Those who drove long distances to arrive at the dinner table and are criticizing current proposals to raise the gasoline tax, which already adds about 50 cents per gallon to our fill-ups, should also give thanks that we pay significantly less than our developed-world peers.
Despite widespread national dissatisfaction with Congress, it is still the country’s best check against government overreach and unaccountable bureaucrats trampling on American job creators.
This week, the New York Times reported that the overwhelming majority of entry-level employees are forgoing employer-based, mandatory insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). For good reason.
While presidential campaigns keep getting longer, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has made union election campaigns shorter. Known as the “quickie-election rule,” the NLRB has reduced the length of union election campaigns from 38 days to as few as 11 or 12 days. The NLRB’s rule change is already having its intended outcome.
Crafting sensible, realistic environmental regulations requires the consideration of more than simply slashing pollutants in the name of public health—a fact lost on the current EPA.
In order to acquire the skills to earn a fair day’s pay, employees first have to start their career at an entry-level wage. Here, they learn basic skills like time management, a sense of urgency, and customer service that allow them to quickly climb the career ladder so that they can earn a career wage. Economists find that learning these soft skills allows two-thirds of entry-level wage employees to get a raise within their first one to eleven months on the job.
Game of Thrones wins the Emmy award for outstanding drama, and its popularity is bordering on phenomenon status. While that’s good news for fans of high-quality entertainment, it’s bad news for supporters of free-enterprise. Game of Thrones falls into the all-too-familiar Hollywood trap of demonizing business.
One of the most glaring examples of the NLRB’s revolving door and cronyism problem is Craig Becker. Before serving on the NLRB, he worked for two of the nation’s largest unions, the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union. After his tenure on the NLRB, he returned to the AFL-CIO as the union’s general counsel.
Rather than taking credit for a manufactured unemployment rate, then, governments should be taking responsibility for a labor market that by many indicators is still at recession levels. The speech did acknowledge the problem of stagnant wages, but the proposed solution – a $15 minimum wage – would do more harm than good. You can’t legislate prosperity or jobs.
A good place to start reforming health care is by eliminating the so-called Cadillac tax, one of about 20 new taxes associated with the ACA. Starting in 2018, this tax imposes a 40 percent surcharge on health plans that cost more than $10,200 for an individual or $27,500 for a family. Repealing this tax enjoys bipartisan support — with unions, which traditionally have very generous health care plans, being among the tax’s fiercest opponents.
Who is your employer? Most of us can answer that question fairly easily. But the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) wants to confuse this question to advance Big Labor’s agenda.
HBO will air 35 Sesame Street episodes each year and bring much-needed modernization to the franchise. PBS will air them on a 9-month delay. In other words, the move will improve access to the show for everyone – something that the free market has an unparalleled record in doing.
The lack of prices – and the signals that they convey – is essentially why socialism and government-run programs fail. Without a robust price system, shortages, famines, and waste inevitably occur because resources can’t be allocated effectively. (Despite what they might lead you to believe, no politician or bureaucrat is smart enough to know how many bagels and boats an economy needs – let alone the millions of other goods and services in an economy.)
There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding how federal subsidies impact the price of goods in the marketplace. While subsidies are often seen as a mechanism to make products cheaper, the reality is, government subsidies do the exact opposite.
Another round of coordinated, nationwide quick-service restaurant protests occurred recently, with some low paid employees joining union-affiliated activists to argue for a $15 minimum wage and labor union representation.
