There was an interesting article here by Peter Gumbel http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/09/25/with-unemployment-high-france-forces-stores-to-close-early/ earlier this week on what France is doing in the face of high unemployment. Before you read, remember this is France, since the nineteenth century, one of the most socialist (small “c”) nations in Europe, allowing for brief intervals of sanity. It appears that Parisian officlals–the only […]
Archives
-
Government Tyranny and Economic Life
27 Sep 2013
-
I came across an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. More on Fracking and the Poor reminds us that it is private initiative and activity that is the source of economic growth in the US economy. The concluding paragraph reads in part: “It’s a classic American story of innovation, human ingenuity, risk-taking and […]
-
Not All Jobs Are Created Equal
01 Aug 2013
I have written about the Keystone Pipeline on this blog before and I do not intend to go back through the reasons why I think it is something the President should support here. I was struck this week, however, by his recent comments that the pipeline would not produce meaningful jobs. He believes it would […]
-
Minimum Wage legislation, should we abolish it?
10 May 2013
This is subject of a recent debate featuring Libertarian’s Russ Roberts and Jim Dorn as well as Progressive’s Jared Bernstein and Karen Kornbluh. Unfortunately, the audience voted with Mr. Bernstein that we should keep the minimum wage. If you take the time to listen to the debate, you’ll find some rather startling admissions by […]
-
PIMCO’s Bill Gross came out swinging today against European austerity today, this after reports that Reinhart and Rogoff’s well-regarded work on debt had some statistical errors on the danger of debt. So today Mr. Gross told the FT, “The U.K. and almost all of Europe have erred in terms of believing that austerity, fiscal austerity […]
-
Immigration Reform Misses the Mark
15 Apr 2013
The ”gang of eight” (Senators Schumer, McCain, Durbin, Graham, Menendez, Rubio, Bennet, and Flake) is expected to release the long awaited bipartisan framework for comprehensive immigration reform tomorrow, April 16. While the legislation will go through Congress’s meat grinder of debate and approval, the four pillars of the proposal do provide another rung in the […]
-
Rather than a single subject today, I’d like to offer some quick thoughts on several recent economic events and get your feedback on what you’d like to hear more about. Post in the comments if you’d like more details. First up, we are told we will finally have a budget submitted by the President this […]
-
Economic Freedom in the 50 States
28 Mar 2013
Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore published a very interesting editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal. The editorial highlights the fact that states which have more economic freedom are more prosperous than states with less economic freedom. States with lower taxes and less onerous regulations provide a better environment for entrepreneurship. This relatively rich economic soil […]
-
Good news about economic growth? While consumer confidence took a nosedive in March thanks largely to continued fiscal uncertainty focused on the sequester, business investment is up in the first quarter of 2013. Although uncertainty over the fiscal sanity of our politicians and unease about the global economy are still very real, some US firms […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach