Looking at labor markets, my biggest concern is the drop in labor force participation. The data from the Labor Department on the employment-population ratio, for instance, suggest a permanent reduction in the share of the population that is working. And since economic…
Daily Analysis
Yet another Example of the Failure of Keynesian Economics
Early last year, with the sequester about to begin, President Obama stated that “these cuts are not smart, they are not fair, they will hurt our economy, they will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls.” He made this statement…
The Best State in America Is…?
What’s the best state in America? I’m not sure I can answer that broad question, but I can address the more narrow issue of which state has the most economic freedom. Last month, for instance, I shared some data from the Canada-based Fraser Institute which showed that…
The Biggest Impediment for the Poor is Government, Not Inequality
A bunch of well-connected rich people and government officials are descending upon Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. This upsets many people, and perhaps with some justification. After all, bad things often happen when big business and…
Deconstructing Obama’s Dismal Record on Jobs
According to the most recent numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate has dropped to 6.7 percent. Is this good news? Well, it’s depends on your benchmark. Compared to France’s anemic economyand double-digit levels of unemployment, America is…
New Data Shows Big Loss of Economic Freedom in the United States
My favorite Heritage Foundation publication (other than…ahem…my studies on government spending and the flat tax) is the annual Index of Economic Freedom. Like the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World and the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness…
The Bread-ish Difference Between Capitalism and Socialism
If you ask an economist about the difference between capitalism and socialism, you’ll probably get a boring answer about the size of government, the impact on incentives, and the power of the state. Or maybe you’ll get a nit-picking answer, sort of like when I…
To Be Genuinely Compassionate, Politicians Should Focus on Job Creation, not Unemployment Benefits
Washington is in the middle of another debate about redistributing money. But that’s hardly newsworthy. Politics, after all, is basically a never-ending racket in which insiders buy votes and accumulate power with other people’s money. The current debate about…
Boost Worker Pay – and Make the United States More Competitive – by Gutting the Corporate Income Tax
The business pages are reporting that Chrysler will be fully owned by Fiat after that Italian company buys up remaining shares. I don’t know what this means about the long-term viability of Chrysler, but we can say with great confidence that the company will be better…
A Manifesto for Free Markets in Health Care
Not counting humor-oriented pieces such as this and this, it’s been nearly a month since I’ve written about Obamacare. To make up for this oversight, today we’re going to look at a way out of the Obamacare mess. But the goal isn’t simply to repeal the President’s bad…