Economy
It’s quite model the U.S. government has created for itself, as an entity, and the Democrats have made its principles undeniably clear with their ownership of power: Spending more on border security commands bipartisan support, but the jobs bill, which narrowly passed the Senate, is being described in starkly different political terms. Democrats say it…
In the course of checking a claim by Congressman Jim Langevin, C. Eugene Emery, Jr., offers this explanation of the calculation behind the “multiplier effect” allowing Democrats to claim, as Langevin did, “for every $1 we spend on unemploymen t benefits, $1.90 is put into our economy”: When you give $1 to people who have…
I’ve been preoccupied, today, with the sorts of thoughts that are hugely important to the individual, but quotidian details on a larger scale… and there’s been so much on that larger scale that might otherwise have merited consideration. The economy, obviously: The recovery lost momentum in the spring as growth slowed to a 2.4 percent…
This is a familiar argument, but given the attractiveness of government fiat, it seems it must be had again and again: Three years after the passage of federal wage legislation, teen employment prospects are suffering tremendously. The unemployment rate for 16 to 19-year-olds remains above 25 percent; for those ages 16 to 17, the unemployment…
Brian Riedl likens our growing national debt to the bubble that’s left many of us owing more for our houses than they’re worth, forcing others into destitution, and holding our economy under water: In short, between 2009 and 2020, Washington is set to borrow more than three times more than in the previous 220 years…
In a climate of increasing regulation from Washington, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission recently recommended a five year moratorium be placed on lobster fishing all along the Atlantic seaboard. While the decision was fortunately voted down, it still represents a growing trend of dangerous restrictions being placed on individuals and industries by uninformed and…
One wonders whether U.S. legislators don’t understand the consequences of their work — which isn’t implausible, inasmuch as it’s a real question whether they read the legislation on which they vote — or don’t care. Of course, the conservative critique of government is that big government will tend to work in the interests of those…
Stephen Spruiell argues that there have now been five rounds of stimulus spending by the federal government, totaling $1.085 trillion, which surpasses the cost of both wars in which our nation has been engaged over the last decade. He further argues that the approach that the government has been taking has been flawed in its…
Having followed the work of Providence Journal reporter Neil Downing for years, now, I’m confident that it was not a deliberate omission, but I can’t help but wonder why a particular factor contributing to economic malaise didn’t make it into his recent article about unemployment: In the current recession — which began in late 2007,…
It’s fortuitous that I’m a bit behind my blogging schedule today, because Marc’s closing point happens to relate to my thoughts upon reading Red Jahncke’s criticism of the Dodd-Frank Act regulating the finance industry. Jahncke gives a little history: Under Glass-Steagall, banks were local and regional champions. In New England, for example, Connecticut had Connecticut…