Schwartz's Quandary

Today's NYTimes features an interesting article by Nelson D. Schwartz headlined "Recovery in US is Lifting Profits, But Not Adding Jobs."  Surprise, Surprise!

The main tool for solving unemployment by the White House is to figure ways to make employees more expensive.  Businesses aren't dumb.  If you make a factor of production much more expensive, businesses will use less of it.  Machines aren't more expensive; outsourcing is not more expensive, but hiring American workers is much, much more expensive thanks to Obamacare and numerous "worker protection" rules, laws and regulations.

So, what to do?  Obama now suggests raising the minimum wage from $ 7.25 to $ 9.00 -- almost a 25 percent hike in the minimum wage.  That is in keeping with the philosophy of making employees more expensive.

The war on workers and the war on the middle class by this White House continues unabated.  Schwartz is puzzled by the "golden age for corporate profits" unaccompanied by meaningful increase in the demand for workers.  But why is there any surprise.  This is the predictable result of White House economic policy.

Three Cheers for Christina Romer

It has been somewhat of a puzzle that Obama's economists haven't rebelled at his Administration's assault on the US economy.   Economics is, after all, economics.  Finally!

In today's NYTimes, Christina Romer, former head of Obama's Council of Economic Advisors, questions the necessity of the minimum wage.  She not only wonders openly about increasing the minimum wage, but questions the very idea of minimum wage legislation.

Romer is right that the minimum wage is not the way to go.  While she doesn't go far enough to oppose the minimum wage outright, it is hard to see her op-ed piece as anything but a plea for sanity and clear opposition to Obama's recent call for a minimum wage increse.