Daily Policy Digest
Economic Issues
| America's Early Industrialists Earned Their Wealth America's early industrialists, like shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt and oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, got their money the old-fashioned way: they earned it... |
| Toward Another Mortgage Meltdown? The mortgage loan system now in place is eerily reminiscent of the pre-housing bubble before 2007... |
| Regulating Workers' "Human Rights" Harms Employment Mandating such privileges as maternity leave and paid sick leave in the name of eliminating labor market discrimination will only kill jobs and stifle economic growth... |
| Growth Corridors Key to Economic Recovery Covering 20 percent of the country, the Great Plains region has a population of 30 million people and will become more urban and ethnically diverse in the future, proving vital in America's economic recovery... |
| Transatlantic Trade Talks Provide Promise and Challenges Reducing restrictions on free trade might be beneficial for the economies of both trade partners, but there is a limit to how much trade agreements can accomplish... |
| What Do Banks Do? For banks, holding debt is preferable to holding equity, because 98 percent of the time the debt will be paid back with interest... |
| The Jobs Crisis Is About Much More than Unemployment Since 2007, the real median income of American families has dropped by over $5,000 per family, while the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average employed person spends 8.3 hours per day working, up from 7.6 hours per day in 2007... |
| Raising the Minimum Wage Hurts Its Intended Beneficiaries Raising the minimum wage would crowd out the lowest skilled workers and make it more challenging for our country's youth to begin on the career ladder... |
| Currency Wars and Global Macroeconomic Policy The combination of austerity measures and fiscal pumping results in currency weakness, which exports deflationary pressures... |
| Income Inequality Not Necessarily Inequitable Favoring redistribution ignores the fact that there is no way to make the poor richer without making the rich poorer... |
