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Connecting today’s news with the research & opinion you need.

We Should Have Known

What to Know: Minimum wage hikes accelerate the use of robots in the food industry. But New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio has a solution—he wants to tax robots. Of course.

The TPPF Take: The real problem here is the minimum wage, not tax-dodging androids.

“When we artificially raise the minimum wage, we eliminate lower-wage, lower-skill jobs, while benefiting higher-wage engineers and computer programmers,” says TPPF’s Elliott Raia. “Hikes hurt the people they’re supposed to be helping. Instead, government should let people prosper by getting out of the way, so that workers’ benefits and technological advances are based on markets, not mandates.”

Fire Prevention?

What to Know: Pacific Gas & Electric, California’s biggest utility, is cutting power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses—in an effort to prevent wildfires in the state’s mismanaged wilderness areas.

The TPPF Take: While blackouts might be a preventative of last resort, California’s wildfire problem is really a problem of bad public policy.

“Decades of environmental mismanagement has created a tinderbox of unharvested timber, dead trees, and thick underbrush,” says TPPF’s Chuck DeVore. “Cutting power to thousands of Californians will reduce ignition sources but where there’s fuel, there will be fire.”

Guess Again

What to Know: U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently tweeted—wrongly—that a “fracking” site in Colorado was polluting the air. There was no fracking, and there were no emissions (the graphic showed heat signatures).

The TPPF Take: Fracking is safe. One of her Democratic colleagues responded correctly, “we do ourselves no favors” when Democrats deny facts and science.

“This is part of a narrative aimed at banning fracking, which will drive up energy costs—something that has a clear and measurable effect on health and mortality,” says TPPF’s Katie Tahuahua. “That’s why we must oppose policies—including fracking bans—that will drive up the cost of electricity and fuels, and instead encourage American innovation and energy independence.”