Daily Policy Digest
Economic Issues
| The Federal Housing Administration Is Going for Broke The Federal Housing Administration's accounting system shows that it has roughly $1.2 billion in intangible capital supporting loan guarantees of over $1 trillion... |
| Extended Unemployment Insurance Benefits Studies show that extending unemployment benefits to 99 weeks has increased the national unemployment rate by roughly 0.5 percentage points... |
| With New Law, Profits Take a Back Seat Businesses in a half dozen states will be taking advantage of a new and untested corporate charter, allowing a company's governing board to consider social or environment objectives ahead of profits... |
| Counting the Cost of Calamities Between 2000 and 2050 the city populations exposed to tropical cyclones or earthquakes will more than double, rising from 11 percent to 16 percent of the world's population... |
| Private Equity Is a Force for Good While employment at bought-out firms may initially decrease, private equity firms aggregately aid employment in the long run... |
| Economic Gain Not Zero-Sum Game Even though lower earners have a smaller share of income today than they did in 1990, their absolute income is higher... |
| The Income-Inequality Myth Studies that use taxable income as their measure of wealth do not take into account non-salary benefits and payments that the lower and middle classes have increasingly received in recent decades... |
| A Step Backward for Economic Freedom in 2012 Government spending rose on average to 35.2 percent of gross domestic product from 33.5 percent last year as measured by the 2012 Index of Economic Freedom... |
| Federal Regulations Cost Billions Federal regulations in 2011 added more than $231 billion in regulatory costs to private businesses and state and local governments... |
| A Primer on What Unions Do to the Economy The union wage premium amounts to between 8 and 12 percent -- this pay differential over market rates reduces the total number of workers a business can hire and passes on higher costs to consumers... |
