Economics

Assume you are a legal political refugee in the United States from a communist country. You are not well educated and have limited skill with the English language, but you are a master stonemason — a real artist in stone.

Because of your skill, you have no trouble getting jobs, but by their very nature your jobs are limited and transitory. In the warm months, you most often work in the Northern states, and in the winter in the Southern states. You do not have one regular employer because you go from specialized job to specialized job and often are paid in cash.

You occasionally want to send money to your elderly parents who still live in the old country, but you cannot use a bank because you do not have a bank account. The reason you do not have a bank account is are required by domestic and international financial regulatory bodies to “know their customers.” Your lack of a permanent address, a regular employer and close family in the United States means you do not meet the banks’ “know your customer” tests. This even though you have a good yearly income, are hardworking, constructive, and law abiding.

William Tucker is a Senior Fellow of Discovery Institute

End of the Line: The Failure of Amtrak Reform and the Future of America’s Passenger Trainsby Joseph Vranich
(AEI Press, 204 pages, $25)

Once again, Amtrak is before Congress asking for another handout. Having lost $600 million last year — about average for the 34 years of its existence — the company is once again begging Congress for money.

This time, however, the Bush administration plans to end the charade that Amtrak will one day become profitable. It wants to end the handouts, making Amtrak compete like any private company. Democrats, of course are opposed. They love any government program — even those created by the Nixon administration. Before they begin their annual last-ditch stand, however, they would do well to read Joseph Vranich’s new book.

A former public affairs spokesman at Amtrak, Vranich has one thing to say about Amtrak — it’s a rolling disaster. The government-owned corporation now regularly requires nearly $1 billion a year in subsidies. It is drowning in debt. Two years ago it mortgaged New York’s Penn Station for $300 million to pay three months’ operating losses.

Nearly empty trains roll through Iowa and Montana, subsidizing passengers at a rate of $300 per ride. Meanwhile New York’s cross-Hudson tunnels are a disaster waiting to happen because Amtrak won’t spend the money to improve fire protection and escape routes.

The United Nations fancies itself a vehicle that reduces global poverty and increases economic wellbeing. But, in fact, the U.N. advocates policies that will do the opposite. U.N. reports and committees issue a steady stream of demands for tax increases. Most would fall on Americans and citizens of other very successful countries, with revenues given to the U.N. and leaders Read More ›

How much lower is your real income because of excessive regulation? And how much higher is unemployment because of too much regulation? Economists have been trying to answer these questions for the last several decades. Great strides have been made, and now Steve Entin, former Treasury official and president of the Institute for Research in the Economics of Taxation (IRET), Read More ›

Which countries do you think have the best business environments? Economists, politicians and business people fiercely debate this question. There is obviously no one correct answer because there are many variables, depending on such things as whether a particular business is capital- or labor-intensive, import- or export-dependent, etc. Forbes magazine has just issued its list of the “2000 biggest, most Read More ›

Are you aware we are increasingly regulated and even taxed by international organizations that are undermining the protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution? The “Oil for Food” and other recent U.N. scandals made many aware the U.N. is quite literally out of control. What is not well known is that the U.N. is only one of now dozens of international Read More ›

The U.S. Treasury has just released some new data that will bring cheer to the advocates of lower tax rates and heartburn to those who advocate higher tax rates. By way of background, for the last three decades, there has been a fierce debate about which tax rates maximize tax revenue. Economist Art Laffer drew a curve that merely illustrated Read More ›

Do you feel more or less free today than you did 10 years ago? If you happen to be a property developer, sit on the board of a public corporation, often travel by air, like to spend your own money supporting political candidates and causes you believe in, or are outspoken in your Christian beliefs, you almost certainly answered the Read More ›

Federal government prosecutors are sending doctors to prison for making mistakes in filing Medicare paperwork. At the same time, Medicare customer service representatives are apparently not even reprimanded for a 96 percent error rate in answering questions about how to handle physician billings. These representatives work at call centers operated by insurance carriers handling Medicare claims, and are tasked with Read More ›

PRESIDENT BUSH WENT TO MADISON County, Illinois, last week to kick off his campaign for tort reform. “Junk lawsuits change the way doctors do medicine,” said the president, surrounded by a phalanx of doctors from southern Illinois. “Instead of taking care of patients, they’re worried about lawsuits.” Madison County — named the nation’s worst “judicial hellhole” by the American Tort Read More ›