Economy

Florida And Texas Take First And Second In The 2019 U-Haul Trophy As People Flee Illinois And California

The 2019 U-Haul state migration index is out, and the top states Americans are moving to are no surprise—Florida, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Washington. These are states with light state and local tax burdens. Conversely, four of the top five states people are fleeing—Illinois, California, Michigan, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania—feature high taxes (though Michigan’s tax burden...

January 8, 2020

Economy

The Gig’s Up In California—A New Law Outlaws Independent Contracting, Killing Jobs

California’s Assembly Bill 5 just went into effect. With some exceptions, the law takes aim at the new gig economy and independent contractors, forcing businesses to choose between hiring contractors as employees or laying them off. A week before Christmas, Vox Media’s SB Nation, a sports website, sent notice to some 200 of its California-based freelancers that they...

January 2, 2020

Economy

Trump’s Tax Cut Is Two Years Old, And Job Growth In Low Tax States Is Soaring

President Trump signed the Tax Cut and Jobs Act into law on December 22, 2017. The tax cut, combined with billions in federal regulatory relief, reinvigorated the economic expansion which is now in its 126th month, making it the longest recovery in U.S. history. While the tax reform law cut taxes for most individual taxpayers and...

December 20, 2019

Economy

Death On The Job

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics just released its 2018 data for fatal occupational injuries. As with many government reports, much of the data reflects common sense with a few interesting outliers. In 2018, 5,250 people sustained fatal injuries at work. To put that into perspective, an estimated 609,640 Americans died of cancer in 2018, 116 times as many...

December 17, 2019

Energy & Environment

China Goes All-In On Coal While Telling The Rest Of The World To Reduce Emissions

Greenhouse gas negotiations in Madrid adjourned after two weeks without an agreement, leaving delegates to jet back home in failure. In response, an executive with the Environmental Defense Fund admonished nations to go their own way on carbon markets, setting up rules for “international emissions trading.” A U.N. report released last month said greenhouse gas emissions must...

December 16, 2019

Economy

Employers Add 266,000 Jobs In November, Far Above Expectations, Previous Months’ Estimates Revised Upward By 41,000

American employers added 266,000 jobs in November, far above the 180,000 expected by economists, while the unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, matching a 50-year low. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the employment numbers this morning in their monthly release. Employment rebounded by 54,000 in manufacturing following last month’s decline of 43,000. Most of this...

December 6, 2019

Economy

America Goes Back To Work: A Key Measure Of Unemployment Hits A Record Low

The numbers are good—and suggest our nation’s economic expansion continues apace. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported today that the number of people who were unemployed at any time in 2018 as a proportion of the number of persons who worked or looked for work—called the “work-experience unemployment rate”—was 7.8%, down by 0.8%...

December 3, 2019

Taxes & Spending

How President Lincoln Created Thanksgiving

Amidst a raging Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued a “Proclamation of Thanksgiving” on October 3, 1863, 74 years to the day after President George Washington issued his first presidential Thanksgiving proclamation. Prior to Lincoln’s proclamation, states, mostly in the North, would mark their own Thanksgiving commemorations. The concept for a national Thanksgiving celebrated annually...

November 27, 2019

Economy

U.S. Economy Revised Upward, Defying Expectations of a Slowdown, While Manufacturing Appears Poised to Resume Expansion

The current economic expansion is 10 years and five months old and showing little signs of ending. The U.S. Department of Commerce announced Wednesday that the third quarter grew at a 2.1% annual rate vs. the previously estimated 1.9%. Preliminary data from the fourth quarter looks steady as well. The good economic news comes amid widely...

November 27, 2019

Economy

Businesses (And Workers) Are Thankful For Texas As Charles Schwab Calls It Quits On California

California’s population is 38% larger than Texas’, but since 2008, Texas has added about 100,000 … [+] TEXAS PUBLIC POLICY FOUNDATION, DATA FROM THE U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS Charles Schwab (NYSE: SCHW), the San Francisco-based financial services firm that pioneered low-cost stock trades, is moving to Texas. The announcement follows news yesterday that Charles Schwab will...

November 26, 2019

Energy & Environment

Blackout-Prone California Is Exporting Its Energy Policies To Western States, Electricity Will Become More Costly And Unreliable

California is again facing widespread blackouts. Politicians are scrambling to assign blame to Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) a heavily regulated utility that can only do what the politically appointed regulators say it can do. In recent years this has meant building a bunch of solar and wind projects, while decommissioning reliable sources of power and...

November 19, 2019

Taxes & Spending

President Trump calls it quits on New York taxes. He’s not alone

In 1975, at the height of New York City’s financial crisis, President Ford announced he would deny federal aid to help the city avoid bankruptcy. The Daily News ran an iconic headline the next day: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.” Today the headline might read: “NEW YORK TO MILLIONAIRES: DROP DEAD.” The latest example of New York’s politicians bitterly...

November 10, 2019