Free Republic

A front-page Wall Street Journal article published at the beginning of this week (see link below) and other news reports are calling public attention to the fact that, after many years of decline, manufacturing employment in the U.S. has modestly rebounded since the end of the Great Recession. Unfortunately, the Journal account and others appearing in major media outlets ignore data showing that even as the total number of manufacturing jobs increased by roughly 480,000 from 2009 to 2012, the number of factory jobs held by unionized workers fell by nearly 130,000. (Our source for these figures and those in...

Retiring to the sofa after turkey dinner tomorrow, most Americans may feel they have little in common with the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock. But one defining feature of 17th-century Americans remains: We still migrate for freedom. American mobility is legendary and the notion that it is driven by a desire for liberty is the basis for the methodology behind the Pacific Research Institute's U.S. Economic Freedom Index released last week. Kansas is America's freest state while New York -- home of the Statue of Liberty -- ranks at the bottom. The Index uses five categories -- fiscal, regulatory, judicial, government...