Posts Tagged ‘economy’
Stoking the Climate Change Fires
Eagle Forum Exclusive Report, United Nations/Global Warming by Pat Carlson Global warming or climate change as it is now referred to due to no warming since 1997, is a non-issue to the majority of Americans as the U.S. experiences the worst economic times since the Great Depression. It has been put on the back burner and left to simmer in [...]
The Twisted Tree of Progressivism
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Joseph Stromberg Sorting out the Progressive movement and its constituent ideologies can be difficult in that the very term “progressive” is burdened with contested meanings. Rather than work along lines agreeable to presently out-of-office politicians hoping to regain power by denouncing long-dead [...]
The Family Stone: Cavemen, Trade, and Comparative Advantage
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Richard Fulmer Imagine a Stone Age family: Papa Stone, Mama Stone, and their two little pebbles. Suppose that, as befits pre-women’s-lib Neanderthals, Papa Stone is initially more competent at every prehistoric survival skill: hunting, fishing, nut-and-berry gathering, firebuilding, tool-making. Despite his [...]
Obama Invokes Teddy Roosevelt
Liberty Alerts, Fred Lucas, CNSNews.com Invoking former President Teddy Roosevelt, President Barack Obama quoted the Republican president who said in 1910, “‘The fundamental rule in our national life – the rule which underlies all others – is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.” “Fewer and [...]
A Return to Gold?
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, John L. Chapman and John A. Allison “Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. . . . Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society. . . .The process engages all the hidden forces [...]
The Last Incarnation of Barack Obama
Mike Brownfield, Heritage Foundation If there was any doubt where President Barack Obama’s ideological heart lies, yesterday he let it be known loud and clear in a wide-ranging speech in Osawatomie, Kansas. President Obama is at his core a dyed-in-the-wool progressive who sees the federal government as the answer to all of America’s [...]
The Mortgage and Student Loan Bubbles Compared
By Carl L. Bankston III Many of today's college students and recent graduates have accumulated debts beyond their apparent abilities to pay. In a number of ways, their debt is similar to the massive housing debt that led to the collapse of the real estate market beginning about 2007. In both instances, federal subsidization of borrowing [...]
Destroying Childhood to Save Children
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Wendy McElroy Society is deeply schizophrenic about children. On the one hand, there is the Sandusky response. Jerry Sandusky is the former Penn State football coach accused of serial child molestation. Even before a trial, states are scrambling to pass new laws to require universities and athletic [...]
Demand-Side Policies, Debt, and the Financialization of the American Economy
Carl L. Bankston III The 2008 government bailout of many of the nation’s financial institutions was troubling because the combination of private profits and socialized risks contributed to the institutionalization of moral hazard. Beyond that, though, this brings the government into active participation in the financialization of the American [...]
Scientism and the Great Power Nexus
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Max Borders President Obama wants to create jobs. His political life depends on it. So the President recently used the bully pulpit to propose a “jobs” bill that would include heavy spending on infrastructure. Journalists wanted to know what the bill would do. They turned to economists. These experts, [...]
The Marcellus Shale Boom
Steve Irwin, The Center for Vision and Values Marcellus Shale is becoming a household name, from discussions around kitchen tables to town halls with (sometimes) angry citizens. Endless media coverage, economic analysis, geological prediction, business maneuvers and political debate encompass this complex topic. Even the experts concede that [...]
America Needs More Job Creation
Mike Brownfield, Heritage Foundation After months upon months of unemployment stuck at or above 9 percent, the American people may finally see a sliver of relief in today’s jobs report from the Department of Labor. The report suggests the month of November saw 120,000 net new jobs created and the unemployment rate drop to 8.6 percent–driven [...]
Support Teens Working on Farms; Stop DOL Overregulation
Liberty Alerts, JBS.org Freedom Campaign Like baseball and apple pie, teenagers working on farms is part of the American way of life in rural areas, conjuring up iconic images of sunny afternoons baling hay in a spirit of camaraderie, downing the occasional soda or glass of lemonade together. Teens learn to work responsibly and earn money while [...]
Unemployment: What’s To Be Done?
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Warren Gibson In Part 1 I outlined natural unemployment, government-caused unemployment, and the attempts to measure these. We saw how ambiguous and subjective some of the concepts of unemployment are and how the government, specifically the Federal Reserve, is charged with managing it. Now we turn to current [...]
Stop Obama’s Big Union Onslaught
Mike Brownfield, Heritage Foundation What does it take to bring an airline to its knees? Uncompetitive union-negotiated labor contracts and a fundamental unwillingness to recognize that in a down economy, unions have a hard time raising wages without destroying jobs. That was a lesson that unions refused to learn in the case of American [...]
Facebook, Twitter, and Familiar Strangers
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Sandy Ikeda Right now, how many people do you know and keep in contact with? How many names are on your Rolodex, or friends do you have on Facebook? And how many people can you recognize whose names you don’t know? For most of us the answers get bigger with each question. Stop to think about it. [...]
Obama Keeps Turning His Back on Jobs
Mike Brownfield, Heritage Foundation This week, President Obama is again set to make a pitch for his latest plan to stimulate the economy, but meanwhile he is turning his back on projects that would put tens or even hundreds of thousands Americans to work. And he’s doing it all to appease his left-wing, environmentalist base at the expense of [...]
“Find Out What the People Want”: The Russell Conwell Story
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Harold B. Jones Jr. “There is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings. . . .” Those words come, interestingly enough, from what is almost certainly the most successful charitable fundraising speech ever delivered. It was given over 6,000 times, provided [...]
In Michigan, Obamacare is Already a Job-Killer
Jay Lucas and Alyene Senger, Heritage Foundation While the White House continues its rhetoric on job creation, the job-killing effects of Obamacare are already taking effect. One provision of the law, its tax on medical device manufacturers, is already having a detrimental impact on a Michigan-based manufacturer. Stryker Corporation has [...]
Why the Titanic Is Sinking
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, James Payne Washington is now deep into the process of attempting to deal with the budget deficit, an exercise that leaves experienced observers with a sinking feeling. Presenting plans to cut spending and balance the budget is like the proverbial activity of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It [...]
The Tenets and Benefits of True Capitalism
David Mint, Guest Contributor As the Capitalistic system, which is currently the economic model that is associated with the heavily indebted Western Democracies, is in the process of being villainized for any and every economic problem known to man, it is important to step back and take a sober look at the term Capitalism itself. As with many [...]
Obama Hails ‘Job-Creating’ Deals in Asia, As China Complains
Liberty Alerts, Patrick Goodenough, CNSNews.com President Obama headed home from a nine-day Asia-Pacific trip highlighting deals that he said would support nearly 130,000 American jobs, while Chinese state media complained about an ambitious trade agreement widely seen as designed to isolate China. In his weekly address, recorded in Indonesia [...]
Putting Bureaucracy First: Rachel Maddow’s Progressivism
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Sheldon Richman Progressives today say people should come before profits. Now in a privilege-ridden corporate state, that’s a worthy goal, though Progressives have no clue how to achieve it. How nice it would be if they were equally committed to putting people before bureaucracy. Here they fall down rather [...]
Ousted WH Green Czar Becomes Occupy Movement’s Official Leader
Liberty Alerts, Corruption Chronicles The ousted Obama “Green Czar” who describes himself as a “rowdy black nationalist” turned communist has found a job as the official spokesperson and leader of the national movement to end economic segregation and social injustice in the United States. Widely known as Occupy Wall Street, the [...]
German Official Chastises Britain Over Financial Transaction Tax
By Dennis Behreandt A German official has criticized the UK over its reluctance to accept a tax on financial transactions in order to prop up the Euro. The criticism over British reluctance to agree to the tax came from Volker Kauder, the “parliamentary leader of the Christian Democratic Union,” the London Telegraph reported. According [...]
Markets Are Messy, Part 2: The Errors of the Economists
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Steven Horwitz Last week I argued that critics of markets are wrong when they point to imperfections as an ipso facto case for government intervention and when they criticize defenders of markets for being unable to explain exactly how they would solve a particular problem. Markets are inherently messy and [...]
Let’s Talk About Jobs
By Phyllis Schlafly We watched a couple more TV presidential candidate debates and, funny thing, again there was little or no mention of what is widely conceded to be the number-one issue: jobs. The unemployment figures remain unacceptably high, and the figures for young people are truly shocking. The general unemployment rate has been 9 [...]
Green Fiascoes and Boondoggles
Mark W. Hendrickson, The Center for Vision and Values A barrage of news headlines on the Solyndra (1) scandal continue to remind us that President Obama made green jobs one of his administration’s priorities. Those headlines also reveal this initiative to have been a costly mistake. The bankruptcy of Solyndra, the solar-panel manufacturer [...]
Dangerous Political Naifs
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Donald Boudreaux Being well past the age of 50 and having spent nearly all my adult life as an academic economist, I seize the privilege of doing what so many other economists of my age and rank do—namely, offer unsolicited speculations about what is right and what is wrong with modern economics. First, [...]
Leaking Left and Right
Free Enterprise Zone, The Freeman, Sandy Ikeda The foundations of the free market are private property, freedom of association, and the rule of law. The free market is what happens when the law does not intentionally privilege any person or group or persecute any particular person or group. It exists to the degree that the rules of the [...]
