Opinion
Help workers truly earn higher wages
As automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence keep evolving, the market for entry-level and low-skill workers will adjust accordingly.
Opinion
Dear politicians: stop ignoring economic laws
Economic laws are not subject to a vote. They can’t be wished away because you don’t like certain realities they reveal. They don’t bend to accommodate your feelings or the politician’s will. These harsh realities must be kept in mind when anticipating the results of public policy. For instance, there’s no surer way to make...
Opinion
Government shouldn’t set prices
The reason most industries with lesser-skilled workers don’t already pay $15 an hour is that they see details the politicians and political activists can’t see.
Opinion
Still room to improve on regs
Economic growth isn’t driven primarily by existing companies getting a little more productive. It’s driven by innovators with new, sometimes disruptive, ideas.
Opinion
Remove barriers instead of erecting new ones
Have you ever noticed how social reformers often want new government regulations to do away with behavior and outcomes that past government regulations helped create? For as much as they talk about the greed of capitalists and the power of government to change society, they seem to miss that people do change their behavior in...
Opinion
Let’s head off labor shortages
Not enough young people are graduating from high school, receiving good postsecondary education or training, and then developing valuable skills through on-the-job experience.
Opinion
Higher costs won’t help economy
The great surges in living standards enjoyed during most of our country’s history came not from making things more expensive but by making them less expensive.
Opinion
The Great Suppression may linger
In its understandable rush to impose sick-leave requirements, expand unemployment-insurance benefits, and cast a lifeline to struggling businesses, the federal government has made the labor market far more rigid than usual.
Opinion
Hiking the minimum wage breaks first rule of policies to help the poor
If you’re a fan of Subway, perhaps you like getting a “five-dollar footlong.” Maybe you even like the jingle. But in Seattle, you’d be singing a different tune if you saw you can’t buy a five-dollar footlong. Seattle’s minimum-wage hikes have made labor costs too expensive for a Subway franchise to afford to do the...
Opinion
Some reforms enjoy broad support
Many state leaders believe that North Carolina should find ways to ease the transition of convicted criminals into the job market, reform occupational licensing, and offer more apprenticeships.
Opinion
Painting an accurate picture of the minimum wage debate
During the period of apartheid in South Africa, all-white labor unions representing workers in the diamond mines were able to have put in place minimum wage laws for diamond mine workers. At the time lower-skilled black workers were competing with white workers and taking “their jobs.” The all-white unions were quite upfront about their motives...
Opinion
H.B. 2 and Beyond
It's nice to see increased interest in rolling back government rules and regulations that hurt the economy.
