Daily Policy Digest
Economic Issues
| A New Measure of Consumption Inequality For nearly all durable goods, the gap between high-income and low-income households has either narrowed significantly or remained the same... |
| Why Hairdressers Are Secure: Their Jobs Can't Be Exported While the nation as a whole saw the number of jobs decrease by 6 percent in 2007, there was a 2 percent increase in personal-service jobs... |
| Just Wait until It's Free Because consumers pay such a small portion of the total cost of subsidized goods in the form of the marginal cost, they are not encouraged to shop around... |
| The U.S. Housing Market: Metrics of Recovery and Links to Economic Growth Residential construction spending is up 6.2 percent from the beginning of the year, but still far below pre-housing crisis levels... |
| Disability Ranks Outpace New Jobs in Obama Recovery Since June 2009, the economy has created 2.6 million jobs while 3.1 million workers signed up for disability benefits... |
| Dodd-Frank: The Economic Case for Repeal The Dodd-Frank Act is still uncertain and ill-defined, making employers wary and resistant to risk cash savings on additional payroll expenditures... |
| Wages Drop, Only Fifth Time in 33 Years Weekly wages dropped during 2011 by 1.7 percent to $955 from a high of $971 in the fourth quarter of 2010... |
| The Negative Effects of Minimum Wage Laws The U.S. Department of Labor's own assessment of the first 25-cent minimum wage in 1938 found that it resulted in job losses for 30,000 to 50,000 workers... |
| Want to Move a Worker to the United States? Good Luck. From 2003 to 2007, an average of only about 8 percent of company requests for L1-B visas were denied; by 2008, that rejection rate had tripled, only to increase further last year to 27 percent... |
| The Inequality Fetish There is no real evidence that a nation's income inequality either dampens economic growth or worsens financial crises... |
