Business & Economics
Business & Economics
Plunder: New Book Exposes Power of Unions
Last month, the Legislative Analyst Office predicted a budget shortfall for Californias next fiscal year so large it shocked even seasoned observers. The projected $20 billion shortfall is larger than the entire state budgets of all but a handful of other states. The LAO also excoriated the continued use of ...
Business & Economics
We’re increasingly ruled by rules
To the extent that anyone still thinks about the former Soviet Union and its satellite communist states, they understandably think about the suffocating oppression – the Berlin Wall, the gulags, the KGB, the political prisoners, the persecution of religious people and minorities. Yet, in talking to refugees from that nightmarish ...
Business & Economics
California’s Revenue Problem – Educators Should Demand Economic Growth Not Tax Increases
In what is becoming a perennial affair, the California budget deficit is projected to be over $21 billion in the coming year – including a $6 billion hangover from this year. With the same degree of regularity, in pursuit of stable education funding (a good idea), educators in California are ...
Business & Economics
California’s Revenue Problem – Educators Should Demand Economic Growth Not Tax Increases
In what is becoming a perennial affair, the California budget deficit is projected to be over $21 billion in the coming year – including a $6 billion hangover from this year. With the same degree of regularity, in pursuit of stable education funding (a good idea), educators in California are ...
Business & Economics
Stimulus spending fails on jobs front
The White House recently announced the results of its stimulus package, billed as instrumental in averting a second Great Depression. In reality, the stimulus has been a profligate flop, even if we take the administration’s numbers at face value. The Web site Recovery.gov breaks down stimulus expenditures and the reported ...
Business & Economics
Why students and taxpayers should protest UC fee hike
Los Angeles Daily News, December 1, 2009 Roadrunner.com, December 1, 2009 CSU Northridge (CA): December 2, 2009 THE University of California Regents have approved a plan to raise student fees 32 percent over the next year and admit fewer students, the latest in a series of fee increases and service ...
Business & Economics
Eyes on the Prize
Next week the 2009 year’s Nobel winners receive their prizes. They include two women who deserved their awards but are not likely to draw cheers from feminist celebrities. This year, for the first time, the Nobel committee awarded the prize in economics to a woman. Elinor Ostrom was not picked ...
Business & Economics
Lawsuits hurt taxpayers
We’ve all read and laughed at the stories of ludicrous lawsuits and the runaway juries who decide on multi-million judgments. Unfortunately, fellow New Yorkers, the joke is on us. A recent independent economic study conducted for New Yorkers for Lawsuit Reform — a statewide coalition of large and small businesses, ...
Business & Economics
New Yorkers pay a high price for liability litigation
High taxes help make New York an expensive place to do business. A new report argues convincingly that costly malpractice litigation and insurance also kill jobs and drive away business. The report from the conservative Pacific Research Institute notes that from an economic perspective, New York state ranks near the ...
Business & Economics
Frosting on an already-sweet pension deal
When people have an entitlement mentality, enough is never enough. Even though government employees enjoy absurdly generous defined-benefit pensions that often allow them to retire with 80 percent to 90 percent of their final year’s pay guaranteed forever, employees game the system by taking advantage of various pension-spiking schemes. A ...
Plunder: New Book Exposes Power of Unions
Last month, the Legislative Analyst Office predicted a budget shortfall for Californias next fiscal year so large it shocked even seasoned observers. The projected $20 billion shortfall is larger than the entire state budgets of all but a handful of other states. The LAO also excoriated the continued use of ...
We’re increasingly ruled by rules
To the extent that anyone still thinks about the former Soviet Union and its satellite communist states, they understandably think about the suffocating oppression – the Berlin Wall, the gulags, the KGB, the political prisoners, the persecution of religious people and minorities. Yet, in talking to refugees from that nightmarish ...
California’s Revenue Problem – Educators Should Demand Economic Growth Not Tax Increases
In what is becoming a perennial affair, the California budget deficit is projected to be over $21 billion in the coming year – including a $6 billion hangover from this year. With the same degree of regularity, in pursuit of stable education funding (a good idea), educators in California are ...
California’s Revenue Problem – Educators Should Demand Economic Growth Not Tax Increases
In what is becoming a perennial affair, the California budget deficit is projected to be over $21 billion in the coming year – including a $6 billion hangover from this year. With the same degree of regularity, in pursuit of stable education funding (a good idea), educators in California are ...
Stimulus spending fails on jobs front
The White House recently announced the results of its stimulus package, billed as instrumental in averting a second Great Depression. In reality, the stimulus has been a profligate flop, even if we take the administration’s numbers at face value. The Web site Recovery.gov breaks down stimulus expenditures and the reported ...
Why students and taxpayers should protest UC fee hike
Los Angeles Daily News, December 1, 2009 Roadrunner.com, December 1, 2009 CSU Northridge (CA): December 2, 2009 THE University of California Regents have approved a plan to raise student fees 32 percent over the next year and admit fewer students, the latest in a series of fee increases and service ...
Eyes on the Prize
Next week the 2009 year’s Nobel winners receive their prizes. They include two women who deserved their awards but are not likely to draw cheers from feminist celebrities. This year, for the first time, the Nobel committee awarded the prize in economics to a woman. Elinor Ostrom was not picked ...
Lawsuits hurt taxpayers
We’ve all read and laughed at the stories of ludicrous lawsuits and the runaway juries who decide on multi-million judgments. Unfortunately, fellow New Yorkers, the joke is on us. A recent independent economic study conducted for New Yorkers for Lawsuit Reform — a statewide coalition of large and small businesses, ...
New Yorkers pay a high price for liability litigation
High taxes help make New York an expensive place to do business. A new report argues convincingly that costly malpractice litigation and insurance also kill jobs and drive away business. The report from the conservative Pacific Research Institute notes that from an economic perspective, New York state ranks near the ...
Frosting on an already-sweet pension deal
When people have an entitlement mentality, enough is never enough. Even though government employees enjoy absurdly generous defined-benefit pensions that often allow them to retire with 80 percent to 90 percent of their final year’s pay guaranteed forever, employees game the system by taking advantage of various pension-spiking schemes. A ...
