Weekly Writers Round-Up: Wasted Government Space, Solar Panel Mandates, and an Attack on the Gig Economy

Each week, we’ll be featuring opinion pieces from the alumni and current participants of AF’s Writing Fellows Program. A few highlights from the past week are below. Do you dream of having bylines like these? Applications for the summer session are now open!

GOP congressmen introduce simple plan to save taxpayers $15B by Brad Polumbo (Summer 2018) in the Washington Examiner
Given their propensity for subsidizing Serbian cheese and propping up the Pakistani film industry, government bureaucrats aren’t exactly known for putting taxpayer money to good use. But even with its wasteful reputation, the federal government’s mismanagement of public properties is far more shocking.

Thankfully, two Republican congressmen have a plan that could address this issue once and for all — and pass the savings on to taxpayers…

Are Solar Panel Mandates Helping Consumers Save Money? by Krisztina Pusok (Fall 2017) in The Economic Standard
California’s solar energy mandate was officially implemented at the beginning of this year, making the Golden state the first in the nation to implement a law that obligates all newly constructed houses to have solar panels. Hawaii, Arizona, Maryland, and other states have announced they will follow suit. While the mandate is an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, mandated solar panels will negatively impact homeowners by adding thousands of dollars to the cost of housing.

Back when California first announced the implementation of the mandate in 2018, it did not take into consideration the unseen costs that would follow. According to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, cost-burden in California was already around 42 percent in 2016…

California’s Gig Economy Is Under Attack by Billy Binion (Spring 2018) in Reason
A new California law intended to force employers to hire workers as employees rather than treat them as contractors is killing freelance jobs across the Golden State and leaving those contractors in limbo.

Assembly Bill 5 (A.B. 5), which took effect January 1, was drafted in response to Dynamex Operations West Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, a landmark court case that established a three-pronged test to determine whether companies are correctly classifying employees and contractors. That test says that contractors must control their workload, not perform work within the business’s primary scope of operations, and be “customarily engaged” in the occupation…