White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel wasn’t kidding when he said that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and according Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), it was anything but wasted. “Indeed, the period of panic that everyone was facing opened a tremendous opportunity for the left to start establishing the principles of social democracy,” Brooks said this week at The Heritage Foundation. As the recession abates, confidence slowly builds and a dynamic is born where panic is receding and anger is setting in …
Today, another burden is being placed on America’s small businesses. Effective on this date is the third installment of the increase of the minimum wage that was passed in 2007. Once again, our federal government has provided not a help, but a hindrance to our economic recovery. When the three-phase minimum wage increase was initially signed into law in May 2007, the unemployment rate was 4.5%, and when the first phase went into place, the unemployment rate was 4.6%. Today it stands at 9.5%. At a time of record deficits, …
“There is no disagreement,” said President Obama, “that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help jump start the economy.” Those chilling words were said in January, but we were reminded of that sentiment yesterday when President Obama claimed that “…economists on both the left and right agree that the last thing a government should do in the middle of a recession is to cut back on spending.” Markets work and there are many companies and entrepreneurs making the best of the current recessionary environment despite …
For the next few days, weeks and probably years, we’re going to hear a lot about what caused the financial crisis and led to a $700 bailout. And we’ve already heard presidential nominees, Members of Congress and political analysts blame free markets and deregulatory policies over the past 8 years. Using free markets and deregulation as scapegoats couldn’t be farther from the truth. Let’s see why. Here’s Sebastian Mallaby’s take: Financiers did create those piles of debt, and they certainly deserve some blame for today’s crisis. But was the financiers’ …
Robert Lawson has a great post at Division of Labor exploring the relation between power, free markets, and government: Let’s explore this point a bit by comparing the concentration of financial power in the hands of the 535 members of the United States Congress with the concentration of financial power of the 535 richest people in the United States. According to Forbes, the 400 richest people had a combined net worth of $1.57 trillion. Let’s simply assume the next 135 richest people had the same net worth, though they surely …
A round-up of Op-Eds from The Heritage Foundation Job Jitters – James Sherk America has faced much more serious problems in the past. If you have a job today that isn’t directly affected by housing markets or energy prices, you have little to fear from reports of rising unemployment.[...] Mr. Smith Didn’t Do This – Michael Franc Beginning in the 1990s, this narrative goes, free market, Republican extremists told government regulators to take a hike so the barons of high finance could indulge in an economic free-for-all, thus producing our …
