RealClearMarkets Articles

America’s real estate market benefits from innovation. Anyone who works in housing should welcome tools that make transactions faster, more efficient and more secure. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, digital identity verification and automation all have a role to play in modernizing real estate and helping transactions serve consumers properly and safely. But innovation should not be confused with elimination. Technology can improve the title process. It cannot replace the professional judgment, local knowledge and accountability required to protect property rights. That distinction...

A paradox is confronting boardrooms everywhere. With AI, many tasks are routinely completed 10X to 1000X more rapidly and more accurately than ever before. Yet many executives aren’t seeing commensurate gains in business performance or enterprise value. Leaders of organization are asking a difficult question: If everyone is moving faster, why isn't the organization advancing at the same pace? Economists have encountered this puzzle before. In 1987, Robert Solow famously observed that the computer age could be seen everywhere except in the productivity...

This past June 12 was a remarkable day, marking three great and closely related events: the 250th anniversary of the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776, the 39th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s “Tear down that wall” speech in 1987, and the SpaceX IPO.  The Virginia Declaration of Rights inspired both America’s Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Reagan’s speech challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to end the Soviet Union’s oppression of Central and Eastern Europe. The SpaceX IPO was the largest public offering in history and made...

“If you could fog a mirror, you could get into the University of Florida.” That’s how a longtime Floridian described the admissions’ process of old. How things have changed. As a recent Wall Street Journal article indicated, competition to get into Florida’s flagship state university is so fierce today that students have been reduced to taking online classes while still participating in campus life. The anecdote rates thought in response to a new article about affordability and prices in The Dispatch by the excellent Aaron Brown, a frequent contributor to...

The announcement of a deal to end the war with Iran and reopen the Strait of Hormuz is welcome news for consumers. Brent crude fell 4% Sunday night, and West Texas Intermediate crude dropped to $81 a barrel. But even if oil prices continue to retreat, Americans shouldn't expect immediate relief at the pump. And gasoline is only part of the story. The real question isn't when gas prices will fall—it's when life will become affordable again. The world's economy is incredibly interconnected. Even if the political resolution is signed on Friday as announced, economic recovery will move much...

Every serious debate about economic policy eventually runs into a question that redistributionists rarely answer: where does wealth come from?  It is not a trivial question. The entire logic of democratic socialism rests on an unexamined assumption — that wealth creation will continue largely unchanged no matter how heavily it is taxed, regulated, or redirected. Production is treated as a given. Political energy focuses almost entirely on distribution.  But wealth in a market economy is not a stockpile. It does not sit still waiting to be divided. It...

For years, the debate over the American electric grid has been trapped in a false choice. You’re either a "fossil fuel guy" or a "Green New Deal guy.”  As someone who grew up in the heart of Pennsylvania coal country and spent my career in the trenches of Republican politics, I’ve always been a "what works" guy. And right now, the loudest voices in the room are clinging to a myth that is actually making our energy more expensive and our grid more vulnerable. We’re told that solar energy is a luxury of the left - a fragile technology that fails the moment the sun...

Why is Netflix founder Reed Hastings so rich? It’s a clown question, right? Everyone knows why he’s worth billions, and it’s because he founded a company that is worth over $300 billion. Except that what you’ve read so far is insufficient. In truth, it glosses over the true source of Hastings’ wealth: no one thought Netflix was going to survive. And on this assumption, the experts didn’t buy Hastings out when they could have. Lest readers forget, a younger Netflix twice offered itself to Blockbuster for under $100 million. Get it? If not, the true driver of...

“In our political age of envy, the press and Democrats are preoccupied by Elon Musk’s otherworldly wealth. But he has enriched the country by building a remarkable company.” That was from an excellent editorial (“Who Wants to Be a Trillionaire?”) at the Wall Street Journal, for decades (and to this day) the Holy Grail of freedom and market-friendly opinion from prestigious names on and off the page. The editorial was yet again a great read, but it followed a great deal more criticism of Musk on the page from the past, along with the stock market that his...

A new wave of wealth-tax proposals is upon us. A California ballot initiative would impose a one-time 5 percent tax on billionaire wealth. Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, has reintroduced her annual wealth tax legislation. Senator Bernie Sanders, I-VT, has proposed a 5 percent yearly levy on billionaires. These proposals differ in design but share a common premise: that billionaires hold enormous wealth on which little tax is being paid.  In a recent New York Times op-ed, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman argue that several California billionaires “have accumulated...

In FCC v. AT&T, the Supreme Court recently decided that Federal Communications Commission orders are not binding for the collection of forfeitures under Sections 503 and 504 of the Communications Act. The FCC had previously issued forfeiture orders of $57 million against AT&T and $47 million against Verizon and demanded payment within 30 days. Chairman Brendan Carr, then a commissioner on the FCC, properly dissented from the forfeiture order. The companies paid the forfeiture amounts under protest and went to court to reclaim what they viewed as illegal forfeitures. AT&T and...

Senator Elizabeth Warren reintroduced her Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act of 2026 in March, proposing annual levies on net worth above $50 million and a 3% surtax on billionaires. The timing is notable: Elon Musk just crossed the $1 trillion threshold, becoming the world's first trillionaire — a fortune tied almost entirely to illiquid ownership stakes in Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. He doesn't hold $30 billion in cash. That's roughly what the surtax would demand of him annually. The financial mechanics of this proposal collapse the moment you examine them. I've spent more than...

As is well known, SpaceX floated its shares last week. Elon Musk is the world's first, but surely not last, trillionaire. Let’s refer to Musk as the Frederic Bastiat “seen.” From there, let’s pivot to Megan McArdle’s latest Washington Post column on the national debt. She writes that “There is only one way this kind of profligacy can end: in a fiscal crisis that forces Congress and the President to hike taxes and cut spending, very probably at the worst possible time, when the economy is already nose-diving for some other reason.” No, she can't mean...

If imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, then last week’s reintroduction of the American Innovation and Online Choice Act (“AIOCA”) would make it seem that the European economy is the envy of the United States! Just last week, Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) reintroduced the AIOCA. It was first offered up in 2021 but did not pass either house of Congress. The proposal seeks to apply more severe restraints on the activity of on-line platforms than current antitrust law provides. A similar bill, the Digital Markets Act...

For years, Senator Bernie Sanders has touted Sweden as his favorite democratic socialist model, praising the country for its high tax rates and massive social welfare spending programs.  He may want to change his tune.  According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Sweden’s socialist experiment was an enormous failure, and a capitalist makeover is underway in Sweden.Sanders has pointed to Sweden as the model for the democratic socialism he embraces and espouses.  He has extolled their socialist programs as the type of system the U.S. should implement, repeatedly...

Newly installed as Fed chair, Kevin Warsh wants the Federal Reserve out of the mortgage business. The organization still holds almost two trillion dollars in mortgage-backed securities, the residue of two rounds of crisis buying and something the law allows but never required it to hold. A central bank that keeps housing as its favored sector, whatever the crisis-era logic for getting there, is running something closer to industrial policy than monetary policy. The case for getting out is clean. The case for getting out cheaply is not. A reform everyone claims to want The Fed itself says it...

Having rolled up accountants, insurance brokers, dentists, and other localized professional services into nationwide practices, private equity firms have a new target: billboard lawyers. This spring, Fortress made headlines when it signed a $125 million investment deal with an Arizona-based personal injury lawyer.  The deal signals a new chapter in the long campaign to open litigation to outside capital. The evolving business of law is a big deal for an obvious reason: taxes, regulations, excessive government spending, and litigation are the four biggest growth killers. Last...

The latest Social Security Trustees Report contains a warning that neither political party should ignore. If Congress fails to act, Social Security's retirement trust fund is projected to become depleted within the next decade, triggering an automatic reduction in benefits of approximately 22 percent. Predictably, the report has generated a familiar round of partisan finger-pointing. Some blame recent tax changes. Others blame decades of government overspending. Still others point to immigration policy or demographic shifts. As an accounting professor, I see the issue somewhat...

Milton Friedman was sometimes wrong. Revered by right and many on the left, a look back reveals thoughts and actions that were sometimes puzzling. Take the work Friedman did at the U.S. Treasury during WWII. Historical accounts indicate that he was one of the economists who helped design tax-withholding. Considering Friedman’s correct stance that government spending is a tax, he seemingly didn’t embrace his association with a system that substantially enhanced the federal government’s ability to penalize work. Then there’s his stance on money. How Friedman got money so...