Economy

On Tuesday morning's MSNBC Live, Louise Mensch, though she claims to be a conservative, put forth what I suspect will be the left's core economic argument if the economy improves under Donald Trump. That argument: The economy is "fantastic" already, and Trump will have had nothing to do with whatever economic improvements over what is already "fantastic" we might see.

CPAC, currently going on just outside the Beltway in National Harbor, Maryland, has changed along with the conservative movement, believes Matthew Yglesias. Old-school CPAC, Yglesias contended in a Wednesday piece, was philosophically driven, populated by the sort of activists who “helped [Ronald] Reagan mount a primary challenge to incumbent President Gerald Ford.” In the past fifteen-plus years…

It was Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman who made famous the adage, "There's no such thing as a free lunch." Professor Friedman could have added that there is a difference between something's being free and something's having a zero price. For example, people say that there's free public education and there are free libraries, but public education and libraries cost money. Proof that they…

A 2:00 p.m. Wednesday deadline to leave the area looms for hundreds of bitter-ender protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline site following Donald Trump's January 24 executive order advancing its approval. Based on previous reporting I've seen, the presence of "hundreds" is a revelation. What's more, despite the oncoming environmental disaster caused by their trash, filth and abandoned items, up…

On Sunday's Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, during the show's opening "Fareed's Take" commentary, host Zakaria portrayed President Donald Trump as getting very little accomplished apart from "hot air," and mocked those who voted for him by cracking, "How's that working out for you?" Referring to voters who supported Trump in the presidential election in spite of his flaws, Zakaria opened his…

Thursday was the national “Day Without Immigrants” protest, an event where immigrants of all statuses walked out of their jobs and schools and protested President Donald Trump. The protest was like candy to the liberal Big Three networks, all of which conducted full reports. “There were protests and walkouts across the country today aimed at demonstrating immigrants' impact on this economy,”…

John McCain’s 2008 campaign slogan, “Country First,” does not describe the worldview of Republicans, suggested Pierce on Monday. For them, the Esquire blogger implied, it’s more like “GOP über alles.” The peg for the post was chit-chat in the political and media worlds about whether President Trump is of sound mind, or, as Pierce put it, about “the possibility that the presidential trolley has…

CNN took the time during Wednesday’s edition of The Lead to take jabs at President Donald Trump for not being able to get much done during his first three and a half weeks besides create controversy. When asked by host Jake Tapper to walk him through the events of Trump’s first month in office, reporter Tom Foreman joked that “it's more like staggering than walking cause it's quite an experience…

In the editorial titled "The Grand Old Party of Disenfranchisement," the Washington Post rides to the defense of convicted felons by conflating the rights of criminals with the rights of blacks in taking aim at Virginia Republicans who are pushing to make it more difficult for felons to regain their right to vote. In its first sentence, the article accuses the Virginia GOP of trying to "suppress…

If you were like one of the many viewers watching the Super Bowl LI, you may have seen a commercial from the American Petroleum Institute (API) with the catchy opening line, “This ain’t your daddy’s oil.” It was actually a play on General Motors’ 1988 commercial pitch, “this is not your father’s Oldsmobile,” in an effort to attract a younger generation. 

There is little question in most academic research that increases in the minimum wage lead to increases in unemployment. The debatable issue is the magnitude of the increase. An issue not often included in minimum wage debates is the substitution effects of minimum wage increases. The substitution effect might explain why Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, a national network of business owners and…

At the Associated Press, George P. Shultz, James A. Baker III and six other formerly despised Republicans and business leaders have suddenly become "GOP senior statesman." What accounts for this instant transformation? The group is pushing what it calls a "Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends.” In a Tuesday evening Wall Street Journal op-ed, Shultz and Baker advocated "a gradually increasing…

Things became awkward during CNN’s The Future of Obamacare debate Tuesday night, as Senator Bernie Sanders appeared to become a little irritated with a small business owner who admitted to him that she was not providing health care for her employees. Texas salon chain owner La Ronda Hunter explained to the senator that because of Obamacare’s mandates she could not expand her business and could…