Pay Equity Errors by Sheldon Richman February 2, 1998 President Clinton has pledged to step up enforcement of the Equal Pay Act. The promised $14 million to fight wage discrimination was on his list of bribes to the American people, otherwise known as the State of the Union address. The president's Council of Economic Advisers says women make only 75 cents for each dollar men ...
Economic Sanctions: Who Has What Rights? by Samuel Bostaph December 1, 1997 Christmas is one of the most joyful times of the year for most Americans. Gaily decorated houses, yards, and Christmas trees sprout nationwide in November and last until the New Year season closes the holidays with fireworks, parties and, finally, the Super Bowl. People decorate their Christmas trees in many ways, but one of the staples is bright, multicolored strings ...
Freedom in Transactions by Fredric Bastiat August 1, 1997 On entering Paris, which I had come to visit, I said to myself — Here are a million of human beings who would all die in a short time if provisions of every kind ceased to flow towards this great metropolis. Imagination is baffled when it tries to appreciate the vast ...
Order without Design by Sheldon Richman March 1, 1997 Perhaps the toughest thing that libertarians have to persuade nonlibertarians of is the existence of order that is undesigned. It is certainly a counterintuitive idea. So much of our everyday experience seems to teach us that where there is order, there is a designer working from a plan. That fact ...
The FTC Strikes Again by Sheldon Richman March 1, 1997 The Federal Trade Commission has once again dealt a blow to our allegedly free enterprise economy. The FTC plans to move against a proposed merger between Staples and Office Depot, two office supply chains. The commission claims the merger would violate the antitrust laws. Displaying its standard confusion over ...
The Evils of Economic Sanctions [long] by Sheldon Richman February 1, 1997 Americans are undoubtedly sleeping soundly in the knowledge that U.S. Customs agents in the last year tripled the number of Cuban cigars seized before they could be brought into the country. The Customs Service says that it grabbed nearly 90,000 cigars, thwarting 1,285 acts of smuggling. The cigars were valued at more than $1 million. That may sound impressive, but ...
The Evils of Economic Sanctions by Sheldon Richman October 1, 1996 Americans are undoubtedly sleeping soundly in the knowledge that U.S. Customs agents in the last year tripled the number of Cuban cigars seized before they could be brought into the country. The Customs Service says that it grabbed nearly 90,000 cigars, thwarting 1,285 acts of smuggling. The cigars were valued at more than $1 million, according to USA Today. Why ...
Corporate Chiefs Should Refuse Clinton by Sheldon Richman July 1, 1996 President Clinton has invited corporate chief executives to the White House in April to talk about "corporate citizenship." The meeting is intended to honor companies that treat their employees well in hopes of inspiring others to do the same. Any self-respecting corporate chief who believes in the free-enterprise system ...
Minimum-Wage Law as Political Racketeering by James Bovard July 1, 1996 President Clinton and many congressmen are hankering to raise the federal minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15 an hour. The minimum wage epitomizes government pseudo-paternalism, and Clinton's proposal should receive harsh condemnations from anyone who has looked at the history of minimum-wage policies. Early in the century, after a ...
Free Trade, Peace, and Goodwill Among Nations: The Sesquicentennial of the Triumph of Free Trade by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 1996 Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is justly considered one of the intellectual fountainheads of economic liberty. With a brilliant combination of logic and historical example, Smith demonstrated, like few others had up to his day, that governmental controls, regulations, and restrictions on economic freedom were the fundamental causes of ...
Foreign Workers are Good for America by Sheldon Richman June 1, 1996 The U.S. Labor Department says the program that allows foreigners to work in this country is a "sham" because it fails to protect American workers' jobs and wages. Under the program, thousands of noncitizens work in the United States. But those workers are supposed to have "unique" skills ...
Government Should Ignore Gas Prices by Sheldon Richman May 1, 1996 Now, let's see if I have this straight: just as the economics textbooks say, when the demand for gasoline went up and the supply fell, the prices went up. So, the Clinton administration told the Department of Justice to investigate. Investigate what? It doesn't matter. Any time a politician wants to score ...