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To Limit Hunger, Progressives Should Embrace This Price Discrimination Plan

By Gavin A. Sicard and Hal Singer
November 10, 2025
Image: Instacart is offering a one-time 50 percent grocery discount to SNAP users thanks to an approved USDA waiver.
When it is funded, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP (colloquially known as food stamps) helps feed over 40 million people every month by dispensing $187 per average recipient. The program is especially critical for families—children represent about 40 percent of all SNAP recipients. Despite 78 percent of Americans (and 69 percent of Republicans)... Read More

Deciphering the Meaning of This Year’s Nobel Prize in Economics

By Hal Singer
October 17, 2025
Image: The winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics.
Advocates of all stripes will pounce on a Nobel prize in economics to promote their particular policy agenda. They find a strand of the work by the winning economist, or a snippet from the Nobel committee, spin it into their narrative, and voila, their pet theory is proven right. Even a Nobel prize winner says so!  We should take such claims with a grain of salt.  I... Read More

To Preserve Railroad Competition, the STB Should Separate the Track from the Train

By Peter Carstensen
October 16, 2025
Image: A BNSF-CSX through train moves down the tracks.
The proposed merger of the Union Pacific (UP) and Norfolk Southern (NS) railroads would consolidate ownership and control of a significant part of the central arteries or “trunk lines” of the rail network in this country. Currently, four railroads control most of these key components of the rail network, especially for the east-west service, and... Read More

The Hollowness of Growth as an Objective

By Dylan Gyauch-Lewis
October 8, 2025
Image: The Growthers are punching at shadows.
One of the favorite jabs of the left-punching commentator community—from Matt Yglesias, Alex Trembath, and the abundance-flavored podcast “Everyone Gets Pie”—has been to accuse progressives of being “Degrowthers.” While degrowth as a framework has been around for a while, its extremely limited presence in the zeitgeist is a relatively recent phenomenon. Modern progressives are not... Read More

Why Did Hotel Rates Surge in Vegas? (Hint: It’s Wasn’t the Demand)

By Hal Singer
October 6, 2025
Image: Flying Elvises from Honeymoon in Vegas (1992)
If I had a dollar for every New York Times business story that attributed an industry-wide price hike in the post-Covid era to an outward shift in demand—that is, a story that blamed consumers for higher prices—I’d have, like, 25 dollars. Since the post-Covid era, the Times in particular, and the mainstream business press in... Read More

Will Google’s AI Overviews Swallow the News?

By Tim Cowen, Abdea Coomarasamy and Uni Valdivieso
September 22, 2025
Image: Google’s AI Overview occupies all of the above-the-fold area on a mobile display.
Google’s August 2024 launch of AI Overviews has reshaped online search and upended the original bargain between publishers and Google. Google places its own AI Overviews at the top of its search results pages, providing the user with a synthesised answer to the query. That answer is provided by Gemini, Google’s large language model (LLM),... Read More

Standing with Small Business in the Fight for a Fair Economy

By Seth Frotman
September 21, 2025
Image: Uber and Lyft drivers rally for batter pay and working conditions at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Austin. (Jay Janner/AP)
We are at a crossroads today in American law. It’s not just about Trump and his cronies clearing out the agencies that keep consumers, workers, and everyday people safe from corporate abuse. It’s not just about Trump refusing to enforce safeguards for corporate accountability—or worse, weaponizing them against working families. It’s also about the many... Read More

A Judge Just Decided to Let Google Keep Breaking the Law

By John Newman
September 7, 2025
Image: A courtroom sketch of Judge Amit Mehta on the bench. ILLUSTRATION: DANA VERKOUTEREN; AP
After nearly five years of intense litigation, the landmark United States v. Google antitrust trial is finally over. Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled last fall that Google illegally monopolized internet search for more than a decade by paying smartphone makers, wireless carriers, and web browsers to be the default—and sometimes exclusive—search engine for users. The... Read More

Antitrust Liability Obligates Structural Change

By Daniel A. Hanley
August 17, 2025
Image: Google CEO Sundar Pichai departs federal court in Washington, D.C. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Antitrust restructuring of major corporations is on the table in a way it has not been since the Microsoft case in the late 1990s. Indeed, the historic moment may be comparable to the breakup of Standard Oil in the 1910s and AT&T in the 1980s, when courts reorganized those companies and freed the market from... Read More

Prior Authorization: A Consolidated PBM Nightmare

By Venu Julapalli
August 14, 2025
Image: Prior authorization is a nightmare for patients and doctors. Photo: Enrique Guzmán Egas on Unsplash
On December 3, 2024, Chris Salinas officially entered a nightmare that would make Freddy Krueger proud—a nightmare in the medical industry known as prior authorization. Even I, as his gastroenterologist, didn’t know at the time that this one would become my biggest nightmare yet. Chris has given me permission to share the details of his... Read More

To Limit Hunger, Progressives Should Embrace This Price Discrimination Plan

By Gavin A. Sicard and Hal Singer
November 10, 2025
Image: Instacart is offering a one-time 50 percent grocery discount to SNAP users thanks to an approved USDA waiver.
When it is funded, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP (colloquially known as food stamps) helps feed over 40 million people every month by dispensing $187 per average recipient. The program is especially critical for families—children represent about 40 percent of all SNAP recipients. Despite 78 percent of Americans (and 69 percent of Republicans)... Read More

Deciphering the Meaning of This Year’s Nobel Prize in Economics

By Hal Singer
October 17, 2025

Advocates of all stripes will pounce on a Nobel prize in economics to promote their particular policy agenda. They find a strand of the work by the winning economist, or a snippet from the Nobel committee, spin it into their narrative, and voila, their pet theory is proven right. Even a Nobel prize winner says so!  We should take such claims with a grain of salt.  I... Read More

Image: The winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics.

To Preserve Railroad Competition, the STB Should Separate the Track from the Train

By Peter Carstensen
October 16, 2025

The proposed merger of the Union Pacific (UP) and Norfolk Southern (NS) railroads would consolidate ownership and control of a significant part of the central arteries or “trunk lines” of the rail network in this country. Currently, four railroads control most of these key components of the rail network, especially for the east-west service, and... Read More

Image: A BNSF-CSX through train moves down the tracks.

The Hollowness of Growth as an Objective

By Dylan Gyauch-Lewis
October 8, 2025

One of the favorite jabs of the left-punching commentator community—from Matt Yglesias, Alex Trembath, and the abundance-flavored podcast “Everyone Gets Pie”—has been to accuse progressives of being “Degrowthers.” While degrowth as a framework has been around for a while, its extremely limited presence in the zeitgeist is a relatively recent phenomenon. Modern progressives are not... Read More

Image: The Growthers are punching at shadows.

Why Did Hotel Rates Surge in Vegas? (Hint: It’s Wasn’t the Demand)

By Hal Singer
October 6, 2025

If I had a dollar for every New York Times business story that attributed an industry-wide price hike in the post-Covid era to an outward shift in demand—that is, a story that blamed consumers for higher prices—I’d have, like, 25 dollars. Since the post-Covid era, the Times in particular, and the mainstream business press in... Read More

Image: Flying Elvises from Honeymoon in Vegas (1992)

Will Google’s AI Overviews Swallow the News?

By Tim Cowen, Abdea Coomarasamy and Uni Valdivieso
September 22, 2025

Google’s August 2024 launch of AI Overviews has reshaped online search and upended the original bargain between publishers and Google. Google places its own AI Overviews at the top of its search results pages, providing the user with a synthesised answer to the query. That answer is provided by Gemini, Google’s large language model (LLM),... Read More

Image: Google’s AI Overview occupies all of the above-the-fold area on a mobile display.

Standing with Small Business in the Fight for a Fair Economy

By Seth Frotman
September 21, 2025

We are at a crossroads today in American law. It’s not just about Trump and his cronies clearing out the agencies that keep consumers, workers, and everyday people safe from corporate abuse. It’s not just about Trump refusing to enforce safeguards for corporate accountability—or worse, weaponizing them against working families. It’s also about the many... Read More

Image: Uber and Lyft drivers rally for batter pay and working conditions at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Austin. (Jay Janner/AP)

A Judge Just Decided to Let Google Keep Breaking the Law

By John Newman
September 7, 2025

After nearly five years of intense litigation, the landmark United States v. Google antitrust trial is finally over. Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled last fall that Google illegally monopolized internet search for more than a decade by paying smartphone makers, wireless carriers, and web browsers to be the default—and sometimes exclusive—search engine for users. The... Read More

Image: A courtroom sketch of Judge Amit Mehta on the bench. ILLUSTRATION: DANA VERKOUTEREN; AP

Antitrust Liability Obligates Structural Change

By Daniel A. Hanley
August 17, 2025

Antitrust restructuring of major corporations is on the table in a way it has not been since the Microsoft case in the late 1990s. Indeed, the historic moment may be comparable to the breakup of Standard Oil in the 1910s and AT&T in the 1980s, when courts reorganized those companies and freed the market from... Read More

Image: Google CEO Sundar Pichai departs federal court in Washington, D.C. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Prior Authorization: A Consolidated PBM Nightmare

By Venu Julapalli
August 14, 2025

On December 3, 2024, Chris Salinas officially entered a nightmare that would make Freddy Krueger proud—a nightmare in the medical industry known as prior authorization. Even I, as his gastroenterologist, didn’t know at the time that this one would become my biggest nightmare yet. Chris has given me permission to share the details of his... Read More

Image: Prior authorization is a nightmare for patients and doctors. Photo: Enrique Guzmán Egas on Unsplash

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