The Cato Institute came out with a big study recently that argues the familiar point that generous welfare payments undermine incentives to work. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities promptly replied with a four-page paper rebutting key aspects of the report.

You know the drill — we have a dysfunctional political system and a gridlocked Congress. The House is firmly in the grip of a band of Republican maniacs and the Senate, though technically Democratic, requires a virtually impossible filibuster-proof majority to get anything passed. So we should just

On the eve of a march to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, labor and civil rights activists are calling on President Barack Obama to honor King with an executive order that would raise wages for as many as two million workers. One of the most poignant calls came Wednesday

Yesterday I wrote about why a tight labor market may not return any time soon to raise wages. But here's another scary thought: What if tight labor markets no longer push up wages like was once the case?

A tight labor market is the great conservative answer to the low-wage jobs crisis. If we can just get the economy booming again, the logic goes, wages will rise along with demand for low-skilled workers. Bill O'Reilly told me that earlier today, when I taped a segment at Fox on the economy. Of

The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, is pushing the idea that being poor and living on government benefits in America is actually living high on the hog.

When Walmart broke the bad news to shareholders last week about declining same-store sales and cuts to their profit and sales projections, the company offered a glib explanation. "The retail environment was challenging," asserted Walmart Stores President and CEO Michael Duke. Company executives

Here's something alarming to imagine: One day, your investment advisor at Merrill Lynch doesn't show up to his job. No warning, no nothing. He just doesn't show.

It’s high drama and riveting politics these days as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation’s most thoroughly red-state retailer, charges deep into blue-state territory in its efforts to expand beyond its comfortably established realm in rural America and suburbia by moving into the often hostile territory

The case for raising the pay of low-wage workers usually focuses on the here and now: The biggest low road employers have plenty of profits to spare and sharing them more equitably with their workers would do a load of good, including for the economy as a whole by stimulating more spending and