Government policies are typically sold as intuitively good ideas. We can give everyone access to health care and cut the deficit. We can inject money into the economy to create jobs and beat the recession. We’ll set up a “Consumer Protection Financial Agency” to do what? Protect the consumer, of course. Government mandates and regulations will help Americans save money on electric bills and at gas stations. The “government knows best” mentality spreads through all sectors of the economy. Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) delivered that very message when …
The Fundacion para el Análisis y los Estudios Sociales of Spain recently sponsored presentations on the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom (www.heritage.org/index) in Madrid and Barcelona. Discussion centered on Spain’s 18 percent unemployment rate, the highest in Europe, and its labor market regulations that are among the most severe in Europe. According to the Index of Economic Freedom, the average labor freedom score for the members of the European Union is 60.0, on the Index’s 0-100 scale. Spain’s score, by contrast, is only 47.3. The average unemployment rate for EU …
Today the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor and Statistics released its monthly jobs report showing that the nation’s unemployment is 9.7% for the third month in a row. While the jobs report does indicate that 162,000 net jobs were created in March, almost 50,000 of those jobs were temporary government Census jobs that do not reflect any real economic progress. In total, the U.S. economy has now lost a total of 3.8 million jobs since President Barack Obama signed his $862 billion stimulus plan. We are 8.1 million jobs short …
In a recent interview with Yahoo Finance, Vice President Joe Biden said the following: “the top 1 percent of earners get 22 percent of all income made in the U.S. Taxes have been lowered for the wealthy considerably over the years. It’s about time we get a little tax equity here.” Putting aside the fact that the Vice President thinks top-earners “get” their income instead of earning it through hard work, innovation and business acumen, he is right that the top one percent of taxpayers earn 22 percent of all …
Early this year, the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, the Heritage Foundation’s data driven policy guide, reported that our economy is no longer in the top tier of economically free countries. Worse, still, we slipped behind our northern neighbor Canada for the first time in the Index history. This disappointing news is vividly echoed in KPMG’s just released study, Competitive Alternatives 2010 The report provides an updated comparison of global business locations, focusing on costs of conducting businesses. According to the report, “Canada now holds a 5 percent business cost …
Almost a year ago, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez told President Obama, “I want to be your friend.” Today the much-photographed handshake at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad has become a cold shoulder. Sadly like much of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy, relations with arch-anti-American Hugo Chavez have fallen well short of expectations. Good intentions, positive gestures, and, a little naïveté has not stopped Hugo Chavez from pursuing his mission to consolidate authoritarian rule in Venezuela and undermine U.S. leadership and influence in the Americas. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir …
“According to a report released Monday by the U.S. Department of Education, an increasing number of American parents are choosing to have their children raised at school rather than at home,” The Onion “reports” today. “School-homing,” as the satirical source dubs the fictional trend, would be a witty April Fool’s fib if it didn’t sound so much like the liberal education ideas we’ve heard in the last few decades. The Clinton administration, for example, popularized the idea of “one-stop shopping” for social services at public schools. They also heavily promoted …
Major flaws in the gargantuan Obamacare bill started to emerge almost immediately after it was signed into law. One of the most embarrassing: failure to ensure immediate coverage for kids with pre-existing conditions—something Obamacare supporters had constantly promised was part of the bill. Looking to provide cover for those who wrote the bill, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius fired off a warning letter to insurers. “Health insurance is designed to prevent any child from being denied coverage because he or she has a pre-existing condition,” she scolded. …
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner appeared in an interview on The Today Show this morning and decried the “unfairness” of an economy where businesses on Wall Street are recovering, but where Americans still don’t have jobs. Quoth Geithner: “It’s not fair, it’s deeply unfair, and [Americans] should be angry about it.” The concern over “unfairness” is the unsettling ethos underlying President Obama’s economic agenda and, specifically, his proposed tax on America’s banks, intended to recoup dollars shelled out under the bailout program. President Obama aims to tax banks who received bailout …
So much for shovel-ready. In February of 2009 President Obama signed the $862 billion stimulus bill into law and of that; $36.7 billion was allocated to the Department of Energy. More specifically, $16.7 billion is geared towards increasing the production of renewable energy and improving energy efficiency in buildings and appliances. In what was supposed to provide timely, targeted funding to stimulate the economy, many projects are having trouble getting off the ground. For instance, solar companies are in jeopardy of missing the deadline for federal funding: NextEra Energy Resources …
