winner from Washington’s biggest ever spending spree? State and local governments in California. In music to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s ea...
11 March, 2021On this Wednesday edition of Freedom & Prosperity Radio Joe Thomas is joined by Dr. Wayne Winegarden, Senior Fellow in Business and Economics, to discuss the gig-economy. ShareTweetPinShare...
10 March, 2021Proponents of Stockton’s universal basic income (UBI) pilot project – known as the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, or SEED – released a report last week detailing its first year findings. The report’s main claim is receiving UBI boosted ...
10 March, 2021Pacific Research Institute’s Wayne Winegarden, Ph.D., joins NTD News to discuss the congressional and anti-gig economy PRO Act and his new study on the many benefits for gig workers. Wayne’s segments begins at the 3:24-minute mark. Share...
09 March, 2021This podcast features a virtual debate on free speech and the role of social media platforms in moderating online content. PRI brings together an unmatched team of experts including former Congressman Chris Cox, one of the original authors of Section...
08 March, 2021This week, the House will vote on the so-called PRO Act, which the National Law Journal calls “the most significant labor law reform since the World War II-era Taft-Hartley Act and the 1935 Wagner Act . . . which first granted private-sector employee...
08 March, 2021Study finds gig economy grows amid COVID pandemic; ‘Benefits people as consumers of goods and services and the income-earning opportunities created’ By Sarah Downey As gig economy restrictions have been reintroduced at the federal level, a new analys...
04 March, 2021
Pacific Research Institute is proud to present a virtual debate on free speech and the role of social media in moderating online content. PRI brings together an unmatched team of experts including former Congressman Chris Cox, one of the original aut...
02 March, 2021Late Friday, the House took its first vote to pass President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package, the first step toward their goal of enacting the plan into law before a March 14 deadline when some unemployment benefits will expire. Much of last w...
02 March, 2021In this podcast, PRI Senior Fellow Wayne Winegarden discusses his new study “The Small Business Gig.” The gig economy is one of the fastest growth sectors in the U.S. But entrenched union power has been leading the charge for more and more restricti...
01 March, 2021When United Farm Workers organizers swarmed over a private farm in Dorris, Calif., during the 2015 harvest, it’s likely they had no fear of consequences. After all, unions enjoy a well-stocked basket of government-granted privileges and protections. ...
01 March, 2021House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has told House Democrats that earmarks are coming back in 2021. According to Punchbowl News, which originally broke the scoop on earmarks, Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Sen. Patrick Leahy – Congress’ lead appropriators – are...
25 February, 2021Dr. Wayne Winegarden, PRI’s senior fellow in business and economics, joins the Andy Caldwell Show to discuss his new study, “The Small Business Gig,” on steps policymakers can take to help gig economy workers. Winegarden talks about...
22 February, 2021
Watch PRI’s Dr. Wayne Winegarden discuss the last report in the “Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity” series on gig entrepreneurship with host Paul Greaney on “NTD Business.” ShareTweetPinShare...
22 February, 2021This podcast is a recording of the health care panel discussion at PRI’s virtual Sacramento Policy Conference. Our All-Star panelists include Sally Pipes, PRI President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy; Wayne Winegarden, PRI sen...
22 February, 2021With Californian Kamala Harris as vice president, it’s clear the new Biden administration is taking its cues from the once-Golden State on labor policy. In one of its first acts in office, the Biden Administration placed a regulatory freeze on a Depa...
22 February, 2021At first, we were relieved to find that Pres. Biden’s proposal to include a $15 minimum wage hike in the COVID-19 relief package was just a bad nightmare. But when Californians woke up the other day, the idea was back on track. Unlike Bill Murray,....
18 February, 2021
Amid a renewed push in Congress and states to enact new gig economy restrictions following California’s controversial AB 5, a new study released today by the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute finds that enacting these harmful laws would hinder i...
17 February, 2021Policymakers in Sacramento and Washington are focusing on how to turn the economy around, keep businesses afloat, and help people stay employed amidst the ongoing pandemic. Elected officials, policy insiders, and free market economists discuss effort...
16 February, 2021One of the big policy stories coming out of Congress is Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar’s introduction of the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act, a broad measure aimed at strengthening antitrust regulation in the United States. What...
11 February, 2021The argument for an economic stimulus seems persuasive. The economy contracted 3.5 percent in 2020, which is the largest annual decline in the national economy since 1946. The latest employment numbers, which were a disappointment to many, seem to fu...
10 February, 2021
Newly elected Representative Young Kim of Orange County provided the keynote address at this year’s virtual Sacramento Ideas in Action Policy conference. Rep. Kim discusses her first days in Congress, her legislative priorities, and her goal to forge...
08 February, 2021Last month we covered the story of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors deciding it was within the scope of their duties to reward pandemic “front-line” workers with other people’s money. As we noted then, Long Beach was considering a similar ...
08 February, 2021Cynthia Ariosta and Carl Dene of the Coalition of Bay Area Restaurants and Wineries discuss the impact of Gov. Newsom’s on again/off again restrictions on small businesses. The pandemic has hit California hard, especially small businesses and employ...
01 February, 2021Last week, California should have celebrated an important step to help small business owners and Californians reclaim some sense in of normal. Instead, Governor Gavin Newsom’s announcement to lift stay-at-home restrictions across the state was met wi...
01 February, 2021The new Pacific Research Institute book A Kite in a Hurricane No More profiles the challenges and ultimate triumph of Mia Giordano, a young woman with serious learning disabilities. As we observe National School Choice Week 2021, this podcas...
26 January, 2021Media reports that some California businesses have gone underground during the pandemic lockdown should surprise no one. When politicians ban activities, both those accepted by society and those considered less honorable, they drive them into black m...
26 January, 2021It was 38 years ago this weekend when during Super Bowl XVIII, Apple debuted one of the most powerful and provocative ads of all time. “1984” opens with an army of clone-like humans marching into a theater to watch on a giant screen a menacing......
21 January, 2021PRI former speechwriters offer their perspective on President Biden’s inaugural speech. Lance Izumi was speechwriter to Attorney General Edwin Meese and Gov. Deukmejian and is now PRI’s senior director of education studies, Tim Anaya was speechwrit...
20 January, 2021On the second business day after the state’s higher minimum wage took effect, employers in Los Angeles County had another weight dropped on them. The County Board of Supervisors approved a $5 an hour increase in “front-line” workers’ wages. It applie...
20 January, 2021By Maryalene LaPonsie, Contributor DURING THE 2020 Democratic presidential primary race, candidate Andrew Yang proposed sending $1,000 each month to all U.S. citizens age 18 and older. Dubbed a Freedom Dividend, his idea garnered him devoted supporte...
15 January, 2021Offering a temporary pay increase to grocery workers, often referred to as “hero pay”, makes a lot of sense when grocers voluntarily provide this additional compensation to their employees. Grocery workers are taking on additional health risks, suffe...
15 January, 2021Last month, Californians may very well have begun the process of saving their state, reversing a move by the state legislature. They voted by a large margin via Proposition 22 to preserve the ability of people to pursue flexible working arrangements ...
14 January, 2021Michael Thom, professor at USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy, discusses his new book Taxing Sin. Prof. Thom reviews the history of sin taxes, which goes back for hundreds of years, and the traditional sin taxes, such as alcohol and tobacco tax...
11 January, 2021Way back in August, in what seems like an entirely different historical era, when California was open relative to the restrictions we’re under today, 44% of small business owners said they were at risk of permanent closure in the next six months, unl...
06 January, 2021It’s not hard to argue that California has the country’s harshest pandemic restrictions, though New York and Michigan are close enough to call it a tie. This would be news to anyone visiting from elsewhere, though. Aside from a few exceptions, things...
05 January, 2021Listen to PRI’s recent webinar featuring an all-star panel of experts representing legal, regulatory, and policy industries discussing state and federal changes to data privacy and cybersecurity during 2020 and what the future holds for tech, digital...
04 January, 2021
New federal COVID stimulus package could help in short term; longer-term impact less clear By Sarah Downey As final agreements on the new COVID-19 stimulus package were negotiated last week, crucial help for businesses and families was approved along...
04 January, 2021The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is considering a rule (i.e., Fair Access to Bank Services, Capital, and Credit), which would ensure that banks provide equal access to financial services, without discrimination. Such clarification ...
04 January, 2021In mid-December, the U.S. Supreme Court signaled their intent to wade into the student athlete compensation debate. The Supreme Court combined two cases, National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston and American Athletic Conference v. Alston, a...
30 December, 2020Uber customers might have noticed a new fee that’s appearing on their charges. Now, who do we have to thank for that? Oh, yes, the lawmakers who tried to destroy the gig economy and its millions of jobs. Uber added a “California Driver Benefits Fee”....
29 December, 2020The ill-winds of populism are again blowing across the American political landscape. This thin veneer of ideology only seeks to divide people, diving a wedge between “the people,” presented as the forces of good, against “the elite,” portrayed as evi...
23 December, 2020Dr. Wayne Winegarden, PRI senior fellow in business and economics, today submitted comments to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency responding to their proposed rule on “Fair Access to Bank Services, Capital and Credit.” In the l...
22 December, 2020
A Sign the ESG Movement Is Too Big to Ignore: There’s Backlash In the waning days of the Trump administration, several agencies are pushing back on the notion that corporations should prioritize anything other than profits. By Peter Coy, December 22...
22 December, 2020A Sign the ESG Movement Is Too Big to Ignore: There’s Backlash By Peter Coy The legal principle that corporate boards must focus exclusively on maximizing value for shareholders wasn’t always taken for granted. It was enshrined in a 1919 court decisi...
22 December, 2020By Henry Miller, M.S., M.D. and Andrew Fillat NASDAQ recently proposed new diversity requirements for the corporate boards of companies listed on the exchange. “Successful companies must cultivate diversity to fuel innovation and to thrive in today’s...
22 December, 2020One of the more surprising results from November’s election was the surprise defeat of Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs in his bid for re-election to a Republican upstart Kevin Lincoln, a pastor and former George W. Bush administration official who is bo...
16 December, 2020
On this webinar, PRI welcomes back an all-star panel of experts representing legal, regulatory, and policy industries to discuss state and federal changes to data privacy and cybersecurity during 2020 and what the future holds for tech, digital priva...
15 December, 2020Dr. Leslie Lenkowsky, an expert on philanthropy and public affairs, offers his insights into American civil society’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and what increased restrictions on personal freedom mean for our democracy. Dr. Lenkowsky is a pr...
14 December, 2020Several possibilities have been offered for how the Biden administration will shift U.S. trade policy including scrapping the Trump trade negotiations with China through executive order and working with Asian allies to pressure China. Much of the Tru...
14 December, 2020Coronavirus relief funds are back on the negotiation table, but the three sides have a huge chasm to close. Speaker Nancy Pelosi originally proposed a $3.4 trillion package, then $2.2 trillion, and has now settled on $900 billion. Treasury Secretary...
09 December, 2020It is with much sadness that I learned of the recent passing of one of my favorite and most respected economists, Professor Walter Williams. Walter was a prolific writer, author, educator, and defender of freedom. He died on December 3rd at 84, hav...
08 December, 2020
Steve Moore, a member of President Trump’s economic task force, discusses the domestic policy implications from the 2020 election with moderator PRI senior fellow Steve Hayward. Steve Moore offer his insights into what lies ahead for our nation amid ...
07 December, 2020
Lance Izumi, senior director of PRI’s Center for Education, joins us to discuss his new book, which profiles the journey of Mia Giordano, who overcame learning disabilities through science and school choice. He discusses the promise show by advanced...
30 November, 2020Recent Census Bureau data tell a story that surprises no one who keeps up with current events in California: The state is losing residents like few others. According to economist Mark J. Perry, only four other states – New York, Illinois, New Jersey,...
30 November, 2020Dr. Henry Miller, PRI senior fellow in health care studies and former founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology, joins us with an update on efforts to develop vaccines and therapeutics to fight Covid-19. He discusses how a transition be...
23 November, 2020Majority of Voters Think Coronavirus Stimulus Package Should Be Top Priority During Biden’s First 100 Days By Rachel Bucchino Amajority of registered voters think President-elect Joe Biden should focus on issues relating to tackling the coronavirus p...
19 November, 2020The Department of Labor finalized a rule last month that, as the Wall Street Journal editorial page noted, should not be controversial. The rule states that private pensions cannot let ancillary issues distract them from their primary mission of secu...
18 November, 2020Ronald Reagan once described the government’s view of the economy like this: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” From his last point, even the Gipper couldn’t imagine that government would tax...
17 November, 2020PRI Chairman of the Board Clark Judge returns to discuss the lessons learned from Election 2020. He shares his thoughts on where the conservative movement stands today after four years of President Trump, offers advice to conservatives, President Tr...
16 November, 2020San Francisco voters have told CEOs and their businesses to take a long walk off a short pier into the bay. Not in those exact words but in their own way, by overwhelmingly approving Proposition L. Under the Overpaid Executive Tax, passed by a 65-35....
13 November, 2020This week, PRI’s Evan Harris interviews R Street Institute’s Steven Greenhut about his newly-published PRI book, Winning the Water Wars. In the book, Greenhut makes the case that California can end its decades-long water wars and meet the state’s wat...
09 November, 2020
Now that all the votes have been cast, the PRI All Stars are back with a special election wrap-up. They break down the night’s biggest winners and losers and the night’s biggest surprise results, discuss what the national election trends mean for Ca...
04 November, 2020
As of this writing, we don’t know who has won the 2020 presidential election. Whoever wins, America’s next chief executive has many important policy decisions to make in the coming weeks. Here’s a preview of some of the big issues that the presiden...
04 November, 2020Free marketers often assume that between the two political parties, Republicans are better for the stock market. It makes sense. Republicans believe that economic growth can be achieved by reducing regulation and costs for businesses and relying on ...
03 November, 2020Our PRI All Stars are back with an election preview. On deck are Tim Anaya, senior director of communications, Kerry Jackson, fellow in California Reform, Evan Harris, manager of media relations and outreach, and Rowena Itchon, senior vice president...
28 October, 2020During the first presidential debate in September, both candidates answered where they think the economy is headed. Trump believes in a V-shaped recovery, basically a quick rebound, while Biden prefers a K-shaped recovery, with the rich recovering wh...
27 October, 2020Michael Anton, lecturer in politics and research fellow at Hillsdale College’s Kirby Center in Washington, DC and former national security official in the Bush (43) and Trump administrations, joins PRI senior fellow Steve Hayward for a discussion of ...
26 October, 2020Next COVID-19 relief bill remains stalled in Washington; ‘Adverse impacts on the economy and individuals will be longer-lasting than they could have been’ By Sarah Downey With the outcome for a new COVID-19 financial stimulus package still in flux, c...
26 October, 2020PRI fellow in legal studies Erik Jaffe shares his thoughts on the Amy Coney Barrett nomination hearings, and what changes we might expect to see at the Supreme Court under a Justice Barrett. We discuss the controversy over “court packing” in the pre...
19 October, 2020Last week, I wrote about a proposition on the California ballot that would give 17-year-olds the right to vote in some California elections. California’s push for the youth vote got me thinking about how recent college graduates and others entering t...
14 October, 2020Pick nearly any state in the union and likely it has a large swath of rural area and population. Even California, which is rarely thought of as a “rural state,” is still physically more than half rural, with about four million residents living in tho...
13 October, 2020Norman Gonzales and Carlos Yniguez from John Adams Academy join PRI’s Lance Izumi to discuss a change in this year’s budget that takes away funding for thousands of kids attending charter schools across the state, and how the school is fighting this ...
12 October, 2020At the end of last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill establishing quotas for minorities on the boards of every publicly traded company in the state. That’s on top of a law enacted in 2018 that implemented quotas for women on corporate...
12 October, 2020In case you missed our special live webinar, listen to PRI’s Lance Izumi as he interviews U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The two discuss the importance of expanding school choice opportunities for every American student, school reopenings fo...
08 October, 2020This podcast with Heather Mac Donald, Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor at City Journal, was recorded from a recent webinar with PRI’s own Steve Hayward doing the Q&A. Heather offers her perspective on the r...
05 October, 2020State Board of Equalization Member Ted Gaines joins us to discuss one of the most controversial issues on the November ballot, Proposition 15, which would create a new split roll property tax system for commercial property. He shares his thoughts on...
02 October, 2020PRI’s former speechwriters (Rowena Itchon, Lance Izumi and Tim Anaya) are joined by attorney, former Reagan and Wilson administration appointee and PRI board member Lawrence Siskind in breaking down the best and worst moments of the first presidentia...
30 September, 2020Most of the California business community is at the mercy of California’s progressive state legislature. It is easy to forget, especially with Silicon Valley pumping out inflated IPOs, that small businesses are the backbone of the economy. The U.S. S...
23 September, 2020Few topics are hotter these days than mail-in ballots and the role of the U.S. Postal Service. John Barger, a member of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors appointed by President Trump, joins us to discuss the Postal Service’s plans to move w...
22 September, 2020Last month, the Trump Administration announced a “historic deal” to normalize relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel. Did the Trump administration solve Middle East conflict? No. While the merits of the deal will be debated in think ta...
16 September, 2020Kenneth Green, Ph.D., PRI Senior Fellow in Environment, discusses the recent California wildfires, the state’s climate change policies, what he thinks about presidential candidate Joe Biden’s environmental agenda, as well as Pres. Trump’s performance...
14 September, 2020If you’ve ever had a medical procedure and received a large bill from your hospital because, unknown to you, one of your doctors was not in your insurance network – that’s the subject of this podcast. PRI senior fellow Wayne Winegarden discusses his...
07 September, 2020Right by the Bay has been following Sacramento’s tax raising schemes here, here, and here. But the state’s tax marauding politicians aren’t the only ones we should be worried about. Presidential candidate Joe Biden also wants Washington’s share of ...
02 September, 2020PRI’s former speechwriters (Rowena Itchon, Lance Izumi and Tim Anaya) review the 2020 Republican National Convention. They discuss how the convention dealt with outside events taking over the headlines, analyze the party’s use of real people versus ...
31 August, 2020There are no state taxes on wealth in the U.S., but California is a good bet to be the first. The idea carries some political popularity, and its promises sound sweet, but what would be the reality if the legislation, Assembly Bill 2088, becomes law?...
26 August, 2020
Just prior to the pandemic, many states were finally recovering from the fiscal crises created by the 2007-09 recession. But, as with so many things, the pandemic has derailed these gains. If history is a guide, no matter how long the current recessi...
25 August, 2020President Trump’s signature was barely dry when cash-strapped governors nationwide cried foul over his executive order to provide $400 of additional unemployment benefits a week for the country’s jobless, after negotiations on a new coronavirus stimu...
25 August, 2020PRI’s former speechwriters (Rowena Itchon, Lance Izumi, and Tim Anaya) discuss the highs and lows of the first virtual convention in American history. We share our thoughts on the key highlights from the -2020 Democratic convention, including John K...
24 August, 2020
Here’s Why Democrats Have An Edge Over Republicans in Stimulus Negotiations By: Jenni Fink, Newsweek The White House and Democratic Party leadership both cast blame for the stalemate over a stimulus package on the opposing side, but, in the bat...
20 August, 2020This week’s podcast is a special presentation of PRI’s recent Young Leaders’ Circle webinar, which brought together distillery owners, craft brewers, and licensing experts to examine the impact that COVID-19 has had on the production of our favorite ...
17 August, 2020When the 2020-21 state budget was enacted a few months back, I made the case that the majority party’s spending plan essentially sets the stage for an upcoming battle over tax increases. Back in 2011, former Gov. Jerry Brown pushed a budget plan that...
17 August, 2020Listen to PRI Business and Economics Fellow Damon Dunn on the Bottom Line with host Roger Marsh discuss details from his new book Punting Poverty, the danger of universal basic income, and his upbringing from rural Fort Worth, Texas, to Stanford, the...
13 August, 2020Title: Are second $1,200 stimulus checks coming? Here’s what we know By: Lorie Konish, CNBC Capitol Hill has come to a standstill following heated discussions last week on what to include in the next coronavirus stimulus package. One thing they did s...
12 August, 2020The Hon. Dan Kolkey – former legal advisor to Gov. Wilson, former appeals court justice, and PRI board member – joins us to discuss how this year’s key public policy issues, such as the state’s response to COVID-19, the housing crisis, and efforts to...
10 August, 2020Now that the California Public Employees’ Retirement System has decided to become a lender, it follows that the taxpayers who finance the pension fund have the right to know what types of loans will be made and to whom. The process, though, will unli...
10 August, 2020Congress and the Administration continue to debate the next stimulus bill. It will be much more effective, however, if we heed the lessons from the trillions of dollars that have already been spent battling the current recession. Some of the programs...
06 August, 2020PRI’s Business and Economic Fellow Damon Dunn joined Carol Roth on the Roth Effect Podcast to discuss his new book, Punting Poverty, and universal basic income, poverty, and capitalism. Dunn is a former Stanford and NFL football player turned s...
05 August, 2020R Street Institute’s Steven Greenhut returns for his annual look at the year’s legislative session in Sacramento. We discuss how the Legislature and Governor have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and rising social unrest, a $54 billion budget defi...
03 August, 2020This week in Washington, Democrats and Republicans are squabbling over the next economic stimulus package. Republicans have proposed a roughly $1 trillion plan, while Speaker Pelosi is pushing a $3 trillion plan. The partisan haggling and negotiati...
28 July, 2020PRI Senior Fellow in Tech and Innovation Bartlett Cleland joins us to discuss the California Consumer Privacy Act, which took effect on July 1. He discusses the serious flaws with the new law and how it will impact consumers and business owners, loo...
27 July, 2020Listen to PRI Fellow in Business and Economics Damon Dunn discuss the growing push for universal basic income and his new book Punting Poverty on “Alabama’s Morning News with JT”. ShareTweetPinShare...
27 July, 2020The COVID-19 recession has fueled volatility in the financial markets. Investment portfolios saw sharp drops in March and April but have rebounded recently as the economy opened up in some areas. This volatility has negatively impacted public pensio...
27 July, 2020The federal government’s emergency unemployment benefits are set to expire this week. Set at $600 a week by the CARES Act — the economic rescue package Congress passed back in March — the emergency benefits were intended to suppleme...
25 July, 2020PRI senior fellow in health care studies Dr. Henry Miller gives us an update on what scientists are learning about COVID-19 and the progress in finding a vaccine. He also weighs in on whether schools should be reopening this fall, gives his thoughts...
20 July, 2020Taxing billionaires would be a great way to fund the fight against coronavirus like AOC says — but only if the US government were drastically different By: Taylor Nicole Rogers, Business Insider The United States needs to find a way to cover the spir...
20 July, 2020Last week, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden unveiled his economic platform in Pennsylvania, calling for an end to the “era of shareholder capitalism.” It seems that Jack Lew, former treasury secretary and a member of the Biden brain trust, n...
15 July, 2020By Rod Richardson and Wayne Winegarden As the nation grapples with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Senate may soon consider another federal stimulus package. Some politicians favor trillions in additional federal spending and lending, but...
14 July, 2020
Watch PRI Fellow in Business and Economics Damon Dunn respond to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey coming out in support of universal basic income with host Paul Greaney on NTD TV. ShareTweetPinShare...
14 July, 2020Recently, I attended a webinar hosted by the Legatum Institute, a UK-based think tank, where they discussed the results of their latest “Prosperity Index”. According to the Index’s executive summary, Legatum hopes that “nations around the world (will...
14 July, 2020This podcast is a special rebroadcast of a recent webinar featuring Damon Dunn, PRI fellow in business and economics, discussing his new book Punting Poverty: Breaking the Chains of Welfare. The former collegiate and pro football player turned entr...
13 July, 2020These are incredibly tough times for Texas and all Americans. On top of the economic pain from months of shelter-in-place orders, the violence and unrest we’ve seen arising from the death of George Floyd has brought economic inequality to the top of ...
10 July, 2020Policy experts: California needs to reform its tax system By Krystina Skurk California’s reliance on a notoriously fickle tax system has exacerbated the state’s budget problems in light of Covid-19, an economics professor said. The state of Californi...
09 July, 2020Labor Groups, San Francisco Push Bogus Taxpayer-Funded Survey to Support Anti-Gig Law By Collin Anderson A liberal advocacy group’s own researchers raised red flags about a taxpayer-funded study used to justify a union campaign against the Cali...
09 July, 2020As Americans struggle to recover from a deep recession fueled by the COVID-19 crisis, and respond in horror to the violence in many communities following the death of George Floyd, economic inequality and lack of opportunity have risen to the top of ...
09 July, 2020As if small businesses weren’t hurting enough, California’s senate voted last week to pass Gov. Newsom’s proposal to mandate job-protected family leave for businesses with as few as five workers. If SB 1383 becomes law, very small business would be ...
09 July, 2020Private equity firms are an important source of financing for both new businesses and existing firms. States with more private equity investment experience more business start-ups, more innovation, and generally have a more efficient business sector....
08 July, 2020PRI fellow in Business and Economics Damon Dunn discusses his new book Punting Poverty with host Joe Thomas on WCHV Radio in Charlottesville, VA. ShareTweetPinShare...
07 July, 2020Listen to PRI fellow in Business and Economics Damon Dunn discuss his new book Punting Poverty with host Larry Marino on “Politics, Issues, and Candidates” on AM 870 The Answer, KRLA Radio in Los Angeles. The interview begins at the 37:4...
07 July, 2020Political partisanship can be found in every part of society. What you say, or even what you do not say, is ripe for political criticism these days. It is no surprise then that social media, where a majority of the world devotes multiple hours each.....
07 July, 2020PRI Senior Fellow in Business and Economics Dr. Wayne Winegarden joins us to discuss the latest study in the “Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity” series, which makes the case that future medical innovation will be hindered unless state and federal...
06 July, 2020Listen to PRI’s Damon Dunn discuss his new book Punting Poverty on the Andy Caldwell Show on KUHL AM 1440 in Santa Maria, AM 1290 in Santa Barbara, and K-News 98.5 in San Luis Obispo. The interview begins at the 22:00 minute mark. The Andy Cald...
29 June, 2020PRI Chairman and White House Writers Group founder and managing director Clark Judge evaluates how effectively political leaders in Washington, state capitols, and city halls are communicating with the public during the COVID-19 crisis and the social...
29 June, 2020California’s mask order tests the limits of Newsom’s executive power By: Phil Willon Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order June 18 requiring all Californians to wear face masks came as welcome news to those in the state concerned by the recent surge in COVID-19 ...
29 June, 2020As Americans have benefited from tele-health and other innovations thanks to COVID-19 regulatory relief, future medical advances will be stymied unless policymakers remove road blocks that make it difficult for entrepreneurs to develop new technology...
25 June, 2020Elon Musk is not alone in his frustration with the way California treats businesses. But he makes the news, and the announcement that SpaceX is abandoning plans to build rockets in Los Angeles and will instead make them in Texas and Florida is anothe...
23 June, 2020As single-payer advocates such as Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and House member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are seizing on the COVID-19 pandemic to push even more aggressively for a complete takeover of our health care system by the federal gove...
22 June, 2020
In the new book Punting Poverty, released today by the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute, former collegiate and pro football player turned entrepreneur Damon Dunn pushes back against the universal basic income movement to give Americans between ...
18 June, 2020This podcast features Erik Jaffe, a partner at Schaerr-Jaffe and a PRI fellow in Legal Studies. A constitutional attorney, Erik has been involved in over 100 Supreme Court matters. We discuss some of the high court’s decisions involving COVID-19, a...
15 June, 2020According to a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, the next coronavirus relief package could spell disaster for our economy. In a letter to the Senate Finance Committee, the nonpartisan CBO warned that extending unemployment benefits w...
15 June, 2020Across the state, main streets have gone from being closed to being boarded. For California entrepreneurs, doing business in the state has hit a new low. It’s too early to get insurance data on what the vandalism, arson, and looting has cost business...
10 June, 2020The University of California Board of Regents just announced that “the endowment, the pension and all of our working capital pools are fossil-free at the University of California”. The Regents justify the divestment based on their belief that “contin...
09 June, 2020PRI Fellow Kerry Jackson, author of the book “Living in Fear in California,” joins us to discuss the debate over criminal justice policy in California in these troubled times. We discuss temporary changes to early release and cash bail policies duri...
08 June, 2020California’s Assembly Bill 5 has not been broken, but given a couple of recent developments, it might soon be showing some cracks. On May 20, Assembly Bill 1850, which would exempt some professions from AB5, a law that virtually outlaws independent c...
02 June, 2020Listen to a special presentation of PRI’s webinar featuring a panel of policy experts, education specialists, and homeschooling practitioners discussing the coronavirus impact on education in the United States. They discuss the many options available...
01 June, 2020Former Connecticut State Treasurer and founder and president of the Institute for Pension Fund Integrity Christopher Bancroft Burnham recently cited Dr. Wayne Winegarden’s study showing how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) funds unde...
28 May, 2020Nearly 39 million Americans have filed for unemployment, as of May 21, since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, pushing unemployment closer to levels not seen since the Great Depression. So far, Congress has allocated over $239 billion in stimul...
26 May, 2020PRI Senior Fellow in Business and Economics Dr. Wayne Winegarden joins us to discuss his latest study “Legislating Energy Prosperity,” which makes the case that if lawmakers acted to alleviate the unnecessary costs from state energy mandates, Califor...
26 May, 2020Year to date, the Dow Index of the U.S.’s 30 largest companies is down 14 percent; the S&P 500, which tracks 500 large-cap companies, is down 8 percent; and the NASDAQ, an electronic system that trades many of the world’s fastest growing companie...
21 May, 2020Policies intended to force Americans into electric vehicles, and taxpayer-financed subsidies that have propped up the EV industry aren’t consistent with those who believe government has limits. But this doesn’t mean that a company such as EV maker Te...
19 May, 2020
Governor Newsom announced his new budget revisions for the next fiscal year. Due to the forced shutdown of California’s businesses and the additional spending on the coronavirus pandemic, Newsom expects a budget shortfall of $54 billion. Our All-St...
18 May, 2020Even as House members consider themselves non-essential workers (they’ve decided to vote from home), it hasn’t stopped some lawmakers from coming up with bad ideas for the next stimulus package, including relief for states and municipalities with pre...
14 May, 2020Public affairs professional and noted wine blogger David White of Terroirist.com joins us to discuss how the wine industry is faring during the global coronavirus crisis. He also shares his advice on organizing a virtual Happy Hour and gives recomme...
11 May, 2020There’s been a growing debate in California and nationally about extending workers’ compensation benefits for workers who are impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Some states are moving to make front line workers battling COVID-19 to be eligible for...
11 May, 2020California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has officially filed suit against Uber and Lyft for violating Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5). The action is a clear signal that the state’s policy leaders are determined to maximize the economic damage from this ill...
06 May, 2020Roughly 30 million people have filed for unemployment since the coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc on the nation’s economy. Economists estimate that the unemployment rate now ranges from 15 to 20 percent – numbers not seen since the Great Depression...
05 May, 2020Listen to a special presentation of PRI’s webinar featuring a panel of business experts and entrepreneurs analyzing how California can recover economically from the coronavirus pandemic. The panel looks at the current economic outlook resulting fro...
04 May, 2020“Healthy people have rights too,” complained my 89-year old mother, who’s miffed because we’ve refused to take her to her favorite grocery store. Mom has joined the tens of thousands of people across America who believe that enough is enough. From C...
29 April, 2020PRI President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Studies Sally C. Pipes is back to discuss some of the health care challenges that have popped up during the coronavirus crisis, including a renewed push for single-payer and calls for pres...
27 April, 2020Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic could be the crisis that his party has been looking for to permanently establish a progressive “nation-state.” “There is opportunity for reimagining a progressive era as it...
27 April, 2020
Watch Pacific Research Institute’s inaugural panel webinar featuring a panel of business experts and entrepreneurs analyzing how California can recover economically from the coronavirus pandemic. The panel looks at the current economic outlook result...
22 April, 2020PRI Senior Fellow in Business and Economics Dr. Wayne Winegarden joins us to evaluate the response by state and federal governments to boost America’s economy amidst the coronavirus pandemic. We discuss the “phase 3” $2 trillion stimulus package ena...
20 April, 2020
Lance Izumi, senior director of PRI’s Center for Education, joins us to discuss a situation caused by the coronavirus pandemic that millions of parents never though they’d find themselves in – homeschooling their kids. He shares advice from experts ...
13 April, 2020The United States and China are engaged in a no-holds barred attempt to salvage their economies during the coronavirus pandemic. We’re all familiar with the actions taken in the recent weeks by the United States. The Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury...
13 April, 2020Voters will likely have a chance in November to decide if Proposition 13 will remain as it has since its passage in 1978, or if it will turn it into a chimera that treats homes and businesses differently, bleeding the latter for tens of billions......
08 April, 2020PRI Senior Fellow in Health Care Studies Dr. Henry Miller joins us with an update on the fight against the coronavirus. He offers much-needed perspective on what public health officials are doing to “flatten the curve,” efforts to find vaccines and ...
06 April, 2020Public banks, it seems, are the next wrongheaded progressive movement in state overrun with them. The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors voted last month “to reach out to nearby jurisdictions proposing a viability study, the first step in the cre...
06 April, 2020This podcast is a recorded lecture from PRI’s second annual policy conference in Sacramento. The speaker is Judge Daniel Kolkey, a partner with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He served as an Associate Justice on the California Court of Appeals and Legal ...
03 April, 2020
By eliminating government-created barriers to opportunity, state and federal lawmakers can make it easier for those who are suddenly unemployed to earn a living from home or start a new home-based business. To learn more about reforms to empower en...
02 April, 2020
In his “Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity” series, PRI’s Dr. Wayne Winegarden has argued that one of the most important ways that elected officials can help to lift people up the economy ladder is by embracing policies that encourage entrepreneur...
01 April, 2020
That’s what Pres. Trump said in a tweet on the record-shattering $2 trillion phase 3 stimulus package. Right by the Bay doesn’t question the need for government to step up to help the economy get through the coronavirus pandemic. But even during thi...
31 March, 2020
Dr. Mark Skousen is one of the most prominent libertarians in the country and founder of FreedomFest – the largest gathering of libertarians in the world. Dr. Skousen also teaches economics at Chapman University. In this podcast, we discuss the eco...
30 March, 2020All the Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas Layin’ in the sun, Talkin’ ’bout the things They woulda coulda shoulda done… –Shel Silverstein As of this writing, the Trump Administration has pledged to spend more than a trillion dollars...
24 March, 2020This podcast is a recorded panel discussion from PRI’s second annual policy conference in Sacramento. The panel focuses on education. As the attack over charter schools has increased, one false narrative is that they don’t serve the needs of specia...
23 March, 2020Until recently, terms like social distancing and even the coronavirus were nonexistent. Now these terms could come to define the beginning of a pending global recession the likes of which have yet to test modern economic markets. As parts of Californ...
23 March, 2020This podcast is a recorded panel discussion on entrepreneurship from PRI’s second annual policy conference in Sacramento. The state’s new law re-classifying many independent contractors to employees has put the livelihoods of many entrepreneurs and ...
16 March, 2020Nearly three dozen bills intended to revise or repeal Assembly Bill 5, which restricts workers’ freedom and could potentially kill the burgeoning gig economy, have been introduced in Sacramento. Here is some of the latest, and most important, news ab...
12 March, 2020Baby I’ll spill the facts Well honey it ain’t your money ‘Cause baby I got plenty of that I love you for your pink Cadillac. – Bruce Springsteen If you’ve ever admired the gal who managed to steal The Boss’s heart with her pink Cadi...
10 March, 2020Janice Rogers Brown, a former U.S. Court of Appeals judge for the D.C. Circuit and former Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court was the keynote speaker at PRI’s second annual policy conference in Sacramento. Judge Brown discusses the thr...
09 March, 2020As a former legislative staffer in the California State Assembly, I often asked myself when reviewing legislation, “do we really need this bill?” I asked myself the same question when I came across the introduction of a bill mandating gender-neutral ...
05 March, 2020The PRI All Stars discuss the big takeaways from Super Tuesday – including Joe Biden’s big comeback, which candidate would be easier for President Trump to defeat, and voter attitudes on single-payer health care and socialism. We also talk about th...
04 March, 2020Our colleague Wayne Winegarden wrote a marvelous piece for his Forbes column on “Bernie’s Math Problem.” To fund free health care, free housing, free college and so on, the Democrat frontrunner plans to make “billionaires pay their fair share of tax...
02 March, 2020Love it or hate it, for a variety of reasons when California enacts public policy the impact is felt across the country. And so, it has been again with the January 1st implementation of California’s Assembly Bill 5 (AB5), the so called “gig employmen...
26 February, 2020California’s growing homeless crisis is impacting nearly everyone, especially those living in big cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento. In Governor Newsom’s recent State of the State address, he reportedly spent 35 of his 42 minute ...
24 February, 2020Lord Jamie Borwick of the United Kingdom’s House of Lords was a recent guest at a PRI luncheon in San Francisco. Britain’s House of Lords has certain similarities with the U.S. Senate, except the members are mostly appointed, or as in Lord Borwick’s ...
17 February, 2020Back in 2017, concerned over the sclerotic growth of the U.S. economy, PRI published a series of studies titled Beyond the New Normal by economist and PRI senior fellow Wayne Winegarden. Up until that point, annual real GDP growth averaged just 1.9 p...
13 February, 2020Noted education reformer Larry Sand of the California Teachers Empowerment Network talks with PRI's Lance Izumi about opportunities to expand school choice in California despite recent legislative setbacks last year targeting charter schools. They d...
10 February, 2020
Dr. Henry Miller, senior fellow with PRI’s Center for Medical Economics and Innovation, joins us to discuss the Wuhan Coronavirus. We explore a wide variety of topics related to this public health crisis, including how people get the illness and how...
04 February, 2020In October 2019, the Pacific Research Institute released findings of a new report, titled Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity #2 Entrepreneurship as a Pathway to the American Dream. The report, authored by Wayne Winegarden, contends that “ov...
30 January, 2020
Adam Andrzejewski is the founder of Open the Books, an organization dedicated to transparency in government. Open the Books has been at the forefront of holding state government accountable for how it spends taxpayer money. In California, Governor N...
27 January, 2020The complexity of the financial markets encourages people to support positions that would be unthinkable in most other situations. Such is the case with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) proposed new regulations of proxy advisory firms. ...
27 January, 2020Joseph Tartakovsky, a PRI adjunct fellow and with the law firm Gibson Dunn, discusses the homeless case Martin v. the City of Boise. It involves five homeless people who sued Boise, Idaho for fining them for violating a city ordinance prohibiting pe...
20 January, 2020I have written before on the benefits and drawbacks of the various universal basic income (UBI) proposals bubbling up the last few years in the American political scene, specifically the economic, political, and moral dimensions of these policies. A...
14 January, 2020
Dr. Wayne Winegarden, director of PRI’s Center for Medical Economics and Innovation, breaks down recently-proposed plans in Washington and Sacramento that emphasize price caps and more government control to address prescription drug prices. He discu...
13 January, 2020The United States is in the midst of the longest economic expansion on record. The U.S. economy has been growing for more than 10 years. The unemployment rate is near its lowest point ever. And yet, poverty continues to be persistent nationwide. Tens...
13 January, 2020
In this podcast, PRI President and CEO Sally Pipes discusses her new book False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All. Sally makes the case against Medicare for All using evidence from government-run systems in Canada an...
06 January, 2020More than 38 million Americans are living in poverty, according to the latest U.S. Census data. That’s just under 12% of the population. Not exactly what President Lyndon Johnson had in mind when he declared war on poverty in 1964, more than a half-c...
03 January, 2020In 1967 Arthur Koestler wrote The Ghost in the Machine, which was essentially a critique of the hypothesis that the human mind could be viewed as a machine, a sort of chemical computer. He went on to consider that if were a computer, then what......
02 January, 2020
Back once again with their popular holiday tradition, the PRI All-Stars get together for our annual entertaining look back at 2019. We hand out our annual awards for the biggest winners and losers of 2019 in the worlds of politics and policy. Stay ...
23 December, 2019This podcast is the fifth and final in the series of joint PRI and Claremont Institute 40th Anniversary Cruise lectures. The cruise took place in October, started in Barcelona, with stops in Mallorca, Marseille, Monte Carlo, Nice, Florence, and endin...
16 December, 2019Two days before Thanksgiving, financial services firm Charles Schwab announced it was relocating its headquarters from San Francisco to Texas. The Wall Street Journal’s explanation: “The brokerage giant heads for a state that doesn’t punish finance.”...
16 December, 2019Wayne Winegarden, PRI’s Senior Fellow in Business & Economics and Director of the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation, joined the Andy Caldwell Show on AM 1440 to discuss his most recent entrepreneurship study . Wayne’s interv...
12 December, 2019PRI Senior Fellow in Business and Economics, Dr. Wayne Winegarden, submitted written comments to the Securities and Exchange Commission on their proposed rule change regarding more disclosure of conflicts of interest by proxy advisory firms, calling ...
12 December, 2019
This podcast is the fourth in the series of joint PRI and Claremont Institute 40th Anniversary Cruise lectures. The theme of the lectures was “The Future of America and the West: Liberty, Sovereignty, and Self-Government. This fourth lecture on Brex...
09 December, 2019California’s attorney general has become one of the most powerful political offices in the state. The powers granted to the Golden State’s top cop are numerous and impactful. The attorney general is often front and center for state and federal lawsui...
05 December, 2019
This podcast is the third in the series of joint PRI and Claremont Institute 40th Anniversary Cruise lectures. The theme of the lectures was “The Future of America and the West: Liberty, Sovereignty, and Self-Government. This third lectur...
02 December, 2019Jessica Locke, a paramedic living in Linn Creek, did some traditional mall-type shopping over Thanksgiving weekend, she said Friday night at a neighborhood social gathering in Republic. Locke, who’s lived in the United States since 2010 after m...
02 December, 2019The flood of lousy legislation that has poured out of Sacramento for the last two decades or so truly astonishes in its volume. As fourth-rate as the lawmaking has been, though, nothing has been worse than Assembly Bill 5, an existential threat to bo...
02 December, 2019Sacramento politicians have heralded the state’s record-low 4.0 percent unemployment figures. While this is good news, anyone living in Southern California will tell you that things aren’t as rosy as they appear to be. Take what’s going on in Imperi...
01 December, 2019
This podcast is the second in the series of joint PRI and Claremont Institute 40th Anniversary Cruise lectures. The theme of the lectures was “The Future of America and the West: Liberty, Sovereignty, and Self-Government. This second lecture, titled...
25 November, 2019Lars brings on regular guest Dr. Henry Miller, a physician, a molecular biologist and Senior Fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, and widely published in both scholarly journals and the popular press and the owner of HenryMillerMD dot ORG to dis...
25 November, 2019Academics and former agency heads have called for the Food and Drug Administration to become an independent agency, out from under the umbrella of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Although the FDA has real problems, giving it more i...
25 November, 2019PRI senior fellow in business and economics Wayne Winegarden discusses the latest study in the Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity series, “Entrepreneurship as a Pathway to the American Dream” on the nationally-syndicated Lars Larson Sh...
21 November, 2019PRI Senior Fellow in Business and Economics Wayne Winegarden discusses California’s public pension crisis – and the new report showing that there are now more than 80,000 members of the $100K Pension Club – on Dr. Drew Midday Live w...
21 November, 2019The United States tweet first, tariff second trade policy against China continues to define American -Chinese relations. As both nations pursue the “Cold War light” escalation through tariffs, the United States continues to drum up new regulations to...
19 November, 2019
This past October, PRI and the Claremont Institute teamed up to celebrate our 40th anniversaries on a cruise in the Mediterranean. The cruise started in Barcelona, with stops in Mallorca, Marseille, Monte Carlo, Nice, Florence, and ending in Rome. ...
18 November, 2019When I was on vacation recently in Europe, our tour guide would tell us stories every night about her time living as a young bride in Greece with her late husband and young daughter. As we departed, she said she would love to be our......
18 November, 2019Recently we ran across several fascinating articles about civics, liberal arts, and climate hysteria that raise basic questions about the content taught at too many of our educational institutions: Has our society lost sight of the fundamental purpos...
14 November, 2019Amid an unprecedented – and excruciating – recent number of intentional power outages to mitigate the risk of fires during California’s dry, windy conditions, Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed a number of policy measures, ranging from demands for $100 r...
12 November, 2019
PRI Center for California fellow Kerry Jackson discusses the electricity shutoff that plunged some 3 million Californians into darkness. He reviews the history of California’s utility problems, the lack of market incentives for delivering power in t...
11 November, 2019“To observe government is to observe the absence of accountability,” James Freeman wrote in the Wall Street Journal.1 That’s certainly true of unwise regulation of many innovative technologies; and modern biotechnology, also known as “genetic engine...
06 November, 2019Fears that the President’s Trump’s trade war with China will lead to a recession may have faded from the headlines, but economists say it cannot be discounted. “We’re not expecting a recession anytime soon, but, that said, there are a number of headw...
05 November, 2019
PRI’s Wayne Winegarden joins us to discuss the latest study in his Building Barriers to Opportunity series. We discuss how overregulation and misguided government policies make it harder for immigrant and low-income entrepreneurs to start a business,...
04 November, 2019
A new study released today by the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute finds that government has erected barriers to opportunity that make it very difficult for immigrant and low-income entrepreneurs to lift themselves out of poverty and climb the ...
30 October, 2019
Sarah Rose Siskind, a New York writer and aspiring comedienne and Larry Siskind, Bay Area attorney, father and daughter, go head to head on the issues of the day: climate change, socialism, the presidential race, technology and the changing culture o...
28 October, 2019
Keli’i Akina is the president of the Grassroot Institute, a non-partisan think tank based in Hawaii. Besides sunshine and palm trees, California and Hawaii have something in common – one-party rule. As Dr, Akina says in the interview, Hawaii is as bl...
22 October, 2019Many of America’s largest public corporations recently made a commitment in principle to their “stakeholders,” which included working with their communities and “protect[ing] the environment by embracing sustainable practices.” Leaders of 181 of the ...
16 October, 2019My last column began a conversation our nation desperately needs to have – forcefully pushing back against the dangerous and misguided myths promoting by proponents of socialism in the U.S. surrounding the supposed socialist success stories in ...
15 October, 2019
Jared Walczak of the Tax Foundation discusses taxes, taxes, and more taxes in the Golden State. He offers his analysis of the split roll tax, the state and local income tax deduction and its impact on high-tax states like California, reforming the s...
14 October, 2019The initial report on Stockton’s “basic income” experiment, in which 125 residents in low-income Zip Codes receive $500 a month, shows that most of the money that can be tracked has been spent on necessities. But that’s only part of the story. Forty ...
10 October, 2019Now that dust has settled after the signing of perhaps the hottest bill this legislative session – Assembly Bill 5 – what’s next for those who work in the gig economy? A panel of free-market advocates and subject matter experts recently got together ...
09 October, 2019
Hillsdale College Professor of Economics and Public Policy Gary Wolfram shares his thoughts on some of the hot topics in the debate over free-market economic policy today, including the Green New Deal, electric car subsidies, the growing push for soc...
07 October, 2019California continues to lead the nation in poverty, according to a recent Census Bureau report. The report (pdf), released in September 2019, measured states’ functional poverty rates, which takes into account the cost of living and other factors. Ca...
03 October, 2019Biosimilars have the opportunity to bring significant savings to state Medicaid programs and consumers with commercial insurance according to a new study released today by Pacific Research Institute. “Every state would experience significant savings ...
02 October, 2019DOWNLOAD THE BRIEF California lawmakers won’t give up on their crusade to force everyone in the state into electric cars (before eventually removing us out of our cars altogether). That electric vehicles neither sell nor perform up to reasonable expe...
01 October, 2019The history of failure, destruction, and death lying in the wake of nearly every socialist experiment is well-known in our country today. Modern-day proponents of socialism cannot point to a single instance of their failed dogma being successful in a...
30 September, 2019
PRI Fellow in Business and Economics Damon Dunn joins us to discuss his new brief on the rise of socialism. He shares stories from his childhood growing up in poverty in Texas as his inspiration for striving to work his way up the economic ladder rat...
30 September, 2019One of the most contentious battles of this year’s legislative session was AB 5, with labor and gig economy companies duking out over the definition of who is an employee and who is an independent contractor. In this battle over the “new economy” and...
26 September, 2019Listen to Damon Dunn, Fellow of Business and Economics at the Pacific Research Institute, joins the David Webb Show on SiriusXM Patriot 125 to discuss why socialism doesn’t work. Click here to listen ShareTweetPinShare...
24 September, 2019
PRI Senior Fellow in Business and Economics Wayne Winegarden joins us to discuss his new study on the State and Local Tax cap in the 2017 federal tax reform legislation. Wayne discusses how the legislation amounted to taxpayers in low-tax states sub...
23 September, 2019I have long adhered to the proposition that we should extend grace to our ideological opponents. In fact, when discussing fellow Americans, I reject wholesale the increasingly common language of combat in politics (e.g. political “enemies,” culture w...
17 September, 2019
Longtime Capitol journalist Steven Greenhut of the R Street Institute joins us for our annual end-of-session wrap-up. We discuss all the hot issues from this legislative session, including the debate over who is an independent contractor and who is ...
16 September, 2019On Thursday night, the Democratic presidential candidates will meet for the next presidential debate in Houston. One surprising candidate who qualified for the Houston debate and has attracted a small but growing following of supporters (known as the...
12 September, 2019
Association of American Educators executive director Colin Sharkey joins us to discuss a new survey from their Teacher Freedom project on the attitudes of teachers one year after the historic Janus decision and shares insight on what teachers think a...
09 September, 2019Damon Dunn sits down with Lars Larson Show to discuss his new PRI brief on why socialist policies cater to the poor and how the left takes advantage of this. ShareTweetPinShare...
06 September, 2019Sen. Elizabeth Warren, with one eye on California presidential primary votes and the other on the state’s rich political donors, recently wrote an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee in which she demanded someone do something about that “shameful” gig econom...
05 September, 2019Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-New York, recently stood in front of a home in a beautiful neighborhood in White Plains, NY, to decry — of all things — the area’s high local tax burden. “We all know that one of the biggest burde...
05 September, 2019
Recalling his experiences overcoming extreme poverty, former collegiate and pro football player and successful businessman Damon Dunn makes the case for why socialism doesn’t work in a new brief published by the nonpartisan, California-based think ta...
04 September, 2019Ask Americans what Labor Day means, and they’ll likely say it marks the end of summer. One last chance to wear white and go for a swim before the pool is drained. But as its name suggests, Labor Day was established to celebrate labor –- organiz...
03 September, 2019It seems you can’t scroll through your social media feed or morning newsletter without reading commentary about inverted yield curve and recession. A 2020 economic recession is the talk of political pundits, financial talking heads, and presidential ...
03 September, 2019
Lance Izumi, PRI’s Senior Director of Education Studies, joins us to discuss perhaps the most controversial education legislation in recent memory – a so-called compromise that would impose significant new requirements and restrictions on charter sch...
02 September, 2019Despite evidence of a recent slowdown, the American economy is strong according to nearly all traditional economic indicators and has been for multiple years. Nearly a decade of economic expansion has led to record highs being recorded in the stock m...
27 August, 2019
National Review’s Andy McCarthy joins us to discuss his new book The Ball of Collusion. No one is better than McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who earned the Justice Department’s highest honor, to provide perspective on the Trump investigation ...
26 August, 2019The Business Roundtable recently released a statement announcing it had redefined “the purpose of a corporation.” Signed by almost 200 of the most powerful CEOs in America, the statement “affirms the essential role corporations can ...
26 August, 2019Last fall, Democratic congressional candidates successfully painted the 2017 federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as a tax increase on hard working Californians to pick-up even more congressional seats. Congress, they charged, raised the tax burden of many ...
21 August, 2019
R Street Institute’s Jarrett Dieterle joins us to discuss his research on the hottest issue of the final weeks of the legislative session, Assembly Bill 5, and the impact its passage would have on employers, our innovation economy, and Californians w...
20 August, 2019The “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” (TCJA) was signed into law on Dec. 22, 2017. The Act reformed the U.S. corporate income tax code cutting the rate to a globally competitive 21%. Reforms on the personal income tax side, which are scheduled to expire in......
19 August, 2019
A new study released today by the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute, a California-based free market think tank, found that capping the State and Local Tax deduction brought broad-based tax relief to millions of Americans, while putting an end to...
15 August, 2019Sally C. Pipes offered her critique about a reported gender pay gap in the White House. “Sally Pipes of the conservative Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco argued, “You can’t just generally add up all the women and all the men. What ar...
12 August, 2019CalPERS and CalSTRS – the two largest public employee pension funds in both California and the nation –just announced their annual investment returns for the 2018-19 fiscal year. Once again, it’s not good news for California taxpayers. Both funds re...
12 August, 2019
Claremont Institute President Ryan Williams joins us to discuss their current work on what they see as the growing threat from identity politics and multiculturalism, their recent censorship battle with Google, and how we can encourage a more balance...
12 August, 2019
Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Tim Snowball joins us to discuss the policy roadblocks unions and their allies have put up in California and other states following the Janus decision, and their ongoing legal efforts to overcome these hurdles and pr...
05 August, 2019Every other year, I always take a big trip somewhere around the world. This fall, I’m excited to be traveling to England, Ireland, and Scotland for the first time. As I prepare for my trip, the UK is in the midst of great political turmoil......
01 August, 2019
Reason.com Associate Editor Robby Soave joins us to discuss his new book about the disruptive political activism and growing political unrest among millennials, Panic Attack. He discusses why “Zillennials” as he calls them are so hypersensitive and ...
29 July, 2019Perhaps the most controversial bill of this year’s legislative session is legislation responding to last year’s state Supreme Court ruling that has the potential to disrupt how millions of people work in California. In the Dynamex ruling, the Court e...
25 July, 2019You may have heard about Libra, Facebook’s newest venture aimed at the cryptocurrency and blockchain industries. Facebook released a whitepaper on Libra in June, detailing how the company plans to use Libra as a decentralized blockchain, low-volatili...
24 July, 2019
Daniel Hannan, Member of the European Parliament for the South East of England, joins us to share his perspective on Brexit and the ongoing political turmoil in the UK. He discusses the prospects for a stronger UK alliance with the United States on...
22 July, 2019California has lived on the trope of being the hub of technology startups and innovation for decades. California’s economic success has long been touted and celebrated, none more so than the technology gold rush in the Bay Area. But despite Californi...
16 July, 2019
California State Board of Education member and Natomas Charter School co-founder and retiring Executive Director Ting Sun joins us to discuss what makes her school so special. Natomas Charter School is one of the schools profiled in Lance Izumi’s bo...
15 July, 2019Home ownership provides basic financial literacy, drives wealth creation, and increases free cash flow for individuals and families. However, it can be difficult to differentiate between having surplus cash and wealth. Having surplus cash is havin...
11 July, 2019Citing an oft-used U.S. Census Bureau statistic that women earn 80 percent of what their male counterparts earn, presidential hopeful and California Senator Kamala Harris said that if elected, she would end gender pay discrimination by requiring com...
08 July, 2019
PRI’s Kerry Jackson and Wayne Winegarden join us to discuss their new issue brief on San Francisco’s growing homeless crisis. They explore just how bad the problem really is in the City by the Bay and how the city got in this mess, analyze current e...
08 July, 2019Many California legislators seem to believe in open borders — not just the border to Mexico but also the borders to Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon. Businesses are slipping out of state through those boundaries at an alarming rate because of the difficul...
02 July, 2019
The PRI All Stars share their thoughts on the 1st Democratic presidential debate and analyze of the policy platforms put forward by the 20 candidates. Who won? Who lost? Did anyone have a major gaffe? Did anyone really help themselves on their qu...
01 July, 2019The California Senate Banking Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing Wednesday (June 26) on a bill that caps consumer loan rates and threatens to sever a vital credit lifeline for many. Oddly, three commercial lenders who offer the kind of loans su...
25 June, 2019
It's the 100th episode of Next Round with PRI and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy is our special guest. We discuss the first 6 months of the Democratic majority in the House, and a host of issues of concern to Californians including big tech ...
24 June, 2019After being soundly defeated in the Senate 0-57 (43 Democrats voted “present”), the Green New Deal continues to languish in the House. Roll Call reported the following excuse from Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “I can’t say we’re going to take that and pass ...
19 June, 2019
In this special episode - recorded at a recent PRI luncheon in San Francisco - PRI Senior Fellow and UC Berkeley Professor Steve Hayward and UC Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo share their thoughts diversity, equality, and the attacks on free speech o...
17 June, 2019
Brian Isom of the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University joins us to discuss his research on California wildfires. He discusses why the Paradise and Napa Valley fires were so destructive, why devastating wildfires are becoming mu...
10 June, 2019The Trump administration’s trade wars are whipping Fed policy back and forth By Sarah Foster President Donald Trump’s trade wars just might prompt the Federal Reserve rate cut he’s been clamoring for — but for the wrong reasons. Weeks after the White...
07 June, 2019US recovery closes in on 10 year milestone as fears abound that the party is ending By Calder McHugh As the U.S. economy inches closer to a record-setting decade of sustained growth, experts are increasingly worried that a cliff — caused by a multi-f...
05 June, 2019In the classic work Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, the character Humpty Dumpty says that “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Responding, Alice (of Wonderland fame) says, “The question is.....
05 June, 2019When the state Supreme Court issued a ruling last year threatening workers’ ability to operate as independent contractors, it sent a chill through the gig economy. The temperature dropped a few more degrees recently when the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of...
04 June, 2019GOP senators speak out against Trump’s tariffs on Mexican imports By Debra J. Saunders The Trump administration worked Tuesday to contain blowback that followed President Donald Trump’s announcement last week of new tariffs on Mexican goods — both fr...
04 June, 2019
Legendary pollster Scott Rasmussen of ScottRasmussen.com joins us to share his insights on all things polling – from how technological changes affect the polling industry today, to the state of the Presidential race and where Americans really stand o...
03 June, 2019One of the hottest investment trends promises to do well while by doing good. This investment trend is called environmental, social, and governance investing, or ESG funds. Not all ESG funds have similar investment strategies. Some ESG funds actively...
02 June, 2019
Kerry Jackson, Fellow at PRI’s Center for California Reform, discusses PRI’s new book, Living in Fear in California. California once had the nation’s strongest public safety laws, but voters and lawmakers have recently embraced a shift in crime poli...
27 May, 2019Putting a question mark on ESG fund performance by Leo Almazora An increasing number of stakeholders are buying into sustainable investments, figuratively and literally. Aside from fund providers’ growing willingness to offer values-based investment ...
23 May, 2019There have decades of bipartisan rhetoric about the virtues of home ownership, with politicians competing with one another to see who can propose the worst ideas for responsible homeownership. Some policies, like preferential tax treatment and credit...
23 May, 2019Listen to PRI senior fellow in business and economics Wayne Winegarden discuss federal spending and the “15 Percent Solution” level of federal government to optimize economic growth on the “POTUS Morning Briefing” with Tim Far...
22 May, 2019ESG funds that champion environmental and social causes have historically underperformed funds investing in the broader market over the long-term, so finds a new study released today by California-based, free-market think tank, the Pacific Research I...
22 May, 2019
In this podcast, Bartlett Cleland, PRI’s Senior Fellow in Tech and Innovation, discusses the state of tech policy including trade negotiations with China on intellectual property, privacy laws, the debate over the possible break-up of social media co...
20 May, 2019They were warned. They wouldn’t listen. But they should have. A university study confirms what so many of us already knew — and what several other studies have corroborated: Minimum wage hikes kill jobs. Scholars at the University of California...
16 May, 2019Listen to Dr. Wayne Winegarden, PRI Senior Fellow in Business and Economics, discuss his “The 15 Percent Solution” study – which outlines the optimal government economic and spending policies to maximize economic growth – on T...
15 May, 2019
New York Post editorial page editor Mark Cunningham joins us to discuss what’s going on in the Big Apple, including the push for single-payer, rent control, and criminal justice reform that are also hot issues in California. He also gives us the loc...
13 May, 2019A central theme of my previous columns has been the importance and primacy of the individual. Economic policymakers cling to their blackboard models but forget that even for unambiguously “net-positive” interventions, there are millions of people bei...
09 May, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=L-va5HLzTcs Watch PRI Senior Fellow in Business and Economics Wayne Winegarden speak at a forum in Washington, DC hosted by the Institute for Pension Fund Integrity on public pensions, proxy adviso...
08 May, 2019
Tommy Few talks about his legal efforts to fully secure the freedoms won by all public employees following the Janus decision. He shares his first-hand experience with how his local teachers unions is trying to preserve membership, and his legal bat...
06 May, 2019Silicon Valley and Wall Street aren’t the only ones celebrating IPOs this year – Sacramento is doing its share of the partying. That’s because the state is expected to receive a deluge of tax dollars over the next several years thanks to capital gai...
30 April, 2019
PRI President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy Sally Pipes joins us to discuss how Medicare for All is becoming a big issue in the 2020 presidential campaign, the growing push for Medicare for All in Congress and states like Cal...
29 April, 2019The skills and education of every American will form the basis of our nation’s long term success, as well as the solution to many of the most divisive issues in American politics. Issues such as wage stagnation, income inequality, unaffordable housin...
29 April, 2019Milton Friedman used to say, “keep your eye on one thing and one thing only: how much government is spending because that’s the true tax”. Judged against this criterion, despite the recent tax reforms, the U.S. economy is still taxed too much. At the...
26 April, 2019PRI senior fellow Steve Hayward joins us for a special Earth Day edition of Next Round. We talk all things environment, from how the environmental movement morphed from a call for conservation to a push for socialism, how the Green New Deal would hu...
22 April, 2019Gene therapies are transformative treatments that fundamentally differ from traditional medical and pharmaceutical options because they modify a patient’s DNA in order to address the genetic causes of diseases. These therapies have the potential to d...
19 April, 2019Many Sacramento lawmakers have named reducing poverty and economic inequality among their top priorities this session. They have unveiled a variety of proposals to address these issues, most center around new government programs, increased state sp...
18 April, 2019California has been a red-hot destination, and comfortable home, for entrepreneurs at least as far back as the mid-19th Century, when 300,000 fortune hunters swarmed West during the Gold Rush. In 2019, it is still attracting business pioneers. But at...
17 April, 2019Even during times of strong job and economic growth, as we’re experiencing today, economists are looking for warning signs about future economic distress – after all, it is called the “dismal science”. The fact that entrepreneurship is declining in t...
16 April, 2019
PRI senior fellow in business and economics Wayne Winegarden joins us to discuss his new series exploring how costly government regulations serve as a barrier to entrepreneurship, small business growth, innovation, and job opportunities to lift peopl...
15 April, 2019A dominant narrative in recent American politics, on full display as the Democratic presidential candidates race left to do battle in their upcoming primaries, is that America is a land of inextricably fixed “haves” and “have nots.” The challenge of ...
11 April, 2019There are many well-intentioned programs serving the homeless in California, but private charities and non-profits are just as effective – if not more so – in getting people back on their feet. PRI’s Kerry Jackson and Damon Dunn, Michele Steeb of Sa...
08 April, 2019Will Rogers said, “The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.” But Rogers never came up against the current California legislature, which these days isn’t just holding a legislative se...
08 April, 2019
Costly regulations serve as a barrier to entrepreneurship, small business growth, innovation, and job opportunities to lift people into the middle class, concludes the first paper in a new series from the California-based, free-market think tank, the...
03 April, 2019
Public opinion polls show that most Californians see climate change as a threat to the state’s economy and quality of life, yet the state’s approach is hurting poor, rural, inland, and minority communities. PRI’s Wayne Winegarden, Nick Loris of the ...
01 April, 2019Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) has just doubled down on one of the Trump Administration’s unsound ideas. His proposal is disappointing for many reasons, particularly because Alex Azar, Secretary of Health and Human Services, has proposed an alternative re...
01 April, 2019The long-standing failures of the American welfare state have left politicians and policy wonks searching desperately for answers, including a willingness to consider radical changes to how we as a nation care for the poor. With little to show from b...
28 March, 2019You would think that California’s current $21.4 billion budget surplus would be plenty of money to fund the spending wish list of those thwarted over the past 8 years by former Gov. Jerry Brown’s adherence to the principle of subsidiarity. Think agai...
28 March, 2019California is proving once again that it’s the worst place to do business in America. This time, the state is attempting to collect up to eight years of back taxes from Amazon sellers whose products were temporarily stored in Amazon warehouses throug...
26 March, 2019
Every day, charter schools play an important role in meeting the diverse needs of California’s students. PRI’s Lance Izumi, Fortune School CEO Margaret Fortune, and EdVoice’s Bill Lucia share real-life charter school success stories and explore idea...
25 March, 2019
Watch PRI Fellow in Business and Economics Damon Dunn discuss the push for universal basic income with host Graham Ledger on the “Daily Ledger” on One America News Network. ShareTweetPinShare...
21 March, 2019Health care costs will rise unless Congress blocks harmful tax By Ross Marchand The American people – and just about all our elected officials – frequently and justifiably complain about the high cost of health care. But unless Congress acts, a tax i...
20 March, 2019
In part 1 of a special 4-part series on how free-market ideas can build new, diverse coalitions in California, PRI’s Sally Pipes, Wayne Winegarden, and Henry Miller discuss how proposals like single-payer health care and new mandates on prescription ...
18 March, 2019Spring is in the air, which of course means it’s time to start thinking about the federal budget. Our latest Beyond the New Normal analysis examined what it would take to transform our current unaffordable federal budget. And while it would take poli...
13 March, 2019
Senate Housing Committee Vice Chair Mike Morrell joins us to discuss all things housing, including the prospects for free-market housing reform legislation this session and his thoughts on Gov. Newsom targeting cities over their failure to meet state...
11 March, 2019You don’t make health care more affordable by increasing its cost. Yet that is precisely what the currently suspended medical device tax threatens unless Congress permanently repeals it. Although permanent repeal failed in the last Congress, Senators...
11 March, 2019I recently explained in these pages how government welfare programs keep people at a sustainable level of poverty instead of helping people escape poverty. Little of the actual results of welfare policies resemble the promises made by their proponent...
06 March, 2019
Terry Anderson, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, discusses the history, culture, and the economic challenges of Native Americans. Native American life has been romanticized by Hollywood films and popular myths. Terry breaks down those myths...
04 March, 2019Washington, DC is currently in the grips of techno dystopian group think. Lobbyists and activists with something to gain, and politicians looking to reap rewards, have dreamt up an absurd imagined society where there is great injustice caused by tech...
04 March, 2019Congress could soon vote on legislation that would gut America’s intellectual property laws. The bill isn’t just bad news for big pharmaceutical companies that hold lucrative patents. It’s terrible news for patients — medical ...
01 March, 2019Welfare programs treat the symptoms of poverty, not the cause. As a result, they will never be the solution to ending poverty, nor are they designed to be a lasting solution. We have created a massive, cumbersome bureaucracy to administer an ineffect...
27 February, 2019Today’s hearing in front of the Senate Finance Committee will, unfortunately, be another wasted opportunity. Surely, Senators will make grandiose speeches and be shocked at the cost of drugs. They will also continue to support the very policies that ...
26 February, 2019
Politico California Pro editor and Sacramento Bee veteran Kevin Yamamura joins us to discuss what to expect from the new kid on the block covering politics and government in Sacramento. We discuss the changing media landscape and trends in political...
25 February, 2019Listen to Dr. Wayne Winegarden, PRI Senior Fellow in Business and Economics as he joins Lars Larson to discuss his latest report detailing how we reach the “15 Percent Solution”, or the optimal level of federal spending to maximize econom...
25 February, 2019They say that age and cunning always beats youth and exuberance. But when it comes to the latest dust-up between the Left’s old guard and the new Far Left, how it all plays out in the end isn’t so clear. The Left’s old guard has......
21 February, 2019
On the heels of the news that the national debt has surpassed $22 trillion, the Pacific Research Institute today recommended reforms to bring spending under control, reduce the national debt and maximize economic growth in the latest report in its Be...
19 February, 2019
Samuel Coleman, California Outreach Director of the Freedom Foundation, discusses his organization’s efforts to inform union members of their First Amendment rights after the landmark Supreme Court Janus decision in 2018. Janus ruled t...
18 February, 2019It used to be that political parties would argue over which policy was more effective at helping the largest number of people achieve the American dream. Now, a growing chorus on the left have begun to argue that the American dream itself is a lie,.....
16 February, 2019State and local public pension funds are trillions of dollars in debt. Without fully accounting for the risks, state public pension funds have $1.4 trillion in unfunded liabilities (e.g. debt) according to the Pew Center’s latest estimates. Even more...
14 February, 2019In response to the problem of rising list prices for drugs, elected officials continue to propose counterproductive reforms. Whether it is importing drugs from Canada or indexing U.S. drug prices to the prices charged in other countries, these polici...
12 February, 2019
Sally Pipes, president and CEO of PRI and PRI’s health care expert, discusses the future of single-payer health care, which is shaping up to be a hot political issue in the 2020 presidential elections. She also talks about the future of single-payer...
11 February, 2019Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar just released a sweeping proposal that would drastically change how Medicare pays for advanced cancer therapies and other potent medicines. The plan relies on foreign price controls to reduce drug spendin...
11 February, 2019It doesn’t happen often enough, but sometimes freedom wins in California. In the most recent of these rare events, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – yes, the Ninth – affirmed late last month a lower-court ruling that said the San Francisco or...
07 February, 2019
PRI’s Lance Izumi and Tim Anaya – both former speechwriters – weigh in on this week’s State of the Union address by President Trump and the Democratic response by Stacey Abrams. They discuss the impact of the one-week delay, whether the President an...
06 February, 2019In January, PRI had the pleasure of hosting Manhattan Institute fellow Heather Mac Donald at a luncheon in Southern California to discuss her new book The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine our Cult...
05 February, 2019Remember 1999? Yes, it was a memorable year thanks to the Prince song. But, the last year of the 20th century is also noted for the launch of MySpace, the announcement of Blue Tooth, the rage that was Napster, and the panic over Y2K and the......
31 January, 2019Generic EpiPen to Become Available Soon By Ashley Bateman Drug maker Sandoz announced it will debut a generic EpiPen model that provides a more affordable option for the rising number of allergy patients in the United States. The epinephrine auto-inj...
29 January, 2019It’s not often that another state can top California when it comes to protecting public employee unions. But Oregon’s House Bill 2643 takes the prize so far for the most audacious attempt to thwart the U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus decision. Janus v. A...
29 January, 2019
Steve Moore is the co-author along with Arthur Laffer of the new book Trumponomics. He discusses Trumponomics, its key principles, how it differs from Reaganomics, and even some aspects of Trumponomics that he doesn’t agree with (no spoiler alert ne...
28 January, 2019The old joke about the drunk and the policeman is apropos for far too many pharmaceutical studies. Typically, the joke goes something like the following: A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk...
28 January, 2019In this podcast, New York Times best-selling author Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute discusses her new book Diversity Delusion. It’s a provocative account of the attack on the humanities and sciences, the rise of intolerance, and the er...
21 January, 2019Making it more expensive to drink in San Francisco is not one of Proposition C’s objectives. But it was nearly one of its initial effects. Young’s Market Co., a wine and spirits distributor based in Tustin that does business across the western U.S., ...
17 January, 2019We’re painting the roses red, Painting the roses red, And many a tear we shed, Because we know, They’ll cease to grow, In fact, they’ll soon be dead. And yet we go ahead, Painting the roses red Just like the characters in Alice in W...
15 January, 2019
Senior Director of PRI’s Center for Education Lance Izumi joins us to talk about his new book on charter schools, Choosing Diversity, which profiles several charter schools across the country that are a different as one could imagine, but all meet th...
14 January, 2019
We support free markets not because some 18th- or 19th-century European philosopher said they’re great. Rather, we support a free market system because experience has shown it delivers more opportunity and prosperity to Americans than any other econo...
14 January, 2019Irate over plummeting stock prices in recent weeks, the media reported that President Trump wanted to fire his appointed Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. But can he really fire him? It turns out that the law is murky in this area. Trump can fire Powell...
08 January, 2019
Join the PRI All Stars as we review Gov. Gavin Newsom’s inaugural address. We explore the memorable moments from his speech, whether Californians will remember anything he said by the end of the week, what we can glean from his speech on health care...
07 January, 2019Too often, drug pricing analyses do not shed light on how much drug expenditures are actually increasing because these studies examine the wrong price. The latest iteration is an analysis by Rx Savings Solutions. According to the Wall Street Journal,...
03 January, 2019
The PRI All-Stars are back with our special year-end awards. Tune in to see our picks for the biggest winners and losers of 2018, the best and worst ideas, our New Year’s Resolutions, and our policy predictions for 2019....
24 December, 2018Americans of all stripes should be able to unite in support of trade. It’s fundamental to a diverse and healthy economy. Robust U.S. trade relationships around the world are also critical to the national economy. That’s especially true in California....
22 December, 2018One idea that has been gaining traction recently is a system of universal income, also known as basic income. The city of Stockton, California will be the nation’s first city to launch a universal income pilot program in 2019. While the specific pol...
18 December, 2018
PRI’s Wayne Winegarden joins us to discuss his new study exploring how big government energy policies in California and New York are increasing energy burdens on rural, poor, and minority communities, and how free-market ideas can more effectively re...
17 December, 2018Last week, the California Supreme Court heard the case Cal Fire Local 2881 v. CalPERS which challenged the 2013 law (the California Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act or PEPRA) that eliminated state employees’ ability to add up to five years of emp...
13 December, 2018Government solutions often come with a price. For the America Invents Act (AIA), this price was an unintended impediment to medical innovation. Proposed legislation known as the Hatch-Waxman Integrity Act can reduce these costs, if Congress takes adv...
12 December, 2018
Tim Rice, deputy director for health policy at the Manhattan Institute, joins us to talk about their new study on New York’s single-payer health care proposal and whether the same type of plan could become reality in California. WE also discuss othe...
12 December, 2018My last blog post discussed the risks that ESG investing creates for CalPERS and CalSTRS. If not addressed, then both taxpayers and public employees will bear unnecessary costs and risks. Unfortunately, SEC rules are making this problem even worse. T...
11 December, 2018I just returned from my annual Thanksgiving family trip to Hawaii where it was Day 40-something of a hotel workers’ strike at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. I had a hunch something was amiss when our Uber driver pulled into the driveway and a lone young....
06 December, 2018
Legislating Energy Poverty Shows Market-Based Policies More Effective in Cutting Emissions...
05 December, 2018California’s public pensions are in trouble. While the Pew Charitable Trusts reports that California’s current unfunded liabilities are nearly $170 billion, as I recently reported in my chartbook on California’s pension crisis, the crisis is much wor...
05 December, 2018As I write this article in late November of 2018, the stock market has fallen significantly from its recent highs. These losses, which have erased nearly all the gains made thus far in 2018 push us toward official correction territory for both the D...
04 December, 2018Former PRI intern, and now stand-up comic and lead writer for “StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson” Sarah Rose Siskind joins us to discuss the state of comedy in America today. We discuss how she got into comedy, whether we can laugh in an era of ever...
03 December, 2018While success still has many fathers, failure is no longer an orphan. President Obama’s recent speeches and rallies demonstrate that, now, failure is simply redefined as success. The costs from this revisionism is high. Creating false narratives enco...
30 November, 2018By Bethany Blankley The latest report calling for occupational licensing reforms joins others in saying that strict licensing requirements cost millions of jobs, billions of dollars in economic costs, and reduced overall GDP . . . “All too often, the...
28 November, 2018Dr. Cara Stillings Candal of the Pioneer Institute talks with PRI’s Lance Izumi about the fight for charter schools in Massachusetts, and what advocates in California can learn from their experiences to expand school choice for students and parents i...
26 November, 2018If your holiday meals include filet mignon, rack of lamb, roast pork, or even charcuterie, you might want to reach for a second helping while you can still afford it. That’s because Oxford University researchers are proposing a tax on meat. Their go...
26 November, 2018
It’s flu season and Americans are faced with our annual dilemma – should we get a flu shot or not? PRI’s Dr. Henry Miller and Dr. Wayne Winegarden join us to discuss the science behind flu shots, why last year’s flu shot failed and why this one shou...
19 November, 2018There is no shortage of bad ideas when it comes to the pharmaceutical market. One such proposal would allow drugs to be imported directly from other countries, such as Canada. Then there is the Trump Administration’s proposal that would effectively a...
19 November, 2018In the early 21st century, American fiscal policy must balance and prioritize two fundamental goals. First, we need to create the best possible environment for investment and innovation, setting the stage for another century of unparalleled prosperit...
19 November, 2018Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar just released a sweeping proposal that would drastically change how Medicare pays for advanced cancer therapies and other potent medicines. The plan relies on foreign price controls to reduce drug spendin...
16 November, 2018The SEC requires all institutional investors to vote on all matters put forth in proxy statements, or the measures voted on during shareholder meetings. For most institutional investors, keeping up with all of these issues is not feasible, so they tu...
15 November, 2018Argues That SEC Should Ensure Shareholder Interests Are Top Priority in Investment Decisions SAN FRANCISCO – Policy reforms should be enacted to ensure that proxy advisory firms promote fund managers’ fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders and in...
14 November, 2018It’s official. Amazon has announced plans to establish its second headquarters in New York in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens and Crystal City, Virginia, which is just outside Washington, D.C. I first wrote about Amazon’s search in ...
13 November, 2018PRI's chairman and White House Writers Group founder and managing director Clark Judge joins us to discuss the election results, what it means for the future of free-market reforms, and what we can expect from a divided Congress and a polarized Washi...
12 November, 2018In some excellent reporting by Chris Reed of CalWatchdog, Reed found that more than 100 local governments in California asked voters for tax hikes on Election Day, double the 56 the Bond Buyer said it recorded in November 2016. These 100+ measures we...
08 November, 2018
The PRI All Stars are back with a post-election wrap up on the results of the key races and propositions in California and nationally. We discuss what the election results will mean for single-payer health care, tax reform and free-market policies, ...
08 November, 2018There are not enough politicians who know what it takes to run a business. Many argue that government would improve if it was run more like a business. Having been an entrepreneur and business owner, I know firsthand the blessings and challenges that...
07 November, 2018Watch PRI’s Wayne Winegarden debate “the future of American retirement” with former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and others at a recent Pepperdine University School of Public Policy forum in Washington, DC. ShareTweet...
01 November, 2018Listen to PRI’s senior fellow in business and economics Dr. Wayne Winegarden discuss President Trump’s drug pricing transparency proposal on the nationally-syndicated “Lars Larson Show.” The interview begins at the 54:25 mark...
31 October, 2018The PRI All Stars are back, breaking down the 2018 election in California. Listen to this super-sized podcast for their analysis of the races for Governor, U.S. Senator, the U.S. House and the California Legislature, and all of the major ballot meas...
29 October, 2018It’s been a rocky road for the stock market so far in October. Historically, the financial markets aren’t jittery around mid-term elections. But rising interest rates, a trade war, the mysterious death of an Arab journalist, and Central Americans o...
29 October, 2018At 2 pm Eastern time today, President Trump spoke at the Department of Health and Human Services where he recommended a litany of policies that would ultimately impose price controls on the pharmaceutical market. Take his proposal to force the prices...
25 October, 2018Rarely is there bipartisan agreement that a tax cut won’t cost the federal government money. But, in the case of the medical device tax (a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices and products that was passed as part of the Affordable Care Act) this is......
24 October, 2018Jim Manley of the Pacific Legal Foundation joins us to discuss his efforts in state legislatures and courtrooms across the country to protect student free speech....
22 October, 2018As part of the Affordable Care Act, a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices and products was passed. The tax was levied on devices such as pacemakers, advanced imaging technologies (Cat Scan, MRI and ultrasound equipment), artificial joints, surgical gl...
18 October, 2018Our politics are full of paeans to small business. Regardless of one’s policy preferences or party affiliation, everyone appears rhetorically to be on the side of small business. As an entrepreneur and small business owner, I am reminded daily of the...
18 October, 2018Watch PRI’s Wayne Winegarden discuss the Trump Administration proposal on drug pricing advertising on “America Talks Live” with Dr. Gina Loudon and John Cardillo on Newsmax TV. ShareTweetPinShare...
17 October, 2018Pete Constant, former San Jose City Councilman and president of the Retirement Security Initiative, joins us to share his experiences as a local elected official grappling with runaway public employee pensions, and what can be done to tame California...
15 October, 2018Rebecca Friedrichs of For Kids and Country joins us to talk about the victory for worker freedom in the Janus decision, and her experiences as lead plaintiff in a prior case that ended in a 4-4 tie in the Supreme Court. We discuss what’s next for di...
08 October, 2018This essay is meant to be a simple and straight forward look at how adding specific skill sets allowed me to have socioeconomic mobility and earn wages that allow me to send my daughter to private school, own a home, and enjoy a better present......
04 October, 2018When I was in the investment industry in the 1990s, my friend Jeannette and I observed that after meetings and conferences, the top executives – mostly men but a few women — often played a round of golf. We knew a lot of bonding took......
03 October, 2018Regnery Publishing Vice President and Executive Editor Harry Crocker joins us to talk about his new book Armstrong, which imagines what would have if George Armstrong Custer survived the Battle of Little Big Horn. We discuss his inspiration for writ...
01 October, 2018This summer, I had the opportunity to interview Andy Puzder on PRI’s “Next Round” podcast. In chatting with him about his new book Capitalist Comeback, the former Trump nominee for Secretary of Labor and I were both astounded at the speed of the eco...
27 September, 2018Last week, I celebrated my 42nd birthday in style – taking a few days off following our Baroness Thatcher Gala to enjoy some of the sites of Southern California. I spent a lovely afternoon at Downtown Disney, which is an entertainment district right ...
26 September, 2018
Dr. Henry Miller, PRI’s new fellow in health care studies, joins us to discuss his recent Wall Street Journal op-ed challenging the “authentic” industry, which made waves nationally. We also discuss how over-regulation prevents beneficial products f...
24 September, 2018Americans are facing two very different pension outlooks. Most private sector workers contribute to 401(k) plans (which are often matched by employers), and rely on investments, savings, and Social Security for their retirement. But, their savings is...
20 September, 2018Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg is trying to have his cake and eat it too. He announced in June that he opposed a local ballot measure being pushed by labor unions and activist groups to impose new rent control restrictions in Sacramento. That mea...
19 September, 2018Calls for stricter environmental mandates contradict the broad public consensus on global warming. According to a 2018 report by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, seven out of ten Americans believe global warming is happening and six ...
18 September, 2018It didn’t take long for a California Supreme Court decision to start claiming victims. Bottle & Barlow, a “get loose stay sharp” joint on trendy R Street in Sacramento, where a gentleman can sip whisky and also be stylishly shorn, has lost its en...
18 September, 2018The Sacramento Bee’s new political reporter and “Capitol Alert” editor Bryan Anderson shares his observations on his first summer covering the California Legislature. We discuss the DMV wait time scandal, privacy legislation, CEQA reform for stadium...
17 September, 2018I used to tell my friends and colleagues to be sure to check out the Lord & Taylor website before they buy an outfit. Lord & Taylor doesn’t have operations in California, so the same Calvin Klein dress would be tax-free at Lord & Taylor,....
17 September, 2018Trump, Obama spar over economy. Who’s right? By Niv Elis By many metrics, the economy is booming, and both President Trump and former President Obama want you to know that they are the one to thank. Under Trump, the stock market hit new highs, ...
16 September, 2018In this and succeeding columns, I intend to develop a new paradigm for thinking about economic progress for America in the 21st century. I believe that supporters of free markets are faced with both extraordinary opportunities and great cause for con...
13 September, 2018Steven Greenhut of the R Street Institute shares his thoughts on the just-completed 2018 legislative session and Jerry Brown’s legacy as governor, the second go-around. We discuss wildfire response legislation, bail reform, 100 percent renewable ene...
10 September, 2018Listen to PRI’s Senior Fellow in Business and Economics Wayne Winegarden discuss his new chartbook and study on California’s $1 trillion pension monster with Carl DeMaio on “The DeMaio Report” on KOGO Radio in San Diego. Share...
06 September, 2018
New PRI-Open the Books Chartbook Shows California’s Public Pension Monster Has Grown to Nearly $1 Trillion More Realistic Market Estimate Show State Pension Funds are Just 28 Percent Funded...
05 September, 2018USC Public Policy Professor Michael Thom joins us to discuss his research exploring whether California’s film and television tax credits are a good deal for taxpayers and whether they make a difference in attracting or retaining jobs and economic act...
03 September, 2018Historian Laurence Jurdem joins us to talk about his new book, Paving the Way for Reagan, which explores how National Review, Human Events, and other conservative publications strongly influenced Ronald Reagan’s outlook and paved the way for his “pea...
27 August, 2018Heading into the Labor Day weekend, we thought we would take a contrarian view of the holiday by reviewing Forbes columnist John Tamny’s new book, The End of Work. Last year, we interviewed him on our podcast on his previous book, Who Needs the Fed?...
27 August, 2018Play everyone’s favorite game show “What Will You Bid?” to learn about the broken competitive bidding process for providing durable medical equipment to Medicare patients. Read the new study by PRI’s Wayne Winegarden to learn ...
24 August, 2018During her recent campaign swing through California, Democratic socialist Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez visited the asparagus capital of America to meet with Mayor Michael Tubbs and explore ways to take a local universal basic income plan nationwide. “We t...
23 August, 2018We almost never find ourselves on the same side as celebs, so when “Sex and the City” star Cynthia Nixon, now running for governor of New York, recently railed against taxpayer subsidies for the film industry, we couldn’t help but pop the popcorn. B...
21 August, 2018Cal State San Bernardino professor and historian Richard Samuelson joins us to discuss his upcoming book on John Adams and his take – shaped by Adams’ argument - that the best place to handle a runaway elite who want to change the world like Mark Zuc...
20 August, 2018Pfizer CEO Ian Read recently told investors that he believes pharmaceuticals will soon be sold without rebates. While this change, if it comes to pass, is undoubtedly positive for patients, a question naturally arises: why? After all, rebates and dis...
16 August, 2018Just after the New Year began, California lawmakers, sore that the Federal Communications Commission restored a stolen freedom and repealed the Obama-era net neutrality rule, introduced their own net neutrality bill. The California Internet Consumer ...
16 August, 2018Former CKE Restaurants CEO Andy Puzder says that “capitalism” is not a dirty word. He joins us to discuss his new book profiling the rise of anti-profit forces in the U.S., and how, under President Trump’s leadership, they can be vanquished for good...
13 August, 2018The United States benefits every day from the policy victories won by President Reagan’s administration. Enough time has passed since his tenure in the White House that many fair-minded observers, regardless of their political orientation, recognize ...
08 August, 2018Through its purchases of durable medical equipment (DME), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) helps many patients remain in their home and out of hospitals or other long-term care settings. These purchases cover a wide array of me...
07 August, 2018Tim and I have a little shtick on the PRI podcast where on the last question we ask each of our guests for a favorite wine recommendation. Our headquarters in San Francisco is just down the road from Wine Country and most everyone loves wine......
07 August, 2018In part 2 of our discussion with PRI general counsel Dean McGrath, who is a veteran of past Supreme Court nomination fights, we discuss the Brett Kavanaugh nomination in depth, and explore how he might rule on some of the key issues to likely come be...
06 August, 2018This week, we celebrate what would have been Milton Friedman’s 106th birthday (he was born July 31, 1912). In celebration of Dr. Friedman’s important legacy defending free markets and free people, and the inspiration he has provided all ...
03 August, 2018Step one in any recovery program is to admit that the problem exists. And, make no mistake about it, California’s public pensions are addicted to debt. Solving this debt crisis requires political courage to implement fundamental reforms, which is why...
31 July, 2018PRI’s general counsel Dean McGrath – and who also served as counsel to President Reagan – joins us to discuss the battle for the Supreme Court. He gives us an inside look at what goes into nominating and confirming a Supreme Court justice, and share...
30 July, 2018Oh Canada, here I come! Well, not really. At least not permanently. This week I’m in Montreal and Quebec City for summer vacation. Before leaving, I decided to check out how the U.S. compares economically to Canada, and there’s no better source than ...
30 July, 2018Download the PDF When the Legislature declared a moratorium on cities enacting soda taxes, it felt like a win for freedom and a pushback of interventionism. But the busybodies never give up and they plow a fertile field in California, which has no ri...
26 July, 2018Nick Loris of the Heritage Foundation joins us from Vancouver to discuss why California gas prices are so much higher than the rest of the nation, and what reforms would make a real difference in giving drivers some relief at the pump....
24 July, 2018When Andy Puzder was 10, he went with his father, a Ford salesman, to deliver a new car to a wealthy customer. “Mr. Humphrey” lived in opulence on the east side of Cleveland. Puzder marveled at the treasure before him, the enormous house, the grand.....
18 July, 2018Former Trump and George W. Bush administration national security official Michael Anton joins us to discuss his experiences in both administration’s foreign policy teams, and discusses some of America’s biggest foreign policy challenges today....
16 July, 2018On the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision on Janus, the State Controller’s Office announced that beginning in July, it would stop deducting “fair share fees” from the paychecks of state workers who are not full union members. The fair share fee, ...
16 July, 2018Expenditures on prescription drugs grew 12.4 percent in 2014 and 8.9 percent in 2015. These eye-popping data are not representative of the long-term expenditure trend, however. Not only did the growth in prescription drugs expenditures slow to 1.3 pe...
12 July, 2018If there’s one thing that unites Californians, it’s a disdain for crony capitalism. What is crony capitalism, you ask? We see it all the time. Think local elected officials throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Amazon to try and lure their se...
12 July, 2018One of the most common themes in American politics is the emphasis on preserving or restoring our role as a land of opportunity. Across the political spectrum, there is a general sense that the intergenerational promise of upward mobility is becoming...
10 July, 2018Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute joins us in Vancouver for a discussion on how the free-market is a more effective way to achieve a global, clean energy future than new clean energy laws or excess regulations....
09 July, 2018Tax Calculator Part 2 In my last blog, I ran some numbers on the Tax Foundation’s new tax calculator to show the average tax cut for California households by congressional district under the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. But I thought what would be......
04 July, 2018
California Housing Finance Agency Executive Director Tia Boatman Patterson discusses the efforts of the self-supporting state agency she runs to help people find an affordable place to live, and gives her thoughts on what should be done next to addre...
02 July, 2018Download the PDF California’s “bullet” train to nowhere keeps going — nowhere. Unless tearing down a bridge just to rebuild it is somewhere. Construction of an overpass near Fresno was scrapped late last year—yes, we’re learning about this just...
27 June, 2018Leave it to the Tax Foundation to come with this cool online calculator to figure out how much you will save in taxes from the Trump tax cuts. The calculator asks you to plug in your AGI, your filing status (single or married), even details......
27 June, 2018Last week, the Supreme Court issued a major decision in a case about online retailers collecting sales taxes, South Dakota v. Wayfair. As PRI’s Bartlett Cleland recently wrote in Fox and Hounds, “the case is centered around the notion that an entity ...
25 June, 2018For PRI’s 50th episode, our special guest is George Gilder. We asked him about his views on Silicon Valley (“in the process of having a nervous breakdown”), the threats to innovation (“the world’s $253 trillion debt”) and his view of Basic Income (“p...
25 June, 2018In June of 1930 President Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Act. This Act imposed steep tariffs on over 20,000 different goods that Americans imported from other countries. As of its time, it was one of the largest tax increases in history. It was also ...
21 June, 2018There are plenty of similarities between Italy and California. Both are similar in size and have wonderful wine countries and picturesque coastlines. They also share high taxes, a challenging regulatory landscape, and a growing gap between their rich...
21 June, 2018Our guest in this podcast is Todd Gaziano of the Pacific Legal Foundation. As director of the newly created PLF Center for the Separation of Powers, Todd is working on a long-term project to roll back the power of unelected government administrators...
18 June, 2018No one should wonder why executives keep saying California is the worst state to do business in. Too many politicians see businesses as nothing more than vessels available to be drained of their substance for the funding of foolish ideas. The most re...
18 June, 2018
The business guru Peter Drucker is credited with the notion that “if you can’t measure something you can’t manage it”. Using this logic in reverse, perhaps the best way to thwart the misplaced attempts to manage global economic trade is to stop measu...
12 June, 2018A Supreme Court case to be decided by the end of June could require California residents to pay taxes to a variety states, counties, cities and even mosquito abatement districts across the country. South Dakota v. Wayfair is a case that asks whether ...
12 June, 2018Former California Assemblyman and now Texas Public Policy Institute VP Chuck DeVore joins to talk about his experiences relocating to the Lone Star State, the advantages that Texas has over California, how the states differ on economic and energy pol...
12 June, 2018“Pension risk includes lava,” said Keli’i Akina, president of the Grassroot Institute, a sister free-market think tank in Hawaii. Recently, the Grassroot Institute hosted an event titled “Navigating risk at Hawaii’s public pension system.” Thom Will...
12 June, 2018Public-sector employees who want to be freed of forced unionization are hoping that the Supreme Court will release them from their yoke when it issues its impending ruling in the case of a government worker who sued the union that claims to represent...
08 June, 2018Tax-Cut-Fueled Stock Buybacks Retard Emergence of Trump’s ‘Greatest’ Economy By Bradley Keoun President Donald Trump’s tax cuts have prompted corporate executives use the cash windfall to reward their own investors instead of ...
07 June, 2018The U.S. economy has generated more wealth for more people than any other economic system in human history, and it’s not even close. What began as a small group of colonies clustered near the eastern seaboard of a mostly empty continent founded by po...
07 June, 2018
Now that the voters of California have spoken, what does it all mean? The PRI all stars analyze the results of the California primary, preview the major fall contests and initiative battles, and ponder the future of the Top 2 primary....
06 June, 2018In 2017, there were 46 new novel drug innovations, including new treatments for cancers, Parkinson’s disease, and serious skin infections. These innovations are essential for improving the quality of health care in the U.S. However, innovation is not...
05 June, 2018New Study: Patients, Employers and Taxpayers Could Save Significantly if Barriers to Biosimilars Removed Case Study: Increasing Use of Infliximab Biosimilar Could Lower Costs Up to $465 Million Annually...
05 June, 2018The great investor Warren Buffett once said, “Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.” UC President Janet Napolitan...
04 June, 2018Without a hint of irony, while announcing the 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and the 10 percent tariffs on imported aluminum on May 31st, Commerce Secretary Ross proclaimed that “we take the view that without a strong economy, you cannot have s...
31 May, 2018By Brendan Pringle This afternoon some 8,000 Starbucks stores in the United States shut down for “racial-bias education” to prevent discrimination in its stores. Starbucks remains under fire after the arrest of two black men after they refused to lea...
30 May, 2018By Rowena Itchon and Tim Anaya This week, the Assembly and Senate face a key deadline. All bills originating must pass their “house of origin” by the end of the week (i.e., bills introduced in the Assembly must pass the Assembly). The Appropriation...
30 May, 2018
The “PRI All Stars” break down the California primary, analyzing the major propositions and how the major gubernatorial candidates might different from Gov. Brown, discuss whether the initiative process and Top 2 primary should be reform, and give th...
28 May, 2018That sound you hear is the rush of California politicians and various moneyed interests racing to try and take advantage of a recent Supreme Court ruling paving the way for sports betting in every state. On May 14, the Court struck down a federal law...
23 May, 2018Businesses in California could use some good news, but one wonders when — and sometimes if — any will ever come. At the same time, there seems to be no end to the bad news, at least when government authorities are involved. The most recen...
22 May, 2018Incentives drive all economic activity. Unfortunately, far too many of the incentives that underlie the U.S. health care sector discourage quality and encourage excessive costs. Our current health insurance system exemplifies this problem. The disinc...
21 May, 2018Pepperdine University School of Public Policy dean Pete Peterson joins us to discuss the quest for ideological diversity in America’s universities, how free market ideas are treated on college campuses, and the current clash over campus free speech....
21 May, 2018Due to its national implications, last week’s introduction of the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) blueprint on drug prices is garnering all the attention. Despite its importance, HHS’ blueprint should not overshadow the many poor, and ...
17 May, 2018Cutting, styling, shampooing, and curling hair properly takes some practice. But how much before a person is skilled enough to obtain a license to perform those tasks in California? The state says at least 1,500 hours of training are needed. Common-s...