Economics

Jeffrey Tucker: How to Fake a Fast Food Strike

"There’s every indication that people outside the restaurants protesting didn’t actually work for the place they were protesting. It was a classic 'rent-a-mob' situation, and the rent was being paid by political activists whose agenda has nothing to do with helping the average burger flipper. These were mostly media stunts cooked up by the Service Employees International Union, which bused in these so-called workers as a fulfillment of a little charade and subsequent media blitz. The SEIU coordinates these protests with various professional worker groups and in conjunction with the press to make the biggest possible splash." Continue reading →

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Can We Pay a Minimum Wage That Makes Everyone Rich?

"More people -- an increase in the supply of labor -- want to work at McDonald’s at a rate of $15 an hour than $7.25. That leads to an influx of workers into the labor force and higher unemployment as new entrants fail to find a job. The road to a higher-paying job goes through education, training for the jobs of tomorrow, and incentives such as the earned income tax credit, not through the imposition of a floor on wages. So the next time someone tells you that the U.S. needs to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, ask him what’s so special about $15. Why not raise it to $50, or $100, and make everyone rich?" Continue reading →

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McDonald’s Dollar Menu Is About To Become “The Dollar Menu & More”

"McDonald's Corp. says it has been testing higher priced versions of its famous value menu. The Dollar Menu & More that was tested has three price points -$1, $2 and $5 or 'shareable' items such as 20-piece McNuggets. Another version that was tested has prices of $1, $1.79 and $4.99. Earlier this year, Wendy’s revamped its 99-cent menu to a 'Right Price Right Size' menu, with prices ranging up to around $2. Sure looks like signs of price inflation, not deflation, to me." Continue reading →

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When It Comes To Healthcare, Paul Krugman Is Wrong 100% Of The Time

"In a recent New York Times column Krugman pronounced Obamacare a success before it has even been tried. Why? Because the premiums to be charged in California health insurance exchange are apparently lower than what the experts thought they would be. Aah… let’s see… Everybody thought health insurance premiums would be 100% higher. In fact, they are only 60% higher… Hooray… Break out the champagne! I’ll come back to these price comparisons in a minute. For the moment, I would ask: What kind of an economist would celebrate an expected price decline without asking what happened to quantity or quality? This is an Econ 101 mistake." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingWhen It Comes To Healthcare, Paul Krugman Is Wrong 100% Of The Time

Note to Fed: Giving the Banks Free Money Won’t Make Us Hire More Workers

"As anyone in the actual position of hiring more staff knows, it is not a lack of cheap credit that makes adding workers unattractive, it is the lack of opportunities to increase profit margins by adding more workers. If the economic boom of the mid-1980s proves anything, it is that the cost of credit can be very high but that in itself does not restrain real growth. What restrains growth is not interest rates, it is opportunities to profitably expand operations. What the Fed cannot dare admit is that in a crony-capitalist, globalized, State/cartel-dominated economy, there are few profitable opportunities, regardless of the cost of credit." Continue reading →

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Turning New York City into Detroit?

"Some large cities in California already have declared bankruptcy, for instance, and you can find the same pattern of overcompensated bureaucrats and escaping taxpayers. And the same thing may happen to New York City if the next Mayor is successful in pushing for more class-warfare tax policy. But there’s a big problem with de Blasio’s plan. Rich people are not fatted calves meekly awaiting slaughter. Gelinas warns that the city would have less money if just 20 percent of rich people escaped. She doesn’t think that will happen, but she does explain that rich people can stay but take some simple steps to reduce their taxable income." Continue reading →

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Why a single mom is better off with a $29,000 job than a $69,000 job

"Let’s take the example of a single mom with two kids, 1 and 4. She has a $29,000 a year job, putting the kids in daycare during the day while she works. As the above chart – via Gary Alexander, Pennsylvania’s secretary of Public Welfare — shows, the single mom is better off earning gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income and benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income & benefits of $57,045. It would sure be tempting for that mom to keep the status quo rather than take the new job, even though the new position might lead to further career advancement and a higher standard of living." Continue reading →

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Propaganda Alert: ‘Peace with Syria Will Crash the U.S. Economy’

"Former chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission – and now Kyocera copier salesman – Peter Morici argues that failure to attack Syria will destroy the American economy. In reality, it is the threat of yet another unnecessary, counterproductive war in the Middle East – and not any delay in approving such a boondoggle – which is destabilizing the economy. Moreover, far better-known and more impressive economists than Morici have shown that – contrary to long-standing myths – war is horrible for the economy. Finally, a strong rule of law is the main driver of economic growth. On the other hand, institutional lying and corruption is one of the main factors hurting our economy." Continue reading →

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Guns, Badges, and Cartels

"Drug dealers are not going to obey laws that supposedly control guns. If you want to get drug dealers to stop buying guns, then you had better vote to de-criminalize drugs. But liberals want to criminalize guns, and conservatives want to criminalize drugs. If you think this argument makes no sense, then don’t expect liberals to respond to this argument: 'People who are prepared to defy the laws against murder aren’t going to obey laws against owning guns or large-capacity magazines.' Cartels want above-market income on state-protected turf. This takes guns. The debate is over who gets to carry the guns legally, and who will carry them illegally." Continue reading →

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Bitcoin developer: Are bitcoin thieves revealing NSA back doors?

"Will bitcoin -- and the financial incentive to break bitcoin crypto -- reveal other NSA backdoors in ECDSA, SHA256, RIPEMD160, and other algorithms and libraries used by bitcoin? Thieves are likely to exploit any flaws immediately, and move stolen loot to another private key. The NSA, on the other hand, is likely to avoid exploiting any weaknesses until key moments. Thus, ironically, thieves are playing a role in securing bitcoin and associated algorithms from NSA, Chinese, Russian or mafia tampering. Was the SecureRandom() bug a now-revealed NSA backdoor? You can thank bitcoin for exposing the problem and leading to immediate fixes, and attention to weak RNG impact." Continue reading →

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