The recent report that the standard (U-3) rate of unemployment fell to 7.7 percent last month seems to have stirred considerable joy in Mudville. But before we spend a lot of time shouting huzzahs, we might well bear in mind a few other data and, of course, recall that not so long ago, a...
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The U.S. military is increasingly putting a feminine face forward in its ads and PR (for example, the bright smiling faces flanking Mrs. Obama at the Oscars). The Navy’s outreach to women proclaims: What’s it like being a woman in today’s Navy? Challenging. Exciting. Rewarding. But above all, it’s incredibly empowering. That’s because the...
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The notion that the Second World War is responsible for ending the Great Depression has met growing skepticism among economic historians, thanks in no small part to the work of Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs. Beginning with an article that first appeared in the Journal of Economic History in 1992, Higgs has argued...
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Welcome to the 21st century Hotel California. The number of Los Angeles Unified School District teachers warehoused in administrative offices, also referred to as “rubber rooms,” for alleged misconduct has doubled in the past 18 months to nearly 300 according to the LA Daily News. The cost is staggering: $1.4 million a month just...
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When the September unemployment figures were announced a month before the presidential election as having miraculously declined to below 8% for the first time since the current administration started, more than a few speculated that there may have been some book-cooking in the back room. In response, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, said she was...
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President Obama took time out of his hectic campaign schedule this week for a visit with the ladies of The View. Host Barbara Walters asked him, “What do you say to people who say you’re trying to redistribute the wealth?” Obama responded that he and his wife Michelle pay taxes so other people’s public-school...
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Most Americans are celebrating Labor Day with barbecues, picnics, and parades—but not the Chicago Teachers Union. They’re busy planning the city’s first teachers’ strike in 25 years, which incidentally coincides with the September 10 start of most Chicago Public Schools. Observers had hoped a strike could be averted when Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and...
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In Sen. Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign ad against big government, the narrator warns a young boy who’s parking his bike at grandma’s house, “Don’t look now young man, but somebody has his hand in your pocket. It’s the hand of big government. It’s taking away about four months pay from what your daddy earns...
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Over the years, I have heard many people say that the government’s adoption of a laissez-faire stance during a business recession or depression amounts to “do-nothing government”—the unstated assumption always being that it is better for the government to “do something” than to do nothing. Recommending such a hands-off stance is often described as...
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In late June Congress acted to freeze the interest rate on certain college loans at 3.4 percent for an additional year, claiming this move would help make college more affordable. Of course, a relative handful of college students saving a few dollars each month doesn’t translate into college affordability—and the Obama administration knows it....
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