Virtually all families in the middle of the earnings distribution aspire to send their children to a school of at least average quality. (We'd think ill of any parent whose aspirations were lower.) The rub is that the best schools tend to be located in more expensive neighborhoods.

A flat tax is roughly the same as a sales tax.

Commercial roadways in communities that lack zoning laws, for example, are often an aesthetic nightmare not because of insufficient competition, and not because merchants are stupid or lack taste. Rather, the problem is that any individual merchant's sign won't be noticed unless it's bigger and more garish than those of rival merchants.

Prescriptive regulations, such as telling electric utilities what kinds of coal to burn or what kinds of scrubbers to install on their smokestacks, were not only intrusive, they were also grossly inefficient.

In almost every instance, air and water quality goals were met more cheaply and quickly when we taxed pollution than when we tried to regulate it directly.

Virtually all families in the middle of the earnings distribution aspire to send their children to a school of at least average quality. (We'd think ill of any parent whose aspirations were lower.) The rub is that the best schools tend to be located in more expensive neighborhoods.

Ever since the Great Depression, economists have known that demand shortages tend to persist in the wake of severe financial crises like the ones that happened in 1929 and 2008.