Hicks: Better ways to help minimum-wage workers
Much of the rhetoric about the costs and benefits of the minimum wage is pure bunk. Life as an adult minimum-wage worker is tough, but not because of salaries.
Economic Analysis
Articles
Hicks: Odds of Affordable Care Act failure keep rising
It is far too early to call the rollout of the Affordable Care Act a failure; most new programs have rocky starts. But this one has most of the signs of inevitable failure. If the situation doesn’t remedy itself quickly, the complete redo of the law will be hastened considerably.
Study: 15 percent of U.S., Hoosier youth out of school, work
Indiana finished 35th among states on the report's Opportunity Index, mostly because of a subpar score in education. The percentage of Hoosiers ages 16-24 not in school or not working mirrored the national average of nearly 15 percent.
Hicks: Economists don’t know why economy is ailing
The first slowdown seems to have been at least partially remedied by the Federal Reserve’s massive purchase of assets known as quantitative easing, the most recent of which was accompanied by a marked short-term improvement in the economy. That improvement seems to have run its course.
Hicks: Welcome this debate, even if it ain’t pretty
Voters’ expressing only anger and frustration over D.C. politics simply won’t do. It is intellectually lazy, cowardly and un-American to wish that everyone should settle their argument like this is a school playground.
Hicks: Sometimes it’s about spending, not taxes
No matter the result of last week’s budget debate, we are in need of a serious discussion about tax and spending policy.
Hicks: We’ll spend more and more on health care
Like most Americans, I am confused by the ACA. I don’t have a spare couple of months to read it in its entirety, but am certain there are things about it I will like and some I will detest. On balance, though, it is increasingly clear that it will require Herculean fixes.
HICKS: Yellen understands the Fed’s conflicting roles
With Janet Yellen as the clear front runner for Federal Reserve chairwoman, rampant speculation regarding her approach to monetary policy fills blogs and editorials.
HICKS: Now is not the time to backtrack on school reforms
My local paper recently published an opinion piece criticizing virtually all recent education reform efforts, including those by the Bush, Obama, Daniels and Pence administrations. The piece was naively rich with irony.
Hicks: Incomes won’t rise until communities improve
Indiana has many fine communities with good schools and great local amenities. High-earning households are eager to live in these communities, and businesses flock there to obtain access to those workers and consumers. Indiana also has many poor communities with weak schools and few amenities. Households and businesses flee such places.
Hicks: Blame labor’s collapse on its own successes
The decline of the American labor movement is startling. In only 50 years, membership has dropped 80 percent. No mainstream American institution of note has dissipated at this pace before. Today, more Americans receive disability payments than belong to private-sector unions.
Hicks: Antitrust suit rests on decades of tradition
The attempt by the Department of Justice to block the merger of American Airlines and U.S. Airways offers a glimpse into one of the great public policy innovations of the past couple of centuries: American anti-trust law.
Hicks: Education debate shouldn’t matter to students
Higher education is undergoing a metamorphosis. Cost-saving measures such as online learning and the ubiquity of technology might seem to make today’s undergraduate experience vastly different from their forbears’. That is a mirage. The most essential elements of an education are unchanged.
Hicks: Two excellent choices for Bernanke successor
A great debate under way regarding the successor to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke seems to come down to economists Lawrence Summers or Janet Yellen. The debate is full of interesting insight but it’s the immediate challenges of the Fed that matter more.
Hicks: Stamp out mediocrity in education colleges
Over the past two years, Indiana has replaced licensing and compensation rules for public schoolteachers that required degrees exclusively from teachers colleges.
Economic growth better than expected in 2nd quarter
U.S. economic growth accelerated in the April-June quarter to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.7 percent. The Bureau of Economic Analysis said the rate released Wednesday was based on incomplete data and would be revised over the next month.
Hicks: China’s economy colliding into great wall
For more than three decades, China’s economy has dazzled observers, with annual growth frequently sneaking into double digits. But the wide-eyed narrative of boundless wealth that has accompanied this growth is suffering a couple of hiccups.
Hicks: ‘Real poverty’ is beating a retreat globally
Over the past 30 years, the number of people in the world living in “real poverty” has dropped from just under 2 billion to fewer than 1.1 billion. This is a drop from roughly 40 percent to 15 percent of the world’s population.
Hicks: Same-sex debate obscures larger family crisis
Same-sex marriage or household arrangements possess no economic consequences. However, the debate itself does have consequences because it crowds out honest deliberation on the real problems of collapsing families.
Hicks: The Austrian school is winning the fiscal debate
Political folklore has it that economists are infamously divided between Keynesian and classical explanations for the cause of the boom-and-bust cycle.