The Red Robin chain of 570 restaurants has decided to eliminate busboys due to rising labor costs. Its business is mostly in western states several of which have raised the local minimum wage rate. Previously they eliminated the job of “expediter” who prepared plates in the kitchen due to rising labor costs. Clearly the labor force is losing jobs due to the increases in the minimum wage.
The number of police officers killed on duty dropped to near a 50-year low in 2017. As of December 28, 2017, 128 officers died in the line of duty. That’s down 10% from 2016, when 143 officers died, according to new data from National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
The only other year with fewer deaths in the past five decades was 2013, when 116 officers were killed.
This might seem a frivolous question, while the dollar still retains its might, and is universally accepted in preference to other, less stable fiat currencies. However, it is becoming clear, at least to independent monetary observers, that in 2018 the dollar’s primacy will be challenged by the yuan as the pricing medium for energy and other key industrial commodities. After all, the dollar’s role as the legacy trade medium is no longer appropriate, given that China’s trade is now driving the global economy, not America’s.
“Capitalism is incompatible with the conservation of nature. Only the places with a strong state and restricted economic freedom can achieve high environmental quality ratings.” These statements have been repeated so often that most people consider them true without giving them a slightest thought.
Although these theories usually only explain one side of the coin, there are at least two opposing theories:
In January 2015, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) unexpectedly removed the de facto peg of the franc to the euro.1 The move was welcomed by free-market economists, including in contributions on Mises Wire
Anyone reading the news and especially the political “liberal” and conservative commentaries might easily conclude that he is living in a world of two parallel political universes. It is as if modern American liberals and conservatives are, respectively, occupying alternative realities about how they look at the economy and culture of the country, and evaluate Donald Trump and his administration. The common element in both, however, is the existence of an intrusive and controlling government.
On December 19, an Amtrak train in Washington State killed three people and injured 100 others when it derailed and crashed into traffic lanes on a nearby highway.
The day before, Atlanta’s international airport suffered a disastrous power outage:
A great many people — especially conservatives — reverence the Constitution, consider that it has been abused and that if only the doctrines expressed within were revived and respected, all would be well with America again.
This, of course, is a kind of children’s bedtime story — and approximates reality to about the same degree as the story of the Three Little Pigs.
And the taxpayer, not content with thus ruining political science, added insult to injury by damning all its chief ornaments as thieves, and by swearing that he would never let them rook him again. His bellow was now for the most rigid economy, and he swore that he would have it if the heavens fell. There was no holding him while the fit was on him. In many American cities, public expenditures were actually reduced. — H.L.
And the taxpayer, not content with thus ruining political science, added insult to injury by damning all its chief ornaments as thieves, and by swearing that he would never let them rook him again. His bellow was now for the most rigid economy, and he swore that he would have it if the heavens fell. There was no holding him while the fit was on him. In many American cities, public expenditures were actually reduced. — H.L.
