by Dan Mitchell | May 16, 2019 | Blogs, Economics
I shared a video last year that pointed out that Americans live in a nation that became prosperous thanks to “creative destruction.” That’s the term developed by Joseph Schumpeter to describe the economic churning caused by competition, innovation, and markets...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 24, 2019 | Blogs, Economics
Time for a confession. I don’t particularly enjoy writing columns about the minimum wage because it’s such a slam-dunk issue. Simply stated, it is cruel and illogical when politicians mandate wage levels that are higher than the productivity of low-skilled workers....
by Dan Mitchell | Nov 30, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Welfare and Entitlements
Washington is a place that gets infatuated with trendy ideas. A few years ago, everyone was talking about a “universal basic income” because of the strange assumption that millions of people will be unemployable in the future. That idea was mostly embraced by folks on...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 15, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics
Politicians can interfere with the laws of supply and demand (and they do, with distressing regularity), but they can’t repeal them. The minimum wage issue is a tragic example. If lawmakers pass a law mandating wages of $10 per hour, that is going to have a very bad...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 12, 2018 | Big Government, Blogs, Economics, Welfare and Entitlements
One of the more elementary observations about economics is that a nation’s prosperity is determined in part by the quantity of quality of labor and capital. These “factors of production” are combined to generate national income. I frequently grouse that punitive tax...
