Independence Institute

Are Auto Accidents a Disease?0
- TRANSPORTATION - Miscellaneous
- May 19, 2011
Somebody thinks they are. The Centers for Disease Control just released a study saying that crash-related deaths cost $41 billion a year. This smells to me like a government agency seeking more funding by jumping into an area outside of its core mission. The first thing to note about this study is that it is […]
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Market Asymmetry 0
- TRANSPORTATION - Miscellaneous
- May 18, 2011
Along with Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, Gregory Zuckerman’s The Greatest Trade Ever shows that at least some investors were aware that the housing bubble of the mid-2000s was likely to collapse, with severe repercussions on the economy. The book (whose alternate subtitle is “How One Man Bet Against the Markets and Made $20 Billion”) […]
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Driverless Cars vs. High-Speed Rail 0
- TRANSPORTATION - Miscellaneous
- May 17, 2011
The Los Angeles Times says the California high-speed rail project “is a train wreck” that has become “a monument to the ways poor planning, mismanagement and political interference can screw up major public works.” But the newspaper still favors “Obama’s inspiring vision of a nation crisscrossed by bullet trains, providing cleaner, safer and cheaper competition […]
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The Wrong Measures 0
- TRANSPORTATION - Miscellaneous
- May 16, 2011
Late last week, with great fanfare, the Brookings Institution released a new report on “Transit and Jobs in America.” Too many people, the report found, live too far away from a transit stop, so it urged more investments in transit so that more people can use it. Data in the report itself discredited this logic. […]
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