States get creative to fund highways.

To its enormous credit, Sweden reversed economic course with consummate skill and political courage; it has become a paragon of sensible economic and social policy.

A job at any tax-exempt organization qualifies for the federal government's student loan forgiveness program. The implicit theory here: that such jobs are relatively poorly paid and that taxpayers have an interest in having well-qualified college graduates take them. But public employment offers a combination of job security and retirement benefits that are actually the envy of those in the private economy. The larger problem... More

Trader Joe’s and Costco are the specialty grocer and warehouse club for an affluent, educated college demographic. They woo this crowd with a stripped-down array of high quality stock-keeping units, and high-quality customer service. The high wages produce the high levels of customer service, and the small number of products are what allow them to pay the high wages.

The process for seeking disability benefits has become a boon to legal firms that specialize in  disability claims.

Insolvent municipalities could learn from California’s bankrupt ones.

Marcellus shale drilling in Pennsylvania is exceeding advocates' expectations for economic and energy benefits — and doing so safely, refuting environmental extremists' alarmism.

Returns suffer when politicians pursue a social agenda.

At least one recent decision, for the city to subsidize yet another sports arena, makes clear that Detroit won’t be rethinking its failed strategies for economic growth.

In a note to clients, long-time bank analyst Dick Bove writes “the United States government has made it a priority to break this company. In my view, it wants the firm broken up and it wants the management changed.” As Bove points out, despite JPMorgan Chase’s extraordinary performance – it is one of the nation’s top five money-making businesses across all industries – the media and the White House continue to ... More

Why they are unaffordable and unfair to taxpayers.

Wall Street investment banks and mortgage bankers seem poised to get what they want in housing finance reform – at the expense of taxpayers.

President Obama has overseen a dramatic expansion of the regulatory state that will outlast his time in the White House.

Regulatory institutions appear to be a significant depressant on job satisfaction, particularly credit-market regulations (such as interest-rate controls) and goods-market regulations. The institutions of collective bargaining and regulations on hiring and firing are also estimated to depress mean job satisfaction.

New York's approach to housing, which heavily subsidizes some residents for life, lilmits the housing options and raises costs for everyone else.

 The fact that many are calling for government intervention in the recent standoff between CBS and Time Warner Cable shows that there is nothing free about the video marketplace.

That's classified information.

Bioethicist Peter Singer uses a deft, if ill-founded argument, to demonize much contemporary philanthropy. Giving that is directed to “arts, culture, and heritage” is a particular focus of his ire.

Cities don't have to be in trouble to dump retirees on federal taxpayers.

The assumptions about economic benefits used in government cost-benefit analysis of regulations should be viewed with skepticisim.

Perhaps golden ages always are this way:  slow to take shape, suddenly glorious, then quickly over.

 In 2012, for the first time, patent trolls targeted non-technology companies with demands for licensing payments more frequently than they did tech companies, signaling a strategic shift toward retailers and end users of technology-related patents. Small businesses were a growing target.

The current postcrisis economic recovery, though punctuated so far by two “swoons,”  has passed its 48th month. But with second-quarter 2013 growth looking to be below 1 percent, we perilously close to stall speed.

If tomorrow doesn't matter, only calloused ideologues indifferent to suffering would oppose any policy that brings relief today at the expense of tomorrow. So spend today. Spend a lot.

The growth in health-care entitlement spending is driven by the special interest that has the most to gain from coercing taxpayers to spend more money on health care: hospitals. Hospitals’ political and economic power, and their exaggerated reputation as pillars of their communities, has ensured that every health-care debate has ended with hospitals receving greater taxpayer subsidies than ever before. There is no... More

The unprecedented frenzy surrounding Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's potential successor shows that Americans won’t let the central bank go back to its opaque and secretive ways.

Is wrongdoing is now built into the system, in part because of the decline of traditional banking and the merger of commercial and investment banking. And has  a tidal wave of government-backed money changed businesses that should be purely risk-based?

The nation’s most aggressive plaintiffs’ lawyers have begun to manipulate U.S. legal rules to extract wealth from the nation’s most innovative companies. Most such litigation today is not filed by companies holding patents, such as Samsung, but by “patent trolls” — people or companies that produce no goods or services themselves but exist to acquire patent rights and seek to enforce them... More

Gasoline prices are skyrocketing, as many news reports attest, but absent from the stories is any sense that the blame should fall on the president. That's quite a contrast from the years when George W. Bush was president.

These days, when real estate investors talk about bubbles, they are referring to the new one that might now be inflating as home sellers sift through a frenzy of offers. Yet some government officials pursue a murky deal to “solve” the dissipating housing crisis by marrying government power with private enrichment. The Bay Area city of Richmond is the first one to sign on to an... More

States and localities owe far, far more than their citizens know or have ever sanctioned.

Government knows best?

More than anyone else, George P. Mitchell unlocked vast reserves of U.S. natural gas and oil to production and, in the process, transformed America's energy outlook.

The much-ballyhooed and self-celebrating “creative class”—a demographic group that includes not only single professionals but also well-heeled childless couples, empty nesters, and college students—occupies much of the urban space once filled by families. Increasingly, our great American cities, from New York and Chicago to Los Angeles and Seattle, are evolving into playgrounds for the rich, traps... More