Reflections on Americans’ Net Worth

By Bryan Caplan. Excerpt:

"I’ve been an economics professor for almost 30 years, but I don’t think I’ve ever before seen anything like the table below. I knew that claims that “58% of Americans can’t afford a $1,000 car repair” were laughable clickbait. I knew that — measured by income — the middle class is disappearing… by becoming upper-middle class. But only recently did I start to fully appreciate the chasm between populist pessimism and actual data on Americans’ net worth. From the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances: 

 

"Main reflections:

1. Economists have long known that inequality is relatively low for consumption, medium for income, and high for wealth. What they rarely emphasize, however, is how much wealth depends on age. The richest Americans aged 65-69 are worth about 30x as much as the richest Americans aged 18-24.

2. Net worth is very high in absolute terms. The median is over six figures by the mid-30s. Americans at the 75th percentile are millionaires by their mid-50s. Americans at the 90th percentile are millionaires by around 40. Claims about middle-class, middle-aged Americans who “can’t afford” eggs or gas or beef are nonsense.

3. The most sensible argument for worrying about trade deficits is that we’re “living beyond our means.” Trade deficits represent borrowing, and we can’t keep borrowing forever. But given Americans’ extraordinary net worth, the most sensible argument for worrying is still senseless. After 50 years of unbroken trade deficits, we’re wealthier than ever."

  

Despite government spending and regulations on green energy transitions, fossil fuels still accounted for 76.3% of Canada’s domestic energy consumption in 2024 compared to 76.8% in 1995

By Kenneth P. Green, Julio Mejía and Elmira Aliakbari. They are all with the Fraser Institute.

Energy Facts - Canada Edition

• Despite continued discussion about energy system transitions, fossil fuels remain central to Canada’s energy system. In 2024, they accounted for nearly 88% of domestic energy production and more than 76% of energy consumption.
• Pipelines remain essential for the country’s energy system. Over the past decade, pipeline safety has improved, with safety incidents falling by nearly 60% and the share of incidents involving product releases declining from 83.2% in 2014 to 20.6% in 2024.
• Canada’s largest energy-consuming sectors remain heavily reliant on fossil fuels: in 2024, fossil fuels supplied nearly three-quarters of industrial energy use, and more than half of residential energy use, with natural gas remaining the dominant source, particularly for space heating. Meanwhile, fossil fuels accounted for almost 99% of the transportation sector’s energy consumption in 2024.
• The energy sector is also a major economic contributor, representing 6.9% of Canada’s total economic activity. Its importance is even greater in some provinces: energy accounts for 30.1% of Alberta’s economy, 22.7% of Newfoundland & Labrador’s, and 21.5% of Saskatchewan’s.
• Energy is one of the top 10 categories of average household spending. Over the past two decades, energy prices have risen faster than overall inflation and have been more volatile than many other household expenses, increasing pressure on family budgets.
• Overall, fossil fuels remain essential to Canada’s standard of living, and ensuring reliable, affordable, and safe energy systems will remain a key priority in the years to come.

Most European Countries that Had Wealth Taxes Have Repealed Them

By David R Henderson. Excerpts:

"According to the OECD, 12 OECD countries had individual net wealth taxes in 1990, and all 12 were European countries. By 2017, only four OECD countries still had them" 

"the likely reason is that they were losing some of their wealthiest residents to other countries that didn’t impose taxes on wealth." 

AI and Employment: So Far, So Good

By Alex Tabarrok.

"In September 2023, the Census Bureau added questions about AI to its Business Trends and Outlook Survey. Census asked hundreds of thousands of businesses whether they had used AI in the previous two weeks to produce goods and services. At that time, 3.7% said yes; by late 2025 the figure had reached about 10%. (In November 2025 Census broadened the question to ask about AI use in any business function, producing a jump in measured adoption to about 18%.)

Twice the Bureau has asked a key question:

In the last six months, how did the use of Artificial Intelligence affect this business’s total employment?

In Dec. 2023 to Feb 24, when ~5% of firms were using AI the answers were 2.8% increased, 2.6% decreased and 94.6% reported no change. Two years later, in the Nov 2025–Feb 2026 supplement, the answers were: 2.3% increased, 2.0% decreased, and 95.7% reported no change. The answers were similar by firm size.

Some sectors reported more action. Information is the one sector where fewer than 92% report no change. But overall, almost all firms report no change and of those reporting change it’s about evenly divided between increasing and decreasing employment.

 

The supplement also asked about tasks. Among firms using AI, 44% say it supplemented or enhanced work an employee already does. Ten percent say it performed a task an employee used to do. Eleven percent say it introduced a task no one had been doing.

Among those using generative AI, 85% of firms cited writing or editing documents and email as the biggest uses, half cite searching for information, 45% summarizing documents, and 13% coding. Sixty-four percent of adopters say they changed nothing about the business in order to use AI, 15% trained existing staff, another 15% built new workflows, and just over one percent hired anyone with AI skills.

Among firms where AI has taken over some employee tasks, the degree of substitution is growing. The share reporting that AI took over “a large number” of tasks rose from 2.4% to 7.1%, while the share reporting “a moderate number” rose from 13% to 22%. But this group is still small: only about a tenth of AI adopters, who themselves make up about a fifth of firms.

I have reported firm-weighted estimates but employment-weighting gives essentially the same result. Thus, we have unusually direct evidence from a very large sample, and it says that the overwhelming majority of firms using AI do not yet report any effect on total employment. Very consistent with what Tyler and I said in our talk to OpenAI."

 

Occupational Licensing Across Countries

By Jeffrey Miron. 

"The standard argument for occupational licensing is that it keeps out low-quality providers. Existing evidence, however, does not support this claim; moreover,

licensing erects barriers that can restrict labor supply and worker mobility, with potentially far-reaching implications for wages, employment opportunities, and economic efficiency.

Indeed, new research suggests that

[c]ountries with higher licensing rates tend to have lower output per person, larger informal sectors, and lower scores on multiple dimensions of governance quality, including regulatory quality, rule of law, political stability, and control of corruption.

Licensing is not only a problem in advanced economies. Instead,

it appears to be a widespread labor market institution spanning countries with diverse legal systems, income levels, and regulatory traditions. […] Countries with lower income levels, weaker governance institutions, or larger informal sectors may adopt additional licensing requirements in an effort to improve quality, increase compliance, or formalize economic activity.

The research concludes that

[c]ountries with higher rates of occupational licensing tend to have lower output per person, larger informal sectors, and lower scores on multiple dimensions of governance quality."

No, Marijuana Legalization Didn't Fill Emergency Rooms With Stoned Drivers

By Aaron Brown. He teaches statistics at New York University and at the University of California at San Diego. Excerpts:

"Last October, The Wall Street Journal published an editorial titled "More Marijuana Users Are Crash Dummies."

"How much social and public-health damage will Americans suffer before doing a U-turn on marijuana promotion?" the editorial begins. "A new study finds that more than 40% of drivers who died in car accidents in one U.S. county over the last six years had elevated levels of the drug in their blood.

The "new study" they cited is available only as an abstract and a short press release describing a conference presentation of an unpublished report, with no supporting details. After the Journal editorial appeared, we made several attempts to speak with the lead author, Wright State University professor of surgery Akpofure P. Ekeh, to obtain a copy of the draft study and answer some basic questions. We were unable to reach him. A public information officer at the American College of Surgeons, where Ekeh is a member, told us via email that the study "is a research-in-progress, meaning there is not yet a complete study that I am able to provide.""

"The claim that 40 percent of deceased drivers had elevated levels of marijuana in their blood isn't trustworthy because THC testing is only ordered in some cases, presumably the ones when driver impairment is suspected." 

"Drivers were likely tested because they were suspected of intoxication."

"Also, testing the blood of autopsied drivers doesn't mean they were high while driving. THC in the blood generally indicates that someone has used marijuana in the previous few days. Postmortem THC tests are particularly unreliable."

Another study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety did claim to show a difference between pre- and post-legalization of marijuana use by drivers by examining changes in accident rates in five Western states. It found that legalization was associated with a 2.3 percent increase in fatal crash rates.

Here's how the authors presented the data.

 

The blue dots represent seasonally adjusted monthly motor-vehicle fatalities before legalization, the orange dots represent those after legalization, and the dashed lines show the averages before and after legalization.

The three-year average traffic death rate in legalization states was 9.5 percent higher after legalization than before. The pattern was the same in the control states that did not legalize, but they had only a 6.5 percent increase. After some complex adjustments, the authors attributed a 2.3 percent increase to legalization. It looks like a big jump. But that's because the chart presented the data in a misleading way.

I recharted the data and, unlike the authors, I made it into a time series, accounting for changes in the rate of traffic deaths during the study period. This way, you can see the trends, which undercut the authors' thesis.

The blue dots represent seasonally adjusted monthly motor-vehicle fatalities before legalization, the orange dots represent those after legalization, and the dashed lines show the averages before and after legalization.

The three-year average traffic death rate in legalization states was 9.5 percent higher after legalization than before. The pattern was the same in the control states that did not legalize, but they had only a 6.5 percent increase. After some complex adjustments, the authors attributed a 2.3 percent increase to legalization. It looks like a big jump. But that's because the chart presented the data in a misleading way.

I recharted the data and, unlike the authors, I made it into a time series, accounting for changes in the rate of traffic deaths during the study period. This way, you can see the trends, which undercut the authors' thesis.

 

The press release also had no mention of a control, so we have no idea if the drivers' THC-positive rate is higher or lower than for the general population. Scientific studies require a control. It also looked at one county in Ohio, covering data before and after marijuana was legalized there in 2023, and there was no significant change in the ratio of drivers with THC in their blood.

So the study, if it ever does appear, will have nothing to say on the impact of marijuana legalization on driving while high, and it won't present evidence that this practice is on the rise. That didn't stop The Wall Street Journal in its coverage of this yet-to-materialize study from claiming in its subhead that "high-on-pot drivers are contributing to more highway accident deaths."

The most explosive finding about the dangers of legal weed comes from a study by a team of Canadian researchers, who looked at emergency room records in Ontario before and after legalization took effect in October 2018. As CNN summarized it, the study found that "documented marijuana-related traffic accidents that required treatment in an emergency room rose 475% between 2010 and 2021."

Why is the 475 percent claim misleading? For starters, the news coverage didn't mention that we're talking about a very small number of people. During the period when marijuana was legalized and commercialized, 120,569 people showed up in Ontario emergency rooms due to traffic accidents. Just 125 people, or 0.1 percent of the total, "had documented cannabis involvement," according to the clinical judgment of the onsite medical team. Moreover, for every cannabis involvement patient, there were 18 with alcohol impairment. Of the people with cannabis involvement, 42 percent also had alcohol involvement. Cannabis alone does not seem to be the major intoxicant choice to impair driving. 

The tally of 125 people over 20 months works out to about six people per month. Before legalization, there were two people per month showing up at emergency rooms with "cannabis involvement." That's a 200 percent increase, not a 475 percent increase. Why did the authors claim a 475 percent increase? 

Marijuana legalization overlapped with the COVID-19 lockdowns. During the pandemic, people were driving much less, leading to a decline in total car accidents.

The authors wanted to adjust for this unusual situation, so they assumed that if people had been driving normally, there would have been many more marijuana-related accidents. That assumption, along with a few other adjustments, led them to raise the 200 percent increase to 475 percent.

This adjustment isn't valid. You can't compare COVID lockdown data with pre-COVID data because life was so abnormal. School closures in Ontario meant people were driving their kids to school less often, and many were working from home or were unemployed. Since most people who drive while high are less likely to do so while heading to work or taking their kids to school, you would expect an increase in the proportion of drivers on the road with marijuana in their system during the lockdowns, even if the absolute number stayed the same.

Another problem is that the 125 people counted by the researchers weren't necessarily high while driving. Just because they were classified as cannabis users in the E.R. doesn't mean they were under the influence at the time of the accident, or that marijuana caused them to crash their cars.

Some of those 125 people were passengers rather than drivers, which makes the inference that marijuana contributed to the crashes even more dubious. If someone who didn't use marijuana was giving a ride to a friend because he was too stoned to drive, and they still got into an accident, the passenger would have been counted as a patient with "documented cannabis involvement." That tells us nothing about whether marijuana legalization led to more traffic accidents.

Another problem with the dataset is that many of the people were counted because they admitted to the doctor at the E.R. that they were marijuana users. Patients would have been more willing to admit to their drug habit after legalization than before, which further biased the data.

by claims that legalization increases traffic accidents by 2.3 percent. Even if there were solid evidence for that claim, it's laughably inadequate to support a drug war." 

A Tale of Two Borders: Ceuta and Gibraltar

Why did removing border fences in Gibraltar spark no migration crisis, while Ceuta's fortified perimeter failed?

By Daniel Sánchez-Piñol of The Independent Institute.. 

"Just days after Spain celebrated winning the FIFA World Cup, it found itself making international headlines for a very different reason. Tens of thousands of migrants crossed from Morocco into Ceuta—Spain’s small autonomous enclave on the North African coast—overwhelming local resources and sparking an immediate crisis.

The political reaction was immediate. Criticism focused almost exclusively on Spain’s failure to secure its border. Because many migrants had bypassed the perimeter by swimming around it, Spanish officials quickly announced plans to construct new maritime barriers. To much of the international community, the lesson seemed simple: if the border had taller fences on land, better barriers at sea, updated intel, tighter controls, and tougher enforcement, the tragedy could have been prevented.

Spain took the heat. But the debate largely ignored a more fundamental question: Why are tens of thousands of Moroccans willing to risk their lives simply to leave their country?

The answer lies a few miles away, on the other side of the Mediterranean.

Only days before the Ceuta crisis, Gibraltar, the British Overseas Territory bordering southern Spain, removed physical fence barriers separating the two jurisdictions. There was no migration crisis. No sudden wave of Spaniards poured into Gibraltar, nor did Gibraltarians rush into Spain. Daily life continued uninterrupted; crossing the border simply became faster and easier.

Why did one border descend into chaos while the other barely made news?

The answer lies in institutional convergence.

In the mid-twentieth century, Spain and Morocco were not dramatically different. Authoritarian regimes governed both and relied on protectionist policies, running economies that rewarded political connections over entrepreneurship. In the early 1950s, Spain’s income per person was roughly twice Morocco’s—a modest gap by modern standards.

Today, Spain’s GDP per capita is roughly four times higher than Morocco’s. Meanwhile, the economic gap between Spain and Gibraltar has narrowed dramatically. That divergence explains why one border facilitates routine commerce while the other attracts desperate migration.

Spain’s transformation was no accident. Its 180-degree pivot began when the United States and the broader Western alliance sought to integrate the nation into a liberal democratic order. Following the 1953 Pact of Madrid, international isolation began to end. Spain joined the United Nations in 1955, and the 1959 Stabilization Plan abandoned decades of autarky in favor of fiscal discipline, trade liberalization, foreign investment, and market competition. Following Franco’s death, the democratic transition and subsequent integration into the European Economic Community anchored Spain’s rule of law, curtailed rent-seeking, and solidified its market economy.

Morocco has undertaken economic and political reforms of its own, but structural barriers to opportunity persist. Centralized power, militarized state, corruption, and cronyism continue to constrain entrepreneurship and job creation. These institutional weaknesses help explain why so many Moroccans look abroad for a future.

The contrast offers a powerful lesson. Paradoxically, the most effective long-term policy against irregular migration is not an impenetrable wall, but the expansion of institutions that generate opportunity: secure property rights, competitive markets, and the rule of law.

That was once a central objective of Western policy. During the Cold War, the United States and Western Europe invested considerable diplomatic, economic, and political capital in helping nations like Spain converge toward liberal market democracies. Today, that vision has largely been set aside in favor of a narrower focus on controlling borders.

But borders do not exist in isolation. What matters is what lies on either side of them. When institutional and economic gaps are wide, migration pressures grow, and borders become harder to enforce. When those gaps narrow, borders become easier to secure because fewer people have reason to cross them illegally.

The West cannot fence its way out of a problem by treating symptoms instead of causes. Ceuta and Gibraltar show that the most important border is still the institutional one."