Of the various flavors of government interventionism in our lives, the minimum wage is perhaps the most welcomed. It appeals not only to our innate sense of “fairness” but also to our self-interest. Its allure may erroneously lead us to the conclusion that because “it is popular,” ergo “it is right.”
While the costs of providing health care insurance are beginning to skyrocket because of Obamacare, insurance company executives are sleeping very soundly. A respected consultant to health insurance companies, Robert Laszewski, reveals that there are two obscure provisions in Obamacare that guarantee that insurance companies will be subsidized and bailed out by Amercian taxpayers.
In recent years, Americans have been burdened with an historic expansion in government control. Further, the proliferation of fees, regulations, bans, czars, bureaucracies, mandates and programs are increasingly justified by the desire to control vice (in the government’s eyes), which violates citizens’ inalienable self-ownership, rather than to deter crime, to protect citizens’ self-ownership.
It is easy to sympathize with 33-year-old Acsana Fernando. Since immigrating to Canada from Bangladesh as a refuge in 2002, she has struggled to find her footing. Bouncing from job to job trying to eke out a living, Ms. Fernando now works at a group home and earns the Ontario minimum wage of $10.25 an hour.
Tax burdens are so high that it might not be possible to pay off the high levels of indebtedness in most of the Western world. At least, that is the conclusion of a new IMF paper from Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.
A new journal article from Adrian Ravier and Nicolas Cachanosky: “A Proposal of Monetary Reform for Argentina: Flexible Dollarization and Free Banking” Abstract:
So-called insider trading may take place in publicly traded firms. It occurs when an individual privy to private information (the insider) attempts to profit on the buying and selling of stocks using non-public information to anticipate the stock’s future price.
The really bad employment report came out on Friday. The Conference Board issued its own Employment Trends Index (ETI) this morning. Their report was “positive” for December and 5 out of the last 6 months.
There is controversy on the Indian River in southeast Florida where fishermen are complaining about the fertilizer runoff from sugar farms. The fertilizer runoff leads to an overgrowth of algae in the Indian River lagoons and cuts down on the amount of fish that can be caught. Sugar subsidies provide large incentives to grown sugar inside the US and it also encourages sugar farmers to use more fertilizer than under free market conditions.
