Aaron Rothstein

A stretcher in a hallway is not a hospital bed. The wrenching story of my dying husband’s last days. For @TheAtlantic and @KFFHealthNews theatlantic.com/health/2026/…

UnitedHealth Seeks PR Boost by Suing Online Critics racketmn.com/unitedhealth-no…

Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center locked teens in their rooms for long stretches without cause amid staffing shortage startribune.com/report-henne…

An 81-year-old man in Quebec strangled his wife to death with a rope because she had dementia and he "wasn't capable of enduring it all." He says he acted "out of love." How many people will opt for euthanasia to spare their spouse hardship or jail time? montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-m…

Euthanasia for the side-effects of Seroquel. Why not? cbc.ca/news/canada/british-c…

This week's roundup from Understanding America: The Arc of the Economics Debate Is Long, But It Bends Toward Tariffs Your one thing to read this week is my new essay @TheAtlantic, “Trump’s Most Misunderstood Policy Proposal: Economists aren’t telling the whole truth about tariffs.” In many ways, the essay is a sequel to one I wrote last year for the @WSJ, which focused specifically on the idea that “making things matters.” Economists had generally opposed tariffs, I noted there, because they rejected the idea that a strong domestic industrial base was something worth preserving. From that starting point, of course a tariff would seem silly. But force economists to concede that making things does matter, and their opposition to tariffs becomes much harder to sustain. What they have done subsequently is to produce skewed assessments of a tariff’s effects, counting costs but not benefits and looking only at the shortest-term impacts. The new essay addresses all that: if you acknowledge that making things matters, and properly analyze the long-term tradeoffs associated with a tariff, the case in favor looks quite strong. The argument’s strength is most evident in the bizarre angle from which critics are attacking it. If making things didn’t matter, or a proper cost-benefit analysis didn’t support a tariff as an effective tool, one might expect opponents to start there. What they’ve done instead is reject the basics of market logic entirely. Maybe making things matters to the nation, they argue, but individuals pursuing their own private interest will take this into account and ensure the strength of the American industrial base of their own accord. There is no market failure, no externality, and to suggest otherwise is to privilege the collective over the individual’s freedom. For instance, @RichardHanania takes the phrase “collective economic, political, and societal harms” to mean “literally just every collectivist anti-market argument in history.” It should go without saying, but apparently does not, that use of the term “collective” does not make an idea “collectivist.” If you have to throw out the basic rationale for most public policy to make the case against tariffs, you may not be winning... THIS WEEK AT @AmerCompass The Compass Point is from @MartyManley, challenging organized labor to rethink collective bargaining: To Honor Labor, Rethink Unions “Roosevelt backed the NLRA not only out of sympathy for striking workers, but also because he believed that industrial unrest compromised America’s ability to confront the growing menace of German fascism. Between the perceived fading of the American dream that motivates much of our era’s populism and the need to reindustrialize in the face of China’s rise, perhaps enterprising politicians can find the right catalyst for today.” Also on The Commons @UVA fellow Sam Pressler on college, From the ‘Great Connector’ to the ‘Great Sorter’ @DrewHolden360 @AmerCompass on An Unsafe Bet @MikeNeedham at American Compass on A Constructed Crisis in Charleroi Bruno V. Manno @ppi on how the U.K.’s Labour Party Gets Learning Right And, on the American Compass Podcast this week, Marc Fasteau and Ian Fletcher @cpa_tradereform join me to discuss the history and future of American industrial policy. WHAT ELSE SHOULD YOU BE READING? Re: Human Resources… @CNN discovers that McDonald’s Touchscreen Kiosks Didn’t Destroy Jobs Re: The Cruelty Is the Point… @CharlesFLehman in The Atlantic explains why Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Huge Mistake Re: The Old College Try… Sara Hendren considers The How and the Why of Higher Education Re: Hard Cases Make Bad Law… @AaronRothstein @NationalAffairs on Origins of the Modern Euthanasia Movement Enjoy the weekend, and subscribe to Understanding America! Read more and get all the links from this week's roundup here: understandingamerica.co/p/th…

Physicians are dropping their profession in droves: 1 in 5 doctors plan to leave medicine in the next two years, while 1 in 3 plan to reduce hours. Doctors resist 'burnout' as the explanation. ‘You’re not burned out’, fellow physicians say; ‘you’ve been abused’.

Canada finds a medically assisted solution to medical malpractice: cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/…