Retirement Planning

Today’s Top Debates: Critical Thinking, Election Meddling, Costly Pension Reforms, Speech Policing, and Rent Caps

Today’s Top Debates: Critical Thinking, Election Meddling, Costly Pension Reforms, Speech Policing, and Rent Caps

From the left: Experts against ‘Critical Thinking’ Early COVID-era documents by various 'academics' and 'professional fact-checkers' uncovered via FOIA widely denounce 'the practice of doing one’s own research,' according to Matt Taibbi at Racket. This stance emerges because the mere act of mistrusting expert opinion is seen as a risk of 'totalitarianism' (read: Trump). Researchers frequently scan for misinformation spread by ordinary consumers, yet they rarely scrutinize government officials or credentialed experts as potential sources of bad information. For instance, a study by Jay Bhattacharya indicated that the April 2020 COVID-19 caseload in a Californian town was around 50 times higher than public estimates, leading to a dramatic overcounting of mortality.

Academics in the '70s drove VW buses with 'Question Authority' stickers. Today, however, they have built an industry around the slogan 'Don’t Bother.' From the right: DOJ’s ’24 Elex Meddling The Biden Justice Department's recent actions against alleged Russian state media employees, as part of an effort to curb Russian 'misinformation,' should raise significant red flags, warns The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson. The timing suggests that alleged Russian election meddling is designed to boost Donald Trump, implying support for him is fake and funded by Moscow. This mirrors previous Democrat strategies seen in Russiagate 2016 and Hunter Biden’s laptop controversy in 2020.

Regardless of the truth behind these allegations, the primary takeaway is the timing: Biden’s DOJ is once again meddling in the lead-up to a major election, in a manner potentially more significant than any Moscow-based efforts. Eye on NY: Another Costly Pension Reform Governor Hochul and state lawmakers have approved a substantial giveaway for public employee unions, retroactively increasing pension benefits for employees hired since 2012, according to the Empire Center’s Ken Girardin. This move will elevate contribution rates for local governments, school districts, and state agencies starting next April. Many employer contributions will rise from an average of 15.2% of pay to 16.5%, and for police and fire pensions, from 31.2% to 33.7%.

In comparison, private-sector employer contributions to 401k retirement accounts average 4.6% of pay. Unions are also pushing for further rollbacks of the 2009 and 2012 pension reforms to enable employees to retire with full pensions at age 55, which could impose upwards of $100 billion in new costs on taxpayers. Libertarian: Kamala’s Speech-Policing History Would President Kamala Harris shut down X, the social media site now run by Elon Musk? Reason’s Robby Soave raises this question, pointing out that Harris in 2019 was notably obsessed with getting Trump kicked off Twitter. This embodies some of the most concerning tendencies in progressive speech policing and does not bode well for a future Harris administration.

During the 2019 Democratic primary debates, Harris had a particularly tense exchange with Sen. Liz Warren, when Warren refused to agree that Trump should be banned from Twitter. As Vice President, Harris was also complicit in the Biden administration’s widespread pressure campaign to push social media companies to remove contrarian content regarding Hunter Biden, elections, and COVID-19. Her remarks at the debate reveal an obsession with policing disfavored speech online. Housing beat: Biden-Harris’ Rent-Cap Delusions The Biden-Harris administration's proposal to limit annual rent increases to 5% for large landlords will worsen the shortage of available housing units and disincentivize new housing construction, warns Alec Mena at The Hill.

This would eliminate depreciation write-offs for landlords with more than 50 units unless they agree not to raise rent by more than 5% annually for two years. Such caps are seen as virtue-signaling rather than practical solutions. If enacted, housing stock growth would slow, disproportionately affecting new renters. Additionally, beyond the housing market, a rent cap could impede labor mobility and reduce property tax revenues. While the administration might claim to be addressing affordable housing in an election year, the road to affordable housing is paved with evidence-based, supply-oriented policy, not economically illiterate dictates from the top.