consumer

Despite coughing up reams of information about themselves in exchange for often minimal benefits, consumers are now suddenly concerned about their privacy. 

John Nothdurft and Donny Kendal present episode #111 of the In The Tank Podcast. Today’s podcast features work from the Tax Foundation, the Illinois Policy Institute, The Property and Environment Research Center, and the Fraser Institute.

Lindsey Stroud and Jesse Hathaway speak with Jeff Stier about the government’s misguided war on e-cigarettes and electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS).

Congratulations to Google on Pokemon Go. Google’s parent company Alphabet incubated and spun out this latest highly successful data-collection-device – for sale to advertisers everywhere.

The electronic payments industry has revolutionized worldwide markets, making services like Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, and touch and pay systems possible. As the industry grows and innovates, consider the effects of this technology on the US economy.

A new report from the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan government agency tasked with auditing, evaluating, and investigating government affairs for Congress, faults the Internal Revenue Service for failing to properly secure taxpayer data, leaving taxpayers’ private information at the mercy of hackers, both domestic and foreign. The report, delivered to IRS chief John Koskinen on March 28, says the IRS has failed to make recommended improvements to its financial and information-technology procedures.

In this episode of The Heartland Daily Podcast, managing editor Jesse Hathaway talks with Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Sophia Cope about the Federal District Court for the District of Central California’s recent demand that Apple, the $700 billion tech company producing consumer products like the iPhone and iPad, assist the Federal Bureau of Investigations with their investigation into the December 2, 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack by devising a way to unlock the deceased terrorist’s iPhone without a password.

Hosts Donny Kendal and John Nothdurft continue to explore the world of think tanks in episode #27 of the In The Tank Podcast. This weekly podcast features (as always) interviews, debates, roundtable discussions, stories, and light-hearted segments on a variety of topics on the latest news. The show is available for download as part of the Heartland Daily Podcast every Friday. Today’s podcast features work from the James Madison Institute, the Mercatus Center, the John Locke Foundation, the American Energy Alliance, and Reason.

Supporters of education reform who advocate for government-funded choice mechanisms, such as vouchers, tend to argue the problems in K–12 schools in the United States are primarily economic matters, not pedagogical. This view is validated by much data, but the concept ought to be extended further to say the economic marketplace in which K–12 education operates needs more than vouchers to become as efficient as it needs to be to deliver a quality education to each and every child.

In today’s edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, managing editor Jesse Hathaway talks with Berin Szoka, president of TechFreedom, a non-profit organization devoted to promoting the progress of technology that improves the human condition, about how regulators both at home and abroad are using the power of the state to combat zero-rating, a kind of sponsored-data plan where access to popular web applications like Facebook or streaming video services is made available to consumer at no cost.