Switzerland’s left-wing party has instigated a referendum for November 24 that asks voters to limit pay ranges so that a company wouldn’t be able to pay top employees more than 12 times what they’re paying their lowest-level employees. I talked with Neil Cavuto about…
Daily Analysis
The European Crisis (and American Future?) of Too Many Over-Compensated Bureaucrats
The only sustainable way of achieving more prosperity and higher living standards is to increase the quality and quantity of labor and capital in the economy. This may sound like boring econo-speak, but labor and capital are the two “factors of production” and our…
Obamanomics and the Vanishing American Worker
The Department of Labor has issued its monthly employment report and the item that will attract the most attention is that the unemployment rate marginally increased to 7.3 percent. That number is worthy of some attention, but I think it distracts attention from a far…
Obama Advocates Higher Unemployment for Lower-Skilled Workers (and Some Great Election News from Colorado)
Perhaps because he wants to divert attention from the slow-motion train wreck of Obamacare, the President is signaling that he will renew his efforts to throw more people into the unemployment line. Needless to say, that’s not how the White House would describe the…
What America Can Learn from the Faroe Islands about Social Security Reform
I’m currently in the Faroe Islands, a relatively unknown and semi-autonomous part of Denmark located in the North Atlantic. Sort of like Greenland, but too small to appear on most maps. I’m in this chilly archipelago for a speech to the annual meeting of the Faroese…
Easy Money Is Creating the Conditions for a Bigger European Economic Crisis
At the beginning of the year, I was asked whether Europe’s fiscal crisis was over. Showing deep thought and characteristic maturity, my response was “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, are you ;@($&^#’% kidding me?” But I then shared specific reasons for pessimism, including the…
Keynesian Economics, Government Shutdowns, and Economic Growth
Keynesian economics is the perpetual motion machine of the left. You build a model that assumes government spending is good for the economy and you assume that there are zero costs when the government diverts money from the private sector. With that type of model, you…
If There’s a Grand Bargain, Taxpayers Should Get a Tax Cut rather than a Tax Hike
The Washington metropolitan area has become America’s wealthiest region because trillions of dollars are taken every year from the productive sector of the economy and then divvied up by the politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists and interest groups that benefit from…
Setting Taxpayers on Fire in California
I posted a video back in 2010 that used biting humor to complain about overpaid firefighters. That video stirred a hornet’s nest, generating some spirited debate in the comments section. But there was no resolution, in part because you can’t make sweeping judgements…
For any Fiscal Policy Question, Spending Restraint Is the Answer
Okay, I’ll admit the title of this post is an exaggeration. How to fix the mess at the IRS is a fiscal policy question, and that requires tax reform rather than spending restraint. But allow me a bit of literary license. We just had a big debt limit battle in…