President Biden’s lax immigration policy has one inescapable economic effect: it lowers the earnings of low-skill Americans. Conversely, the policy of the 1620s and 1630s that shipped convicts and the indigent to the American colonies as indentured servants had a remarkable positive effect in reversing the hundred-year decline in real English wages. The recent failure […]

U.S. non-farm labor productivity declined at a 4.6% annual rate in the second quarter of 2022, following a 7.4% decline in the first quarter. Although predictable from the expansive employment numbers and the declining GDP, this is shocking news, which the media have largely ignored. There also seems little likelihood of a near-term reversal. Like […]

The Financial Times this week had a lengthy piece “When the tech boom met reality” detailing how truly galactic levels of venture capital funding have produced little innovation and are now leading to truly galactic levels of losses. It is now clear that the “all point in one direction and throw money at it” approach […]

The 0.9% decline in U.S. second quarter GDP Thursday brought an immediate denial from the Biden administration that the United States was in a recession, following similar denials that inflation was persistent and that high oil prices were due to restrictions on U.S. pumping. As this column has frequently forecast, the 2020s will be a […]