Daily Policy Digest
Economic Issues
| Why Growth Matters More than Debt The largest holder of the government debt is the government itself, which owes money to a Social Security trust fund that has been investing in safe U.S. T-bonds... |
| 401(k) Plans Step Into the Sunshine By 1990, all 401(k) plans held roughly $900 billion in assets; by 2011, this figure had grown to some $4.3 trillion... |
| The Innovation Nation vs. the Warfare-Welfare State If medical research could reduce cancer mortality by just 10 percent, that would be worth $5 trillion to U.S. citizens... |
| Government's Proper Role in Creating Jobs In February 2009, when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act became law, 12.5 million Americans (8.1 percent of the work force) lacked jobs; in December 2011, 13.1 million Americans (8.5 percent of the work force) still lacked jobs... |
| Minimum Wage Myths San Francisco's $10.24-an-hour minimum wage buys only $6.35 worth of goods and services, says Pamela Villarreal, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis... |
| Rent-to-Own, the Feds and the Housing Sector The Federal Reserve suggests that there will be potentially 1 million more foreclosures in 2012 and 2013, which will further expand properties where mortgage lenders have taken ownership after default... |
| Why Are Interest Rates So Low? The United States, though briefly optimistic about the 3 percent growth posted in the final quarter of 2011, is still expected to maintain 2 percent growth for 2012... |
| Rating Housing Affordability More restrictive land use regulation has been associated with up to nearly 87 percent of house price increases and a 61 percent hike in new house prices... |
| Why the United States Will Never Build the iPhone In addition to an enormous population of unskilled laborers, China produces 600,000 engineers each year (versus 70,000 in the United States) who are skilled administrators... |
| This Is America's Moment, If Washington Doesn't Blow It Foreign investment in the United States rose 49 percent in 2010, while overall investment in the European Union dropped 36 percent in 2009... |
