To say North Carolina is bouncing back is not to say everyone is coming along for the bouncy ride. Still, things could be worse. In most the country, in fact, they are.
In the 1970s, high marginal tax rates were a big factor on the supply side of inflation. Today, it’s more likely to be regulation.
A year ago, in the midst of the pandemic, all hands were wringing about shortages – shortages of food, everyday essentials, salaries, and government revenues. State budget experts were expecting revenue shortfalls of between 5% and 10%. Massive layoffs of state workers were possible, even possibly reaching into the ranks of university professors. Now, a...
Gov. Cooper repeatedly vetoed pay raises for teachers, betting that Democrats could transform the resulting public frustration into legislative gains. It was a bad bet.
We should all take reasonable precautions, absolutely. But keeping schools, public venues, and large swaths of our economy closed or severely constrained indefinitely strikes me as the opposite of reasonable.
While the government counted about 100,000 fewer North Carolinians as unemployed last month, only 28,000 got jobs. The remaining 72,000 dropped out of the labor force.
But getting people back to work, not encouraging them to remain unemployed for additional months, should be the priority. Long-term joblessness has deleterious effects of its own.
On Monday, May 18, the opinion team for The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer called for Gov. Roy Cooper to take responsibility for North Carolina’s disastrous unemployment insurance system. “NC unemployment delays have been a disaster. Own it, Gov. Cooper,” read the headline for the editorial appearing in both papers. I agree with...
The coronavirus recession, the Great Lockdown, and the Great Suppression are all terms used to describe the global economic downturn produced by COVID-19 mitigation measures. As elected officials issued stay-at-home orders and closed “nonessential” enterprises, unemployment skyrocketed. From mid-March to mid-April, about 22 million Americans, or roughly 13.5% of the labor force, filed initial claims for...
The professional left’s work-equals-death argument is an irresponsible misrepresentation of the movement to reopen North Carolina’s economy, which has been devastated by state and local government mandated shutdowns and the resulting job losses and business closures. The argument implies a profound lack of trust in our fellow North Carolinians to make wise decisions about themselves...
North Carolina’s economy has been devastated by the decisions of Gov. Roy Cooper and state and local officials in their attempt to ameliorate the effects of COVID-19. To enforce social distancing rules, politicians outlawed a number of occupations and businesses. Included in these restrictions are restaurants and restaurant workers, beauty salons and barbershops, specialty stores,...
