Hindsight is supposed to be 20/20, but looking back on the past 12 months, it’s tough to see any sense in many of the Administration’s regulatory missteps. Of course, there are bound to be a few howlers when government churns out more than 3,500 rules in a year, including dozens unleashed by Obamacare, Dodd–Frank, and the perpetually errant Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But by any standard, 2011 brought forth a remarkable number and variety of regulatory blunders. Fair warning: Our Top 10 list may prove fatal to any bit of …
Recent press reports, including a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal, have the news that Wal-Mart has signed a letter to President Obama endorsing the idea of an “employer mandate” – a requirement that employers offer health insurance to their employees. Why would Wal-Mart – the nation’s largest employer – endorse such an idea? Simple: It would cripple many of their competitors. Much ink has been spilled on the effect Wal-Mart has on small retailers. Wal-Mart’s large size enables them to extract low prices from manufacturers, and that – …
…because if big labor gets its way, they will not be protected by the secret ballot at work. Today the Wall Street Journal has a front page story on management efforts to educate employees on what would happen to Wal-Mart if liberal majorities in Congress and the White House passed the “Employee Free Choice Act.” Want to know what the Employee Free Choice Act actually does? Well if your hoping the WSJ will tell you, be patient. The WSJ waits until far after the jump, in the 20th paragraph to …
Defending free trade from politicians who “pander to Americans’ suspicion of foreigners,” George Mason University economics professor Tyler Cowen writes in the New York Times: The last 20 years have brought the world more trade, more globalization and more economic growth than in any previous such period in history. Few commentators had believed that such a rise in trade and living standards was possible so quickly. More than 400 million Chinese climbed out of poverty between 1990 and 2004, according to the World Bank. India has become a rapidly growing …
