Wages & Prices

In news which appears to have first become known to the general public at the Financial Times on Wednesday, research done by Goldman Sachs indicates that the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, has led to more involuntary part-time employment — something which the Act's proponents claimed is something that wouldn't happen, and still insist hasn't happened. How much more? According to the Times, "…

A basic economic premise holds that when the price of something rises, people seek to economize on its use. They seek substitutes for that which has risen in price. Recent years have seen proposals for an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Some states and localities, such as Seattle, have already legislated a minimum wage of $15 an hour.

Hillary Clinton made herself look like the out-of-touch elitist she is often criticized for being, but rather than reporting that, broadcast networks hyped her “historic” nomination. When Clinton spoke against income inequality during a April 2016 speech, she wore a jacket, reportedly costing $12,495, from high-end designer Giorgio Armani. The New York Post reported on the jacket and its price on…

Taking a cue from the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger in March of last year, two Los Angeles Times reporters told readers on Monday that the economy is about to complete a seventh year of expansion. No it's not, at least not if historical benchmarks for determining expansions are consistently and properly heeded. Reporters Jim Puzzanghera and Don Lee couldn't even keep their own standards…

Philip Bump and the Washington Post have apparently had a couple of pretty bad days. The Post had to endure having to cover, and cover for, an absolutely awful jobs report released Friday morning. That news made their beloved Dear Leader, who had just celebrated the allegedly wonderful economic accomplishments seen during his presidency on Wednesday, look quite foolish. Never fear: By Paragraph 4…

Even when CEO pay drops, liberals whine. The New York Times turned its report on CEO pay into a complaint on inequality and the “large-scale transfer of wealth” it created for rich, white men. Large corporations, according to the Times, are transferring wealth “to a few hundred individuals — most of them men, most of them white.”

President Obama and GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan want to expand it. Tax preparation companies and illegal immigrants are cashing in on it. Fraudsters have found bottomless ways to exploit it. The earned income tax credit, a bipartisan-supported "anti-poverty" benefit, is robbing honest, law-abiding Americans blind.   

Barely a minute into Wednesday’s PBS town hall event with President Barack Obama, PBS NewsHour co-host Gwen Ifill took a few digs at the people of Elkhart, Indiana where the event was being held for not giving Obama “any credit” for their unemployment drop to the point that she exclaimed: “What gives?”

The establishment press has given an open mic to proponents of raising the minimum wage nationally, and has cheered $15-per-hour legislation passed in California and New York earlier this year as "historic." The silence from those same quarters, e.g., the Associated Press, the New York Times and others, is deafening now that one of the predictions of those who have criticized such sharp…

In an analysis for the front page of Wednesday’s New York Times business section, Eduardo Porter trumpeted that the real issue ailing the American economy and impeding on its improvement is the lack of mass government jobs programs similar to its “large and underappreciated role in reshaping” the country during the 19th and 20th centuries. 

During a discussion of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump indicating that he was willing to negotiate over both taxes and the minimum wage, and possibly end up raising taxes on the wealthy, CNN's Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room praised the GOP candidate for having a willingness to compromise, unlike "some very conservative Republican hardliners."

In case you didn't get the message the first or second time around, the Washington Post wants you to hear it again: Cool your complaints about the weak U.S. economy, because it's your fault. To be clear, the problem is primarily with the Post's headline — "The economy’s real drag: Us" — than with Robert J. Samuelson's content, which at least gave American consumers credit for having "sobered up…

On Monday, all three network morning shows covered the violent May Day rioting that broke out across Seattle on Sunday. However, the NBC, ABC, and CBS broadcasts made sure to tout how “the march began as a peaceful demonstration for the rights of workers and immigrants.” No liberal labels were used to characterize the protesters and the reporters avoided explaining the Communist roots of the day.

New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait admires Bernie Sanders’s willingness (eagerness?) to raise taxes so as to “finance the kind of social benefits American liberals would prefer.” That’s why Chait is disappointed that Sanders opposes Philadelphia’s proposed three-cents-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened drinks, revenue from which would fund citywide pre-kindergarten and other programs. In a Tuesday…