Michael D. Farren

File this under "Yet more evidence that firm location decisions are based on region-specific advantages, not economic development subsidies" wral.com/why-geography-…

Milton Friedman on his ideal society: “I’d like to see a society in which individuals have the maximum freedom to pursue their own objectives in whichever direction they wish, so long as they don’t interfere with the rights of others to do the same thing.” “In such a society, I believe you do need a government—but the government has a very limited role. Its role should be to provide the national defense, to protect individuals from coercion by others, and finally to provide a mechanism whereby we can formulate the rules that will govern us.”

Why has the US been such an enduring outlier in prosperity—and can it remain so? Hoover Senior Fellows @JohnHCochrane, Valerie Ramey, and Ross Levine take up these questions with Washington Post columnist @asymmetricinfo. Watch the full discussion here: youtu.be/cBQsOJw7FQg

People are finally getting it ... we're headed for a debt spiral. Pieces from @Noahpinion, @mattyglesias, and @econJaredB -- three former fiscal doves.

Just in case anyone who follows @SIEPR is interested in hearing more than one side of this "fiery debate": x.com/joshrauh/statu…. Note: in addition to my @HooverInst appointment, they forgot to mention that I'm also a @SIEPR Senior Fellow (by courtesy)

California's "anchor" firms are growing fast - but they're doing it in other states. With @LincGerstner we looked at 23 large public companies with strong CA employment presence: Alphabet / Google, Amazon (incl. AWS), Apple, Applied Materials, AT&T, Broadcom, Charles Schwab, Charter Communications, Chevron, Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Intel, Intuit, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, Qualcomm, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Tesla, and Western Digital. On a headcount-weighted basis, the 23 firms employed 27.6 percent of their US workforce in California in 2015 and 24.1 percent in 2026. On an equal-weighted basis, the decline is steeper, from 39.5 percent to 34.6 percent. If those 23 firms kept their CA state share from 2015, California would have 62,900 more jobs in 2026. But these firms only employ 2.2% of the 18 million nonfarm workforce. Extrapolating in BLS subsectors tech and manufacturing, there are 243,000 missing jobs in California that have gone to other states. But this is a massive understatement because it doesn't consider what has happened in many other sectors, nor companies that started up elsewhere instead of dysfunctional California. Time for California voters to vote in politicians who will seriously try to fix what is destroying jobs in the state - high taxes, high regulation, obstacles to building housing, waste in government spending - and not keep trying to tax the living daylights via wealth taxes out of people who actually create jobs. Link to full piece below.

California has missed out on up to a quarter million jobs created in other states by established firms, and likely many more from startups that chose other states. A wealth tax would compound the damage. A new piece with @LincGerstner. Link⬇️

"So the modern left wants it both ways. When the question is whether to cut Social Security, FICA is a premium and benefits are earned compensation. When the question is whether the tax system is progressive, FICA is suddenly a regressive tax. Pick a lane."

The headline undersells this excellent @CatoInstitute podcast episode on the minimum wage, featuring @jeffreypclemens and @MrRBourne, a bit. It is not just about restaurants in California and in fact covers so many aspects of the policy and research debate, I even encountered one I had never heard Jeff talk about before. ryanbourne.substack.com/p/out-to-lunch…

Insane stat of the day: California almonds use roughly 3–5.5 million acre-feet of water per year, depending on methodology. That's ~4-7x more water than all data centers in North America used combined in 2025.

"To make the regressivity case, Zucman and Wolfers have to count payroll payments as taxes. That cuts directly against eighty years of liberal doctrine. Beginning with FDR, the argument on the liberal side has always been that payroll taxes are not taxes but contributions or premiums entitling the payer to benefits as an 'earned right.'"

@JustinWolfers What you’re saying isn’t true though. Here is a good primer (parts 1 and 3 are worth reading too): aei.org/wp-content/upl…

People are missing what this actually shows. The Jones Act requires cargo moved between US ports to use US-built, US-flagged, US-crewed vessels. In an emergency waiver, foreign tankers could suddenly move fuel domestically. Result? 45 extra voyages immediately. And the Jones Act fleet stayed fully booked. Meaning this wasn’t replacing American shipping. It was proving trapped demand existed the entire time.

Look at all the 🇺🇸 trade that's now happening without the Jones Act in effect. And the Jones Act fleet is still fully booked. This is all extra shipping, from Americans to Americans, that's happening just because government got out of the way.

Over at Substack, @JoshEakle asks: "It's 2026, and I have yet to see an anti-almond farm protest."

Looking forward to #RNEF2026!

Some of you will know that the economics literature on the minimum wage has at times been contentious. (Here is a partial recap: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…. This one covers some other aspects: pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10….) What is less well known is how petty the behavior of the leader of the "minimum wages can never lead to employment losses" side of the debate has been. @arindube has consistently attempted to keep citation counts for papers from the other side down by mangling and omitting references. In his latest he does this by misnaming (and, I suppose, misgendering) two graduate students, Olivia Edwards and Joshua D. Nguyen (see image). Unbelievable stuff that should imo also lead one to discount his findings to a significant extent.

Wow... I'm loathe to throw the flag of "professional malpractice" in economics, but transgressions like those mentioned here are hard to explain. Also, there's a reason why the boilerplate first footnote ends with "All errors remain my own." QC is a professional responsibility.

I don’t know why data centers have become this generations nuclear power. Unlike nuclear power, there is a 0% chance that a data center can lead to any sort of disaster scenario. This project in Utah is: - in an uninhabited area - bought and repurposed water already in use - is bringing its own power, so it won’t cost citizens anything It’s like being against building a nuclear power plant in the middle of Nevada, except there is no radioactive waste. No fall out. No risk of anything. It’s a big computer in the middle of nowhere, that is self sufficient in all resources. There are a million real problems in America. Data centers just aren’t one.

I'm old enough to remember when politicians and the press constantly warned about the rising federal debt in the US. The federal debt/GDP ratio just crossed 100% but there was barely a peep.

New podcast episode with @DrBrian4Health on why physicians don't start hospitals anymore. Answer: We simply don't let them. The ACA banned new physician-owned hospitals from billing Medicare patients, with obvious results. Listen here: church.substack.com/p/why-arent-do…