I’ve heard it said that “you never forget where you were when you heard that President Kennedy was shot.”  I remember, but most American’s don’t because Kennedy’s assassination was 54 years ago and most Americans weren’t alive then.

Like many Americans, I am convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald, the person who shot President Kennedy, did not act alone.  The convincing evidence, as I see it, is that Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby, who was convicted of the murder but died of lung cancer in prison while his case was being appealed.

There is no doubt that Ruby killed Oswald, because that killing was televised, but why did Ruby do it?  Oswald was already in custody, and if he was the actual assassin, he surely would be sentenced to death.  The only reason for Ruby to kill Oswald first would be to keep him from revealing his conspirators.

California is an innovation leader in lots of areas except one: K-12 education. Enacting education savings accounts (ESAs) would help.

As I detail in a new policy report, California’s public-school system, which largely rations education based on where a child’s parents can afford to live, is a relic of a bygone era. Such a system cannot provide the customized learning students need to succeed. That’s why a growing number of states are enacting ESA programs.

Similar to health savings accounts (HSAs), which put individuals in charge of their healthcare, ESAs empower parents to direct their children’s education.

The ESA concept is simple. Parents of a student who is not thriving in public school simply withdraw her or him and sign a contract promising not to re-enroll their child while using an ESA. Next the state deposits the per-student formula funding it would have spent into that child’s ESA instead. Under most programs parents receive type of dedicated-use debit card to pay for authorized expenses including private school tuition, online courses, testing fees, tutoring, and special education therapies. Any leftover funds remain in the child’s ESA for future education expenses, including college.

The Catalan independence movement has drawn some support among libertarians.

From a theoretical standpoint, any group’s attempt to break away from a larger political entity is hard to argue with. Ultimately, though, the principle of self-determination, taken to its logical extreme, would mean dissolving the state and replacing it with voluntary associations. Which is why some classical liberals have taken a more limited view of self-determination.

Ludwig von Mises, for instance, argued in Liberalism that the only defensible self-determination was that of individuals, not nations, and since it is impracticable on technical grounds, it is necessary to accept the will of the majority in a given territory.

I first met Fred S. McChesney (1948–2017) at the Federal Trade Commission in the early 1980s. Ronald Reagan had just been elected to the presidency and had appointed James C. Miller III as the FTC’s chairman. Robert D. Tollison had been confirmed as the Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Economics. I am not sure how Fred ended up on the FTC’s professional staff after having practiced law in the D.C. area, but he was serving as the Bureau of Consumer Protection’s Associate Director for Policy and Planning when I interviewed for a position in his “shop.” That interview did not turn into a job offer from Fred, which was a blessing in disguise because I ended up working instead for Bob Tollison. Fortunately, that near-miss did not preclude our future friendship.

Being nearly the same age and with similar doctoral training in economics, Fred at the University of Virginia (UVA), me at Texas A&M, we later became intellectual soulmates, although I hasten to emphasize that I am not a lawyer. Fred was: He held a Juris Doctorate from the University of Miami’s Law School and had been counted among the first generation of students to graduate from the program created by then-Dean Henry Manne to produce lawyers with Ph.D.-level knowledge of microeconomic theory. Joint economics Ph.D.-J.D. degree programs are now thriving at George Mason University, New York University, and other schools, but Fred was on the leading edge of Henry Manne’s curricular innovation.

Tech Insider created a four-minute video on the history of Silicon Valley. It’s fun to watch and informative, especially for younger people who weren’t alive when “the Valley” went from groves and orchards to Apples and Googles.

The video doesn’t address one key question: How long will Silicon Valley survive? I discuss this in an earlier Beacon post titled “Death Valley? Peter Thiel and Steve Jobs on What Could Kill Silicon Valley.”

Network effects are keeping Silicon Valley vibrant in California, but everything has a tipping point. Too many burdensome taxes and regulations, coupled with increasing worldwide tech competition to create the next insanely great thing, could eventually turn Silicon Valley into Death Valley.

On Wednesday, the commissioners of Cook County, Illinois, repealed the controversial soda tax that went into effect in August of this year. December 1, 2017, will be the first day residents of Cook County will no longer be required to pay a one-cent-per-ounce tax on sugar sweetened beverages — and they’re better off without it. Although some of the costs are irreversible — one vending machine company estimated the tax cost them about $75,000 to reconfigure their machines — Cook County is now on a better path.

At one cent per ounce, Cook County’s soda tax was smaller than many of the soda taxes enacted elsewhere, which range from one and a half cents to two cents per ounce. Still, the Illinois Policy Institute (IPI), an independent but libertarian-leaning think tank, estimates that the tax effectively raises the price of soda by 50 percent. IPI reports that the after-tax price of a 12-pack of soda has risen from $4 to $5.97. That’s more than five times the local tax on beer, a stunning retail price hike confirmed by the professional fact-checkers at Politifact. A well-known principle of public finance is that some of the burden of a tax imposed at any link in the supply chain eventually gets shifted forward to consumers.

From the BBC:

The prime minister of Spain has two requests for the leader of Catalonia.

First: Clarify whether the region is, indeed, declaring independence from Spain. And second: If that is the case, take it back.

Otherwise, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy says, Spain will suspend Catalonia’s current autonomy, institute direct rule and possibly even jail the Catalan president.

It seems like Madrid means business and plans to use whatever means necessary to prevent Catalan independence.  I will certainly fault Catalonia’s leaders for declining to issue a clear declaration one way or the other on independence.  It seems that they are using the threat of independence as bargaining power and Madrid is calling the bluff.  No wonder the many people who recently voted to support secession seem disappointed and confused by the government’s dance.

The future of work has always been a hotly debated subject. The heat has been turned up recently with advances in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). One view, expressed by Stowe Boyd, lead researcher at GigaOM Research, is that robots will yield a net reduction in jobs for humans, “The central question of 2025 will be: What are people for in a world that does not need their labor, and where only a minority are needed to guide the ‘bot-based economy?”  This view believes that there will be less demand for human labor in the future, resulting in a net reduction in human jobs over time.

An alternative view, however, is that technology is not destiny, and that throughout history, technology has been a job creator overall, not a job destroyer. Dr. Fei-Fei Li, chief AI scientist with Google Cloud expressed this perspective at the Startup Grind Global Conference 2017. Li, who is not an economist, provides, nevertheless, a succinct two-minute economic argument against “robogeddon” (watch until 16:46):

Dr. Li correctly notes that AI and robotics will cause job displacements (they already have), and yet new jobs have been created and will be created in the future. An economy heavily dependent on AI and robotics will demand people who work well with computers and robots, and who are comfortable working in environments of accelerating change.  Such an economy will also pay a premium for uniquely human characteristics such as empathy, creativity, judgment, dexterity, touch, or critical thinking that allow businesses to reach deeper into the needs of consumers, as Li notes. The jobs that people perform in the future will be more uniquely “human.”

Technological change always brings uncertainties and disruptions. But history shows that human ingenuity and entrepreneurship has enabled new technologies to coexist with a growing human labor force. Some jobs, likely very different jobs than today, never succumb to widespread automation.

The big question is will the U.S. education system evolve to produce people who can compete in the global economy of the future, or will other countries produce the best talent? As the global workforce becomes ever-more interconnected, network-based, and virtual, increasingly someone in Minneapolis will compete with someone in Hong Kong, Bangkok, or New Delhi. It is critically important that U.S. schools develop the uniquely human skills and characteristics that will be highly valued in the future.