If the economy is so good, why do small business leaders feel so bad?
The latest Small Business Optimism Index from the National Federation of Independent Business could hardly be more depressing. It finds that the men and women who run our 33 million small businesses and hire more than half of American workers are in a somber mood. The survey finds that small-business confidence has reached its lowest point in 12 years.
In 1992, Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton famously answered a voter question about how the national debt affected him personally. Clinton's response was often paraphrased as, "I feel your pain."
President Joe Biden keeps lecturing corporate America to "pay your fair share" of taxes. It turns out he's right that some companies really are getting away scot-free from paying taxes.
The Biden administration has announced in recent weeks new stringent emissions requirements for virtually the entire American transportation system.
The Biden administration regulators see a monopoly boogeyman behind the curtain of nearly every business merger and acquisition -- from airlines to cellphones to chicken producers.
I am often asked if President Joe Biden is intentionally trying to dismantle the American economy with his imbecilic energy, climate change, crime, border, inflation and debt policies. But I've always believed these policies are driven by a badly mistaken ideology -- not malice.
It's a good thing President Joe Biden wasn't strapped to a polygraph while giving his State of the Union speech on Thursday, because his results would have come back about as clean as O.J. Simpson's. That was especially true when he recited a lot of tall tales -- and some whoppers -- while touting his administration's alleged successes.
Recent polling shows President Joe Biden's open-border immigration policy is now ranked as the No. 1 or 2 problem facing America -- in part because of the havoc in our large cities where the millions of migrants are now residing.
No state in modern times has transitioned from a worker freedom state to one that forces workers to join a union and pay dues to labor bosses. All the momentum across the country in the last two decades has been in the opposite direction: allowing workers the right to choose a union -- or not.
President Joe Biden is boasting about the recent stock market rally. He's right that stocks have been on a tear for the last 14 months. The S&P 500 hit 5,000 for the first time in history. That's up from 500 some 30 years ago.
It's a miracle of private sector innovation and the magic of the free enterprise system that technologies that were only the playthings of the super-rich a generation ago are now available and affordable to almost all Americans.
Here's a sad and textbook case of how companies all too often use the strong-arm of government to destroy their competition.
For the past 30 years or so, the Left has invented a narrative that there are two Americas: a group of very super-rich people (the one-percenters) who have prospered over the past several decades, and everyone else who has gotten poorer. It's a fairy-tale narrative because almost all Americans have seen financial progress. The median household income adjusted for inflation rose by more than 40% since 1984.
The rapid succession of bank failures last spring clearly spooked federal regulators at the FDIC, the Federal Reserve Board and bank depositors.
The bad decision-making at Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank caused the regulators to implement emergency life preserver measures to banks and conjured up memories of the 2008 financial crisis.
The latest Census Bureau data on population changes in America should have been a wake-up call to lawmakers in blue states and cities.The Census data provide even further evidence that "soak the rich" tax policies have incited a blue-state meltdown.
Repeat after me, class: Growth does NOT cause inflation. Write it on the blackboard 100 times.
Nothing exemplifies America's tech industry dominance in the global economy more than the meteoric rise of what is now being called the "Magnificent Seven" stocks -- Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. These companies
single-handedly account for nearly all the gains in the stock market this year. They -- which is to say we as American shareholders who own them -- have a net worth of nearly $10 trillion.
The late, great humorist P.J. O'Rourke used to quip that everyone wants to save the world, but no one wants to wash the dishes.
There's a political cartoon going around that shows John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy sitting on a couch watching a speech by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The two hold their palms to their heads and moan that their legacy is being twisted and ruined.
Let's face it. Anyone who works in, or just visits, the Wall Street area of Manhattan can't deny the aura of power and money isn't what it was 20, 30 or 50 years ago.
