economy
970 pieces tagged “economy”, newest first.
American Energy Will Help Defeat Terrorism
President Obama has been mocked, and appropriately so, for his ludicrous comment that the upcoming climate change summit in Paris will be a "powerful rebuke" to the terrorists. No. This summit is a powerful rebuke to common sense. It says a lot about the lack of clarity and commitment to the growing threat of the Islamic State that the world leaders are gathering in the city where the murderous attacks just happened, with the blood barely dry, and the prime topic of discussion will be how to stop the rise of the oceans.
Here's Something You Should Be Thankful For: Work
Sure, that sounds counterintuitive. Thanksgiving Thursday is the first day of a (for most of us) four-day weekend, a time devoted to gorging on comfort food and nonstop viewing of college and professional football games. It's a time as well for contemplation, already primed by overfamiliar songs in shopping malls, of an even longer holiday season. I grew up in Detroit, where the auto assembly lines shut down entirely for last two weeks of the calendar year. Who needs work?
Why Inequality Is the Democrats’ Dilemma
Strike up a conversation with any taxi cab driver or any fry cook at a roadside diner and the word "inequality" is unlikely to ever come up.
Joaquin and Obama: Two Forces of Nature
Hurricane Joaquin dumped large amounts of rain on the East Coast, but another "force of nature" flooded the country with so much rhetoric it was difficult for most people to keep up. Before barely any facts were known, there was President Obama on camera (when isn't he?) making a 12-minute address — a relatively short time for him — about the school shootings in Roseburg, Oregon. The president referred to himself 28 times, according to Grabien.com, again proving that whatever happens in this country, or the world, it really is all about him.
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Remembering Yogi Berra, Baseball Player Extraordinaire … and Economic Philosopher
The word "icon" is overused these days, but it surely applies to Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra, who passed away [Tuesday] at age 90. His playing career was iconic, and he transitioned into a cultural icon in his role as amateur philosopher and author of droll malapropisms. Yogi was a key part of the New York Yankees dynasty that dominated Major League Baseball in the 1950s and early 1960s. On a personality rich team that included fellow Hall of Famers Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, Berra was the most colorful and arguably the most accomplished, having won three American League Most Valuable Player awards (compared to two each for Mantle and Roger Maris), an all-time record of 10 world championship rings as a player (he won three more as a coach), and the distinction of having caught the only perfect game in World Series history — Don Larsen's gem in 1957.
Why Is There So Much Economic Illiteracy? Paul Krugman Is One Reason
Stanford University economist Thomas Sowell was asked the other day whether the understanding of basic economics has been elevated in political discussions over time. His answer? Economic literacy hasn't gotten better. It's gotten worse. "At one time you had a lot of people who hadn't had any economics saying foolish things. Now you have well-known economists saying foolish things," he said. Although he didn't name names, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman must rank high on the list of guilty parties. There was a time, not long ago, when The New York Times called for a zero minimum wage and Krugman agreed with them. The reason? A minimum wage law isn't just a restriction on employers. It's also a restriction on workers.
Oil, America's Inexhaustible Resource
"The United States of America cannot afford to bet our long-term prosperity, our long-term security on a resource that will eventually run out, and even before it runs out will get more and more expensive to extract from the ground." —Barack Obama, 2011. In August 1859 on the eve of the Civil War, Col. Edwin Laurentine Drake completed the first commercial oil well in the United States on Oil Creek just outside of Titusville, Pa. Over the next century and a half, oil and gas companies have extracted tens of billions of barrels of oil from the ground from California to New York and nearly everywhere in between.
The Struggle for Economic Liberty
Here's my taxi question. If a person is law-abiding, has a driver's license, has a car or van that has passed safety inspection, and has adequate liability insurance, is there any consumer-oriented reason he should not be able to become a taxicab owner/operator? Put another way: If you wish to hire the services of such a person, what right does a third party have to prevent that exchange? Many cities have granted monopoly power to taxi companies — the right to prevent entry by others. Sometimes this monopoly takes the form of exclusive government-granted rights to particular individuals to provide taxi services. In other cases, the number of licenses is fixed, and a prospective taxi owner must purchase a license from an existing owner. In New York City, such a license is called a taxi medallion. Individual medallions have sold for as high as $700,000 and corporate medallions as high as $1 million. In other cities — such as Miami, Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston — taxi licenses have sold for anywhere between $300,000 and $700,000. These are prices for a license to own and operate a single vehicle as a taxi.
Mortgage Madness Returns
Last month I bought a house in Potomac, Md., a trade-up on my current home, and was shocked to learn in the ensuing weeks that I couldn't get a mortgage loan. First, I went to PNC bank. Then Wells Fargo. Then another. Denied. Denied. Denied. No, I don't feel entitled to a loan, and the banks have every right not to lend me money. But my tale of woe tells a broader tale of what is going on in the lending industry these days. All the bankers told me the same thing: "Steve, if you'd walked in our bank eight years ago with this mortgage application, we would have rubber-stamped it in five minutes, and you would have walked out with a bag of money."
Read more Manufacturing Struggling to Get to Pre-Recession Levels
It appears the "stimulus" didn't get things going.