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3 weeks ago | 
thesling.org | Mark Glick |Gabriel Lozada |Darren Bush |David Berri
Free trade is under increasing attack by both the progressive left and the populist right. Although the left and the right offer different policy solutions—the progressive left stresses combining industrial policy, antitrust policy, and support for labor with targeted tariffs, while the populist right advocates a wider use of tariffs combined with stricter immigration policy—supporters of both of these groups no longer adhere to the neoliberal free trade approach advocated by most economists.
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Jul 4, 2024 | 
wagesofwins.substack.com | David Berri |Hal Singer |Darren Bush
Okay, can’t resist that title!I recently had the great privilege of being on a podcast called The Slingshot (a great name!). This podcast comes from The Sling, a website that aims to be “the source for progressive antitrust and consumer protection law and economics.” In a broader sense, The Sling is focused on how people with power exploit those who don’t have power.
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Jun 12, 2024 | 
thesling.org | Hal Singer |Darren Bush
Neoliberal columnist Matt Yglesias recently weighed into antitrust policy in Bloomberg, claiming falsely that the “hipsters” in charge of Biden’s antitrust agencies were abandoning consumers and the war on high prices. Yglesias thinks this deviation from consumer welfare makes for bad policy during our inflationary moment. I have a thread that explains all the things he got wrong.
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Feb 23, 2024 | 
thesling.org | Darren Bush |Hal Singer |Kenny Stancil
Since the boycott of the U.S. News and World Report Rankings (“U.S. News Rankings”) by a group of law schools, the U.S. News Rankings have gone a bit haywire. The top law schools, all highly ranked, refused to submit data to U.S. News. Other schools followed their lead. As a result, U.S. News changed its rankings, perhaps focusing a bit more on publicly available data. But that has led to speculation of potentially wild results.
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Oct 20, 2023 | 
thesling.org | Daniel A. Hanley |Laurel Kilgour |Darren Bush
For years, journalists have reported numerous instances of worker exploitation, hazardous working conditions, and poverty wages in the nail salon and fast food industries.
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Oct 16, 2023 | 
thesling.org | Darren Bush |David Berri |Tim Cowen
It has become quite common to accuse antitrust enforcers of bias and seek their recusal. FTC Chair Lina Khan and DOJ Antitrust Division AAG Jonathan Kanter have been the subject of calls for recusal in cases involving corporate giants such as Meta, Amazon, and Google. The argument is that these individuals are biased in their enforcement of antitrust law. Ideology, in the case of Chair Khan, was initially honed by writing an article in law school and working for a non-profit.
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Aug 30, 2023 | 
thesling.org | Justin Stofferahn |Hal Singer |Darren Bush |Mark Glick
In July, a proposed $13 billion mega-merger between Sanford Health, the largest rural health system in the county, and Fairview Health Services, one of the largest systems in Minnesota’s Twin Cities metro, was called off. Abandonment of the merger came after concerted opposition from farmers, healthcare workers, and medical students, emboldened by passage of state legislation that creates much stronger oversight of healthcare mergers.
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Jun 11, 2023 | 
thesling.org | Sandeep Vaheesan |Ted Tatos |Darren Bush
The mid-sized town of Springfield maintained a speed limit of 25 miles per hour on a one-mile stretch of Main Street that was home to both an elementary school and a middle school. The speed limit had been in force for decades. Children as young as three walked on the sidewalks and sometimes unexpectedly darted across the street. By forcing drivers to slow down, the speed limit minimized the risk of serious injury and death.
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Jun 7, 2023 | 
thesling.org | Ted Tatos |Darren Bush |Tyler Clark
The announced PGA-DP World Tour-LIV Golf “partnership” (read, merger) has reverberated throughout the sporting world, sending shockwaves across not only the golf industry but the sports world as well. ESPN reported players reacting with “complete and utter shock” at the announcement, as did, much of the sports media, calling the news “stunning”. Let’s clear the air. None of this was surprising in the slightest.
