Business & Economics
Business & Economics
Police budget cuts won’t spike crime
SACRAMENTO – “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary,” observed the journalist, critic and satirist H.L. Mencken. Mencken perhaps would not have envisioned the ...
Business & Economics
Make California ‘open for business’
California’s unemployment rate, according to the most recent figures, is 12.4 percent, down from a revised 12.5 percent the month before, which was the highest jobless rate ever recorded for California since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting standardized data in 1976. Such high unemployment is powerful evidence of ...
Business & Economics
Government ‘too big to fail’ and too big to succeed
These days, one is hard-pressed to read a newspaper or watch the news without encountering the phrase “too big to fail.” The debate over TBTF, as it also is known, completely ignores the one institution that deserves attention when assessing the real risks of TBTF: government. To get a sense ...
Business & Economics
Oil Producers’ Liability Should Not Be Unlimited
Everyone loves a villain. And with the Deepwater Horizon disaster at the two-month mark, the love knows no bounds, uniting much of the political-media complex in a sticky goo of opportunism, finger-pointing and phony demands for apologies. That BP–having schmoozed the environmental left for years while compiling a dreadful safety ...
Business & Economics
What an economist learned in Haiti
I recently spent a week in Haiti helping with reconstruction efforts. I volunteered only as someone with two hands and a lot of Gatorade, but my professional background as an economist allowed me to diagnose some of Haiti’s problems. These go much deeper than the earthquake. I registered with the ...
Business & Economics
‘Government involvement’ never leads to lowered prices
After almost a month of repairs, the K.R. Harrington Water Treatment Plant is back in operation. Nashville residents can bathe and wash dishes normally. Now that the crisis has passed, it is useful to reflect on the economic lessons of government pricing and rationing. Let’s start with the basic facts. ...
Business & Economics
How lawsuit reform could jump-start Illinois’ economy
The Illinois economy continues to struggle, with an unemployment rate of 11.5 percent, near the highest in the nation. If lawmakers want to put people back to work, without costing taxpayers another penny for “stimulus,” they can enact desperately needed lawsuit reforms. In the newly released U.S. Tort Liability Index: ...
Business & Economics
Appeals bond cap on the table in New Jersey
A2473 would limit the amount of appeal bond in civil actions to the total value of the monetary judgment or $50 million, whichever is less. Mr. O’Brien wrote, “New Jersey’s reputation recently took a hit when a Pacific Research Institute study ranked the state’s as the most worrisome tort system. ...
Business & Economics
Without legal reform, economic growth evades Nevada
State’s poor civil-justice tort climate drives away businesses and entrepreneurs Nevada’s economy continues to struggle. Its unemployment rate is 14 percent, the highest in the nation. If lawmakers want to put people back to work — without costing taxpayers another penny for “stimulus” — they can enact desperately needed lawsuit ...
Business & Economics
It’s not easy being nonunion green
SACRAMENTO – The state’s Democratic legislators have an inordinate hostility to the free marketplace, as evidenced by their endless push for new business regulations and for higher taxes for corporations and wealthy Californians. Yet there is one form of business development that the California Left has embraced with particular gusto ...
Police budget cuts won’t spike crime
SACRAMENTO – “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary,” observed the journalist, critic and satirist H.L. Mencken. Mencken perhaps would not have envisioned the ...
Make California ‘open for business’
California’s unemployment rate, according to the most recent figures, is 12.4 percent, down from a revised 12.5 percent the month before, which was the highest jobless rate ever recorded for California since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting standardized data in 1976. Such high unemployment is powerful evidence of ...
Government ‘too big to fail’ and too big to succeed
These days, one is hard-pressed to read a newspaper or watch the news without encountering the phrase “too big to fail.” The debate over TBTF, as it also is known, completely ignores the one institution that deserves attention when assessing the real risks of TBTF: government. To get a sense ...
Oil Producers’ Liability Should Not Be Unlimited
Everyone loves a villain. And with the Deepwater Horizon disaster at the two-month mark, the love knows no bounds, uniting much of the political-media complex in a sticky goo of opportunism, finger-pointing and phony demands for apologies. That BP–having schmoozed the environmental left for years while compiling a dreadful safety ...
What an economist learned in Haiti
I recently spent a week in Haiti helping with reconstruction efforts. I volunteered only as someone with two hands and a lot of Gatorade, but my professional background as an economist allowed me to diagnose some of Haiti’s problems. These go much deeper than the earthquake. I registered with the ...
‘Government involvement’ never leads to lowered prices
After almost a month of repairs, the K.R. Harrington Water Treatment Plant is back in operation. Nashville residents can bathe and wash dishes normally. Now that the crisis has passed, it is useful to reflect on the economic lessons of government pricing and rationing. Let’s start with the basic facts. ...
How lawsuit reform could jump-start Illinois’ economy
The Illinois economy continues to struggle, with an unemployment rate of 11.5 percent, near the highest in the nation. If lawmakers want to put people back to work, without costing taxpayers another penny for “stimulus,” they can enact desperately needed lawsuit reforms. In the newly released U.S. Tort Liability Index: ...
Appeals bond cap on the table in New Jersey
A2473 would limit the amount of appeal bond in civil actions to the total value of the monetary judgment or $50 million, whichever is less. Mr. O’Brien wrote, “New Jersey’s reputation recently took a hit when a Pacific Research Institute study ranked the state’s as the most worrisome tort system. ...
Without legal reform, economic growth evades Nevada
State’s poor civil-justice tort climate drives away businesses and entrepreneurs Nevada’s economy continues to struggle. Its unemployment rate is 14 percent, the highest in the nation. If lawmakers want to put people back to work — without costing taxpayers another penny for “stimulus” — they can enact desperately needed lawsuit ...
It’s not easy being nonunion green
SACRAMENTO – The state’s Democratic legislators have an inordinate hostility to the free marketplace, as evidenced by their endless push for new business regulations and for higher taxes for corporations and wealthy Californians. Yet there is one form of business development that the California Left has embraced with particular gusto ...
