Excluding employer-provided health coverage from the income-tax base contributes to all sorts of problems with U.S. health care. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute argues in a new study that the root cause of U.S. health-care problems is the exclusion of health benefits from the income tax. That might sound strange at first glance, but ...

It's not to help low-wage workers. At first glance, it makes little sense that labor unions would support minimum-wage increases. Union members don't get paid the minimum wage, and if nonunion workers saw pay increases as a result of a minimum-wage increase, they would have less reason to unionize because the law would have raised their ...

It was a narrow bill justified by national-security concerns, we were told of the CHIPS Act. Government was going to do what the markets couldn't, or wouldn't, and bring semiconductor manufacturing back home. After passage, the newly empowered Democratic commerce secretary Gina Raimondo began using her authority under the law to talk about ...

Unions and their left-wing political enablers are playing a dangerous game — and it could end with an economy-crippling strike. On September 15, President Biden stood in the Rose Garden and spoke about the labor agreement his administration had brokered to avert a freight-rail strike. This agreement is a big win for America, he said. And this is ...

In his remarks today about the cost of gasoline, President Biden said, The price at the pump should reflect what the price of a barrel of oil costs, and it's not going down consistently. This is part of a continued effort by the White House to blame corporate greed – rather than government policies – for inflation. That's little more than ...

The September consumer-price index report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is out today, and it shows inflation at 8.2 percent year-over-year and 0.4 percent month-over-month. That's a year-over-year decline since August's 8.3 percent, but a month-over-month increase from August's 0.1 percent. The consensus projections were 8.1 ...

The BMWED, the third-largest union representing freight-rail workers, announced today that its members have rejected the tentative agreement that President Joe Biden and Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh celebrated last month. The deal announced by Biden and Walsh was only tentative, and it still required ratification from union membership to go ...

The Federal Open Market Committee raised the federal funds rate by 75 basis points today. It's the third consecutive 75-point increase. The FOMC's statement on its decision says: Recent indicators point to modest growth in spending and production. Job gains have been robust in recent months, and the unemployment rate has remained low. ...

The economy that exists in Joe Biden's head is significantly better than the economy in the real world. That's the major takeaway from the president's comments to CBS's Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes tonight. Pelley asked Biden about the August inflation report, which put year-over-year inflation at 8.3 percent and month-over-month inflation at ...

More businesses are reorganizing their supply chains to avoid the West Coast entirely, shipping goods to East and Gulf Coast ports instead. West Coast supply-chain infrastructure is so inefficient and unreliable that businesses are deciding they'd be better off shipping their products to the opposite side of the continent instead. The shift ...

The data in question are on two of the most important economic topics: employment and output. At his blog, Apricitas Economics, Joseph Politano has written two pieces about economic data not adding up. The data in question are on two of the most important economic topics: employment and output. The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses two ...

American prosperity is best served by free markets, not protectionism. Earlier this month, I wrote about ISI's American Economic Forum, summing up what I heard there as central planning with conservative characteristics, an inclination that appears to be popular among some on the right these days. In pushback to my piece, my friend and ...

The Treasury secretary’s numbers from a letter to the IRS commissioner simply don’t add up.Treasury secretary Janet Yellen sent a letter to the IRS commissioner earlier this week about the new funding the tax-collection agency will receive under the Democrats' reconciliation bill. But her numbers don't seem to add up when she talks about the ...

Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has tweeted a helpful image to frame the inflation debate:
Will high inflation persist? pic.twitter.com/kaXuUBvGmB — Marc Goldwein (@MarcGoldwein) May 10, 2022 It helps because it grounds the debate in actual economic phenomena that we can observe. He does a good job of ...

The Fed still seems to be playing catch-up on inflation, and the economy is still running hot as monetary policy remains loose. The Federal Reserve this week raised the federal funds rate by 50 basis points. Media reports are quick to point out that this is the largest increase at a single Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting since ...

John Cochrane has a new blog post in which he tries to make sense of the Federal Reserve’s reasoning on monetary policy. He describes the Fed’s inflation-fighting policy so far as underwhelming: Inflation has been with us for a year; it is 7.9% and trending up. March 15, the Fed finally budged the Federal Funds rate from 0 to 0.33%, (look ...

A White House fact sheet on reducing gas prices demonstrates the Democrats’ incoherent energy policy. President Biden today announced a plan to reduce gas prices. It’s a perfect reflection of his party’s completely incoherent energy policy.
The White House fact sheet describing the plan says it is in response to “Putin’s Price Hike,” which ...

The new infrastructure law’s Bridge Formula Program turns out to be a windfall for inefficient, unionized blue states. Throughout the bipartisan infrastructure law’s legislative journey, President Biden has repeatedly said that there are 45,000 structurally deficient bridges in the United States in need of repair. Repairing these bridges was ...

Changing the way waiting ships are counted while continuing to kowtow to organized labor will not ease port congestion. On Tuesday, Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh visited Southern California and held a press conference with port leadership and California politicians at the Port of Los Angeles. They told a story of progress and cooperation in ...

The last thing this country needs is a politicized Federal Reserve. The free world is watching – and so are its enemies. With higher-than-normal inflation and an administration dead-set on massive spending measures, the independence of the Federal Reserve is of vital importance. Fed chairman Jerome Powell's term expires in February 2022, ...

With all the focus on America's shipping delays, it's easy to forget that the world's biggest shipping backup is in southern China, not southern California. That's according to the Financial Times this morning, which reports that "a typhoon closed the ports in Hong Kong and Shenzhen for two days this week – but although weather often ...

The August inflation report, released today, doesn't tell us much about whether inflation is here to stay or transitory. The headlines aren't sure what to make of it. "Inflation Eased in August, Though Still High," says the Wall Street Journal. "Inflation Cooled Last Month. It's Still Running High," says Barron's. "Consumer prices are up ...

President Biden has found a new favorite report to use in support of his infrastructure plans. During his town hall with CNN yesterday, the president asserted that the report – written by Mark Zandi and Bernard Yaros Jr. from Moody's Analytics – says that "if we pass the other two things I'm trying to get done, we will, in fact, reduce ...