Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts

Higher Minimum Wage Equals Higher Prices, More Taxes

by John Seiler.     I have dinner once a week with some friends here in Orange County. I set a limit of $20 for beer and food, or $80 a month. When the state minimum wage jumped to $10 an hour from $8 a couple years back, the restaurants increased their prices. So I cut back from a full meal to appetizers. It’s less enjoyment, but, as President John F. ... MORE

The $15 Minimum Wage Will Kill Jobs. Should You Care?

by Peter Coy.   Mandated unemployment for low-skill workers. This is a story about ethics and economics, winners and losers, and the philosophical muddle on both ends of the political spectrum, as told through two of the hot-button issues of the 2016 U.S. presidential race: the minimum wage and free trade. Start with an unpopular but  ... MORE

What If The Minimum Wage Increase Is A Fraud?

by Andrew Napolitano.      What if the latest craze among the big-government crowd in both major political parties is to use the power of government to force employers to pay some of their employees more than their services are worth to the employers? What if this represents an intrusion by government into the employer-employee       ... MORE

Paul Bedard: Americans Are Now Spending More On Taxes Than They Do On Food, Clothing And Housing Combined

After April 24, you get to work for yourself.    A tax advocacy group on Wednesday revealed that Americans spend more on taxes than their whole budget for food, clothing and housing. The Tax Foundation, in its annual report on when the nation as a whole has earned enough to pay its taxes, announced the date as April 24. "Tax Freedom Day  ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Students And Socialism

That Weirdly Interesting Libertarian Party Debate On Fox

by Jeffrey Tucker.      Hooray for John Stossel! He has dedicated two issues of his wonderful show on Fox Business to hosting a debate between Libertarian Party aspirants to the presidency. The format is great. The questions in part one were solid. John does an excellent job. And the candidates were fascinating to watch. Within the LP itself, this    ... MORE

Scott Shackford: Jerry Brown Admits $15 Minimum Wage Does Not Make Economic Sense, Approves It Anyway

Smart economics is not a consideration. California Gov. Jerry Brown simply does not care about what will happen to citizens in non-urban parts of the state under a $15 minimum wage. He didn’t literally say that, but what he did say when today was that he understood that there may be some bad outcomes for such a massive, unprecedented mandate. And then he signed it into law anyway. ... MORE

Sharon Harris: Free Market or… Freed Market?

Unschackle our regulated economy.   Here’s a neat little phrase that can be very handy when talking about economics: “freed market.” No, not “free market.” Freed market. Here’s why. As we’ve discussed in the past, “capitalism” is often not a very useful word for libertarians to use to describe the economic system we advocate. Sheldon      ... MORE

Salim Furth: Government Regulators Have Added At Least An Extra $3,800 To The Price Of Producing A New Car

The high cost of savings-government style.  When Congress and the Obama administration passed and implemented extremely strict fuel economy regulations, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claimed that it would save consumers a few thousand dollars on gas and add only $948 to the price of a new car. Three teams of independent     ... MORE

23% Of Americans In Their Working Prime Are Unemployed

by Michael Snyder. Did you know that when you take the number of working age Americans that are officially unemployed (8.2 million) and add that number to the number of working age Americans that are considered to be “not in the labor force” (94.3 million), that gives us a grand total of 102.5 million working age Americans that do not have a job right ... MORE

VIDEO: Richard Epstein - Toward Fixing America's Economy

China Trade Isn't Killing America's Working Class

by Shikha Dalmia.    Politicians & misconceptions. American politics aren't exactly immune to bouts of protectionism. A Bloomberg poll has found that two-thirds of Americans, Republicans and Democrats, are four-square behind it—a sentiment that Bernie Sanders is exploiting on the left and Donald Trump on the right. But although free trade has     ... MORE

The Candidates' Public Disservice On Trade

by A. Barton Hinkle.   Almost three-fifths of Americans recognize that international trade offers the country an opportunity to expand the economy; only 34 percent see it as a threat. Unfortunately, the leading presidential contenders are doing their best to change that. Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have been spouting a  ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Trade Deficit Angst

Donald Trump's primary bluster.   Let's look at the political angst over trade deficits. A trade deficit is when people in one country buy more from another country than the other country's people buy from them. There cannot be a trade deficit in a true economic sense. Let's examine this. I buy more from my grocer than he buys from me. That   ... MORE

Jaana Woiceshyn: Making Moral Business Choices

On rational self-interest. Having recently concluded teaching an MBA business ethics course, I received unusual feedback from a student. He liked the course but told me that all of it should have been spent on covering the moral code of egoism—rational self-interest—because that is the code he liked the best and considered the most applicable    ... MORE

VIDEO: Who Cares About Inequality?

Bob Russell: Free Market Should Determine Wages

Give low-skill workers a chance.     I think the Minimum Wage Law is one of the worst things that government has ever done. It’s often said that people can’t live on $7.25 per hour as a reason for increasing the minimum wage. Of course, we all wish that everyone could make more, but it is not up to us or even the government to say what people  ... MORE