Latest / Hoover Daily Report / Hoover Daily Report | March 16, 2026

Transcript

Hoover Daily Report | March 16, 2026 · Hoover Daily Report

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Hoover Daily Report, Ideas Advancing Freedom. It's Monday,
• 0:04
  March 16th, 2026.
• 0:06
  Today,
• 0:07
  Joshua Rau debates one of the creators of the proposed California billionaire's
• 0:11
  tax on its merits and points out how it will leave California worse off in the
• 0:16
  long run.
• 0:17
  Ross Levine writes in the voice of Adam Smith to articulate exactly how the
• 0:21
  invisible hand directs economic cooperation among millions of
• 0:26
  participants in the marketplace.
• 0:28
  And Russ Roberts explores why Duke University hands out free tickets to one of
• 0:33
  its most sought after sporting events.
• 0:35
  Hoover's Joshua Rao debates California billionaire's tax law creator at Stanford
• 0:40
  event. Hoover senior fellow Joshua D.
• 0:42
  Rao took his research criticizing the efficacy of the proposed California
• 0:46
  billionaire's tax,
• 0:47
  straight to one of its creators in a debate at Stanford on March 6th, 2026,
• 0:51
  arguing it will leave the state poor in the long run.
• 0:54
  In a public debate with University of California Berkeley economist Emmanuel
• 0:57
  Seas, a key architect of the proposed wealth tax Rao,
• 1:01
  a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, pointed to his own research,
• 1:04
  which shows the net present value of the tax is likely negative,
• 1:08
  meaning it will drive jobs and investment away from California for years if it
• 1:11
  has passed.
• 1:12
  Proponents of the wealth tax would liquidate Silicon Valley for an extra $2
• 1:16
  billion per year, Rau said. This is classic,
• 1:19
  not showing or considering what the economic damage would be of liquidating
• 1:23
  Silicon Valley. His study shows the proposal would leave the state worse off by
• 1:27
  an estimated $25 billion once future lost income tax revenue is considered.
• 1:32
  The invisible hand, how millions cooperate. Hoover senior fellow Ross Levine,
• 1:37
  again taking up the pen of Adam Smith,
• 1:39
  focuses on Smith's most famous contribution,
• 1:42
  the notion of the invisible hand that directs economic cooperation in a society
• 1:47
  built on rules and justice.
• 1:49
  There's nothing mystical about this hand Levine writes.
• 1:52
  It's merely the expression of voluntary exchange among people who benefit from
• 1:55
  trade. This concept has been mischaracterized as greed or selfishness.
• 2:00
  Levine writes, "But this is untrue.
• 2:04
  Yet neither is the hand benevolence.
• 2:07
  What some people supply and other people consume follows from their own needs
• 2:12
  and abilities," he writes,
• 2:13
  "And the process blossoms from ambition rightly guided." Ultimately,
• 2:18
  Levine notes, "The invisible hand transforms an economy for the better.".
• 2:23
  The economics behind Duke Basketball's ticketing tradition.
• 2:26
  On the latest episode of Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious.
• 2:30
  Host Russ Roberts speaks to Duke University economics professor Michael C.
• 2:34
  Munger about why Duke offers thousands of free tickets to its men's basketball
• 2:38
  team's game against its most hated rival,
• 2:40
  the University of North Carolina Tar Heels.
• 2:43
  They discuss the Byzantine system of rules and rituals that govern who gets the
• 2:46
  free tickets and use the legendary Duke UNC rivalry to explore the fundamental
• 2:51
  economics question.
• 2:52
  How do you deal with a world where there isn't enough of something to go around?
• 2:56
  Strategy for beginners, the three questions test. In a new column,
• 3:00
  military history and contemporary conflict working group,
• 3:03
  contributor Ralph Peters asks why the Pentagon appears to have foregone any
• 3:07
  articulation of military objectives before launching a gigantic air war against
• 3:11
  Iran. He picks up on the sentiment from the public,
• 3:14
  apparently baffled by the fact the articulated aims of the war keep changing.
• 3:19
  For the most powerful military in history, Peters writes,
• 3:23
  "We bake failure into the pie by declining to pose,
• 3:26
  let alone answer questions so basic that the average citizen would assume the
• 3:30
  answers had been examined in fine detail through war games,
• 3:34
  intelligence assessments,
• 3:35
  and common sense." Peter says there are three questions that must be asked
• 3:39
  before any military campaign, and the more cogent the answers are, the better.
• 3:44
  Civic values, learning about them, living them. Hoover senior fellow Chester E.
• 3:48
  Finn Jr. Discusses a new interactive tool, civic profile,
• 3:52
  that explores what Americans know and believe about their role as citizens of a
• 3:56
  democracy. What's Mor Finn says in an interview,
• 3:59
  "The tool's ability to capture the ways Americans express their civic values may
• 4:02
  inspire greater personal understanding of their responsibilities and build
• 4:06
  stronger communities.
• 4:07
  Civic Profiles collected survey data holds value for scholars,
• 4:12
  researchers and teachers as well," he says.
• 4:15
  "And in the future will enable even closer readings of Americans' views about
• 4:20
  how they live in a free society.
• 4:22
  "Why authoritarians target women?
• 4:24
  Despite suppress women to visibly show their power,
• 4:27
  to dilute resistance and to recruit anti-democratic allies,
• 4:31
  writes Malena Kapoor in liberty amplified. In Afghanistan,
• 4:35
  the Taliban has used sex-based persecution to flaunt its authority and cement
• 4:40
  its internal legitimacy, she writes,
• 4:43
  singling out perhaps the worst example of this injustice.
• 4:46
  Anti-regime protests in Iran, meanwhile,
• 4:49
  have endured despite official persecution,
• 4:52
  and these protests far from feudal, have created a crack in the Mullah's power.
• 4:57
  Kapoor writes that the Iranian example demonstrates how women's rights are both
• 5:01
  a rallying point for democratic activism in that land and an example for the
• 5:06
  world.
• 5:06
  Featured from the Hoover Library and Archives collections, conflict records,
• 5:10
  research center records,
• 5:11
  experienced digitized documents and sound recordings captured by the United
• 5:15
  States military,
• 5:16
  including Al-Qaeda and associated movements documents captured in Afghanistan
• 5:21
  and Saddam Hussein regime documents and sound recordings captured in Iraq.
• 5:25
  That's your Hoover Daily Report for Monday, March 16th, 2026. Each weekday,
• 5:29
  we bring you research, analysis, and commentary focused on public policy,
• 5:34
  national security, and the ideas shaping American society and government.
• 5:39
  The Hoover Institution at Stanford University is grounded in constitutional
• 5:43
  principles with a commitment to sustaining the safeguards of the American way of
• 5:47
  life. Thank you for listening.
• 5:49
  For links to all the articles and interviews mentioned today,
• 5:52
  visit hoover.org/hdr.