The United States is the most advanced industrialized nation in the world. It’s economy produces the greatest GDP (total quantity of goods and services), doing so with the greatest productivity (GDP per capita). Rapid productivity increase through technological advance has ...
In recent weeks, immigrant-rights rallies have been held in protest of president Trump’s threat to deport millions of illegal aliens. On January 14, 2017, such rallies were held in 50 cities across the country. This “Day of Action” initiated “a new phase of activism in defiance” ...
I was on my way to work. Kind of shaky since I missed eight hours of
sleep and my morning coffee. But at least my deprivation was for a
great universal cause. The world was a mess ...
American manufacturing, once the principal source of American economic power, has become a pale shadow of the world-dominant competitor it was only 30 years ago. Although the productivity of American workers still vastly exceeds ...
In his 2015 State of the Union address, President Obama asserted that his economic policies are working. "The economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999," he declared. "The shadow of crisis has passed." ...
American manufacturing is in decline. It has been for decades, shrinking to half of what it was at its peak, in 1979. During the 2000s alone, it lost one-third of its workforce -- largely blue collar workers who, without a college education, could earn a middle class wage ...
If you are a working age adult who is stuck in a low-wage job, or have no job at all, then you belong to the largest segment of the American labor force: a vast, sprawling underclass, with little, if any, economic value to the society that it burdens ...
Milton Friedman's notion that "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand," has been borne out for decades in US energy policy. Sitting on top of the world's most prolific supply ...
Of course we all know the law of unintended consequences but some of us don’t know that Robert Burns - eternal poet laureate of Scotland - said it better: “The best laid schemes of mice and men gang oft agley” ...
With the passage of the Obama health care bill, the U.S. can be divided into three distinct health insurance groups. Group 1 consists of retirees on Medicare. Group 2 consists of working people with private health insurance to cover them until they retire. Group 3 consists of the 32 million people for which health insurance ...
After a year of record-breaking spending and borrowing, the Obama team geared up for 2010 with a bustling, closed-door planning meeting that might have gone as follows ...
In his 2010 State of the Union address, president Obama said, “Jobs must be our number one focus in 2010.” It took a full year for the Obama administration to recognize what most Americans had figured out in January 2009 when Mr. Obama took office. Back then, unemployment was 7.6% and small businesses - the principal creators of jobs in recessionary periods – could not get loans. Oblivious to such concerns ...
The 1930s has become the sole object lesson for today's monetary policy. Over the past 12 months, the Federal Reserve has increased the monetary base (bank reserves plus currency in circulation) by well over 100%. While currency in circulation ...
My 1985 Toyota Supra doesn’t qualify for the Cash for Clunkers program because it was rated at 19 mpg. It might have got 19 mpg in 1985, but today it barely gets 12 mpg. Plus, it burns about 2 quarts of oil per week. So much for the environment; I was going to buy one that got 48 mpg. Now I have to keep my gas guzzling, oil spewing environmental scourge. ...
On Monday, after President Barack Obama unveiled his plan to nationalize General Motors, GM's vice chairman, Robert Lutz, exulted, "Their No. 1 goal is to make us successful." But Obama seems to have three No. 1 goals: turning a profit, building cleaner cars, and creating American jobs. These priorities clash with one another, with the president's professed desire to "get out quickly," and with his promise of a "hands-off" approach. ...
[It was bad enough that Peking University students laughed at us when Timothy Geithner stated that China's $768 billion in Treasuries was safe. But now we are even ridiculed by Pravda.]
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people. ...
With states facing nearly $100 billion in combined budget deficits this year, we're seeing more governors than ever proposing the Barack Obama solution to balancing the budget: Soak the rich. Lawmakers in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Oregon want to raise income tax rates ...
Right now, my stimulus money is earmarked for a Ford Fusion (see, “I’m Buying A Ford”). According to the experts, it’s as good as a Camry or an Accord in performance and reliability and better in safety and fuel economy. However, it looks like G.M. and Chrysler are going to get more bailout money – amounts so staggering that I’m pretty sure even I could build a good car. So let’s take a look at the likelihood of them coming up with something better than a Fusion. ...
So President Obama got his stimulus bill. For a mere $787 billion, he has pledged to "save or create" 3.5 million jobs. That's only $224,857 and change per job! (If I still have my job next year, will he take credit for saving it?) ...
The big story last week was the incredible Congressional rush to pass a bill that was more than a thousand pages long in just two days-- after which it sat on the President's desk for three days while the Obamas were away on a holiday. ...
I’m tired of hearing about CEO’s who meet with our political leaders to promote, and show their support for, the Stimulus Bill. Most have not impressed me. Many have almost no grasp of economics and, frankly, seem ill equipped for running a business of any size. From what I can tell, their overtures are no more than clumsily veiled attempts to increase their share of the stimulus money. They are begging. ...
I’ve been looking over the Stimulus Bill to see what’s in it for me. I’m trying to find programs, projects, grants, …, anything that will help me with my monthly utility bills or mortgage payments, make it easier to get a business loan or a car loan, keep my employer in business, or at least slow down the erosion of my retirement savings. I know this sounds selfish, but I’m desperate. ...
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was set up to combat fraudulent practices. The SEC's website explains that "Ponzi schemes are a type of illegal pyramid scheme ...
News media people, often plagued with little understanding, fail miserably in their duty to inform the public. This is particularly evident in their reporting on the current financial meltdown, suggesting it was caused by deregulation and free markets. ...
Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read "Atlas Shrugged" a "virgin." Being conversant in Ayn Rand's classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only "Atlas" were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I'm confident that we'd get out of the current financial mess a lot faster. ...
In the old days -- from the Venetian Republic to, oh, the Bear Stearns rescue -- if you wanted to get rich, you did it the Warren Buffett way: You learned to read balance sheets. Today you learn to read political tea leaves. If you want to make money on Wall Street (or keep from losing your shirt), you do it not by anticipating Intel's third-quarter earnings but by guessing instead what side of the bed Henry Paulson will wake up on tomorrow. ...
About a year ago Stephen Moore, Peter Tanous and I set about writing a book about our vision for the future entitled "The End of Prosperity." Little did we know then how appropriate its release would be earlier this month. ...
The price of crude oil has jumped as high as $135 lately, up from $87 in early February. The news encouraged some Wall Street analysts to suggest oil might approach $200 before long. In fact, that's quite impossible: The world economy can't handle current energy prices, much less a big increase. ...
I first became aware of the law of gravity as a small child when I pedalled by tricycle off the porch and crashed into the yard. Gravity was of course operating all along, whether I was aware of it or not. ...
A newspaper headline — "Lawmakers Struggle to Define Gasoline Price 'Gouging'" — shows how phony the current Congressional jihad against the oil companies is. "Price gouging" is one of those phrases that evoke strong emotions but have no definition. ...
Many people are blaming the riots in France on the high unemployment rate among young Muslim men living in the ghettoes around Paris and elsewhere. Some are blaming both the unemployment and the ghettoization on discrimination by the French. ...
[AARP's Utopian vision: A geriatric therapeutic state that we can't afford not to create]
After several years of receiving offers to join the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), I decided to visit their web site. Approaching retirement and with three of my four children approaching marriage, two publications immediately caught my attention: Reimagining America: AARP's Blueprint for the Future and For My Grandchild: A Grandmother's Gift of Memory. ...
As residents of New Orleans and the rest of the gulf coast begin to pick themselves up from a devastating natural disaster, they’re finding lots of hands reaching out to help. ...
Friends of the Earth International (FOE) has just issued its report Nature: Poor People's Wealth in conjunction with the G8 Summit of rich nations at Gleneagles in Scotland. The FOE report aims to highlight the importance of natural resources in poverty eradication. ...
Social Security Reform: The Republican retreat from private accounts doesn't change the choice Americans face in securing their future: IOUs or assets. ...
[Problems engendered by an aging, shrinking population are just beginning to be recognized. For starters, consider unfunded entitlement programs. By 2050, thanks to ignorant and myopic political leaders, the combined cost of Medicare and Medicaid alone will consume a larger share of the nation’s income in 2050 than the entire federal budget does today. The combined cost of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the national debt will rise to 47% of GDP. What's next is worse.]
We moderns have gotten used to the slow, seemingly inexorable dissolution of traditional social forms, the family prominent among them. Yet the ever-decreasing size of the family may soon expose a fundamental contradiction in modernity itself. Fertility rates have been falling throughout the industrialized world for more than 30 years, with implications that are only just now coming into view. Growing population has driven the economy, sustained the welfare state, and shaped modern culture. A declining population could conceivably put the dynamic of modernization into doubt. ...
When Hubert Humphrey said this (We can banish hunger from the face of the Earth) almost 40 years ago, concern about the wretched of the Earth was the almost exclusive preserve of American liberalism. Barry Goldwater sure did not talk that way. ...
Since the end of World War II, the provision of medical care in the United States and other advanced countries has displayed three major features: first, rapid advances in the science of medicine; second, large increases in spending, both in terms of inflation-adjusted dollars per person and the fraction of national income spent on medical care; and third, rising dissatisfaction with the delivery of medical care, on the part of both consumers of medical care and physicians and other suppliers of medical care. ...
Excerpt and condensation of Chapter 4 from The Worldly Philosophers:
The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers by Robert L.
Heilbroner, 7th ed., 1999.,
Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers is a uniquely readable
introduction to the lives and ideas of the great economic theorists of the last three
centuries. The book has enlivened the study of economics for beginning students for
more than 40 years. ...
