The age-standardized cancer mortality rate in the US has fallen by almost 40% since 1990

Tweet by Jeremy Horpedahl.

"The age-standardized cancer mortality rate in the US has fallen by almost 40% since 1990. Technological progress and economic growth is not just new entertainment gadgets that fit in our pockets!"

  

19 years ago the Guardian said we have "ten years to save the planet from mankind"

A tweet from James Melville. Click here to see the original article.

 

What’s Across the Border? Re-Evaluating the Cross-Border Evidence on Minimum Wage Effects

By Priyaranjan Jha, David Neumark & Antonio Rodriguez-Lopez. 

"Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010) argue that state-level minimum wage variation correlated with economic shocks generates spurious evidence that higher minimum wages reduce employment. Using minimum wage variation within contiguous county pairs sharing a state border, they find no relationship between minimum wages and employment in the U.S. restaurant industry. Using the same research design, we show that this result is overturned if we use instead multi-state commuting zones, which provide superior definitions of local economic areas. These contrasting results are explained by a positive bias in the county-pair specification when using pairs formed by counties from different commuting zones." 

The Trouble With MedPAC

A federal advisory board tries to undermine Medicare Advantage.

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"MedPAC last month estimated the government will spend $76 billion more this year for seniors on Medicare Advantage than if the same seniors were covered by traditional Medicare fee-for-service. It estimated excess payments to Medicare Advantage plans at $84 billion in 2025 and $88 billion in 2024. That’s a lot of money, but its estimates are based on faulty assumptions."

"MedPAC claims that seniors in Medicare Advantage are healthier than those in fee-for-service because they incur less spending. Ergo, insurers must be coding them as being sicker than they are. Maybe, but that’s hard to square with the fact that Medicare Advantage enrollees are also more likely to be low-income and have poor self-reported health status.

A more likely explanation is that plans do a better job of ensuring conditions are diagnosed and treated, thereby reducing unnecessary spending and hospitalizations. In a new study published in Health Affairs Scholar, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services officials found excess risk-adjusted payments on the magnitude of 1.5% to 2%, about $5 billion to $6.6 billion a year—far less than MedPAC’s estimates."

Texas’ Self-Defeating H-1B Pause

The MD Anderson Cancer Center is one of the institutions that will feel the pain

By Collin Levy of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"the claim that work visas take jobs from American citizens doesn’t hold up. The Texas unemployment rate was 4.3% as of December, and in Austin—where high-tech jobs cluster—it was just over 3%. Foreign workers in the U.S. typically fill gaps in the labor market that aren’t met by American citizens. A 2020 study by the National Foundation for American Policy found that an increase in H-1B visas within a profession was associated with a decrease in the unemployment rate in the profession."

"Mr. Abbott’s visa ban directs the heads of state agencies and public universities to inform the Texas Workforce Commission how many H-1B petitions they submitted in 2025—as well as “documentation” that Texas candidates had a “reasonable opportunity to apply for each position.” It also asks for the “countries of origin of all H-1B visa holders the entity currently sponsors.” When I asked the governor’s office why it is asking for countries of origin and if there are particular countries of concern, I was directed back to his press release and letter, which don’t address the questions." 

DEI Is a Threat to Americans’ Health

By Stanley Goldfarb. Excerpts:

"They changed [medical schools] their curricula to teach economic and social lessons that ladder up to the false claim that America is systemically racist. The LCME [Liaison Committee on Medical Education] has tacitly approved this shift by issuing vague standards that give medical schools far too much leeway. The resulting lack of rigor allows unprepared students to slide through undemanding courses while undercutting the preparation needed to become excellent doctors."

"The traditional two years of pre-clinical education required to become a doctor has been significantly reduced at more than a third of medical schools. This gives short shrift to the foundational curriculum in genetics, biochemistry, biostatistics and epidemiology."

"At 80% of M.D.-granting schools, the foundational courses in basic science and clinical skills are now graded pass/fail"

"The first part of the national licensure exam that determined residency placement has also been changed to pass/fail"

"a growing number of medical students lack a strong grasp of basic medical knowledge."

"At UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine . . . more than 50% of students failed basic tests on family medicine, pediatrics and emergency medicine. Nationwide, the percentage of medical students who pass the first part of the licensure exam has fallen every year since 2020, dropping from 97% to 89%"

"Even liberal medical journals have begun to question the state of medical education. A 2025 New England Journal of Medicine article on the use of pass/fail in medical school asked, “Is ‘Good Enough’ Good Enough?”" 

Two Confusions About the California Wealth Tax

Unrealized capital gains aren’t classified as taxable income in the U.S. for good reason

Letter to The WSJ. 

"At least two confusions discredit Mayra Castañeda’s attempted defense of California’s proposed wealth tax in her letter “Billionaire Tax Would Save Calif. Healthcare” (Feb. 4). She claims that “billionaires pay less in taxes on their overall wealth than working families do.” She gets away with this because the research that she cites, although it postures as measuring the taxation of incomes, in fact measures the taxation of paper wealth by classifying unrealized capital gains as taxable income.

But unrealized capital gains aren’t classified as taxable income in the U.S. for good reason. Were these gains treated as such, taxpayers—including many middle-class families—would have to liquidate assets whenever tax season rolled around to pay their bills. One result, in addition to this annual hardship, would be a shrinkage of America’s capital stock which, in turn, would slow wage growth as workers, having less capital to work with, would be less productive than otherwise.

Ms. Castañeda also ignores the most prominent argument against the proposed tax—namely, that it will drive billionaires, along with their taxable incomes and wealth, to states that are less greedy to seize the fruits of high-earners’ efforts. This exodus of billionaires would occur even if, contrary to fact, counting unrealized capital gains as taxable income were a sound idea.

Prof. Donald J. Boudreaux

Mercatus Center

George Mason University"