Richard J Grant

Published in The Tennessean , Sunday, February 27, 2011 Unions' real impact has been to impede progress by Richard J. Grant When consumers have a choice, they prefer to buy products that are produced by companies that are not held back by a unionized workforce. It's not that consumers inquire as to the company's relationship to a union, but they do select their purchases on the basis of lower price and higher quality. Companies that wish to please their customers will gravitate toward those jurisdictions that best allow them to do this. The purpose claimed for trade unions is to increase the wages and improve the working conditions of union members. They can never do this for every worker, but only for a few. This is because they can raise wages only by restricting the supply of labor to a particular employer; and that they can do only in the short-term. The real long-term effect of trade unions has been to jump out in front of the parade of economic progress and pretend th...

Published in The Tennessean , Sunday, February 20, 2011 Obama's promised "budget cuts" actually increase deficit by Richard J. Grant The total US national debt has now surpassed $14.1 trillion, which is about 95 percent of annual US economic output. The debt seems to be one of the few things that President Barack Obama is able to make grow, so he is going at it with gusto. His recently proposed budget calls for record spending and is projected to produce a deficit of more than $1.6 trillion. That will increase the total debt by more than 10 percent per year. Expect it to crack $15 trillion just in time for Labor Day. Before the budget was released, we were told that the “tough choices” had been made and to expect significant spending cuts. The storytellers wanted us to believe that the president had accepted fiscal conservatism, had moved to the center, and was now a well-triangulated moderate. Then the real news came out: The proposed budget would be greater than $3.7 tr...

Published in The Tennessean , Sunday, February 13, 2011 Social Security system a trap foisted on public by Richard J. Grant Among politicians, there is an old saying that “perception is reality.” This actually applies to any form of human action. People act upon what they believe to be true, which is not necessarily the same as what really is true. This does not protect them from unintended consequences. But from a politician's perspective, what counts is what voters believe at the time that they vote. This helps explain why government has a tendency to grow. Political leaders and administrators, whether elected or unelected, find it easier to gain the support of those who come to depend on them for income or protection. To hold power, and whatever personal satisfaction that brings, a politician must compete not only with other politicians, but also with the empowerment that each individual finds through personal liberty and a rich array of private alternatives in the pursuit of ha...

Published in The Tennessean , Sunday, February 6, 2011 Social Security deepens nation's deficit by Richard J. Grant In December 2010 without a Congressional tax compromise, tax rates would have risen significantly for incomes, dividends, and especially capital gains. Those who wanted these tax rates to rise cited the need for more tax revenue and saw foregone taxes as a “cost to government.” They rejected the warnings of “supply-side” economists who suggested that increased marginal tax rates would discourage economic activity and yield little, if any, new tax revenue. But part of their compromise was to reduce the employee portion of FICA tax payments by two percentage points for one year. The tax compromise also included an extension of unemployment benefits and increased spending on an array of special-interest projects. At a time of record-high budget deficits, support for the FICA rate reduction must have been based on political considerations, not genuine economic concerns. T...