Like most subsidies, China's subsidy for electric power has generated a wave of misallocation. Chinese power producers, taking advantage of high subsidized electric prices, have borrowed $1.2 trillion, mostly for building dirty coal power plants. Those power plants now need to produce in order to pay back their debts. Meanwhile, the Chinese government would like to move toward cleaner forms of energy, but its own subsidies have built a dirty power infrastructure system that can't be undone so easily. Nathaniel Taplin reports: In the West, bad children get coal in their Christmas stockings. In … [Read more...]
Archives for December 2017
Warehousing Employments Soars to Support E-Commerce Explosion
The number of employees working in the warehousing and storage industry in America has reached a new all-time high of 974,000. Last month alone employers added 8,100 new hires in the business. That's up 0.8% in one month. Since 2014 the industry has been averaging annualized hiring growth of 7.83%. The demand for employees who support e-commerce is ramping up, with hiring for warehouse workers, truckers, and delivery drivers all expanding. Jennifer Smith writes at The Wall Street Journal: November marked the eighth straight month of expansion in a sector that has boomed as more … [Read more...]
Do the Best Managed Companies Make the Best Investments?
The Wall Street Journal released the inaugural ranking of the 250 most effectively managed U.S. companies. The rankings are based on the work of the late business management guru, Peter Drucker. The rankings are based on a score of 37 specific metrics that fall under five dimensions of performance: customer satisfaction employee engagement and development innovation social responsibility and financial strength Factors include everything from market-share and patent applications to employee ratings. To qualify for the rankings, a company must be a member of the Fortune … [Read more...]
$70 Million in Bitcoin was Stolen, Did Anyone Notice?
Judging by the seemingly unstoppable rise in the cost of bitcoin, it would appear no one even noticed that $70 million worth of the digital currency was stolen by hackers. The victim was the crypto-currency mining operation known as NiceHash. Steven Russolillo reports: Andrej P. Škraba, head of marketing at NiceHash, said to The Wall Street Journal that approximately 4,700 bitcoin had been stolen from a bitcoin wallet, an online account that stores the digital currency. Bitcoin wallets, like other online bank accounts, have been targets of hackers in the past. “It was a professional … [Read more...]
What Tax Reform Means for You: Part II
One of the big disappointments (among many) in the GOP tax-reform is that there was no reduction in dividend and capital gains tax rates. With the Obamacare investment tax add-on, the maximum dividend and capital gains rates are almost 25% today. That’s up from 15% during the Bush and early Obama years. Capital gains taxes are one of the easiest taxes to dodge. Investors simply hold their investment positions instead of selling them and paying taxes on the gain. The simplicity with which capital gains taxes can be avoided means there is almost no correlation between the maximum capital … [Read more...]
This Tax Bill Needs Better Messaging
My friend from the Cato Institute, Chris Edwards, outlines some of the areas where Republicans have failed to provide adequate messaging on what will be one of the largest federal tax overhauls in decades. Edwards writes that vague reporting on the bill from various groups who have analyzed it, the bill's "reforms are impressive and promise to lift all boats in coming years with a rising tide of growth." Edwards continues: The Democratic class warfare will continue even after President Trump signs the bill, and that will create two big problems. The first is that the Democrats will probably … [Read more...]
GOP Tax Reform Will Hit Many Wealthy Republicans in Blue States
Yesterday the New York Times published an article about how the elimination of the ability to deduct state and local taxes (SALT) from federal taxable income calculations will hurt many taxpayers in blue states. As the NYT notes, there are even some counties with high Republican affiliations that will take a major hit from the removal of the SALT deductions. Alicia Parlapiano and K.K. Rebecca Lai write: There are a handful of Republican counties, particularly in New York and New Jersey, that claim high amounts of SALT deductions. Many of the 13 Republican representatives who voted against … [Read more...]
USPS Still Does Things the Internet Cannot
Need some baby chicks delivered direct to your home? The USPS will get them there for you. It turns out there are some things that the Internet simply cannot deliver, and that includes livestock and other animals that can be shipped via the USPS. The postal service has a list of animals it will deliver, and the requirements for the packaging and handling. The Wall Street Journal reports that, despite best efforts, animals can sometimes escape their packaging. The USPS has been delivering live animals since at least 1918, according to post-office records. In the past three years, the … [Read more...]
Nestlé Expands its Nutrition Portfolio
Nestlé has been focused on the idea of food as nutrition for a long time now, and the company's new CEO Mark Schneider is continuing that vision. Nestlé just announced that it will buy Atrium Innovations, owner of the Garden of Life and Pure Encapsulations brands of health supplements. Nestlé is trying to keep up with fast changing Millennial tastes by innovating its own more nutritional foods and buying up smaller competitors who already service the market for healthier fare. Ben Dummett and Saabira Chaudhuri report: Packaged-food makers such as Nestlé and Kraft Heinz Co. are being buffeted … [Read more...]
Trust in Money, Store of Value, Part II: Bitcoin, Dollars and You
On a recent outing to the Mt. Washington Hotel, I was concerned my car wouldn’t get us home. You can read that story here. But I also had a chance to think about the Bretton Woods Agreement which was signed there in 1944 and another historic event, bitcoin, and what they mean to all of us. The Bretton Woods Agreement, by pegging the U.S. dollar to gold, created a store of value. The system worked well until the 1960s where high demand for reserve currency dollars dwindled the gold supply. The gold window was closed in 1971. The dollar and other fiat currency values have been floating … [Read more...]
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