Jul 05
Three years ago, the city of Seattle voted to raise its minimum wage to $15 per hour. As usual, government-trusters promised that the minimum-wage increase would lift the poor out of poverty. But a new study by the University of Washington’s School of Public Policy and Governance finds the opposite. The study concludes that there …
Apr 09
The market always wins. Every economic regulation creates a black market, and prices and distribution balance out in unpredictable ways. The brilliant economist John Goodman explains in a new column that Americans actually have ‘school choice’ but don’t realize it. For example, many parents deliberately locate or relocate into school districts with better schools. They …
Mar 29
Crusading newsman John Stossel writes that “[b]ecause there’s no real health care market, costs rose 467 percent over the last three decades.” In fact, 7 in 8 health care dollars are now paid by Medicare, Medicaid or” insurance (which is mostly required and incentivized by government policies). See here. Government subsidies–designed to bring health care …
Aug 27
Trusters of government rarely think beyond what Thomas Sowell calls “Stage One.” The District of Columbia–like many regions of the United States–has recently enacted an increased minimum wage for all D.C. workers. Employers must pay them $11.50 per hour. You know, . . . to help the poor. It seems the minimum wage increase has …
Jul 29
Socialism is a curse that people should wish on their enemies. When hardline socialists won control of Venezuela 15 years ago, socialists and government trusters worldwide cheered. Professors and their grad students across the western world announced the success of “third way” politics: a fusion of private industry under the control and central planning of …
Jul 16
“National security” is something of an oxymoron. The fabric of history shows that liberal societies in which common people have more freedom to innovate, invent, and create without oversight of the state tend to be the most secure societies. Paradoxically, societies that are ruled by a cult of government omnipotence tend to reel from crisis …
Jun 15
Health care and higher education have much in common in modern America. Both are promoted as “rights” by government trusters. And government has promoted programs to “help” the poor obtain their products and services by subsidizing such goods with taxpayer inputs. Both industries have seen annual price increases higher than the rate of inflation for …
May 07
Every government program designed to help poor people get health care produces the opposite effect: Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare all subsidize artificial demand, causing prices to rise. If government withdrew its evil tentacles from health care, medical prices would quickly adjust downward and quality would quickly adjust upward. Markets always win. Now the New York …
Apr 18
More than 100 peer-reviewed studies have found that increasing (or establishing) a minimum wage law causes higher unemployment. Unemployment, in turn, is correlated with a number of measures of social ills, including increased suicide rates, rates of first admission to mental health facilities and rates of alcoholism. Now, just weeks after the State of California …
Apr 09
Socialism is a curse that should be wished on one’s enemies. All societies who embrace it will ultimately become sick and weak. Venezuela is an oil-rich country, but has been saddled with central planning and socialism for decades. Now the country is so short of electricity that its rulers are demanding that women stop using …
