Back in the USA mailbag

'90s pop-punk, bad transportation secretaries, and journalistic navel-gazing

Vacation is over, which is no fun, but there continues to be some good news in the world.

Substack as a whole seems to be thriving and passed two million total paid subscriptions this week. The new Kansas City airport looks really nice. The first solar peaker plant is now under construction. Insulin is getting cheaper, under pressure from new competition and new the Biden administration. Patriots are in control in the Pennsylvania state legislature. Gavin Newsom continues to fight the good fight against his state’s deranged courts.

This is not good news per se, but on the general upbeat theme, I read a really interesting paper about alcohol regulations. The authors note that states have a lot of non-tax regulations in place, the purpose of which is to constrain alcohol consumption, and they argue with charts and graphs and numbers that replacing these with taxes reduces consumption without reducing consumer welfare and generates a huge tax windfall.

On to the questions!

Hilary: Sinc…