Center on Wealth & Poverty
You are walking along a beach, a strange bottle washes up, you open it, and out pops an economic genie. The genie says, “If you give me $100, I will guarantee that the American economy will grow at 6 percent a year (roughly double the rate of the last 30 years), we will have full employment and no inflation, and Read More ›
Who is the biggest provider of foreign aid? The World Bank? The International Monetary Fund (IMF)? The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)? The right answer is none of the above. The single biggest provider of foreign aid is the more than 10 million American immigrants and migrant workers who send back a portion of their earnings to their home Read More ›
Both the European Union and the U.S. government have proved themselves to be incompetent to mint coins. The Economist Magazine just reported that “1- and 2-euro coins, when clutched in sweaty hands, release 300 times more nickel than is allowed by EU guidelines.” According to The Washington Times: “Three years after its splashy introduction by the U.S. Mint, the Sacawagea Read More ›
Assume a friend came to you and said: “Do you know there is this international government organization that is trying to take away your right to protect yourself from criminals; is demanding that your lawyer, accountant, real estate agent, bank teller, jewelry store clerk and car salesman spy on you; and is going to take your personal financial records and Read More ›
American stockholders are now recognized as an oppressed group by politicians’ rhetoric of the last few months. Stockholders are those with the faith and vision that keep the economic system afloat, and there is little doubt they are abused both by government and some corporate managers. However, despite the rhetoric, there is little evidence that government officials or corporate managers Read More ›
Recent opinion polls show that substantial numbers of Americans believe: We are in a recession; free trade reduces jobs for American workers; controlling prices will make us better off; government can create jobs; the tax cut hurt economic growth; and corporations hurt American workers by moving their legal homes to lower-tax jurisdictions. None of the above statements are true. Why Read More ›
To obtain a bank loan, you are often asked to produce a personal balance sheet and income statement. If you were told that if you made a mistake you could be fined $100,000 and go to jail, as corporate executives now face with the new legislation, would you be willing to submit the documents? If you say “no problem,” then Read More ›
If the slide in the stock market is not addressed very quickly, a crisis in corporate and personal debt service may well occur, causing a rapid downward economic spiral. The good news is that Congress and the administration can prevent a further meltdown. The bad news is that Congress seems bent on doing the wrong things, which drive the markets Read More ›
Assume you work for a grocery store chain whose stock is listed on a public exchange, and your boss asked you for ideas on how to increase the company’s profit. If you came back and said, “Let’s double all of our prices,” your boss would be justified in firing you, because he would know that almost no one would continue Read More ›
If WorldCom goes bankrupt, will we have enough telephone companies? Do we have the right number of supermarkets, fast food restaurants and hotels? Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else knows, but the private enterprise market system sorts it out and gives us approximately what we need, where we need it. For each type of business, there is an optimum Read More ›