Price inflation in May 2021 was up 5% over May of 2020. At this pace, the general level of prices will double in less than 15 years. The last time inflation was running this high was in 2008, when gasoline first breached $4 a gallon. And inflation expectations for the next year have reached a...
The latest Labor Department statistics show an all-time record 9.3 million unfilled jobs, even though more than nine million Americans remain unemployed. Alarm bells should be ringing in Washington. Twenty-five Republican governors have wisely suspended the $300-a-week supplemental unemployment benefits starting this month. But 25 mostly blue-state governors will let the bonus run into September,...
America’s labor market has significant structural problems. Despite about 9 million people being unemployed, there are about that many job openings and employers cannot seem to find willing workers. There were 9.3 million unfilled job openings on April 30, 1 million beyond the previous record in March. More than a third of the 1 million...
Headline Numbers: The month of May produced another disappointing jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 559,000 which was 91,000 below expectations. The unemployment rate fell by 0.3% to 5.8%; economists expected 5.9% for May. The number of unemployed fell by 496,000 to 9.3 million and the number of permanent...
President Joe Biden released his plan for massive tax and spending increases. It is a budget only in the loosest sense of the word. If you drafted a household budget using the same methodology and ideas as this latest federal proposal, you would soon be heading to bankruptcy court. While it is difficult to determine...
The economic policies of the Biden administration—Bidenomics—is conspicuously marked by lofty rhetoric, grand promises, and the best of intentions. It espouses helping the poorest among us, along with amorphous but attractive values like “fairness.” But the results of these policies do not live up to their intentions. Here are just a few examples. The American...
President Joe Biden has made so-called “fairness” a central facet of his tax proposals. This prompts the question: what is fair? We all have different definitions of the word. It is dangerous, then, to desultorily apply opinions and envy in the progressives’ flawed attempt to solve perceived social injustices through the federal income tax code....
The substantially weaker than expected U.S. jobs report was unfortunate for struggling Americans, but it should have been expected given the disastrous policy out of D.C. Fortunately, states can fix it. Milton Friedman said that if the federal government oversaw the Sahara Desert, within five years there would be a shortage of sand. So inefficient...
A recent Wall Street Journal article claimed “U.S. Debt Is at a Record High, but the Risk Calculus Is Changing.” But is that calculus really changing? According to some, the government can borrow and print all the money it wants without repercussions. Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) advances the puerile notion that we have somehow moved...
New York sailed too close to the wind and now Texas has a tremendous opportunity. In a recent study, we analyzed New York’s latest tax increase—and it is a disaster. The top marginal personal income tax rate in New York City has jumped to over 14.7%, for the highest combined state and local tax rate...
The Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Chief Economist Vance Ginn and economist E.J. Antoni break down the massive spending proposals in President Biden’s recent address to Congress. $225 billion toward high-quality childcare and ensuring families pay only a portion of their income toward child-care services, based on a sliding scale Raising taxes from one pocket to...
I have rarely agreed with U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) on anything—especially tax policy. Yet here we are, opposing unlimited SALT deductions together. State And Local Tax deductions are paid for by you and me, yet they go to the wealthiest people in the country. SALT deductions work like this: If choosing itemized deductions on...