Unleash Prosperity co-founders Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore's new book, "The Trump Economic Miracle", is at the top of the Economic Policy & Development shelf!
The book contains key lessons on the success of the limited government, low-tax, deregulatory policies that worked for JFK, Reagan, and most recently during the Trump administration. These are vital lessons for politicians of all political parties.
We're pleased to also note that Judy Shelton, who serves on our economic policy council, has a new book out called "Good As Gold," which covers the key monetary policy ingredients for a prosperous economy.
Joe Biden warned last week about the election: "I don't know whether it will be peaceful."
He's right to be concerned, but wrong to limit that concern to the reaction on the right.
We all pray we don't see anything like what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, or the carnage in the streets created by leftist activists in the Summer of 2020.
What is for sure, is that on Nov. 6, roughly 50.1% of the country will be euphoric and the other 49.9% will be in a deep and lasting depression.
Politics in America is now – regrettably – a contact sport.
The best way to settle our differences is to let the states make more policies than they do now. Blue states can adopt more governmental intrusions in the economy and red state residents can keep government off their backs and out of their wallets.
UP Chairman Stephen Moore (currently on a temporary leave of absence) put it well in the Washington Times:
There is a logical way to keep America united as one nation and to avert chaos and mayhem. And fortunately, this solution is consistent with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. For those who have forgotten, the 10th Amendment decrees that all powers not specifically granted to the federal government are reserved to “the states and the people.” ...
It’s amazing that some 250 years ago, our Founding Fathers had exactly the right vision for keeping America united in 2024 and beyond.
According to the BLS household survey, the number of people employed by government saw its biggest monthly increase ever in September (excluding the reopening of the economy in the summer of 2020), leaping 785,000 to a new record high of 22 million workers.
But a government worker can only be employed by taking tax money paid from a private sector worker. This means we are mostly shifting jobs from the private sector to the public sector. At the margin, this rise in government bureaucracy makes the nation LESS productive and LESS prosperous. This is particularly unwise that most of the additional government employment is paid for by massive borrowing.
The Biden administration's antitrust tentacles continue to tighten their grip on almost every American industry.
For the second time in five months, the FTC, led by its hard-left chair Lina Khan, narrowly approved an oil industry merger — but only on the condition that the chairman of the acquired company be barred from serving on the buyer's board of directors.
Last year, Chevron announced it would buy the Hess Corporation for $53 billion with the stipulation that Chevron would "take all actions necessary" to add Hess CEO John Hess to its board.
But Kahn's FTC staff is convinced that Hess has privately consulted with OPEC officials to keep oil prices high and that having him on Chevron's board would "undermine free and fair competition." By a 3 to 2 vote, the FTC only approved the deal this week if Chevron broke its promise and kept Hess off its board. In May, the FTC similarly held a deal involving ExxonMobil hostage unless it excluded an executive from its board.
The obvious flaw in the FTC’s witch hunt is that U.S. oil companies compete fiercely AGAINST OPEC, and it would be impossible for a single U.S. driller to meaningfully inflate global oil prices.
While Khan's chaos theory of competition claims to protect consumers, it is clearly all about politics. And one of Khan's colleagues on the FTC is publicly saying so:
"Unfortunately for Mr. Hess...the author of every fairy tale must also fabricate a villain, and today's action unjustifiably gave him that label," Republican Commissioner Melissa Holyoak wrote in her dissent.
5) A Mortgage Now Costs $1,250 More Per Month Than When Trump Was President
One of the economic miracles between 2017 and 2020, was low monthly housing payments. But thanks to Bidenomics which led to higher interest payments on a 30-year mortgage, along with the higher costs to build new housing, a mortgage on a median value home has risen from the typical family by 75%. That’s more than $1,250 a month for 30 years.
This is the 30-year mortgage payment average interest rate applied to the average size of a new mortgage and then adjusted to include average PMI and escrow payment:
These costs dwarf the $25,000 taxpayer-funded down payment assistance that many on the Left are promising to offer new homebuyers to offset the effects of the inflation their spending spree caused in the first place.
