Scott Alexander reviews Michael Shellenberger’s San Fransicko:
putting it all together and squinting really hard, I think we can tell a story where 10-20% of the homeless are seriously psychotic, and another 20-30% have contributing mental health conditions including depression, PTSD, and others. Somewhere between 25% and 50% of the homeless have substance abuse problems, and this probably mostly overlaps with the 25% – 50% who have psych diagnoses.
HHS says it doesn’t have time to review itself.
Biden is thinking about it. Arnold Kling explains why it is a bad idea:
The basic economic analysis is straightforward. The price of gas has to be high enough to balance supply and demand. A rebate amounts to a subsidy for demand. Raising demand will force the price to go higher. Because supply is relatively inelastic, it will turn out that, relative to the price that would have prevailed without the rebate, the price will be driven up by close to the amount of the rebate. The main beneficiaries of a subsidy for gasoline demand will be producers.
And a gas tax holiday will work the same way. It will reward producers. Any consumer benefit will tend to be illusory.