Free Republic

It's been a while since I've written about the idea of a universal basic income. So I figure an update is in order. The typical UBI proposal you see picks a certain dollar amount and then declares that it should go equally to all adults. I disagree with this in two ways. First, I think that children should also receive a basic income (paid to their parents). Second, I think that UBI payments should vary based on age. Neither of these additions negates the chief administrative advantages of the UBI because they don't introduce means-testing. It's trivially easy to vary...

DEMS ANSWER WALKER WITH LABOR LAW BILL: Two days after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker unveiled his plans to eliminate the NLRB and take right-to-work national, congressional Democrats will today propose legislation developed with the AFL-CIO to stiffen penalties for employers who violate the National Labor Relations Act. Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Bobby Scott will introduce a bill that they say would “help ensure workers are able to have a voice in the workplace and would crack down on employers who break the law when workers exercise their right to collective action.” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will stand alongside the...

Just in time for tonight’s GOP presidential debate, a consortium of think tanks from nearly 90 countries has released its annual Economic Freedom of the World Report. The report has some good news for much of mankind — economic liberty increased slightly around the globe — but not such good news for the United States, which continues to tumble in the rankings. As recently as 2000, the United States had the second-freest economy in the world, trailing only Hong Kong. But throughout the Bush and Obama years, we have slipped further and further behind. Last year, we fell out of...

Yellen May Surprise You Futures see 25% chance of ‘liftoff’ on Thursday;2-yr. yield hits 4-yr. high What if they threw an interest-rate hike and no one cooperated? The Federal Reserve has been edging tentatively toward the final step of monetary policy "normalization" for years. But events have conspired against it. In 2013, the mere mention that the Fed might slow additional bond buys sparked a worldwide market "taper tantrum." Ever since, despite broad consensus that the U.S. economy is on firm footing, one "one-time" event after another has cropped up to test that belief: the worst winter in decades, oil...

Governor Scott Walker made his name reforming Wisconsin’s labor laws. Now he proposes to do the same at the federal level. In a speech yesterday, Walker detailed solid labor-policy reforms that conservatives should embrace. His reforms boil down to eliminating union power over the government and focusing private-sector labor law on employee choice. Walker sees creating government unions as a policy mistake that unnecessarily increases government spending. Neutering Wisconsin’s government unions enabled him to eliminate a $3.6 billion budget deficit and cut taxes by $2 billion. Federal unions are not as powerful as state and local government unions — they...

Yes, yes, Scott Walker doesn’t have enough pizazz or excitement for some Republicans. Let’s just toss out this bold agenda while we’re at it. >>>Walker will propose eliminating the National Labor Relations Board, which he will say has “become a one-sided proxy for the big union bosses — often at the expense of taxpayers and workers.” He will also propose eliminating “big-government federal unions,” saying the time members of those unions spend on union efforts takes away from the time they spend doing their jobs serving the American people. Walker’s plan would also make Right to Work nationwide, giving employees...

Job openings soared to a fresh all-time high in July, evidence that the labor market continues to heat up. But employers aren't ready to close the deal to fill those positions with fatter pay packets. The Labor Department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey out last week showed that actual hires fell 4% to 5 million — 770,000 lower than openings. That's a notable jolt for the "JOLTS" survey. In the seven years before the recession began in 2007, there were an average of 1.2 million more hires than openings per month. July marked the sixth-straight month in which that...

<p>Chinese shares took another tumble on Tuesday amid persisting worries about the health of the world's second-biggest economy.</p> <p>Other bourses in the region also wobbled as cautious sentiment prevailed ahead of the Federal Reserve's highly-anticipated meeting, alongside other risk events such as a sudden leadership change down under.</p>

[Hillary] used the social media platform to accuse Walker of employing “bullying” tactics when dealing with unions. “Unions help keep working families strong. Scott Walker’s attacks on unions and workers’ rights aren’t leadership—they’re bullying,” Clinton wrote. The tweet was signed with her initial, indicating she personally authored the tweet. A few hours later, Walker responded — and hit back hard. @HillaryClinton Actually, we’re protecting the American worker from being forced to support candidates like you,” [SW]

The minimum wage peaked in 1968 at $8.54 per hour, after adjusting for inflation. The current $7.25 is far too low for the 3 million hourly workers who earn at or below that threshold, and certainly not at par with the wage hikes instituted by other countries with similar economic trajectories. Here’s The Economist on America’s embarrassingly low minimum wage: Given the pattern across the rest of the OECD, a group of mostly rich countries, one would expect America, where GDP per person is $53,000, to pay a minimum wage around $12 an hour. That would mean a raise of...

Colleges give prospective students very little information about how much money they can expect to earn in the job market. In part that’s because colleges may not want people to know, and in part it’s because such information is difficult and expensive to gather. Colleges are good at tracking down rich alumni to hit up for donations, but people who make little or no money are harder and less lucrative to find. On Saturday, the federal government solved that problem by releasing a huge new set of data in a website called College Scorecard, detailing the earnings of people who...

Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) is proposing the elimination of federal employee unions as part of broader package of policies aimed at curbing the influence of unions across the country. Walker rocketed to national prominence on the back of his own anti-union policies back in Wisconsin, so he’s looking to elevate that push to the national level as he works to rebound from slipping poll numbers. The plan, released Monday morning, includes shuttering the National Labor Relations Board, a government agency that protects employee’s ability to join unions and rules on unfair labor allegations. Walker plans to call the NLRB a...

Monday, September 14, 2015 Government workers outnumber manufacturing workers in Illinois By Michael Lucci / Illinois Policy Institute - The top-producing states of the Midwest’s manufacturing powerhouse are Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. But Illinois is the only one of the Great Lakes states where government workers dramatically outnumber manufacturing workers, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As of June 2015, Illinois had only 574,000 factory workers, compared with nearly 750,000 state and local government workers. That means Illinois had only 3 manufacturing workers for every 4 state and local government workers. http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2015/09/government-workers-outnumber-manufacturing-workers-in-illinois.html

A growing number of investors believe that US stocks are overvalued, creating the risk of a significant bear market, according to research by Yale University market scholar Robert Shiller. The Nobel economics laureate told the Financial Times that his valuation confidence indices, based on investor surveys, showed greater fear that the market was overvalued than at any time since the peak of the dotcom bubble in 2000. Nobel economics laureate Robert Shiller “It looks to me a bit like a bubble again with essentially a tripling of stock prices since 2009 in just six years and at the same time...

U.S. equity markets were lower Monday morning as traders anxiously awaited this week’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting. As of 9:50 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 81 points, or 0.50% to 16350. The S&P 500 shed 8 points, or 0.45% to 1952, while the Nasdaq Composite declined 16 points, or 0.33% to 4806. Today’s Markets Wall Street waited with bated breath for the outcome of the Federal Reserve’s two-day, policy-setting meeting this week, which begins Wednesday and ends with a statement on monetary policy the day after. In recent weeks, forecasts for a September rate hike have...

This chart shows Shiller's stock market confidence index, which he compiles by asking investors whether they think the stock market is overvalued, fairly valued, or undervalued. In an interview with the Financial Times, Shiller explains that what worries him about this chart is that the drop in investor confidence corresponds with an increase in the valuation and overall index level of the market.Said another way, investors keep buying stocks even though they don't really think stocks are, on balance, a good deal. It is, then, something closer to fear than optimism that is fueling the rally in stocks.This is a...

Donald Trump continues to fascinate if likely not, for much longer, dominate. With the next presidential debate upcoming… what are his secrets? Richard Fernandez at PJMedia is on to something: “Everyone who thinks Obama was an Alinsky disciple should watch Trump in action. He understands the Alinsky principle that public events are not about bandying words. They are about creating opportunities for transgressing certain emotional boundaries. It’s about “empowering the powerless”. Fernandez is on to something. It goes much deeper. Trump is employing twelve of the thirteen tactics Saul Alinsky set forth in his classic work Rules for Radicals. Are...

On Sunday, we got still more evidence to suggest that China’s economy isn’t growing at anywhere near the clip the official figures suggest as industrial production came in light of expectations and FAI rose at the slowest pace since 2000. “This is very disappointing data,” said ANZ economist Li-Gang Liu.“It’s very difficult to see Premier Li Keqiang getting his 7% growth target this year.” The statistics bureau warned of continued headwinds. “The foundation for the recovery is not solid,” it said on its website. “External and internal demand for industrial products remains weak and industrial production still faces relatively big...

Port of Savannah Maybe Trump Gets It-By: Larry Walker II-This year-to-date, the United States has imported $267.7 billion in goods from China, while exporting just $65.4 billion in goods to China. That amounts to a current year trade deficit of $202.3 billion, in the first seven months alone. Looking back over the last 30 years, the last time our mutual trade comprised any semblance of balance was in 1985. Our trade deficit with China was a mere $6.0 million in 1985 (the last time it would amount to less than a billion dollars). From a trade deficit of just...

MADISON, Wis. — Sinking in the national polls, the bumbling campaign of onetime frontrunner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, is preparing to double down with renewed attacks on working people. Career politician Walker’s desperate bid to remain competitive on the backs of the middle class and working people will be unveiled in a Monday speech in Las Vegas Nevada, hometown of anti-union, Walker mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. “Scott Walker has always been willing to do or say anything to try to win an election,” commented One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross. “It’s no surprise he’s...