Creative accounting by the Clinton administration has taken the government’s budgetary imbalances out of the media’s spotlight. But there is no basis for believing that we are entering a new era of fiscal responsibility. Deficits are likely to dominate future decades just as they dominated the past three.
Duality is the Visa and MasterCard management policy that allows banks doing business with one to issue both credit cards. It is a contractual arrangement the merits of which must be tested by the market. There is no way to know ahead of time which contracts will (and should) survive and which will (and should) go by the wayside.
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 trampled on the rights of states to regulate their own labor markets, by overturning local laws enacted to protect women from working long hours, working at night, lifting heavy objects, and working during pregnancy. In addition, the 1963 law prohibited employers and employees from voluntarily agreeing to separate pay scales for men and women.
Former National Football League star Walter Payton has been stricken by a rare liver disease and needs a transplant in order to live. Unfortunately, the demand for available organs far outstrips the supply, and several thousand Americans this year will die waiting for those life-saving organs.
Taxes distort the price system and always alter behavior away from the free-market ideal. That is why, as J.B. Say said, the best tax is always the lowest tax. But in recent years, state and local governments have been using the tax system, along with direct subsidies of all sorts, to influence where particular firms locate, all in an effort to generate more growth and thus more tax revenue. Can states and localities really “buy growth” for themselves through this means?
The journalist, television commentator, and former presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan has been sharply criticized by his fellow Republicans for allegedly betraying Republican party “free-market” principles in his new book, The Great Betrayal. In the book Buchanan argues for protectionism and claims to have presented the strongest case ever made for “economic nationalism.” This, his Republican critics allege, is contrary to what Republicans have always stood for.
The Y2K computer bug isn’t like a natural disaster or mass disease. It is a technical problem with a technical fix that can be overcome with work and time. However, and without speculating about the ultimate fallout from the problem, the bug has exposed a very real and deep infraction that has long plagued the U.S. banking system.
The field in economics called “Industrial Organization” is the very foundation of antitrust activity by government. And if you thought antitrust action was little more than one business using government to smash its competitors, The Economist is here to correct you.
