Blog
The fast food minimum wage hike continues to kill jobs
Governor Newsom Protests Too Much – the Minimum Wage Increase Did Destroy Jobs
As the New York Post reported, Newsom’s deputy director of communications Tara Gallegos disputed the findings of the piece, pointing out to Fox News Digital that the research paper was linked to the Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank she claimed has published “false or misleading information” about California’s ...
Blog
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Why are urbanites more likely to embrace zero-sum thinking?
The well-worn stereotypes of urban sophisticates versus country bumpkins took a hit in July when an up-and-coming French economist explained her latest findings in The Economist, a publication with more than 1.2 million subscribers globally and significant influence with policymakers in the English-speaking world. “Some groups are more likely than others to see the world ...
Blog
Teacher shortages, layoffs hit big cities and rural areas hardest
Teacher shortages, layoffs hit big cities and rural areas hardest by John Seiler | July 31, 2025 Even $24,764 average spending per student can’t stop the shortage of teachers in California. The number comes from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2025-26, which began on July 1. For ...
Blog
Read part 3 of a series on drug pricing
Regulations, Not Anticompetitive Actions, Are Obstructing Drug Competition
The flaws driving up costs across the broader health care landscape are also driving up the costs for innovative drugs. After all, pharmaceuticals are an integral component used in combination with the broader healthcare system. As a result, spending on medicines both influences and is influenced by the spending on ...
Blog
California’s flawed budgeting causes routine deficits
For years analysts have warned that California’s overreliance on a roller-coaster stock market destabilizes California’s budget. During bull markets, revenues surge and Sacramento politicians commit to an unaffordable level of spending that only becomes evident when revenues inevitably crash. Rather than admitting that the spending was never affordable, the political ...
Agriculture
Immigration policy reform, not Medicaid recipients, is the answer to our workforce problem
Some harvests have already started across the country despite farms and ranches facing labor shortages. Where will workers come from to ensure crops don’t go unharvested? U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins recently made a suggestion. In a news conference Rollins said, “So, no amnesty under any circumstances, mass deportations continue, ...
Blog
Learn about the latest Newsom plan on homelessness
Fixing Years Of Missteps On Homelessness
“There’s nothing compassionate about letting people die on the streets,” Newson said announcing the model ordinance. The plan would make it unlawful to set up camps “for the purpose of sleeping, lying, or sheltering one or more persons for more than three consecutive days or nights in the same location.” ...
Blog
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Abundance’ by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Abundance’ By Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson By Matthew Fleming | July 25, 2025 “Abundance,” a new book by liberal thought leaders Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, makes the case that a sustainable future doesn’t need to be driven by the politics of scarcity we see dominating America’s urban ...
Blog
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
California’s obsession with density limits housing growth
Morphing from a once-reasonable requirement that building permit applicants report on the “significant environmental impact” of their construction project and how they intend to mitigate that impact, CEQA is now a process-heavy, bureaucratic beast that delays projects for years and costs developers millions. Of all the ways California’s Legislature and ...
Blog
The U.S. Drug System Strikes a Reasonable Balance Between Incentivizing Innovation and Promoting Competition
The government explicitly grants innovators temporary market exclusivity to provide an opportunity for groundbreaking pharmaceutical companies to recover the costs of capital associated with developing novel treatments. This was one of the express purposes of past federal reform legislation, such as the Hatch-Waxman Act signed in 1984 and the Biologics ...
The fast food minimum wage hike continues to kill jobs
Governor Newsom Protests Too Much – the Minimum Wage Increase Did Destroy Jobs
As the New York Post reported, Newsom’s deputy director of communications Tara Gallegos disputed the findings of the piece, pointing out to Fox News Digital that the research paper was linked to the Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank she claimed has published “false or misleading information” about California’s ...
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Why are urbanites more likely to embrace zero-sum thinking?
The well-worn stereotypes of urban sophisticates versus country bumpkins took a hit in July when an up-and-coming French economist explained her latest findings in The Economist, a publication with more than 1.2 million subscribers globally and significant influence with policymakers in the English-speaking world. “Some groups are more likely than others to see the world ...
Teacher shortages, layoffs hit big cities and rural areas hardest
Teacher shortages, layoffs hit big cities and rural areas hardest by John Seiler | July 31, 2025 Even $24,764 average spending per student can’t stop the shortage of teachers in California. The number comes from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2025-26, which began on July 1. For ...
Read part 3 of a series on drug pricing
Regulations, Not Anticompetitive Actions, Are Obstructing Drug Competition
The flaws driving up costs across the broader health care landscape are also driving up the costs for innovative drugs. After all, pharmaceuticals are an integral component used in combination with the broader healthcare system. As a result, spending on medicines both influences and is influenced by the spending on ...
California’s flawed budgeting causes routine deficits
For years analysts have warned that California’s overreliance on a roller-coaster stock market destabilizes California’s budget. During bull markets, revenues surge and Sacramento politicians commit to an unaffordable level of spending that only becomes evident when revenues inevitably crash. Rather than admitting that the spending was never affordable, the political ...
Immigration policy reform, not Medicaid recipients, is the answer to our workforce problem
Some harvests have already started across the country despite farms and ranches facing labor shortages. Where will workers come from to ensure crops don’t go unharvested? U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins recently made a suggestion. In a news conference Rollins said, “So, no amnesty under any circumstances, mass deportations continue, ...
Learn about the latest Newsom plan on homelessness
Fixing Years Of Missteps On Homelessness
“There’s nothing compassionate about letting people die on the streets,” Newson said announcing the model ordinance. The plan would make it unlawful to set up camps “for the purpose of sleeping, lying, or sheltering one or more persons for more than three consecutive days or nights in the same location.” ...
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Abundance’ by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Abundance’ By Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson By Matthew Fleming | July 25, 2025 “Abundance,” a new book by liberal thought leaders Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, makes the case that a sustainable future doesn’t need to be driven by the politics of scarcity we see dominating America’s urban ...
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
California’s obsession with density limits housing growth
Morphing from a once-reasonable requirement that building permit applicants report on the “significant environmental impact” of their construction project and how they intend to mitigate that impact, CEQA is now a process-heavy, bureaucratic beast that delays projects for years and costs developers millions. Of all the ways California’s Legislature and ...
The U.S. Drug System Strikes a Reasonable Balance Between Incentivizing Innovation and Promoting Competition
The government explicitly grants innovators temporary market exclusivity to provide an opportunity for groundbreaking pharmaceutical companies to recover the costs of capital associated with developing novel treatments. This was one of the express purposes of past federal reform legislation, such as the Hatch-Waxman Act signed in 1984 and the Biologics ...
