The good news is that more millennials are skeptical of economic intervention than trust the government to improve anything. The bad news is that a growing minority of young voters embrace the term socialism, which has an increasingly positive connotation even with those who don’t identify as socialist. The popular candidacy of Bernie Sanders has […]
Manufacturing Ammo for Class Warfare. The AFL-CIO released its annual report on CEO pay last week (see details here and here), and has calculated a CEO-to-worker-pay ratio of 335-to-1 for 2015, based on the average total compensation package for S&P 500 CEOs of $12.4 million last year, and average annual pay of $36,875 for America’s 99 […]
This is from Paul Krugman, “Obama’s War on Inequality,” New York Times, May 20. The other story was about a policy change achieved through executive action: The Obama administration issued new guidelines on overtime pay, which will benefit an estimated 12.5 million workers. What both stories tell us is that the Obama administration has done […]
Thomas Carlyle [pictured above] fits the bill in every respect. Have you heard of the “great man” theory of history? The meaning is obvious from the words. The idea is that history moves in epochal shifts under the leadership of visionary, bold, often ruthless men who marshall the energy of masses of people to push […]
Marriage is not what it once was. FEE contributor Steve Horwitz’s new book, Hayek’s Modern Family, reminds us all that “the use of ‘traditional’ as an adjective for either marriage or the family more generally is … ahistorical.” Marriage and the family, he argues, have always been changing and evolving institutions, and we are mistaken […]
Food, Medicine, Toilet Paper, and Electricity Are Vanishing… Despite having more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia, and in fact more proven oil reserves than any country in the world (8 times more than the US), oil-rich Venezuela’s economy is imploding and collapsing under the burden of socialism, and economic conditions there have deteriorated so dramatically […]
Aveda and others show new way to follow your passion. Scene one: I needed a haircut and someone suggested I go across the street to the Aveda Institute. Fine. My hair was cut by a student who was grateful to be working on a regular person, not a manikin. She had another six months in […]
Not having a job means not participating in the fullness of life. If your goal is to ruin the lives of young and marginalized population groups, raising the wage floor to $15 an hour is a good plan. Already, much of the current problem with youth unemployment is due to the high minimum wage increases […]
There’s Simply No Single Right Answer. The North Carolina legislature voted in March to require that people use the bathroom designated for their biological sex. The state was criticized for violating gay and transgender rights. The Obama administration may cut federal education, housing, and transportation aid to North Carolina in response. Bathroom use has been […]
Young America is suffering a quarter life crisis. The job market is in the dumps and has been for as long as millennials can remember. Twenty-somethings are anxious about the direction of the country. The more politically aware among their generation are on pins and needles about the looming presidential election. If you are in […]
Who’s the Real “King of Debt”? The outrage was palpable. Here was Donald Trump, l’Enfant Terrible of the 2016 presidential campaign, who has offended everyone from women to Muslims to Mexicans, going where no candidate had dared to go, threatening the unthinkable: a default on the national debt. “I would borrow, knowing that if the […]
The National Archives’ most requested photo features President Nixon standing beside one of the world’s most recognizable royals: the King of Rock n’ Roll. Is it genuine history, political commentary, a Photoshop spoof? Surreal but authentic, the black-and-white image shows President Nixon, wearing a full suit, shaking the hand of Elvis Presley, wearing … exactly […]
I wrote earlier this month about one of the potentially fatal flaws of California’s recently enacted $15 an hour statewide minimum wage: a one-size-fits-all uniform $15 minimum wage for the entire state of California is really a “one-size-fits-none” minimum wage, given the huge variations in the cost of living around the country’s most populous state. While a […]
How do you feel when someone lies to you? It probably depends on who is doing the lying. A stranger’s fabrications may not phase you, but dishonesty from a friend or lover can end the relationship. The more you feel the liar is supposed to be “on your side,” the more his or her deceptions […]
How many jobs would the Keystone Pipeline project create? Political reporter Tom Murse points out that the answer is a matter of dispute. “Supporters argue that the Keystone XL pipeline would create tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of new jobs.” But critics “claim those numbers are wildly inflated,” Murse writes. Both sides […]