Near-zero interest rates were supposed to pep up the economy. Six years and 10 months later, economic growth has been positive, but anemic. The unemployment rate has fallen to 5.1 percent, but labor force participation rates are at record lows and full-time jobs are hard to find.
Prices set below what a free-exchange market would determine result in shortages. Above-market prices produce unsold piles of surpluses.
A much more plausible explanation is, there was a mechanical breakdown at BP’s Whiting refinery.
A funny thing happened on our way to the gas station last week. We’d heard world oil prices were tanking. We expected our fill-up to be a bargain. But to our dismay, retail gasoline prices had spiked to nearly $3 a gallon. It turns out the BP refinery in Whiting had been partially shut down for […]
Americans are understandably upset with years of sluggish U.S. economic performance. We don’t blame the political class for trying to blame it on someone else, preferably a foreign someone else. Don’t fall for it.
We offer one simple economic observation: Reductions in CO2 emissions come at an economic cost today, while the benefits accrue in the future.
The most recent Report of the Social Security Administration projects that, in 2020, interest earnings will not be enough to cover Social Security’s deficit, so the Social Security Trust Fund’s balance will begin to decline. It is expected the balance will be zero sometime in 2034.
Fans of goosing the minimum wage should acknowledge that raising the price of labor by legislative fiat costs jobs.
The reserve balances are there for one reason: to cushion against unforeseen shocks that would cause dramatic reductions in public services or tax increases nobody really wants.
China is a mosaic of different “economies”—part subsistence agriculture, part controlled by the People’s Liberation Army, and only part more or less “capitalistic”. The State still calls far too many of the shots.
In recent days, the tug of war between economic interest and other human passions have played out in the dance between Greece and its eurozone creditors.
Many economists who differ over whom to blame for Greece’s financial disaster agree in thinking it is a good idea for the Greeks to leave the euro and go back to using the Greek drachma. A good idea for both Greece and the future of the eurozone.
The only cartels that persist for any length of time are those propped up by government sanction. Horne v. U.S. Department of Agriculture perfectly illustrates our point.
As Milton Friedman once observed, if all you want is a “jobs” program, might as well hire people to dig ditches and fill them up again … with spoons.
At stake is whether people in the 36 states where the federal government runs the Obamacare health insurance exchanges are entitled to receive health insurance subsidies.
Why should we be surprised when another cartel bites the dust?
At least since the time of Adam Smith, economists have recognized that specialization and trade are the keys to prosperity. And at least since that time, economists have had a hard time explaining why this is true.
Innovation is capitalism. Only under capitalism does innovation flourish.
Hoosiers should be sensitive to outside criticism. But it is also possible to be oversensitive to outside criticism and to overreact. That can’t be good for our image.
We’ve fought a 50-year War on Poverty with a cornucopia of public dollars. Poverty is winning.
