Is a Resource Curse Crowding Out US Renewable Energy?

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April 19, 2026 — The Natural Resource Curse [NRC] refers to negative effects that a booming commodity sector can have on a country’s overall economic growth.  (Commodities are defined to include oil and natural gas, minerals, and often agriculture.) Many oil-rich producers in the Mideast and Africa, for example, have failed to achieve the prosperity that some resource-poor rocky islands and peninsulas in East Asia have.

Some  are now applying the idea of a NRC to the US, which is said to be acting like a petrostate in that a revival of the oil and gas sector is crowding out technologically advanced manufacturers of renewable energy equipment. read more

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Is Immigration Bad for America?

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 March 23, 2026 — Immigration is perhaps the most incendiary issue these days, especially in the US. Is immigration bad for the economy, as many people apparently believe?

  1. Jobs

Its opponents worry that immigrants compete with US citizens for jobs, housing, and so forth.  What that instinct misses is that those coming from abroad add to the supply side of the equation at the same time that they add to demand.  Take housing.  Lots of immigrants work in construction.   They make up about one third of workers in the construction trades (32.5%), and more in the trades most relevant for home building, such as plasterers and stucco masons (61%), drywall/ceiling tile installers (61%), roofers (52%), painters (51%), carpet/floor/tile installers (45%).  Hence, they contribute to the supply of housing more than to demand, relative to the rest of the population. read more

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Usury laws and Trump’s proposed cap on credit card interest rates

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Feb. 19, 2026  — Donald Trump, at Davos in January, proposed putting a 10 % cap on the interest rates that banks can charge on credit cards, a position favored by many Democrats, including progressives like Bernie Sanders.  Is it possible that this is an issue where his rhetoric about helping the little guy might be warranted by his actions, unlike with most of his policies?

So-called usury laws have a long history. Each of the three major monotheistic religions has restrictions on usury.  In 1641, the Massachusetts Bay Colony set the maximum legal interest rate that could be charged on a loan at 8%.  Moreover, populist politicians like attacking heartless banks. Most US states already have ceilings on the credit card interest rate.  (The Trump proposal is to tighten that limit, at the federal level.) read more

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