Economics

Poverty Stats Greatly Overstate How Many Americans Are Destitute 0
- Economics
- January 30, 2020
While pressing her agenda to expand means-tested welfare programs, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is claiming that the federal government’s poverty statistics vastly undercount the number of Americans who are “destitute.” In reality, the exact opposite is true because those statistics omit a broad range of government benefits, charity, and unreported income. When these are counted, the poorest fifth of U.S. households consume five
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Taxpayers Eat Another Solar Energy Flop 0
- Economics
- January 21, 2020
Looks like another federally backed solar energy plant has gone bust. Bloomberg News reports, “A $1 Billion Solar Plant Was Obsolete Before It Ever Went Online.” In 2011 the $1 billion [Crescent Dunes] project was to be the biggest solar plant of its kind, and it looked like the future of renewable power. Citigroup Inc. and other financiers
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Bernie Sanders’ Staffers Don’t Know the Dark Side of Soviet History 0
- Economics
- January 20, 2020
One of Bernie Sanders’ organizers, Kyle Jurek, wants you to believe that Soviet gulags were not so bad. If Sanders gets elected, Jurek assures us reeducation gulags are coming to America for Trump voters and others opposed to Sanders’ socialist agenda. Jurek is no better than a Holocaust denier. Around 3 million people died in
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Why the Minimum Wage Is so Bad for Young Workers 0
- Economics
- January 16, 2020
In today’s political discourse, the minimum wage is frequently mentioned by the more progressive members of Congress. On a basic level, raising the minimum wage appears to be a sympathetic policy for low-income wage earners. Often kept out of the conversation, however, are the downstream effects of this proposal. The consensus among economists has always been that
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Why Does New York’s Bureaucracy Cost So Much More Than Florida’s?0
- Economics
- January 14, 2020
New York and Florida have similar populations of 20 million and 21 million, respectively. But state and local governments in New York spent twice as much ($348 billion) as governments in Florida ($177 billion), as discussed here. New York’s excess includes spending more on handouts such as welfare. Another cause of New York’s high spending is
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Restricting Trade on Endangered Species Just Makes Things Worse 0
- Economics
- January 13, 2020
Every year humans buy and sell hundreds of millions of wild animals and plants around the world. Much of this commerce is legal, but illegal trade and over-harvesting have driven many species toward extinction. One common response is to adopt bans on trading in threatened or endangered species. But research shows that this approach can
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