WASHINGTON-Lucky women. They face an 8% unemployment rate, compared with 10% for men. Women are riding out the recession more easily, so what better time for Congress to put forward an agenda to help those men displaced from construction and manufacturing?
Yet men can wait. Today the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions holds a hearing on the misnamed Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill designed to raised women’s wages. Hillary Clinton introduced the bill when she was still a Democratic senator from New York, and it has 38 Democratic cosponsors. The bill would vastly…
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Author ArchiveIt’s very difficult to pick up any kind of financial publication these days without reading about China’s growing economy, and what this means for the economic health of the United States. While an enhanced division of labor has traditionally been viewed as bullish for all who participate in what is a “closed” world economy, China’s rise is increasingly seen as a threat to the U.S. for its ever-expanding workforce making ours less relevant.
Mar
09
2010
 
What’s Gross About Our Gross Domestic Product?Posted by: realclearmarkets in RealClearMarketsThe health of an economy is too-simply described by GDP growth. If I sue you, and you countersue me, our collective legal fees increase GDP handily. Excellent! If government passes additional laws to increase the complexity of the tax code and the burden of regulatory compliance, and then hires additional staff to better enforce these more-complex laws and regulations, GDP rises handily. If our employers hire additional people to address these new levels of complexity and regulation, GDP again rises handily. Better still, the “Keynesian multiplier” applies to the spending of these…
Mar
09
2010
The Oscars, the NFL, and Failed Public PolicyPosted by: realclearmarkets in RealClearMarketsThe game of Chicken, in which two players face off against one another in a potentially devastating confrontation, seems like an apt description for the clash on Sunday between Cablevision and ABC over transmission fees, which resulted in a black-out of part of the Oscar telecast for about 3 million viewers. The game is also an appropriate analogy for the face-off between the National Football League and its players’ union over a collective bargaining agreement, which could result in a lock-out of players or a strike. There’s an old joke about a chemist, a physicist and an economist stuck on a desert island. The castaways possess plenty of canned food, but no tools. The scientists set about an elaborate scheme to build a fire and explode the cans open. But the economist proposes a more elegant solution — “First,” he says, “assume a can opener.”
Mar
08
2010
The Jobs Picture Is Even Worse Than It AppearsPosted by: realclearmarkets in RealClearMarketsEmployment: As the economy continues to destroy jobs, we hear a new excuse. Frigid weather, the White House says, made the jobs report look worse than it is. Actually, even without snow, it’s worse than you think.
Mar
07
2010
Will Systems Biology Survive Healthcare Reform?Posted by: realclearmarkets in RealClearMarketsIf you ever find yourself munching a sandwich at your desk and want to enliven your lunch break with a fascinating lecture about the future of medicine, tune in to a talk titled “Systems Biology, Systems Medicine, and Transformational Technologies” by Dr. Leroy Hood of the Institute for Systems Biology. Rather than a post-partisan olive branch to congressional Republicans and the American public, President Obama’s latest health-care speech was a declaration of war. He’s more than willing to use a 51-vote reconciliation majority to jam through a roughly $2 trillion health-care plan that amounts to a government takeover of nearly one-fifth of the economy. He’s prepared to stick Uncle Sam right in the middle of the age-old relationship between patients and doctors, and doctors and hospitals, all while subjugating the private health-care insurance system to the status of a… Sen. Dodd’s financial reform bill, like Rep. Frank’s before it promises to be a magnificent example of the politicians’ craft. The near perfect failure of either bill to address the actual cause of the crisis is outshined only by the shamelessness with which its authors evade their own responsibility for the disaster. Naturally they propose to expand their own power to do it all over again. It’s important to keep in mind that economic data, even though their definitions and methods of collection may not have greatly changed, do not necessarily give the same signals or tell the same story over time. Faced with high, painful unemployment as far as the eye can see, the government naturally is here to help. WASHINGTON-Many Americans are intent on saving money, making every penny count. But here in Washington, even though President Obama has promised to cut the deficit, wasting taxpayer money remains the local sport, as it has been for years under Democratic and Republican congresses. Call it cronyism, or call it helping your friends. Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has announced his intention to move ahead on his financial reform plan without the support of the panel’s senior Republicans.
Mar
02
2010
Healthcare Is a Good, Not a Natural RightPosted by: realclearmarkets in RealClearMarketsAs health reform again dominates our public discourse many pundits have highlighted how socializing medicine will exacerbate our already precarious budget concerns. Much has also been written regarding threats to evade public sentiment by employing especially repugnant procedural tactics. While these aspects ridicule the hypocrisy of our elected representatives, they are secondary.
Mar
02
2010
White House Goes National With Living WagesPosted by: realclearmarkets in RealClearMarketsACORN, the controversial network of community groups that has lost much of its federal funding, may be fading away, but one of its most cherished campaigns, to get government to pay a so-called “living wage” to those who contract with the public sector, is about to go national thanks to the Obama White House. |
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