Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein's latest weekly column is up at the Hoover Institution's Web site. It's about the New York City planning department's proposal to limit the width of storefronts on Broadway, Columbus, and Amsterdam avenues on Manhattan's Upper West Side. He writes:

Scroll down through the Planner's defense of the UWS plan, and the word "compensation"—as in compensation to those landlords affected by the burden of the proposal—will not be found.

Earlier this month in the item about work conditions at Amazon's warehouse, I almost wrote that the more these workers and the press complained about work conditions, the more likely it was that they'd be replaced with robots. I restrained myself, though, probably in part because I didn't want to be lambasted for heartlessness (which I was criticized for anyway). Now comes the news that Amazon is spending $775 million to acquire Kiva. Reports Reuters: "Kiva develops robots that zip around warehouses, grabbing and moving shelves and crates full of products. The technology helps retailers fulfill online orders quickly and with fewer workers."

"Santorum Slams Romney's Wall St. Ties" is the headline the Boston Globe put on its Republican presidential campaign story this morning, and it is more or less accurate. From the article:

"I heard Governor Romney here called me an economic lightweight because I wasn't a Wall Street financier like he was," Santorum told several hundred supporters in Rockford, Ill. "Do you think that's the experience we need? Someone who's going to take and look after, as he did, his friends on Wall Street and bail them out at the expense of Main Street America?"

And, later:

Later, Santorum downplayed the economic concerns that Romney has made the central theme of his campaign.

"I don't care what the unemployment rate's going to be," Santorum said. "Doesn't matter to me. My campaign doesn't hinge on unemployment rates and growth rates. It's something more foundational that's going on."

A Bloomberg View column by Alice Schroeder is pretty negative about Warren Buffett. It mentions at the end that "The AFL-CIO Reserve Fund submitted a proposal for a shareholder vote in May seeking more transparency about Buffett's successors and regular updates to ensure the process will be board-driven." Details are available in Berkshire's proxy statement, which says the The AFL-CIO Reserve Fund owns 1,282 shares of Class B Common Stock and wants a "written and detailed succession planning policy."

"One of America's most powerful labor leaders, teachers union president Randi Weingarten, has quietly moved out of New York City, a decision that saved her from paying more than $30,000 in city income taxes that she would have owed if she had stayed." So begins my latest weekly column; please check it out at the New York Sun (here) or at Reason (here).

Molly Munger, daughter of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway partner Charlie Munger, is pushing a California ballot initiative that would raise the state's income taxes. Coverage by Joe Mathews is here, by the Economist is here, by the Sacramento Bee is here, and by the Pasadena Star-News is here. Ballotpedia.org reports that the initiative "Increases personal income tax rates for annual earnings over $7,316 with a sliding scale that increases the tax rate from .4% for lowest individual earners to 2.2% for individuals earning over $2.5 million." All told it would be a state tax increase of more than $120 billion over 12 years. The state income tax rate in California is already 9.3% for income above about $50,000 a year, 10.3% for income above $1 million a year.

New York Times columnist Joe Nocera has an article this morning that runs under the headline "The Good, Bad and Ugly of Capitalism." It holds Starbucks and its CEO Howard Schultz out as an example of good capitalism and Goldman Sachs and its CEO Lloyd Blankfein out as an example of bad capitalism. "Maybe the time has come for Blankfein to watch what Howard Schultz is doing at Starbucks. Sometimes, the best way to do well really is to do good," Mr. Nocera writes. He says of Mr. Schultz, "Profitability is important, he believes, but so is treating customers, employees and coffee growers fairly."

The Wall Street Journal has a useful story explaining the fight over the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Delta airlines is complaining that the U.S. government is making it possible for foreign airlines to buy American-made Boeing planes at lower prices than domestic carriers who in some cases compete on the same routes:

Delta has the backing of the airline industry's main trade group, Airlines for America, for which Delta CEO Richard Anderson serves as chairman. The group says financing credits from the Export-Import Bank allow Boeing customers overseas to finance jets at an interest rate at up to half the cost of U.S. carriers. That amounts to an annual saving of roughly $4 million and $5 million on the purchase of a $261 million Boeing 777 aircraft, the airline trade group has said. For an order of 100 jets, that could potentially mean $500 million a year in savings.

Mayor Bloomberg stopped by Goldman Sachs yesterday in a show of support, and on his radio show today called press coverage of Greg Smith's public resignation from the firm "ridiculous."

"You know, Goldman Sachs is a firm that's been around for well over a hundred years and it's a great firm," Mr. Bloomberg said on his radio show, according to a report in the Daily News. "It's my job to stand up and support companies that are here in the city that bring us a tax base that employ our people and I'm going to do that."

Goldman is doubtless a decent-sized customer of Mr. Bloomberg's financial information terminal business, and I don't think Mr. Bloomberg is running for re-election as mayor. But even so, in the current Goldman-bashing and Wall-Street bashing environment, the visit and the comments probably just about qualify Mr. Bloomberg for a Profile in Courage Award.

From Timothy Geithner's speech last night to the New York Economic Club:

The three primary economic imperatives we face today are supporting economic growth now, making the right investments and reforms to make our economy more competitive over time, and restoring fiscal sustainability. These imperatives require that that we resolve the fundamental political divide in this country about the appropriate role of government in the economy.

It's pretty interesting that even Mr. Geithner says there is a "fundamental political divide in this country about the appropriate role of government in the economy." Mitt Romney has said just about the same thing. It may be that Mr. Geithner is overestimating the degree to which Republicans would restrain or roll back government involvement in the economy, i.e., campaigning against a straw man, but it may also be that he's on to something. I'm not necessarily sure this is winning political turf for the Democrats and Obama, but apparently they think it is.

YouTube video with dramatic background music embedded below:

From an article in the Willamette Week (link via Jim Romenesko):

In 1865, this geezer named William Jevons noticed that every time a new innovation came along to get more energy out of the same amount of coal, coal use actually went up. Jevons realized that increasing efficiency reduces cost, reduced cost leads to increased demand, and increased demand leads to increased consumption....If the Jevons paradox applied to hybrid cars, we'd expect to see folks driving more, or faster, or less efficiently or all three. Sure enough, a 2009 study by an insurance-industry group found that hybrid owners were driving as much as 25 percent more miles than their all-gas counterparts, and getting more traffic tickets.

Amity Shlaes has a Bloomberg View column up about inflation:

Author Daniel Yergin tells the story of a student in Freiburg who ordered a cup of coffee in a cafe; the price was 5,000 marks. Then he had another. When the bill came, it was 14,000. "If you want to save money and you want two cups of coffee, you should order them both at the same time," he was told.

And:

Another way to put this is how the central banker Henry Wallich did. Inflation is like a banana, Jerry Jordan of the Cleveland Fed quoted him as saying. Once you see one brown spot, it's too late.

Why does the New York Times, when it reports on a fundraiser that John Catsimatidis held for Mitt Romney, insist on describing Mr. Catsimatidis as a "supermarket magnate"? Here is Mr. Catsimatidis in a 2009 interview with Steve Forbes:

Steve Forbes: Now, in addition to groceries and real estate, you're also in the energy business. What's going to happen with that?

The White House has released its list of guests for the state dinner for Prime Minister Cameron. Highlights include Susan Buffett, Warren Buffett, and Astrid Buffett, Orin Kramer and Kerry Kennedy, Charlie Rose and Amanda Burden, Antonin Scalia, and "Ms. Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers, East Hampton, NY." Also, Terry McAuliffe, but not Bill Clinton.