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The Democrats and many "Progressives" promise to increase the minimum wage to $15/hr. A recent street survey of some (really stupid) people suggests there are some out there who think $50/hr would be a "good" minimum wage. Really? Back in 1972 George McGovern was running for President. He had a photo op with Cesar Chevez, who was trying to get a wage increases for the lettuce pickers. McGovern voewed not to eat another salad until Chevez won his wage increase. A Sociology prof I worked with came in and told me what a great idea McGovern's boycott was. Stupid... The...

The famed Four Seasons Restaurant in New York, which for decades was a go-to spot for power brokers to hobnob over lunch, will shut its doors on Tuesday. The 60-year-old upscale dining spot hasn't been able to hold onto its clientele, Four Seasons managing partner Alex von Bidder told CNN Business on Saturday, and its investors "lacked the confidence to fund it for another year or six months." He confirmed earlier reports in the New York Post and The New York Times that the restaurant will close indefinitely after lunchtime on Tuesday. Forty years ago, The Four Seasons became known...

union hypocrisy and betrayal of its membership ... a series of loopholes that cut union workers out of the very pay increases their leaders have championed. ... written into the fine print of wage ordinances in a dozen California cities at labor leaders’ urging. San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland and Santa Monica have all adopted union waivers in their most recent minimum wage laws. L.A. city officials are expected to indicate whether they will include such an exemption in their own $15 minimum wage at a hearing next week. ... Thanks to the “union waivers” agreed to by union leaders,...

A minimum wage of $12.55 an hour in Oakland, Calif., may be the culprit for a Wal-Mart store's closure. Wal-Mart announced Jan. 15 it will close 269 stores globally, including 154 locations in the United States-affecting about 10,000 associates across the nation... snip Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, a Democrat, has been leading statewide efforts to raise the minimum wage to $15. "This higher city minimum wage eliminated the jobs of the very workers advocates wanted to help," said James Sherk, a research fellow in labor economics at The Heritage Foundation... snip The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that most...

In February the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recorded the lowest percentage of 16- to 19-year-olds working or actively looking for work (32.9%) since the bureau started tracking the data in 1948... Over the past two years, the BLS has recorded some of the worst labor participation rates for 20- to 24-year-olds since 1973... Looking at the seasonally unadjusted data—which is what the BLS makes publicly available—for 25- to 29-year-olds, the April 2014 labor-participation rate was the lowest the BLS has recorded since it started tracking the data in 1982 ... Nonetheless, various states and municipalities have increased their minimum...

You really have to listen to Mika Brzezinski's voice rising as if in a question as she pronounces the very last word in an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal column—and watch the expression on her face—to appreciate how utterly baffled, befuddled and bewildered she seems by the simple notion that increasing the cost of hiring motivates employers to automate their operations. The column, "The Employee of the Month Has a Battery," noted that restaurant chains like Chili's are introducing tabletop ordering devices and eliminating server positions. Author Michael Saltsman makes the incontrovertible argument that "policy makers are encouraging the...

"The level of unemployment is unacceptably high. And will, by all forecasts, remain unacceptably high for a number of years." Who do you suppose said that? A Republican political operative? A Fox News political analyst? One of those several hundred thousand Tea Partiers who assembled in Washington on Sept. 12? No, it was Lawrence Summers, the director of Barack Obama's National Economic Council and, by common consent, one of the world's leading economists Summers made this gloomy forecast in the course of arguing that our economy is headed to "sustained recovery." And while it sounds like self-protective political rhetoric, it...

It seems President Fox of Mexico does not like people pointing out why he is a failure. To hide his failure, he decides to not only insult Americans, but Mexicans as well. Just look at one of Fox's recent comments: "There is no doubt that Mexicans...are doing jobs that not even blacks want to do there in the United States." He said this in a speech broadcast in part on local radio and reported on newspaper web sites (Reuters, Fri. May 13). LibertyPost.org reports the comment this way: "There's no doubt that the Mexican men and women...are doing the work...

The slow awakening of George W. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: September 17, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc. Last July, U.S. Trade Representative Bob Zoellick delivered a halftime pep talk to dispirited globalists, thrown on the defensive by the hemorrhaging of U.S. manufacturing jobs. "What ... a surprise," Zoellick railed at his troops, "to see that the proponents of [free trade] ... have so often abandoned the debate to the economic isolationists and purveyors of fright and retreat." But by September, Zoellick's own boss seemed to be drifting toward the camp of the "economic isolationists and purveyors of fright."...