Free Republic

A few years back, the heavy-equipment manufacturer JCB held a job fair in the glass foyer of its sprawling headquarters near here, but when a throng of prospective employees learned the next step would be drug testing, an alarming thing happened: About half of them left. That story still circulates within the business community of this historic port city. But the problem has gotten worse. All over the country, employers say they see a disturbing downside of tighter labor markets as they try to rebuild from the worst recession since the Depression: They are struggling to find workers who can...

The ROOT CAUSE of our economic woes including business leaving our shores is the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT unconstitutionally forcing minimum wage on business. Minimum wage, regulations, unions, and high taxes are THE CAUSE of businesses moving elsewhere. Federal government is the problem NOT the solution. Although I support Trump, his tariff proposals are MORE federal government and do NOTHING to attack the ROOT CAUSES of the loss of jobs in our country. Tariffs have the appearance but not the reality of a solution - they are only palliative and delay the actual reforms needed. A tariff is a tax and China...

Overregulation: Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s CEO Andy Puzder has people all in a huff over his idea to automate restaurants. But why be upset with Puzder? This is an inevitable consequence of massive minimum wage hikes by the government. “With government driving up the cost of labor, it’s driving down the number of jobs,” said Puzder. “You’re going to see automation not just in airports and grocery stores, but in restaurants.” He’s right. That’s why whenever the minimum wage rises above the market-set prevailing wage, jobs are destroyed. Who would pay someone $15 an hour to do a job that’s...

So, a customer goes to a business to purchase a product. The business refuses to sell. The customer asks why. The business says, however politely, “Because we don’t approve of you.”And the business gets in trouble, right florists, wedding hall operators and cake-bakers of America? Actually, we’ll see about that. Google announced Wednesday it no longer would allow online or payday lenders to advertise on its websites. Online loans join firearms, explosives and illicit drugs as products the search engine giant refuses to tout. Facebook also bans selling ads to online lenders, but Yahoo and other providers still do. It’s...

By adding to an already challenging legal environment in North Carolina, HB2 could cost the state almost $5 billion a year, according to a new report by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. "The repeal of HB2 would not only reverse the threat to over $5 billion in economic activity for the state, but would also begin to bring North Carolina some of the economic advantages that come when a state embraces diversity and its LGBT citizens," said Christy Mallory, Senior Counsel at the Williams Institute and co-author of the new report. While prior reports have focused on...

Chin and Jennifer Kim watched the Carl's Jr. go out of business outside their Carmel Mountain Ranch donut shop. Sesame Donuts has been in the same strip mall for 27 years, 17 of those years owned by the Kims. The old Carl's Jr. has been going through renovations lately. It's only 50 yards away and the Chin wanted to know about their new neighbors. That's why he was shocked when a customer told them that neighbor would be a Krispy Kreme Donut Shop. "I was surprised, I didn't believe it," said Chin. Since the word has gotten out to their...

My FRiends, congratulations to Mr. Trump on his pending Republican nomination!  And what better way to celebrate than to compare Trump with the so-called "First American" and Founding Father, Ben Franklin. On Google Images, I ran across an amusing New York Magazine portrait of Trump wearing an 18th century hair style.  Then, shortly thereafter I found the splendid painting of Ben Franklin by David Martin.  I said: "Hey, wouldn't it be fun to GIMP those images together?" so Trump and Old Ben could sit together at the same table and shoot the breeze. For the story, I searched Wikipedia...

Days before a critical Indiana primary that could sew up the presidential nomination for the “presumptive” Republican party nominee, the candidate’s eldest son, who is also his current campaign surrogate and Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization, isn’t interested in talking politics at all..... If all of these Trump business traits—passion, hard work, getting your hands dirty—sound distinctly similar to many of the themes Donald Sr. is hammering home on the Republican campaign trail it’s because they’ve run in the family for decades—and Don Jr. isn’t shy about telling voters as much. Presidential campaigns have a habit of throwing...

The rap on Donald Trump is he's all bluster. The New York Times says he's offering "incoherent mishmash." GOP rival Ted Cruz claims Trump has "no idea" how to fix the economy. Don't' believe it. The Trump campaign is putting forward proposals to fix problems facing the nation, from the long waits for medical care at the VA to the impending collapse of Obamacare. Check out Trump's economic plan, for starters. Unlike Hillary Clinton's radical anti-business agenda, Trump's plan would actually help unemployed Americans get back to work. Trump slashes the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, down from the...

ASHEVILLE, NC (FOX Carolina) - A local tow truck driver said he refused to tow a woman’s car after he saw Bernie Sanders stickers on the vehicle. Kenneth Shupe said he was called to pick up a woman stranded on I-26 in Asheville on Monday. When he saw “a bunch of Bernie Sanders stuff” he said he told the woman, “very politely,” that he could’t tow her car because she was “obviously a socialist” and advised her to “call the government” for a tow. "Every business dealing in recent history with a socialist minded person I have not gotten paid,"...

Michigan residents are making more money, meaning more money for state government. But its financial health is still enduring the effects of corporate welfare deals cut during the administration of former Gov. Jennifer Granholm. The state is projecting it will take in $9.2 billion in net income tax by the end of the 2015-16 fiscal year, which would be a net 2.5 percent increase from the previous year. But the state also projects that it will have to pay out $1 billion in corporate welfare in the form of Michigan Business Tax credits by the end of the year. Overall,...

Private job creation slowed even further last month as firms added just 156,000 jobs in April, ADP said in a Wednesday report. "The job market appears to have stumbled in April. Job growth noticeably slowed, with some weakness across most sectors. One month does not make a trend, but this bears close watching as the financial market turmoil earlier in the year may have done some damage to business hiring," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, said in a statement. Economists polled by Reuters expected the number to come in at 195,000. In March, private payrolls were revised down...

It was a double whammy for Brooklyn and New York City manufacturing this week with news that 3D printer company MakerBot Industries would be laying off local workers as it shifts its production work, although not its headquarters, to China. It is doing so through St. Petersburg, Florida-based Jabil Circuit (NYSE: JBL), one of the largest contract manufacturers in the world, which has facilities in China. The reasons behind this decision are myriad. Chief among them are the competitive headwinds in the 3D consumer printer business itself, and the high cost of doing business in New York City, ..... <...

Almost all counterarguments against allowing transgender individuals into sex-segregated spaces focus on the high likelihood of what harm will be caused to girls and women. However, to my knowledge there have been very few if any well-developed cases regarding the ramifications of allowing female transgender individuals into male sex-segregated spaces and what could happen to boys and men. Furthermore, the vast majority of rebuttals to allowing transgenders into sex-segregated spaces have focused almost solely on private areas such as restrooms and locker-rooms without further emphasis on incidents of privately owned, male-only businesses that have been coerced into accepting transgender individuals....

The issue of nuisance lawsuits against gun manufacturers has moved well beyond the courtroom drama playing out with the Sandy Hook families. Bernie Sanders has managed to drive Hillary Clinton further to the left as she seeks lines of attack against the Vermont Senator, coaxing her into calling for the repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) in recent campaign stops. That may serve her purposes in the primary, but how well does such a position play nationally as we look forward to the general election in November? A new survey conducted by Harper Polling indicates...

RIYADH—Saudi Arabia, crimped by low crude prices, approved Monday a long-term blueprint for the kingdom’s economic transformation aimed at reducing its dependence on oil. The multiyear plan, dubbed “Saudi Vision 2030,” was approved by the cabinet, according to Saudi Arabia’s monarch, King Salman. The Saudi cabinet, in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, said the government’s economic council would be in charge of overseeing the vision’s implementation. Saudi officials later Monday were to present a broad overview of the country’s most extensive economic shake-up in decades. The steep drop in oil prices has given new urgency to...

Dear College Students, I remember the stress of college. The anxiety of papers due. The uncertainty of relationships. The concerns about what I was going to do after graduation. I get it. It’s tough. I also remember professors who challenged our perceived notions of “right” and “wrong.” I recall being exposed to movies, books and papers that I massively disagreed with. Looking back, I can visualize the heated debates between people with different perspectives. I can almost hear the yelling, the screaming, the passion and the CHALLENGES. You’re studying and learning during the Industrial Revolution of our generation. It’s exciting....

The unveiling of Tesla’s Model 3 electric car was no less than the lifting of the final curtain on a game-changing energy revolution. And if we follow that revolution to its core, we arrive at lithium—our new gasoline for which the feeding frenzy has only just begun. Unveiled just on 31 March and already with 325,000 orders, it seems that the market, too, understands that the Model 3 is more than just another electric vehicle. In one week alone, Tesla has racked up around $14 billion in implied future sales, making it the “biggest one-week launch of any product ever.”...

The New Yorker‘s James Surowiecki writes this week about how Big Business has been a massively effective force for gay rights. He writes that progressives are used to seeing Big Business as the bad guy, but the pro-LGBT activist role corporations have taken on complicates matters. More:

Growth: Suddenly, all of the talk on Wall Street and Main Street is about whether the American economy is sinking into another recession. Who’s to blame? Try the White House and the political class. The warning signs of a sharp slowdown abound. Industrial production fell 0.6% in March and has now fallen 2% over the past 12 months. Corporate profits, real median wages, and business investment are basically flat.... ...U.S. growth has slowed down over the past six months. ... ...We keep asking: Where is the growth supposed to come from? Consider the battering that business and investors have been...