Classical liberal. Pouncing, seizing, etc. DTW-DCA Views my own.
Arlington, VA
Joined January 2011
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Data centers are being blamed for surging electricity bills and grid strain. But decades of regulation, endless permitting delays, and state net-zero mandates are undermining markets, preventing new power plants from being built, and forcing early retirements of reliable power.
We can have AI, environmental progress, and affordable energy. We just need the freedom to do it.
My @PostOpinions op-ed with @realsampeterson:
Alex Stevens 🗽 retweeted
When my colleagues and I criticized that hideous ad from Vivek Ramaswamy, I seem to remember being told that only a RINO squish who didn’t have the guts to handle hardball politics would object. No less a figure than the vice president of the United States told everyone, “stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days.”
Well, how’s that ad working out so far?
"The private poll, commissioned by a Republican group and obtained by Axios, found Acton leading Ramaswamy by eight points — up from a two-point lead in the same poll earlier this month, before the ad began circulating on Oct. 19.
The ad “is having a significant effect on the gubernatorial race,” a memo attached to the poll states."
Oh, is it now?
The Ramaswamy campaign apparently spent $4 million on an ad that makes people want to vote against him. Yesterday, Ramaswamy said the ad “ran to completion.”
Alex Stevens 🗽 retweeted
This seems mostly like the “tax cuts pay for themselves and fix the debt” of the left.
Economic growth is incredibly important — both for our fiscal future and for standards of living ordinary Americans. We should do what we can to boost growth.
But it’s extraordinarily unlikely we’re gonna grow away out of our debt. And we’re certainly not gonna spend our way to enough growth to grow away out of our debt.
This kind of wishful thinking is just gonna delay the hard choices and make them even harder.
Stuck between tax hikes (Scylla) and spending cuts (Charybdis) it's time to consider a secret third thing (rowing faster).
@ZLiscow takes on the deficit hawks for @TheArgumentMag.
theargumentmag.com/p/how-to-…
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Notice that no one thinks that immigration makes it more difficult for people to buy phones, shoes, food, etc.—the discussion always focuses on housing. So the takeaway should be that there is a problem with the housing supply, not immigration.
Q: How does the right and yourself expect us to start families young when the average price of a home in America costs more than $415,000 which feels out of reach for us.
Vance: The reason why housing exploded is in part because we allowed 20 million illegal aliens into our country to buy homes that ought by right go to American citizens.
Alex Stevens 🗽 retweeted
The Routledge Handbook of Classical Liberalism is now open access, which makes it free to read on Kindle.
Edited by @RichardAEpstein, Mario J. Rizzo, and @MissLiyaP the volume is a collaboration between the Classical Liberal Institute and the Institute for Humane Studies that pushes classical liberal ideas forward.
Read it free: link.amazon/B06sWgcEv
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New data out from @ReasonFdn on state and local government finances.
About half of state and local long-term debt is unfunded liabilities for retirement benefits for government workers.
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Which party do workers favor heading into the midterms?
Here's one last thread with data from the new @InnovateEconomy / @EchelonInsights American Worker Survey.
With the cost of living at the top of their minds, workers look set to vote heavily D. 🧵
Alex Stevens 🗽 retweeted
In fact, ethanol mandates drive up food prices and have no environmental benefit
slowboring.com/p/the-dumb-po…
This quoted post is unavailable.
Alex Stevens 🗽 retweeted
A canny journalist would be asking why people are willing to pay thousands of dollars of premium to avoid Bay Area public transit.
San Francisco households could save thousands of dollars a year by ditching their cars for public transpo, according to a new report: kron4.com/news/traffic/going…
Alex Stevens 🗽 retweeted
Gabriel Zucman @gabriel_zucman has now for the third time criticized our research on California’s proposed billionaire tax, claiming we have provided “no answer” to his criticisms.
nitter.cf/gabriel_zucman/status/…
We have actually already responded twice on this platform, but let’s address his arguments once more in detail, with the hope that third time’s the charm. 1/14
This Hoover Institution study, which has fueled the deluge of ads (more than $200 million spent by billionaires so far) to defeat the California billionaire tax, is spectacularly misleading.
Let me explain its crucial flaw. 🧵
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Zucman argues that the tax will raise his projected revenue because billionaires who leave CA after 1/1/26 will be taxed anyway.
At least $542B of net worth (Page, Brin, Thiel) departed the state by 12/31/25.
The entire thread is a misleading denial of this fact.
ft.com/content/d66976…
nytimes.com/2026/04/27/us/…
forbes.com/sites/forbeswe…
Alex Stevens 🗽 retweeted
In the face of ongoing disruptions in energy supplies, a coalition encourages @POTUS to announce an extension of your Jones Act waiver.
@AmerComm @AFPhq @aea @ForFreeMarkets @taxreformer @CFEconomy @CFandP @CTR4Transport
@ceidotorg @ConsumerChoiceC @exiledpolicy @VanceGinn @IWF @Pinpoint_Policy @RioGrandeFndn
@SBECouncil @JoinYoungVoices
Alex Stevens 🗽 retweeted
Trump's tariffs-and-subsidies package has a single common effect across industries: Increasing businessmen's dependence on government.
President Donald Trump announced at a Kansas rally that his administration is introducing an $8 billion aid package for farmers in the face of high diesel and fertilizer costs. cnn.it/4yvIQxu
Alex Stevens 🗽 retweeted
I think you're right. Economic and political freedoms are actually a package deal, and it's not accidental the correlation between them is so strong. The way I think about it is that they are both systems for making the life of incumbents hard. The way economic incumbents keep competition out indefinitely is by political connections, and the way political incumbents keep power indefinitely is by taking control of the distribution of economic benefits. So it's not really feasible to have economic freedom without democracy or democracy without economic freedom. @VincentGeloso and @ATabarrok have a nice paper looking more closely at the empirics.
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What does ethanol have to do with AI policy?
I’m glad you asked. Mistakes were made. We are headed for more of the same.
dailywire.com/news/why-washi…
Alex Stevens 🗽 retweeted
Big net outflow of high-income/high-net worth households in the Northwest, according to local homebuilders we just surveyed.
Recent tax policy shifts in Washington state are a major factor, compounded by tech-sector job losses in Seattle, H-1B visa chaos, etc.
Alex Stevens 🗽 retweeted
Nearly two years after the Palisades fire, the reservoir that was empty during the fire is still out of service.
NEW: A Red Flag Warning is putting LA on alert as the Palisades’ Santa Ynez Reservoir remains OFFLINE for repairs.
The community is still relying on a 6-mile hose line for water as dangerous Santa Ana winds raise wildfire concerns.
“It feels unsettled,” Councilwoman @TraciParkforLA tells FOX 11.
Alex Stevens 🗽 retweeted
Jones Act waiver has now crossed the 300 voyage mark, with over 80 million barrels transported. – at Washington, DC
Alex Stevens 🗽 retweeted
Donald Trump won two presidential elections by promising to put American workers first.
Ahead of the 2026 midterms, we @InnovateEconomy have asked American workers themselves how they judge the president’s economic stewardship and what they think about the key economic issues of our time.
The findings should deeply worry Republicans.
Let's start with tariffs, the president's signature economic policy:
While in 2025 a sizable share of workers gave the president the benefit of the doubt, a year and a half on from Liberation Day, workers have soured on tariffs mightily.
Perhaps the survey's single most important finding is the collapse of support for tariffs among blue-collar workers specifically.
While in 2025 blue-collar workers expressed net support for the policy (49 percent to 46 percent), these ostensible tariff beneficiaries now oppose tariffs 58 percent to 36 percent.
Alex Stevens 🗽 retweeted
The @DallasFed tries to answer what’s behind high diesel prices?
“Global refinery capacity has declined by as much as 10 percent amid mounting transportation challenges and geopolitical tensions.”
dallasfed.org/research/econo…
Alex Stevens 🗽 retweeted
I've been noodling on my Great Decompression thesis for a year, flipping from the 80th percentile to the 90th as my focal point, flopping from worker earnings to family earnings, and so on and so forth.
Today the idea gets clarity, thanks to the masterful data work and cogent distillation of @CardiffGarcia and @BenGlasner.
Cardiff and Ben present a quantitative mosaic that, I genuinely believe, explains the American politics of the past decade and a half.
Indexed to December of the recession-riddled 1982, the median wage has climbed in real terms, but it has been substantially outpaced by the real-wage growth at the 90th percentile.
While when discussing the Great Decompression I've looked almost exclusively at the upper half of the wage distribution, Cardiff and Ben unveil another reason why median earners might be discontented:
Not only are median earners being left in the dust by those at the top, they're also being caught up to by those at the bottom.
Paradoxical as this is, the median wage has lagged not only the 90th percentile, but also the 25 and the 10th. (And adding insult to injury, the 75th, too.) Check out Cardiff and Ben's six interwoven stories on real wage growth @InnovateEconomy.
