labor

The latest survey of small business contains a surprise. Or maybe it is not a surprise if you are or know a small business owner.

For decades, vocational training has been waning.

Most of us both value and take for granted the ability to make decisions about our own lives.

Right parties gained, giving the right bargaining power, though it was no populist revolution such as Trump or Brexit.

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.

The missed payment, due on May 1, was just another scene in the slow-motion train wreck that has been termed “Puerto Rico’s economic crisis,” but to call the territory’s status a “crisis” understates the severity of the problem. Over 12 percent of the workforce in Puerto Rico is unemployed, and one out of every four employed Puerto Ricans works for the government, instead of contributing to the territory’s economy.

For many people, Pittsburgh is defined by the confluence of the Alleghany and Monongahela Rivers, out of which is formed the Ohio River. Three Rivers. But, Pittsburgh was transformed from a disease-infested frontier town into a great city by a different kind of confluence: the combination of coal from West Virginia and iron from Minnesota and the upper peninsula of Michigan.

America’s abysmal 0.7% economic growth during the fourth quarter of 2015 meant the annual growth rate was an anemic 2.4% … and average annual growth for the six-year Obama era a pathetic 2.2 percent.

Nevada’s casinos and the state’s largest electricity supplier are locked in an escalating conflict, but the Nevada Legislature can turn the impasse into a victory for both parties if it will merely restore economic freedom to electricity markets.

Socialism is a failed ideology. It was the avant-garde approach to how to do government – in the Twentieth Century. The Soviet Union was the flagship petri dish. That conquered, infiltrated or ingratiated themselves with many other nations – to establish them as additional petri dishes (Hello, Cuba). We certainly now have a large enough, long enough sample set – and the results are in. The system is contaminated – Socialism does not work.

Labor unions are fighting hard to maintain the power to force people to join unions as a condition of work. In June, Gov. Jay Nixon, Missouri Democrat, vetoed a bill banning forced union membership and forced union dues payments in the workplace, and the legislature just upheld his veto.

The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico owes more than $70 billion—about $19,729.43 per resident—in debt to creditors and investors. First to note the territory’s fiscal problems were the credit rating agencies, which downgraded the territory’s bond status to “speculative,” the first of three steps along the junk-bond path to loan default.

One of the great voices for personal liberty was that of the British economist and political philosopher, John Stuart Mill. His essay, “On Liberty,” though penned well over 150 years ago, is a classic statement that the individual should be respected in his right of freedom of thought, speech and action.