Remember when then-New York mayor Michael Bloomberg banned sales of sugary drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces? The idea was that the ban would cause people to drink fewer ounces of sugary drinks overall. (For Richard Posner's take on that issue, go here.) The New York Court of Appeals ultimately threw out Bloomberg's ban on New […]
From time to time, we discuss evidence about what types of consumer education and regulation (for instance, prohibitions on industry conduct vs. disclosure obligations) best protect consumers. So, I was intrigued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's research study entitled The power of light-touch financial education: A demonstration with credit card revolvers. Here is the agency's summary […]
According to this story by Matt Fuller, the original sponsors of the bill to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act have now been cut out of the legislative process and won't know what they are voting on. And it sounds like the last-minute revisions will cause massive harm to people most in need of essential health […]
Brian posted yesterday about the House hearing. For those who don't want to listen to the recording, you can find reports in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Rep. Ann Wagner takes aim at consumer protection chief), Housing Wire (Tensions escalate at House hearing on constitutionality of the CFPB), Money (This Lawmaker Just Gave the Perfect Defense […]
An Urban Institute report issued today on the "American Health Care Act" finds that, "taking both tax reductions and benefit reductions into account, the average high-income family would be significantly better off and the average low-income family would be significantly worse off under the AHCA." Specifically, under the bill, "[t]he average family with less than […]
Law prof Lawrence Gostin says preliminary evidence suggests that they will in 2016: The Year of the Soda Tax. Here's the abstract: The year 2016 was pivotal in the history of the “soda wars” – the politically divisive conflict between soda as a joy of life or as a uniquely harmful food. This past year, the […]
Consumerist reports that a hacker group claims to unprecedented access to iPhones and is threatening to remotely wipe them clean if Apple doesn’t pay a ransom. Motherboard reports that the group of hackers — known as the Turkish Crime Family — allegedly gained access to a list of between 300 million and 559 million iCloud […]
Go here to view the witnesses' written testimony. (The witnesses were Ted Olson, Saikrishna Prakash, Adam White, and Brianne Gorod.) To watch the hearing, click here or on the embedded video below.
Law prof George Yin has written a brief and timely paper called Congressional Authority to Obtain and Release Tax Returns. Yin is the former chief of staff of Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation. In his paper, Yin explains that particular congressional committees possess the power to obtain, review, and disclose filers' tax returns in limited circumstances and […]
That's the topic of Moral Commitments in Cost-Benefit Analysis by law profs Eric Posner and Cass Sunstein. Here is the abstract: The regulatory state has become a cost-benefit state, in the sense that under prevailing executive orders, agencies must catalogue the costs and benefits of regulations before issuing them, and in general, must show that their benefits […]