6/9/2010 – Kim Priestap -
A survey conducted by Zogby to determine how well people of different political stripes understand economics found that progressives and liberals were woefully ignorant of even the most basic concepts of economics. Some might laugh, but this survey is more than just an academic exercise. It provides insight into why Barack Obama and the progressive Democrats in Congress continue to pass laws and implement policies that do nothing but drive down our economy and drive up unemployment. From the Wall Street Journal: more »

US Unemployment Situation is Grim

6/5/2010 – Chris Banescu –

Across America 15 million Americans are still out of work and unable to find jobs. The latest numbers from the Labor Department indicate that only 41,000 private sector jobs were created last month. Of the 431,000 new jobs added in May, 411,000 were temporary census workers hired by the government. Despite Obama’s assertion, made just days ago, that “the economy is improving and that the economic stimulus legislation passed a year ago was having a positive effect” there is little to cheer about. The president’s unrealistic predictions that “the economy is poised to start adding the jobs people need” were clearly misguided and off the mark.

These are predictable results given how aggressive this administration and the Democrat controlled Congress have been in promoting socialist policies that stifle economic activity and unreasonably punish responsible corporations and businesses. more »

5/29/2010 – Chris Banescu –
The socialist policies implemented by the Obama administration and the Democrat leadership undermine America’s economic prosperity and prolong the misery for millions of companies and workers. Despite passing multi-trillion dollar government tax and spend initiatives, numerous bailouts of failed businesses, and repeated extensions of government benefits, Americans are suffering and the economy is languishing. Nationwide the unemployment rate has risen to 9.9%, while mortgage defaults and foreclosure rates have surged to record numbers.

Even with the tens of billions of dollars Congress has spent on preventing consumer mortgage defaults and home foreclosures, things have not improved much. How could they? Such government bailout measures are temporary band-aids that fail to address the structural problems our economy faces. They only delay the inevitable and push the problem further down the road. It doesn’t matter that house payments are now lower and the government has picked up the tab for a few months. If Americans cannot find a job or raise the capital to start a business they won’t have the money to pay even reduced mortgage payments. more »

The socialist policies implemented by the Obama administration and the Democrat leadership undermine America’s economic prosperity and prolong the misery for millions of companies and workers. Despite passing multi-trillion dollar government tax and spend initiatives, numerous bailouts of failed businesses, and repeated extensions of government benefits, Americans are suffering and the economy is languishing. Nationwide the unemployment rate has risen to 9.9%, while mortgage defaults and foreclosure rates have surged to record numbers. more »

5/12/2010 – Walter E. Williams -
Listening to America’s liberals, who now prefer to call themselves progressives, one would think that free markets benefit the rich and harm the poor, but little can be further from the truth. First, let’s first say what free markets are. Free markets, or laissez-faire capitalism, refer to an economic system where there is no government interference except to outlaw and prosecute fraud and coercion. It ought to be apparent that our economy cannot be described as free market because there is extensive government interference. We have what might be called a mixed economy, one with both free market and socialistic attributes. If one is poor or of modest means, where does he fare better: in the freer and more open sector of our economy or in the controlled and highly regulated sector? Let’s look at it. more »

Jacob Hornberger

5/7/2010 – Jacob Hornberger -
Liberals say that they love the poor, needy, and disadvantaged. Unfortunately, however, the economic philosophy that liberals favor constitutes a direct assault on the economic well-being of the poor, along with nearly everyone else in society.

Liberals claim to combat poverty in two principal ways.

First, they use the force of government (e.g., income taxes) to take money from those who have earned it in order to give it to the poor.

Second, they restrict people’s use of their property to enable the poor to have access to such property. more »

American Thinker | Steve McCann | 3/25/2010

You can thank President Obama for the lower standard of living coming your way. The numbers tell the story.

The electorate in the United States is presently being bombarded from all sides with financial and economic statistics on health care and budget deficits. The scale and magnitude of the sums are incomprehensible. A calculation containing twelve or thirteen zeros causes the eye to glaze over. However, in their gut, the American people know that something is amiss and that the future very much in jeopardy. more »

Some American workers collecting 99 weeks of unemployment

by Chris Banescu | 3/9/2010

With the national unemployment rate at 9.7%, there are now 14.9 million jobless American workers. This is the highest number ever recorded since the 1950s. Some American workers have been collecting unemployment payments for as long as 99 weeks.

This situation was made possible by the multiple extensions of the unemployment insurance program passed by the federal government in attempting to deal with the continuing recession. This is the longest period that American workers have ever collected unemployment payments since the program began. more »

American Thinker | by Chuck Rogér | 3/8/2010

In America, we are beginning to sense a nasty reality that President Obama must acknowledge: Our worst economic problems lie ahead, and fixing those problems is going to hurt — plenty. Our federal government now runs a con game that promises people a level of financial security impossible to deliver. Honoring Medicare and Social Security obligations alone will require confiscatory taxation capable of killing off prosperity. And so it is time to cure our nanny-state insanity and get back to basics. [...]

To deal with our American disaster, experts call for our economy to be “transformed.” President Obama wants a “fundamental” transformation. But what America really needs is a transformation that would undo a century of malignant progressivism that perverted the free-market capitalism on which our nation was founded. Returning to those free-market basics will not be painless. more »

American Thinker | by Jim Gammon | 3/3/2010

We hear people speak of “business” and “capitalism” as being somehow evil, including comments about capitalists victimizing employees and customers in pursuit of the goal of “maximizing profits”.

In conversations with supposedly educated people who lean to the left, the concept is an accepted axiom, that maximizing profits – at the expense of everything good in the world – is the one and only purpose of business. It is the socialist rallying cry these days. more »

USA Today | by Dennis Cauchon | 3/5/2010

Federal employees earn higher average salaries than private-sector workers in more than eight out of 10 occupations, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds.

Accountants, nurses, chemists, surveyors, cooks, clerks and janitors are among the wide range of jobs that get paid more on average in the federal government than in the private sector.

Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available. more »

Pajamas Media | by Victor Davis Hanson | Feb. 17, 2010

Imagine a politician announcing: we are going to raise the Social Security age to 66. We are going to freeze and cut spending until we balance the budget within three years, and then with surpluses pay down the debt within 6 years. We are going to build 100 new nuclear power plants and open up the country and its shores to oil and gas production. We are going to cut back all federal entitlements and subsidies by 20% immediately. We are going to ensure enough water for agriculture. We are … more »

Acton| by Kevin Schmiesing | Feb. 16, 2010

If you’re known by the company you keep, then the United States may want to re-think its economic policy. The 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, a joint publication of the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, measures the world’s nations according to a range of criteria from the ease of starting a business, to protection of property rights, to various forms of government interventions. Among the 15 “biggest losers” during the past year was the United States, placing it among the likes of Libya, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, and Venezuela. more »

ChrisBanescu.com | by Chris Banescu | Feb. 16, 2010

Yet another travesty is unfolding before our eyes in these United States of America. While tens of millions of Americans continue to struggle through difficult economic conditions, with hundreds of thousands more losing their jobs every month, tens of thousands more losing their homes and their businesses, and millions more facing salary cuts and pay freezes, government employees are prospering and getting rewarded financially more than ever.

As the economy struggles, incomes fall, and business bankruptcies and mortgage default rates remain at all time highs, the federal government spending is booming and its employees are enjoying increased hiring and higher salaries. more »

Amazon.com | by Nicole Gelinas | 2009

Robust financial markets support capitalism, they don’t imperil it. But in 2008, Washington policymakers were compelled to replace private risk-takers in the financial system with government capital so that money and credit flows wouldn’t stop, precipitating a depression.

Washington’s actions weren’t the start of government distortions in the financial industry, Nicole Gelinas writes, but the natural result of 25 years’ worth of such distortions.

In the early eighties, modern finance began to escape reasonable regulations, including the most important regulation of all, that of the marketplace. The government gradually adopted a “too big to fail” policy for the largest or most complex financial companies, saving lenders to failing firms from losses. As a result, these companies became impervious to the vital market discipline that the threat of loss provides. more »