President Trump said Thursday that the United States formally will withdraw from the Obama-era Paris climate accord. Despite the decidedly shrill cries made by environmental groups claiming withdrawal from the accord will spell doom for Earth’s climate, the poorly negotiated treaty would have done very little to avert global warming and would have hurt everyday Americans struggling to pay their bills and seeking to find high-paying jobs.

Public policy officials, do not be duped. The next time somebody claims wind and solar power create more jobs than natural gas and other conventional energy sources, ask them for specific definitions and parameters of the job numbers cited.

Heartland Senior Fellow Peter Ferrara joins the Made In America radio show with host Neal Asbury to talk about a new Heartland policy brief titled “Why the United States Has Suffered the Worst Economic Recovery Since the Great Depression.”

South Carolina lawmakers have undertaken reforms to address some of the serious issues with their state’s pension system, but major changes are still needed to prevent future budget problems. In 2012, the state increased employee and employer contribution rates for the South Carolina Retirement System (SCRS), the state’s public pension fund. The increase affected current members as well as new hires. The 2012 reforms also reduced the expected rate of return for pension investments and reduced the minimum cost-of-living benefit increase. In 2000 and 2002, the state created optional defined-contribution plans for existing and new state and local government employees and teachers.

John and Donny continue their exploration of think tanks in episode #43 of the In The Tank Podcast. This weekly podcast features (as always) interviews, debates, and roundtable discussions that explore the work of think tanks across the country. The show is available for download as part of the Heartland Daily Podcast every Friday. Today’s podcast features work from the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity, the John Locke Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute.

As they don caps and gowns, endure commencement speeches and take their diplomas, many high school and college graduates face bleak prospects in an economy that grew a dismal 0.5% the first quarter.

On Monday, May 2 the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on what the New York Times (NYT) called: “a lengthy battle for energy production.” The court’s unanimous decision to strike down two cities’ limits on fracking is a victory for oil-and-gas companies and a “disappointment” to anti-fossil-fuel activists. Several states, including Colorado’s neighbors, New Mexico and Texas, have faced similar anti-oil-and-gas initiatives that have also been shot down.

The electronic payments industry has revolutionized worldwide markets, making services like Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, and touch and pay systems possible. As the industry grows and innovates, consider the effects of this technology on the US economy.

Political campaign years are filled with candidates’ promises to solve people’s problems. Government policies will “create jobs,” will reduce or even block the “unfair” competition of market rivals in foreign lands, will restore or create prosperity for all, and will assure “fairness” for everyone, even if it means imposing regulatory or special tax burdens on some to guarantee politically provided privileges and benefits for others who are deemed “deserving.”

Advocates of occupational licensure argue that it protects the public interest by excluding incompetent and unethical individuals from sensitive jobs. This is certainly the case in some fields, such as health care — but in general, research reveals weak evidence that licensure confers a tangible benefit on public safety or the overall quality of services provided to consumers. What it mainly does is increase costs: Kleiner estimates that licensing increases prices 5 to 33 percent, depending on the occupation and geographic location.

Florida’s citrus harvest has plummeted 60 percent from ten years ago, because of citrus greening disease, a bacterial infection that causes trees to produce stunted fruit and eventually die. The disease has also been found in one Los Angeles area orchard, potentially putting California’s citrus groves at risk. Billions of dollars and thousands of jobs are at stake.

Roadsnacks.net recently identified its candidates for “The Ten Worst Places to Live in Illinois,” and although the article is basically infotainment—the written word’s equivalent of reality TV—and plenty of people disagree with the rankings, it does highlight an undeniable fact: The Illinois towns cited in the article suffer from high unemployment, low incomes, and high poverty rates, which in turn are associated with higher rates of robberies, theft, and even murder.

A recently released study claiming to have found a statistical association between hydraulic fracturing and hospitalization rates in Pennsylvania has been popular in the news. However, just about every aspect of this study is problematic, rendering it to the realm of speculation, not science.