Libertas Institute

08/21/2026

Salt Lake City’s recent short-term rental ordinance continues to ban vacation rentals across residential zones, locking operators out of 75% of the city’s housing supply.

Municipalities don’t need blanket bans to protect neighborhood peace when targeted enforcement works far better:

• Nuisance rules—like 24/7 local contacts and three-strike parking or noise violations—directly punish bad actors.
• Blanket zoning bans and arbitrary 200-night annual caps penalize responsible homeowners without cause.
• Cities should regulate short-term rentals like accessory dwelling units: broad approval paired with strict penalties for repeat violations.

Treating every property owner like a nuisance preemptively limits consumer choice and violates basic property rights. Local governments can preserve neighborhood character simply by enforcing existing noise and parking laws against actual violators. 🏘️

Should local governments have the power to tell homeowners they can't rent out their property short-term?

Let us know below.

Salt Lake City’s recent short-term rental ordinance bans vacation rentals across residential zones, locking operators out of 75% of the city’s housing supply.

08/20/2026

Only 1.1% of American hourly workers earned the federal minimum wage in 2023. Every argument built on that $7.25 number is arguing about the wrong thing.

Start with the influencer math flooding social media. The claim is that one hour of work today buys just one Big Mac, down from two in 2005. But $7.25 in 2005 equals roughly $12.75 in today's dollars, so the comparison stacks two different currencies against each other and calls it decline.

Measured against actual median wages, which now sit north of $64,000 a year, or over $30 an hour, an hour of work buys closer to five burgers, not one.

The market has already moved far past the legal floor. Wendy's advertises up to $18 an hour. The average hourly wage in Texas runs about $35, nearly five times the federal minimum.

Wages are set by supply and demand, not by legislation, and right now demand is pricing labor well above anything Congress wrote into law.

08/18/2026

A staggering 83% of released state prisoners are rearrested within nine years, with nearly half returning to crime within their very first year out.
Confining someone behind bars controls where they are today, but it completely fails to reform who they become tomorrow:

• Traditional prisons restrict physical freedom without teaching long-term personal responsibility.
• Peer-led therapeutic communities like Utah's The Other Side Academy (TOSA) achieve a 72% success rate five years post-graduation.
• TOSA operates entirely free of government funding, funded instead by student-run vocational businesses like moving companies and thrift stores.

Replacing pure isolation with strict peer accountability, hard work, and mentorship breaks generational cycles of crime far better than a cell block ever could. 🤝

Should non-violent offenders be allowed to earn their freedom through intensive, work-based accountability programs instead of prison time? Let us know below.

08/18/2026

We believe that America's best-trained workforce shouldn't have to start over.

🔗 https://libertas.institute/occupational-licensure/americas-best-trained-workforce-shouldnt-have-to-start-over/

08/17/2026

Five years ago, Utah started rebuilding how kids get educated.

Two laws later: ~20,000 students funded and microschools legal in every zone in the state. Here's what it actually took.

The question every back-to-school season forces on parents: does this school actually fit my kid?

08/14/2026

Did Missouri voters really choose to save their income tax? 📉

Media headlines framed the recent defeat of Amendment 5 as Missourians voluntarily choosing to keep their income tax. But that misses the bigger picture.

The proposed amendment wouldn't have just cut taxes—it set up a swap, giving lawmakers the leeway to expand and increase sales taxes to offset the difference. Voters didn't reject tax relief; they rejected a revenue-neutral tax shift that could have raised everyday costs for families.

Genuine free-market reform requires spending restraint and actual tax reduction, not simply shuffling where the government gets its money.

Read the full analysis from Libertas Institute here:

The lesson from Missouri isn’t that states should stop cutting income taxes. It’s that voters want a clear roadmap for phasing them out, and clarity about the transition would look like.

08/14/2026

The predictions were confident. The unemployment rate is 4.2%. Read why forecasting AI is a fool's errand.

🔗 https://libertas.institute/free-market/economists-keep-trying-to-predict-ais-future-they-keep-getting-it-wrong/

08/13/2026

Your smartphone hands the government more personal information than a British redcoat could have learned by living in your spare bedroom for an entire month.

The Fourth Amendment was designed to stop blanket surveillance, but modern technology bypassed that barrier without asking for your permission:

• Flock cameras in roughly 30 Utah cities log vehicle license plates and track location history without a legislative vote.
• Data brokers collect sensitive movement data from everyday mobile apps and sell it directly to government agencies.
• Geofence warrants sweep up location records for every individual near a targeted area, regardless of innocence.

Digital tools eliminated the real-world friction that previously protected constitutional rights. Restoring that safeguard requires requiring warrants backed by probable cause before tracking citizens. 🔍

Do you believe location tracking without a warrant violates your constitutional rights?

250 years ago colonists fought blank-check searches. Today it's license plate readers and data brokers. The Fourth Amendment fight isn't over.

08/12/2026

The doom-and-gloom narrative that AI will eliminate entry-level jobs and create a permanent underclass is crumbling under real-world economic data.

Recent findings tell a completely different story than Silicon Valley doomsayers predict:

• Data from Ramp shows that companies adopting AI at the highest rates are actually increasing entry-level headcount.
• New York Federal Reserve research confirms that firms report very few AI-driven layoffs across major industries.
• AI acts as a equalizer, providing the average person with bespoke tutoring and technical capabilities previously locked behind expensive law or business degrees.

Rather than concentrating wealth among elite tech hubs, generative tools flatten the learning curve and allow everyday individuals to build businesses on their own terms. 🚀

How are you currently using AI tools to expand your skill set or business operations? Let us know in the comments.

https://libertas.institute/ai-regulation/zuckerberg-is-correct-about-ai-the-positive-ai-future-is-already-here/

08/12/2026

A judge can send someone before sentencing. After? The door legally locks. Here's why that needs to change.

🔗 https://libertas.institute/free-market/utahs-per-prisoner-cost-and-the-programs-that-cost-nothing/