Economy
Economist Larry Kudlow sites a story from the NY Times, which includes this bit: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday that union membership fell by 326,000 in 2006, to 15.4 million workers, bringing the percentage of employees in unions to 12 percent, down from 12.5 percent in 2005. Those figures are down from 20…
Although I can’t recall any particular instances of his using it, except when helping me with my homework, I associate the phrase “think it through” with my father. It has always seemed, I suppose, to summarize a particular approach to the world — almost a philosophy — that he emphasizes. Not to leap too quickly…
Heh. Something fishy is going on: House Republicans yesterday declared “something fishy” about the major tuna company in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district being exempted from the minimum-wage increase that Democrats approved this week. “I am shocked,” said Rep. Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican and his party’s chief deputy whip, noting that Mrs. Pelosi…
Here’s a fascinating factoid for the day and a point to ponder in the casino debate, from Michael Mandel et. al in Business Week (h/t Jonah Goldberg)…What you may not realize is that the government’s decades-old system of number collection and crunching captures investments in equipment, buildings, and software, but for the most part misses…
In the July 2006 issue of Hillsdale College’s Imprimis, Larry Arnn interviews Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman on a number of topics. Here are his thoughts on economic issues: LARRY ARNN: In Free to Choose, in the chapter on “The Tyranny of Controls,” you argue that protectionism and government intervention in general breed conflict and that…
I don’t think you’re off base, Don. I do think, however, there’s a whiff of Rhode Islandism in your thinking. Rather than shrinking from the seepage of resources that increasing the freedom (of movement, in this case) of our citizens might entail, we ought to ponder why they’re inclined to seep in the first place.…
From the Projo Blog: State, local and federal officials are scheduled to break ground at 1 p.m. today on a new intermodal train station next to T.F. Green Airport. The $222.5-million facility, including a parking garage and car rental businesses, will take up 1.5 million square feet and rise six stories. It will connect travelers…
Walter Williams writes about Economics of prices: Here’s what one reader wrote: “Williams, I can understand how the destruction of Hurricane Katrina and Middle East political uncertainty can jack up gasoline prices. But it’s price-gouging for the oil companies to raise the price of all the gasoline already bought and stored before the crisis.”…Such allegations…
This posting is Part XVII in a series of postings about economic thoughts. The study of economics is important because economic truths directly influence outcomes in our society. People of good will want our society to be a just one. What constitutes a just society? That question is far too broad for any single posting.…
This posting is Part XVI in a series of postings about economic thoughts. Robert Nisbet once said: “Only Hayek has rivaled Bertrand de Jouvenel in demonstrating why redistributionism in the democracies inexorably results in the atrophy of personal responsibility and the hypertrophy of bureaucracy and the centralized state instead of in relief to the hapless…