Free Republic

There are some aspects of Modern Leftism that have evolved from the Divine Right of Kings -- particularly amongst the elites. Divine Right holds that one is born into a class of the wealthy and powerful due to the Will of the Almighty. Aristocrats-by-birth in agrarian medievalist Europe justified their relative wealth in those terms. So those who have economic success and political influence are so because they have been Chosen while the rest are by definition inferior in Divine blessing in their earthly poverty. Left to their own devices, those born poor would destroy themselves and thus need to...

On Aug. 24, United Airlines diverted a Newark-to-Denver flight to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport after two passengers got into an argument. It started when a 47-year-old man used a device called the Knee Defender to prevent the 48-year-old woman in front of him from reclining her seat. According to The Associated Press, a flight attendant told the male passenger that United does not allow the bracketlike gadget. He refused to remove it. The female passenger then threw water at the male passenger, which probably didn't thrill the passengers seated next to him. (He was in the middle seat.) The airliner's...

Recently, a friend lamented that the liberal left is destroying America, but I disagreed. The left is consistent and transparent in its belief that big government, higher taxes and more regulation serve the greater good. The right espouses a limited government platform of lower taxes, less spending and less regulation, which frees capital resulting in innovation and job creation. But do Georgia Republicans practice what they preach Georgia’s fiscal year 2014 results illustrate the reality vs. the rhetoric. Our revenue jumped $879 million over fiscal year 2013; but $473 million of this increase resulted from the new way cars are...

WASHINGTON - A bunch of economic numbers from the government this week, which should be taken with a large grain of salt, were expected to show the economy was doing much better in the past three months. Well, we've seen these periodic, fragmentary numbers many times before, only to see the economy continue to slowly slog along at its painfully lackluster, jobs-challenged pace for the past six and a half years now. President Obama will recite the exaggerated economic numbers that his cherry-picking speech writers select to prove that he's brought the economy back from the bring of recession. But...

The Status Quo is desperate to mask the declining fortunes of those who earn income from work, and the Misery Index 2.0 strips away the phony facade of bogus unemployment and inflation numbers.

We've written repeatedly about the many flaws of the 2009 "Cash for Clunkers" program. It made used cars more expensive, wasted resources and merely shifted people's car-buying plans forward a few months. Now, a new study by three Texas A&M University economists says the misguided stimulus policy wasn't even good for the auto industry. Mark Hoekstra, Steven L. Puller and Jeremy West find that the program's fuel-efficiency constraints induced people to purchase smaller, less expensive cars than they would otherwise have bought.

On the surface, California's job market is booming. The state has now recovered all the jobs lost during the recession, and done so at a faster pace than all but five states. The growth, though, belies a troubling imbalance. The fastest job creation has come in low-wage sectors, in which pay has declined. At the high end of the salary scale, a different dynamic has taken hold: rising pay and improving employment after rounds of consolidation. Most distressing, middle-wage workers are losing out on both counts. "People talk about it like an hourglass," said Tracey Grose, vice president of the...

Lovers of liberty are today recognizing the birthday of intellectual powerhouse and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, who was born 102 years ago in Brooklyn, New York to immigrant parents. Friedman, who died in 2006, was my intellectual hero. As I have noted in previous blog posts, Friedman revolutionized the economic science while teaching it to the everyman. He is arguably the most influential economist of the 20th Century, perhaps (unfortunately) next to John Maynard Keynes. Friedman cut so many new paths it is difficult to sum up his contributions to economics and public policy in a book, let alone a...

When Adam Smith put to paper the principles of market systems that Marx would later dismiss as capitalism, people were still dedicated to their religious faiths. Smith -- who was not in Washington at the time (ba-dum-tssshhh) -- knew this, and, even prior to releasing this monumental work, he laid the foundation of what his market system would be based on: “moral sentiments”. Smith was not a relativist, but he believed that morals were commonly held -- after all, Christendom was still holding on, albeit just barely and for dear life. True, enlightened capitalism, while inferior to distributism, is at...

The national government yesterday unveiled the results of collective wage bargaining for the first half of the year, stressing the fact that salaries have risen by up to 37 percent “amid a difficult context marred by economic troubles.” The Labour Ministry considered not only hikes in basic salaries but also extra sums agreed to between workers and employers. Meanwhile, private estimates say inflation for the last 12 months has clocked in at around 37 to39 percent.

Flint may be Michigan’s second city to plunge into bankruptcy unless retirees accept cuts in health benefits that threaten to unravel a balanced budget. As Crain's Detroit reports, Emergency Manager Darnell Earley (Flint’s third emergency leader since it was placed under state control in 2011) warned "If we have no ability to mitigate the cost of retiree health care, that’s going to make it very difficult for the city to remain financially stable over the next few years." As Eric Scorsone notes, "Flint's at the forefront, but a lot of cities are on the same train, and that train is...

Everybody talks about it. The news is full of it. But most Christians know very little about it. Economics: it’s everywhere, influencing everything, yet so rarely understood. Economics for Everybody seeks to remedy that through an insightful and entertaining exploration of the principles, practices, and consequences of economics. Thoroughly unconventional, it links entrepreneurship with lemonade, cartoons with markets, and Charlie Chaplin with supply and demand. It’s funny, clever, profound and instructive. If you want to know why economics is so important to understand, this is the series for you. In our day and age, it’s a message every Christian needs...

With most legislative sessions for 2014 adjourned, many states are now looking forward to November. Other than elections, various ballot initiatives will be voted on later this year. Perhaps the most economically damaging proposal comes from the state of Nevada, where voters will decide whether or not to impose a 2 percent modified gross receipts tax, or margin tax on the state’s businesses. Currently, only Texas has the economically devastating margin tax, at 1 percent, and that has been the subject of multiple votes to repeal just in the 2013 legislative session. Other states, such as Washington and Ohio also...

Initial Reaction On the surface, this appeared to be a very strong jobs report from both the household survey and establishment survey perspective. The establishment survey reported a gain of 288,000 jobs while the household survey sported a gain in employment of 407,000. In addition, May was revised up from +217,000 to + 224,000, and April revised up from +282,000 to +304,000. Digging deeper into the details, strength was entirely part-time (and then some). Voluntary part-time employment rose by a whopping 840,000 and involuntary part-time employment rose by 275,000. Compared to a total gain of employment of 407,000, the gain...

Despite overwhelming evidence from economists on both sides of the political aisle, Republicans in leadership positions in the Michigan Legislature pushed for an increase to the state's minimum wage. They were rewarded for their efforts when Republican Gov. Rick Snyder signed the increase into law late last month. By 2018, employers across the state will be forced to pay at least $9.25 an hour to workers. Forced increases to the minimum wage will continue in 2019 and beyond because the wage will be adjusted to the rate of inflation or 3.5 percent, whichever is lower. The mandate will be phased...

During the debate in Michigan over right-to-work, critics commonly incited fear that it would result in lower incomes for Michigan workers. For example, President Obama claimed in 2012 that the law meant "giving you the right to work for less money." As right-to-work is being discussed in other states, including Missouri, the fears about its impact on income are reiterated. The Committee to Protect Missouri Families, a coalition fighting right-to-work legislation, claims on its website that the law "cuts wages and stifles job growth by reducing people's discretionary income. When people have less discretionary income, they spend less, which in...

Many Seattle workers are about to see their income go way up, after the City Council unanimously passed a $15 minimum wage earlier this month. But faster than you can get a happy meal at McDonald's, the ordinance is facing a legal challenge. “I guarantee not everyone will survive,” warned David Jones, who owns a Subway franchise in Seattle. “This discriminatory law will affect some franchisees and they will go out of business.” The International Franchise Association, representing those concerns, has sued over the wage hike, specifically objecting to the fact the ordinance treats franchises as big businesses and requires...

The big political news from last week was David Brat’s upset win over Eric Cantor for Congress. Brat is an economics professor at Randolph Macon and from his research it’s clear that he has strong political views embedded in his economics. It’s perfectly fine to be a political economist, but when it leads to an obviously flawed understanding and presentation of reality then it becomes a real problem in my opinion. For instance, in his website Brat says the following: “Our national debt has skyrocketed, reaching over $17 trillion dollars. What our leaders in Washington fail to mention is...

"One of the most appalling things about NRA was the sudden multiplication of new rules with which businesses must comply, rules not resting on settled law but on arbitrary decisions of administrative bodies, subject to change almost without notice.The business community was suddenly called upon to rush to Washington to participate in the making of codes, codes which represented bargains among different elements of the industries, bargains with labor, and bargains with an extraordinarily incapable set of Government officials and employees, many of whom were extremely radical, and few of whom knew anything about business"

Less than 19 percent of the projected jobs the Michigan Economic Growth Authority (MEGA) trumpeted as being created by tax credits between 1995 and 2011 ever came about, according to an analysis of data provided by the Michigan Economic Development Corp. (MEDC). Of the 186,923 new jobs first projected by companies that were awarded MEGA incentives, 35,369 jobs were reported back to the MEDC as being created, according to the latest MEDC reports. Just 3.9 percent of the 659 individual projects met or exceeded their job projection totals. Since 1997, the state has issued MEGA tax credit certificates worth $1.1...