Congress’s Job Training Overhaul: A Modest Step in the Right Direction
This is a guest post by Robert Maxim, research associate, competitiveness and foreign policy, for the Council on Foreign Relations studies program. Any bill that receives the support of both Ted Cruz and Harry Reid is notable in its own right. When that bill takes steps to streamline the complex web of U.S. worker training ... Read more
The Year of the Great Redistribution
One of the worst epithets that can be leveled at a politician these days is to call him a “redistributionist.” Yet 2013 marked one of the biggest redistributions in recent American history. It was a redistribution upward, from average working people to the owners of America. The stock market ended 2013 at an all-time high ... Read more
‘Welcome’ to the Sharing Economy — Also Known as the Collapse of the American Dream
Your opportunity to be a “micro-entrepreneur”: By cleaning other people’s homes or renting out your spare room. Thomas Friedman, and others, have recently extolled the virtues of the sharing economy (see “Welcome to the Sharing Economy,” or “How to Monetize Your Closet“). At the risk of bragging, my immigrant parents were clearly trendsetters in this ... Read more
Does the US Corporate Saving Rate Portend a Lower Unemployment Rate?
An interesting thing happened in Q4 2011: the corporate saving rate declined following two quarters of gains. Nominal net saving by the domestic business sector fell 3%, while nominal gross fixed investment and inventories surged 6% – the two pushed the saving rate down nearly 40 bps to 2.94% of GDP. The corporate saving rate (gross saving ... Read more
Temporary Employment: A New Ugly Rearing its Head in Europe?
Last week Clive Crook opined on some fallacies of labor reform, specifically related to the unions and through the Spanish experience. Labor reform is a highly contentious subject, given its close ties to welfare and politics. Based on Clive Crook’s article, I delved into global temporary employment using OECD data and noticed two things: (1) ... Read more