At the recent 2018 Ideas Conference hosted by the Center for American Progress, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) called attention to his earlier proposal for a Corporate Freeloader Fee. In his remarks, Senator Brown explained “it’s simple – if you choose to pay your workers so little that they are disproportionately forced onto government assistance, then you need to reimburse American taxpayers. This will save taxpayers money, and give companies an added incentive to invest in … human capital.”

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is about to announce a new proposal that would guarantee a job to every American worker “who wants or needs one,” according to the Washington Post. Details are scarce, as Sanders has not identified a funding source and the Congressional Budget Office has not provided a cost estimate. But the Sanders’ office stated that the new jobs would pay $15 an hour and offer a range of benefits such as health care.

While Amazon’s relationship with the U.S. Postal Service generated most of the headlines this week, another significant development flew relatively under the radar. This week Maryland’s House passed an incentive package totaling $8.5 billion, following passage in the Senate last month it will now head to Governor Larry Hogan's desk. The package is the largest in the state’s history and the most recent development in the competition to land the company’s second headquarters.

The 2019 budget proposal from D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser would increase taxes on ride-hailing services such as Lyft and Uber in order to increase funding for the beleaguered Washington Metro system, among a slate of other tax increases. Metro has struggled with a series of problems, from reduced service to falsified inspection reports to fires on the system.

In an investigation released this week, the Veterans Health Administration was again found to have been incorrectly reporting the wait times experience by veterans seeking care. The scandal first caught national attention in 2014, when investigations discovered widespread wait-time manipulation, and more than 100 facilities were investigated. Those revelations led to the resignation of then-Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki, as well as laws intended to increase accountability at the Department and increase access to care outside of VA facilities for veterans. Unfortunately, this new audit found that the pattern of misreporting wait-times continues.

A recent memo and presentation by a staff member of the National Security Council suggested that the federal government should build and operate the fifth-generation mobile network, or 5G. The report argues that the federal government should build a centralized 5G network within three years, citing the need to protect against actions from China or adversarial actions from other groups.

The inability of the federal government to organize its affairs should not distract from progress at the state level. Even though an increasing number of Americans work in occupations subject to licensing requirements, from 5 percent of the workforce in 1950 to about 30 percent today, some states are fighting back.

Rent control policies have come back in vogue for some cities grappling with higher housing rents and people worried they will not be able to live in growing, prospering cities. Perhaps no city in the country encapsulates the concerns about housing affordability and availability more clearly than San Francisco, where the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment is more than $3,000. A new paper analyzes the effects of rent control expansion in the city and finds that it reduced rental housing supply, causing a city wide-rent increase. 

Senator Sanders recently embarked on a tour of the Canadian health care system as part of his push to bring single-payer to the United States. But problems with the provision of healthcare in Canada and the United Kingdom show that, despite what Sanders might tell you, moving to a single-payer system will not magically cure all that ails the American health care system. Rather, it would exacerbate those problems.