Is the future of the GOP more libertarian, nationalist, or, somehow, both?

Joining us today is Vivek Ramaswamy, entrepreneur, author, and former presidential candidate. He's been making a hard pitch for what he's called a "libertarian-nationalist alliance" for the past several months. He was at the 2024 Libertarian National Convention where he tried to convince libertarians to vote Republican. Reason's Zach Weissmueller also saw Ramaswamy at the Republican National Convention, where he was trying to convince MAGA supporters to be more libertarian. Reason's Stephanie Slade saw him make his case for "national libertarianism" at the National Conservatism Conference. That event was also attended by vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, who has a different vision for the conservative movement. Those dueling visions are the subject of today's episode.

Note: This episode is plagued by technical issues due to a software malfunction. With the exception of an approximately nine-minute section (which is marked in the episode), the full conversation is intact.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

1. Vivek Ramaswamy's full talk at the National Conservatism Conference
2. J.D. Vance's full talk at the National Conservatism Conference
3. "Vivek Ramaswamy Debuts 'National Libertarianism' at NatCon 4," by Stephanie Slade
4. Vivek Ramaswamy: Don't "replace the left-wing nanny state with a right-wing nanny state."
5. "What I Learned From Paleoism," by Llewellyn Rockwell

• Producer: John Osterhoudt

The post Vivek Ramaswamy: Is There a Libertarian-Nationalist Alliance? appeared first on Reason.com.

How much do billionaires really pay in taxes?

"Today, the superrich control a greater share of America's wealth than during the Gilded Age of Carnegies and Rockefellers," said Gabriel Zucman in a recent New York Times opinion piece entitled, "It's Time to Tax the Billionaires."

Zucman is an economist at the Paris School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley, and a frequent collaborator with superstar economist Thomas Piketty, author of the extremely influential book on wealth inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

But today's guest, Phil Magness—an economic historian, author, and the David J. Theroux Chair in Political Economy at the Independent Institute—says the work of Piketty and his circle of inequality-obsessed colleagues is deeply flawed and sometimes outright deceptive. He points out that billionaires do pay taxes…a lot of taxes. And the inequality literature is riddled with errors and bad statistics.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

1. Magness' viral post debunking Zucman
2. Zucman's article discussed in the introduction
3. CBO: Tax credits awarded by quintile
4. Zucman's explanation for excluding the Earned Income Tax Credit (p. 19)
5. Tax Foundation: Summary of the Latest Federal Income Tax Data, 2024 Update
6. Piketty's inequality U-graph
7. Auten-Splinter adjustment, after-tax income for top 1 percent
8. Piketty: "r > g"
9. Piketty: Capital income has increased as labor income has fallen

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Introduction to Just Asking Questions: Billionaires and Taxes
• 01:38 Unpacking the Misleading Tax Rate Graphs
• 06:38 The Political Motivations Behind Misleading Tax Narratives
• 15:39 Analyzing the Impact of Tax Credits on Lower-Income Earners
• 22:32 The Real Tax Burden: A Closer Look at Wealthy Americans' Contributions
• 27:05 Countering Piketty's Inequality Data With Accurate Accounting
• 34:58 The Practical Problems With a Wealth Tax
• 40:04 Piketty's Inequality Narrative and Its Flaws
• 48:50 Global Financial Transparency and Taxation Proposals
• 54:40 The Moral and Economic Case Against High Taxation
• 57:48 Listener Q&A: Defending the Show's Title

• Producer: John Osterhoudt

The post Phil Magness: Who Really Pays the Most Taxes? appeared first on Reason.com.

What should colleges do about pro-Palestinian encampments?

College students across America are camping out to demand their universities divest all investments with Israeli-linked companies that they claim profit from the occupation and oppression of Palestine. It's gone on for weeks, and even administrators at schools known as bastions of progressive activism are finally getting fed up. Harvard's president is threatening "involuntary leave" for protesters. Columbia announced on Monday that it canceled its main commencement ceremony for safety reasons. The University of Southern California has, too.

UCLA called in the cops to clear its encampment, and police have arrested more than 2,100 protesters across all U.S. campuses since April, according to the Associated Press.

Congress has continued to interrogate Ivy League presidents, and a bill to explicitly define antisemitism for civil rights law enforcement purposes just passed the House with overwhelming support last week.

Joining us today to talk about the protests, the backlash, and what it all means for free speech on campus and the wider world is Nico Perrino, executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), and host of the free speech podcast So to Speak.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

1. Full Text of the Antisemitism Awareness Act
2. International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism.
3. Columbia students define "divest"
4. Harvard President Garber Breaks Silence on Encampment, Threatens 'Involuntary Leave' for Protesters
5. Columbia cancels commencement amid campus protests
6. Map: Where College Protesters Have Been Arrested or Detained
7. Polling 1,200 college students on Encampments
8. What Americans think about recent pro-Palestinian campus protests | YouGov
9. Americans' Views of Both Israel, Palestinian Authority Down
10. Majority in US Say Israel's Reasons for Fighting Hamas Are Valid | Pew Research Center
11. Letter from judges saying they won't hire Columbia grads as clerks

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Introduction
• 01:33 Free Speech on Campus: A Conversation with Nico Perrino
• 02:13 The Historical Context of Campus Protests and Free Speech Debates
• 07:28 The Legal and Social Implications of Campus Encampments
• 31:38 The Role of Civil Disobedience in Campus Activism
• 38:31 Evaluating the Effectiveness of Campus Protests Through Polling Data
• 43:07 Congressional Involvement in Campus Free Speech Issues
• 50:48 The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act of 2023: A New Legal Battleground
• 54:56 The Complexities of Free Speech and Political Expression on Campus
• 59:17 Navigating the Tensions of Privacy and Free Speech
• 01:03:42 The Role of Public Shaming and Cancel Culture in Free Speech Debates
• 01:20:03 Nico Wants You To Ask Yourself This Question About Censorship
• 01:23:58 Just Ask Us Questions: A Libertarian's Evolving Stance on Immigration

• Producer: John Osterhoudt

The post Nico Perrino: When Does Protesting Become a Crime? appeared first on Reason.com.

Should kids medically transition between genders?

The number of kids diagnosed with gender dysphoria has surged in recent years. In America, diagnoses have almost tripled from about 15,000 to more than 42,000 from 2017 to 2021. In the United Kingdom, the number of minors referred to the national Gender Identity Development Service grew from 51 in 2009 to 1,766 by 2016, leading to yearslong waitlists for care within the government-run health system.

This surge caused England's National Health Service to commission an extensive study of youth gender treatment. That study is known as the Cass Review, and its results dropped on April 10. The review's author, former head of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Hilary Cass, concluded that modern youth gender dysphoria interventions are informed by "remarkably weak evidence" drawing on studies "exaggerated by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint" and that "we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress." The science, it turns out, is not settled—or anywhere close to it.

NHS England opted to stop routine prescriptions of puberty blockers following the review's publication, as have NHS Scotland and the Welsh government. Major American medical groups such as the American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association, and American Academy of Pediatrics, all of which endorse prescribing puberty blockers for gender-dysphoric kids, have yet to officially respond.

American media coverage of the Cass Review, which could throw the entire youth gender treatment paradigm in this country into question, has been remarkably muted. But today's guest is never muted. Jesse Singal has been covering this topic—and taken a lot of heat for it—for years in the pages of publications such as The Atlantic, The Dispatch, and on his Substack, Singal-Minded.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

1. The Cass Review
2. "Putting numbers on the rise in children seeking gender care"
3. "What Went Wrong at the Tavistock Clinic for Trans Teenagers?" | SEGM
4. "Hilary Cass: I can't travel on public transport after gender report"
5. "Mermaids' response to The Cass Review—In Depth"
6. States with legislation to curb "gender-affirming care"
7. M.P. Dawn Butler admits to misrepresenting the Cass Review

Sources referenced in Just Ask Us Questions:

1. Reason TV: "A private libertarian city in Honduras"
2. Reason TV: "Don't 'Abolish the Police.' Privatize Them."

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Introduction to the Show and Topic: Kids and Gender Transition
• 02:14 Media Coverage and Jesse Singal's Insights
• 04:50 The Impact of Social Media and Activism on Youth Gender Medicine
• 09:36 Exploring the Tavistock Controversy and Its Implications
• 12:38 The Debate on Informed Consent and Medical Ethics
• 28:37 Social Contagion Theory and Its Effects on Gender Identity
• 34:03 Scrutinizing the Science Behind Gender-Affirming Treatments
• 42:32 Navigating the Complexities of Youth Gender Medicine
• 43:03 The Role of Data and Evidence in Gender Transition Debates
• 44:34 The Impact of Politics and Misinformation on Transgender Health Care
• 47:34 Exploring the Cass Review's Recommendations on Gender Medicine
• 49:24 Comparing Gender Medicine Practices: U.K. vs. USA
• 51:25 The Influence of Activism and Politics on Medical Standards
• 55:16 Addressing the Concerns Around Puberty Blockers and Hormone Treatments
• 01:20:32 Just Ask Us Questions: A Discussion of Anarcho-Capitalist Security

• Producer: John Osterhoudt

The post Jesse Singal: Should Kids Medically Transition? appeared first on Reason.com.