The debate over legalization of marijuana is both philosophical and medical. From the philosophical viewpoint it is about individual choice; the medical side is about addiction and marijuana-based medical products. As a direct consequence of the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado, there is now a third side to this issue, an economic...

Let's try a little thought experiment. First, think of your extended family, and pick out which ones you would consider poor. Next, imagine you meet Bill Gates and he says he'll give $10,000 to each of your relatives who is poor, and asks you for a list of those people. You may find a few more poor people the second time. This is the position the s...

In 2012 the Supreme Court ruled that the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act - Obamacare - was constitutional. This was not surprising: after all, since the 1930s the federal government has mandated that Americans buy retirement benefits through Social Security. Now there is another legal challenge to the ACA on its way through the court ...

The issue of legalized marijuana is slowly carving out a spot for itself on the Wyoming political scene. In January the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws, seductively abbreviated NORML, submitted a proposal for a 2016 ballot initiative in Wyoming, seeking to: make it legal for anyone 21 or older to use marijuana;allow medical use a...

Wyoming has more state and local government employees per 1,000 private-sector employees than any other state. Since big government leads to low growth, it is fair to assume that with a smaller government our state GDP would be higher and we would all prosper. We would be able to find better-paying jobs, our state would see more business investment...

Published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle on April 18, 2014 "The politician ... attempts to remedy the evil by increasing and perpetuating the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder." - Frederic Bastiat, "The Law," 1850 - Last week, while discussing locally-generated echoes of the national minimum-wage-raise debate, I made t...

Education funding is a complicated issue in Wyoming. The state constitution gives education a special status on the list of public policy priorities, and the state's education funding formula has been the subject of much debate. It is therefore impossible to give a full picture of state education funding in a short blog or two. There is, however, o...

There are many myths regarding public policy. Those myths are particularly prevalent among people who purport to do economic research. One of those myths says that when you study Wyoming taxes you have to remove severance taxes from the equation because Wyoming is so exceptionally dependent on those; severance taxes, it is said, make Wyoming look l...