Free Republic

I believe every citizen deserves the right to work and the right to organize and I don't believe these rights should be mutually exclusive I come from a union family. I grew up in a union home. The good pay and benefits gained by one of America’s greatest unions provided for my room and board every day that I lived at home. My father and my uncles were all proud union members. My brother and some of my best friends spent their entire careers as union workers and the unions are providing them with generous pensions and great benefits. I...

The Make American Great Again economic program will improve race relations in the U.S., President Donald Trump said at a fiery press conference held in New York City’s Trump Tower on Tuesday.

Trump and the Republicans need to tout the jobs report better. Even ABC radio, which carries Rush Limbaugh and many other top conservative hosts was complaining that weak wage growth was dragging down the economy. NPR said wages were very weak, "this late into an economic recovery." This is shockingly untrue. In the first quarter of the year, real weekly earnings grew two 1982 inflation-adjusted dollars; that's about six real dollars. That's as much as real wages grew during the entire Obama administration. Wage growth then doubled THAT in the second quarter. And while we don't yet know the July...

As the country moves toward full employment, at least as economists define it, the quality of jobs has replaced joblessness as the primary concern. With wages still stagnant, rising an anemic 2.5% in the year to May, the biggest challenge for most parts of the U.S. is not getting more people into the workforce but rather driving the creation of the types of jobs that can sustain a middle-class quality of life. To that end, the key sector to watch is business and professional services. By far the nation’s largest high-wage sector -- including such fields as law, accounting, architecture,...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote: “a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” Seattle’s Minimum Wage Ordinance, passed in 2014, exemplifies courageous experimentation by a local government. The ordinance aims to increase earnings of low-wage workers as one response to the troubling rise in income inequality and stagnant wages of low-wage workers. There is national and international interest in knowing how it is working. Unfortunately, not all social experiments work entirely as planned. On April 1, 2015, the...

Yesterday, Ed Morrissey looked at the “controversial” (not really) figures coming out of Seattle showing the downward pressure on employment and wages experienced there since the minimum wage suddenly spiked upward. This is unwelcome news in the Fight For 15 community and they’re pushing back on it as hard as possible. But the figures don’t lie and this result was entirely predictable in a free market economy. Seattle, however, isn’t the only place this effect is being seen. The minimum wage has been jumping upward in New York City also and similar effects are being felt. Nowhere is this...

There's something weird going on with the US economy. It's steadily adding new jobs, at a pace of about 185,000 every month. Unemployment keeps falling: at 4.4%, it's at its lowest since May, 2007. But people's wages aren't growing at the rate you'd expect them to when unemployment is this low and hiring is so healthy. So what's happening? One explanation is there's a larger pool of people who are starting to look for work — people who weren't previously considered unemployed. If that's the case, companies don't need to boost wages to compete for workers, because there's more people...

Infrastructure spending is the key to increasing economic growth, because it will give Americans better-paying jobs, a prominent investment banker and economist said. "The private sector has done all it reasonably can, yet the U.S. labor market remains a shadow of its former self. It is time to rebuild America," Daniel Alpert, a founding managing partner of Westwood Capital, said Monday in a presentation titled "The Case for Aggressive Fiscal Spending on Infrastructure in 2017."(continued)

The Federal Reserve gives us the freedom to buy things now that we would otherwise have to wait for.In looking at the Federal Reserve, it is important to note that this is a money system, not just a group of people sitting in a conference room controlling everything having to do with the US dollar. The Fed is a system just like the government of the US is a system. What that means is that no one controls it, and that it is much bigger than any one person or group of people could ever control. They can guide it,...

Restaurant diners are footing the bill for rising minimum wages. In lieu of steep menu price increases, many independent and regional chain restaurants in states including Arizona, California, Colorado and New York are adding surcharges of 3% to 4% to help offset rising labor costs. Industry analysts expect the practice to become widespread as more cities and states increase minimum wages.

Whether the weak issue is the gender pay gap, or marriage equality, feminists continue to use women as props to keep a dying movement alive for the next cause célèbre In 2015, it was discovered that in the California Assembly, under Democrat control, women made 92 cents on the dollar compared to men. In the Senate, women made 94 cents on the dollar compared to men. Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, and feminist against unequal pay for women, paid her own female employees $15,708.38 less than her male staffers when she was a U.S. senator from New York....

No mouthpiece in Washington is a more reliable one for crazy leftists in the Democrat Party than the Washington Post, which is out with yet another head-scratcher on illegal immigration. The story not only reminds us how far out of their depth these people are when they try covering illegal immigration accurately, it also reminds us how hilariously obtuse they are about their own fake news and biases. “In the wake of new enforcement policies announced by the Trump administration last week that dramatically expand the pool of undocumented immigrants targeted for deportation, Mexico is bracing for an influx of...

On the heels on its controversial immigration ban targeting seven Muslim-majority countries, the Trump administration has drafted a new executive order that could actually mean higher wages for both foreign workers and Americans working in Silicon Valley. The Silicon Valley companies, of course, will not be happy if it goes into effect. The order aims to overhaul and limit work visas, notably the H-1B visa program. Tech companies rely on these to bring in foreign talent. Their lobbyists claim there is a “talent shortage” among Americans and thus that the industry needs more of such work visas. This is patently...

LOS ANGELES -- He had spent his latest 45-hour workweek hunched over a sewing machine, attaching labels and stitching collars and tightening black and gold blouses that would soon sell at bargain prices at a popular retailer. But now it was Saturday afternoon, paycheck time, when Pedro felt the full sting of that bargain: It was his own salary that helped keep the prices down for consumers. His manager gathered the 30-some workers from their stations in the unmarked brick building and passed out payslips. For the week, he said, he’d been paid $225. Or $5 per hour. “There’s nothing...

The next time you wander into Sammy’s Wood-Fired Pizza for a burrata and pesto pie, indulge in a shrimp-filled bucket at Rockin’ Baja Lobster, or decide to splurge on beef tenderloin at George’s at the Cove, don’t be surprised to see an added charge when your check arrives. Girding for the second minimum wage hike in six months and the fourth in 2-½ years, many of San Diego’s full-service restaurants are introducing for the first time an average surcharge of 3 percent of the meal’s cost to help cover increased labor expenses that some operators say amount to hundreds of...

Nearly 60 percent of California voters with children living at home agree with the statement, “my children will have a better future if they leave California.” More than 75 percent now think “earning enough income to enjoy a middle-class lifestyle is becoming almost impossible in my part of California.” In Los Angeles County, it’s 87 percent. That’s from a new survey by the California Chamber of Commerce. And if you think those numbers are discouraging, the numbers in a just-released report from the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation are even worse. The LAEDC projects that employment in L.A. County...

I’m an Enrolled Agent tax pro based in California with clients all over the country. Recently, the son of a client who had moved to a more free state than ours asked whether I thought he should move back here to start a business. I suggested not. Why? While California suffers from the highest income tax rate in the country and mountains of regulations that cause everything from housing costs to the price of power to be among the highest, the most destructive regulation of all is arguably an up-and-coming one. It mandates annual increases to the minimum prices of...

<p>Following the BREXIT vote in late June and passionate support for the Bernie Sanders campaign, the Presidential election of Donald Trump provided yet another sign that the American people, as well as many around the world, are increasingly demanding a new economic path. This piece is not written to opine on the election or the merits of Donald Trump. The intent is to highlight, through the use of a few charts, that the nation’s economic policy for the last 30 years has failed greatly and hollowed out the middle class. The consequences have been accumulating for years but have been camouflaged by ever increasing, but unsuccessful attempts to reignite economic growth.</p>

It's no secret that the post-crisis recovery hasn't been so great for the average American. Growth has been uneven. Job gains, while strong, have often been concentrated in areas like bars and restaurants. Wage inflation has been tepid. And yet, costs for things like health care, education and housing have soared. Policymakers have focused, for better or worse, on driving down interest rates and boosting the price of financial assets, lifting corporate profits and the stock market to record highs in the process — but also widening the income and wealth inequality gaps. At long last, there is evidence a...

It’s so great to be here tonight. I am honored to also be joined this evening by Governor Scott Walker, Chairman Reince Priebus, and Mayor Rudy Giuliani. We are at a decisive moment in this election. Last week, I laid out my plan to bring jobs back to our country. Yesterday, I laid out my plan to defeat Radical Islamic Terrorism. Tonight, I am going to talk about how to make our communities safe again from crime and lawlessness. Let me begin by thanking the law enforcement officers here in this city, and across this country, for their service and...