Category Archives: News commentary

Were it not for the 2021 infrastructure bill, the Antiplanner would probably be enjoying high-speed internet now. But thanks to the bill, which included $65 billion to extend broadband internet to underserved areas, I probably won’t get it until 2028.

Camp Sherman is in a rural area that is mostly out of cell phone range. CenturyLink, the local phone company, provides DSL service that is slow and unreliable. An internet speed test reports download speed of less than a megabit per second, about 1/250th of what I could get elsewhere and for less money. Continue reading →

U.S. fertility rates have fallen to just 1.6 per woman. This has led some to fear that the United States may face the same kind of demographic collapse that is besetting Japan.

While some may cheer that this makes overpopulation less of a problem, low fertility rates translate to serious economic problems. As demographer Peter Zeihan notes, people in their 20s and 30s spend lots of money, people in their 40s through 60s save money that can then be used for investments in improved productivity, but older people large retire from the economy. The young consumers drive economic growth and the middle-aged savers fund that growth. If the ratio of younger people to older people falls too low, then the economy stops growing, which reduces economic mobility and security. Continue reading →

Why do we still have a postal service? In 2021, the agency cost federal taxpayers around $18 billion in operating and capital subsidies. Plus, in 2022, Congress bailed it out from having to pay $56 billion of employee health care obligations, meaning federal taxpayers are now obligated to cover those costs.

Around 250 years ago, mail was the closest thing the prospective nation had to the internet. When the Continental Congress was forming the fledging U.S. government, it decided in 1775 that America’s mail should be carried by a federal agency, not the states or private enterprise. One reason for creating a federal post office was to bring the country closer together, as distances would be less important if it cost the same to mail a letter across the country as across the street. This was critical as the land area of the original 13 states was far bigger than any European country other than Russia. Continue reading →

Mike Myers, the director of Portland’s community safety program, is in charge of reducing gun violence and increasing street safety. This job paid him $208,263 last year, and he manages to do it while working at home. Home, for Myers, happens to be a gated community in Las Vegas, 750 miles from Portland.

Click image to review a copy of this report.

Perhaps it is only a coincidence that Portland has seen the fastest-growing homicide rates in the highest in the nation and the city suffered a record number of homicides in 2022. Or perhaps there are some jobs that just can’t be performed as well at home, at least if that home is hundreds of miles away. Continue reading →

“Nobody wants to be in a large, crowded city during a pandemic, but what about afterward? Don’t they miss bright lights? Theater? All-night diners?” asks MoveBuddha, a relocation service. “So far, the answer has been, ‘no.'” The company’s data show that net migration continues to be away from major cities and to small towns and exurban areas.

Click image to review this report.

The only cities over 250,000 that saw positive net in-migration actually prove the rule that people are leaving large, dense cities. Honolulu saw 2.19 in-migrants for every out-migrant, but the city of Honolulu covers the entire island of Oahu, of which only 37 percent is urbanized, so many of those in-migrants may have gone to rural parts of the city. The second-most was Anchorage at 2.17 in-migrants for every out-migrant, but, like Honolulu, Anchorage covers a huge area that is rural. In fact, less than 4 percent of the borough of Anchorage is considered urban. The only other two large cities that are gaining more in-migrants than out-migrants are Tulsa and Charlotte. At fewer than 2,000 people per square mile Tulsa is one the lowest-density big cities in the country (and also one of the most affordable), while Charlotte isn’t far behind at about 2,500 per square mile. Continue reading →

Nearly 2,000 people and corporations owe the state of Oregon and state transit agencies more than $330 million in delinquent taxes, according to data recently released by the Oregon Department of Revenue. The list includes taxpayers who owe more than $50,000 apiece. Unfortunately, the list isn’t linkable (you have to go to the Department of Revenue web site, scroll down to “Tools,” and click on “Delinquent Taxpayer List”), it isn’t sortable, and you can’t view more than 5 percent of the list at one time.

American Patriot Brands, doing business near Medford under the name of Urban Pharms, owes Oregon more than $27 million in corporate income taxes.

To remedy these problems, I’ve copied and pasted the entire list into a single Excel spreadsheet. The links from the spreadsheet to “detailed information” on individual taxpayers don’t work, but if you want more information, the spreadsheet lists the order in which the taxpayers are listed. Divide by 100 and add 1 to get the page on which they are listed on the original list (for example, taxpayer 405 is on the 5th of 20 pages). Continue reading →

Portland used to call itself “the city that works,” and I pointed out in a paper 16 years ago that, not only was it not working, it was especially ironic that it borrowed that claim from Chicago, another dysfunctional city. But if Portland wasn’t working in 2007, it is anti-working today, that is, actively working to alienate as many people and businesses as possible.

The latest example is Kevin Howard, who has been a Portland property developer for 40 years. The last property in the city that he owned was worth $800,000 a few years ago, but he was forced to sell it for little more than half that due to repeated invasions by homeless people and the city’s failure to do anything about it. Continue reading →