Real Action to Reduce Unemployment: Eliminating Minimum Wages and Suspending Payroll Taxes

Americans’ top concerns these days are unemployment, deficits and debt. The rate of unemployment seems stuck at a level economically and ethically unacceptable, and efforts to bring it down appear ineffective and extremely expensive, especially in the context of runaway deficits and debt. It’s time to re-evaluate government policies. A good place to start is minimum-wage laws, with payroll taxes a logical second. Alone, wage floors create more problems than they solve, and all of these unintended consequences are compounded by the extra burden of payroll taxes, which raise employer costs even further while also reducing employee take-home pay.

MINIMUM WAGES In May of 2007, during the Bush ...

Blind Men and Elephants in the Room: How Much Should We Worry about the Public Debt?

President Obama is expected to announce today a $3.8 trillion budget with a $1.2 trillion deficit for FY2011. Here’s the context within which he will reveal his plan. For decades now, the federal debt acquired through years and years of deficit spending has been the “elephant in the room” – the huge presence nobody talks about but everyone knows is there. In last week’s State of the Union address, however, debt joined unemployment as the two most urgent issues facing America as Obama enters his second year as our President.

Last year, the White House and Congress went “Keynesian” in a big way as the real-estate bubble popped and ...

Money: We CAN Have Too Much of It

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, and our checking account balances are getting lean.  We could all use more money, right?  Wrong.

We could all use more income and more assets – even Bill and Melissa Gates, who do such a good job of giving it away.  But money?  There’s already too much of it.

If you were worth $50 million, you’d never keep it all in cash, or all in your checkbook, would you?  Of course not.  You’d buy a McMansion, with multiple bathrooms and a Jacuzzi or two.  You’d get a new sports car or three.  How about a vacation home in the Hamptons and box seats at the ...