Free Republic

There’s a growing, bipartisan consensus that the berserk complexity of the U.S. tax code stymies job growth. Our tax code has grown to be 25 times the length of "War and Peace,” notes Pete Sepp, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union. Lowering corporate tax rates and simplifying the maniacally-convoluted tax code is slowly catching fire. S&P Capital IQ has provided an estimate on just what would happen to the U.S. economy if the effective corporate tax rate paid by S&P 500 companies dropped to Switzerland’s average, effective rate of 22.4% from our current 32.3%. S&P Capital IQ says...

1 million immigrants a year isn’t enough for the cheap votes/cheap labor lobby. Their Super-Amnesty is determined to legalize another 12 million illegal aliens and import millions more using amnesty as a magnet.The current border crisis is only a small part of what will happen should Congress pass Super-Amnesty.Advocates of Super-Amnesty claim that immigration is an engine of job growth. It’s not. Cheap labor just undercuts the middle class while cheap votes passes the social welfare bill to that same middle class. All Employment Growth Since 2000 Went to Immigrants – Number of U.S.-born not working grew by 17 millionGovernment...

Obama says he’s a “caged bear” on the loose. And he IS almost exactly like a caged bear on the loose. Nothing good will come of it, just blood and gore. Usually they euthanize animals after such an incident. And I would suggest to the Democrats that at the least they should consider castration. I mean if Michelle will let them have the parts for a while. Here’s an example: “A bear kept in captivity in a recreation center in the Rostov Region attacked a five-year-old girl,” writes RT.com, “biting off her hand. The girl is being treated in hospital,...

A shocking new report from the Center for Immigration Studies claims to prove that every single new job created in America for the last fourteen years has gone to immigrants, legal and illegal. This would fly in the face of those who claim that immigration is an economic boon to native born Americans: The CIS report found that over the last 14 years, people who were born in the United States held 114.8 million jobs in 2000, and held 114.7 million jobs in 2014, a drop of 127,000. But it’s an entirely different picture for immigrants — 5.7 million more...

Most Obamacare customers will face serious premium hikes next year unless they change their health insurance again, according to a Thursday study from Avalere Health. Most Obamacare customers are receiving some level of taxpayer subsidies to take the edge off high premium rates, but the plans that determine the amount of subsidies available will be changing significantly, according to Avalere.

The Center for Immigration Studies has released a report that should be political dynamite.  Since the year 2000, legal and illegal immigrants have taken all new jobs, while native-born Americans have suffered a decline in the numbers employed. All of the net increase in employment went to immigrants in the last 14 years partly because, even before the Great Recession, immigrants were gaining a disproportionate share of jobs relative to their share of population growth. In addition, natives' losses were somewhat greater during the recession and immigrants have recovered more quickly from it. With 58 million working-age natives not working,...

Today is the first anniversary of the Senate’s passage of the Gang of Eight immigration bill (S.744). So it is fitting to remember just how out of touch that bill was with what is actually going on in the U.S. labor market. The labor-force participation of working-age native-born Americans (ages 16 to 65) is at a record low, and the number not in the labor force is at a record high. Yet the Gang of Eight bill would double the number of new legal immigrants allowed into the country over the next decade to 20 million, adding to the 40...

Study: All Employment Growth Since 2000 Went To Immigrants By NRO StaffJune 26, 2014According to a major new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), net employment growth in the United States since 2000 has gone entirely to immigrants, legal and illegal. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, CIS scholars Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler found that there were 127,000 fewer working-age natives holding a job in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000, while the number of immigrants with a job was 5.7 million above the 2000 level. The rapidity with which immigrants recovered...

....Obama is pitching his ideas to boost the American middle class in Minnesota, a state that already has embraced a key component of the president's economic agenda by moving to raise its minimum wage....

For decades, the United States has been a centerpiece of the global economy. Even in the aftermath of the Great Recession, foreign businesses have looked to the U.S. for investment opportunities and talent. According to a recent study from the Brookings Institution, 5% of American employees, or more than 5.6 million people, worked for foreign-owned businesses as of 2011. Foreign direct investment — an investment by a foreign company either through acquisition of an existing business or by starting new company-owned operations — is a critical part of many metro area economies. In the Bridgeport, Connecticut metro area as many...

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell marginally last week, but continues to point to steadily improving labor market conditions. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits slipped 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 312,000 for the week ended June 21, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The prior week's claims were revised to show 2,000 more applications received than previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast first-time applications for jobless aid dipping to 310,000 last week. A Labor Department analyst said there were no special factors influencing the state level data. The four-week moving average for...

The word "unexpectedly" for negative economic reports has become a much-mocked cliché in the media over the past five-plus years of recovery, but this week's final look at first-quarter economic growth deserves an exception. First estimated at a meager 0.1 percent annualized rate, and then downwardly revised to -1.0 percent in May, most economists expected a smaller revision to the downside – in the -1.5 percent-1.8 percent range.

Shrinkage: Economists are writing off the sharp 2.9% drop in first-quarter GDP as a temporary contraction. Maybe. What isn't temporary is President Obama's massively subpar growth record over the past five years. [snip] In the nearly five years since the Obama recovery started — just months into Obama's first term — real gross domestic product has increased only 10.2%. That's less than half the average growth rate for every other economic recovery since World War II, and almost a third less than the pace set during the Reagan recovery. Looked at in dollar terms, if the Obama recovery had merely...

HOUSTON, Texas--The unemployment rate in Texas recently fell to a new five-year low, according to new statistics from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. As business booms in the Lone Star State, many companies are in need of trained workers--most notably employers in the rapidly-expanding medical, gas, and oil fields. It is easy to imagine why a variety of industries continue to grow in Texas, as the state has consistently been one of the best places to start and expand businesses. Vance Ginn, an economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told Breitbart Texas, "What we've seen is that the...

Seattle recently raised the minimum hourly wage that employers in the city must pay to $15. That puts Seattle out in front in America’s Living Wage Derby – hooray! Mayor Ed Murray boasts that the high minimum wage makes his city “the model for the nation.” Not only that, but the big increase, over Washington state’s minimum wage of $9.32 per hour will, he says, enable the city to “regain economic strength.” Great objectives, Mr. Mayor, but I don’t know why you’re being so stingy. You have at best taken a baby step towards fairness for workers and economic vitality....

he major focus of the White House on Monday is its Working Families Summit, and President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, first lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden all are part of the program at the Omni Shoreham Hotel here.

A worrisome word is popping up in discussions among some economists: Recession. As in, the next one. Many Americans feel the recession that began at the end of 2007 never ended, but in technical terms, the economy has been growing since the middle of 2009. Until recently, it looked as if growth might finally hit “normal” levels of 3% or more later this year, as the housing recovery kicks in and employers finally start to hire more. But recent economic setbacks have fed new worries about tapped-out consumers falling even further behind. “The danger has increased the U.S. economy could...

There are currently 61.1 million American men in their prime working years, age 25–54. A staggering 1 in 8 such men are not in the labor force at all, meaning they are neither working nor looking for work. This is an all-time high dating back to when records were first kept in 1955. An additional 2.9 million men are in the labor force but not employed (i.e., they would work if they could find a job). A total of 10.2 million individuals in this cohort, therefore, are not holding jobs in the U.S. economy today. There are also nearly 3...

WASHINGTON (MNI) - Initial jobless claims for U.S. state unemployment benefits fell by 6,000 to 312,000, in the June 14 week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The 312,000 level of jobless claims was slightly better than the 314,000 median expectation from a forecast survey compiled by MNI. The June 7 week was revised up by 1,000 to 318,000. This weeks claims report also coincides with the week the BLS conducts the survey for the June employment report. Claims are down 15,000 from the comparable survey week in May and a Labor Department analyst said there were no special factors and...

The head of a leading environmental group recently defended job losses from the Obama administration's new anti-carbon regulations as "collateral damage" in the fight against global warming. Joseph Schumpeter must be turning over in his grave. Writing in the Huffington Post, William Becker of the Climate Action Project praised the new Environmental Protection Agency regulations to stop climate change, and wrote that "there is nothing explicit in the (Obama) plan to mitigate or adapt to the economic disruption the clean energy transition will cause for coal and oil-country families." These families thrown out of work, he said, are an "evolutionary...