Here’s a list of articles that I have been reading lately:
Why we shouldn’t raise the minimum wage
www.aei.org
Here’s today’s ECON 101 lesson on the economics of the minimum wage… “Raising the wage will make it more expensive to hire younger and low-skill workers. There are better ways to help the poor.”
www.aei.org
Current US national debt is now $17 trillion – in excess of 100% of US GDP (estimated annual rate as of Q1 2013 for US GDP is $15.98 trillion (source: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+Gdp), and also $800 billion higher than it was just 7 months ago (source: http://blog.garven.com/2012/11/07/on-the-current-state-of-americas-public-finances/). Furthermore, quoting from the article cited below,
“In 2012 dollars, household net worth in 2007 was $240,790 per person. Even then, we were looking ahead to high deficits, and the present value of the implicit tax liability facing every American just to cover those deficits was $70,143, with the net of the two values coming to $170,647. At the end of 2012, per capita wealth had climbed back almost to its 2007 value, but the present value of future tax liabilities associated with deficits had climbed all the way to $152,216. So, accounting for federal debt, net wealth had dropped all the way to $62,322 per person.”
Tribal Politics in the 21st Century
www.american.com
I highly recommend this article; for an expanded podcast version, see http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/06/kling_on_the_th.html. “Progressives, conservatives, and libertarians each have a mythology in which they are the heroes and the other tribes are villains. Partisans of these three ideologies even speak different languages.”
The President’s Broken Window Fallacy: Carbon Policies and Jobs
american.com
Here’s a shoutout to Frédéric Bastiat, the 19th century French political economist who is famous for having penned the influential “Parable of the Broken Window” (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window)… “It is time to expose the flawed jobs reasoning behind President Obama’s new carbon plan.”
The $4.3 Million Bunch At Thunderbird
poetsandquants.com
“Pay for just ten Thunderbird profs totals $4.3 million a year” This is impressive considering that according to a recent WSJ article (cf. http://on.wsj.com/132S1nQ), the Thunderbird Global School of Management “… is selling its campus to a for-profit college operator as part of a last-ditch effort to bolster its finances as more people question the value of an M.B.A.” Another article (cf. http://poetsandquants.com/2013/04/06/b-schools-that-graduate-jobless-mbas/) notes that the Thunderbird Global School of Management also has one of the worst full-time MBA placement records of 2012 with 76.1% of the graduating class without jobs at graduation…
Big Government Implodes—and ObamaCare’s Failures Aren’t the Only Sign
online.wsj.com
“Mark July 3, 2013, as the day Big Government finally imploded… In The Wall Street Journal, Wonder Land columnist Daniel Henninger writes that ObamaCare’s failures are not the only sign of a great public crack-up.”
Replace the IRS with the Honor System
www.americanthinker.com
Since there already is an Obamacare honor system in place, in that the administration has announced to take enrollees at their word in self-reporting their income and insurance status (see “Obamacare honor system: Admin will take enrollees’ word on income, insurance status” @ http://bit.ly/18IPSSk and “Health insurance marketplaces will not be required to verify consumer claims” at http://wapo.st/17YorEI), why stop there?
What Austerity Looks Like in 2013: Taxes Up 14%, Spending Down 4%
reason.com
“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has run the numbers for the first nine months of fiscal year 2013, which started on October 1, 2012. The results?”
Walmart Threatens To Pull Out Of D.C. Over ‘Living Wage’
jobs.aol.com
“City council forced to decide: are no jobs better than bad jobs?”