Commentary

May 26, 2020

Americans rendered jobless by COVID-19 have lost more than just their incomes. An estimated 12.7 million people have also lost their employer-provided health coverage since the beginning of the pandemic. The crisis has driven home the imprudence of tying health insurance to employment. Our system not only makes...

May 19, 2020

Roughly two months into the pandemic lockdown, and deep into what looks to be a historic economic wreck, Gov. Gavin Newsom continues to refuse to do anything about Assembly Bill 5, a law likely to kill more jobs than any public policy enacted in California’s...

May 19, 2020

Last week, the House of Representatives passed the HEROES Act, a $3 trillion follow-up to the first three coronavirus relief packages. Among other things, the package would have the government fund nine months of premiums for COBRA, the federal program that lets unemployed workers pay premiums in order...

May 18, 2020

As of the end of 2019, Blackrock (the largest asset manager in the world) held $7.4 trillion in assets. To put this in perspective, relative to the $90 trillion value of the global stock markets, Blackrock’s holdings equaled 8 percent of the total value. Given its size,...

May 12, 2020

Americans rendered jobless by COVID-19 have lost more than just their incomes. An estimated 12.7 million people have also lost their employer-provided health coverage since the beginning of the pandemic. The crisis has driven home the imprudence of tying health insurance to employment. Our system not only makes...

May 12, 2020

Courtesy of the polar vortex, unseasonably cold temperatures came to a broad swath of the country, from Texas to Maine, last week, causing frost damage to crops and ornamental plants. (And snow in New York City’s Central Park on May 9). Cherry and other fruit trees...