From all appearances, the U. S. will be reviving the old concept, widely discredited, of “industrial  policy” in an attempt to head off the growing domination of China and compete with them in various strategic components of economic growth.  Clear evidence of this strategy is that the U. S. Senate last month approved a bill […]

One more big reason to fear a Democrat-controlled U. S. Senate is spelled out in a new report from the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis.  The report essentially lays out how the Federal Reserve and several other regulators will add climate change risk management to their portfolios.  Just what we need after […]

Ever since the Business Roundtable’s announcement last year of its advocacy of “stakeholder capitalism”, the notion that customers, employees, vendors, and suppliers are co-equal in strategic priority with corporate shareholders, the term as become the new buzzword in elite circles.  Even Sen. Marco Rubio has chimed in with his version, which he calls “Common Good […]

The chattering and intellectual crowd of conservatives, through conferences, panels, and periodicals, has begun to seriously discuss what conservatism will look like after Donald Trump.  For a good example of this phenomenon, see “Capitalism Under Fire” in the May 2019 edition of The Texas Pilgrim.  Further in that vein, Oren Cass, Senior Fellow at the […]

One of the many boondoggles of government incompetence and worthless spending has been the Job Corps, which for 55 years has provided vocational training to enrollees from impoverished backgrounds.  But according to most observers, this $1.7 billion per year program has not produced the results intended.  Graduates often end up in low-skill and low-wage jobs […]

It’s not enough that capitalism is under attack by socialists of all stripes, the far left wing of the Democratic Party, and their fellow travelers in most of the mainstream media. It now becomes necessary to defend the most productive economic system in world history with many of its leading practitioners. For example, my friend […]

If you are of a certain age you will remember the term “industrial policy”, a derisive description popularized 30 or 40 years ago to denote practices of nations, particularly Japan at the time, whose governments engaged in “picking winners” in economic competition in the private sector through subsidies or regulatory carve-outs for favored industries.  It […]

We now have even more firm evidence that President Trump does not appear to fully understand the importance of trade policy in sustaining economic growth, building alliances, and supporting American security.  Nor does he seem to grasp the basic economics of trade, i. e., that a trade deficit is the converse, or mirror image, of […]

I realize that in this essay title I am mixing fiscal and monetary policy, which are two different policy areas, but should compliment each other, and often do not.  The real message that needs to be heard in both arenas is that we need a heightened focus on economic growth. In fiscal policy, taxes and […]