Policy and Government

In the Washington Examiner, Patrick Pizzella celebrates the dignity in work.

CNN reports the Dow tanked after Trump’s latest round of tariffs went into effect.

In USA Today, Steve Hanke says the Business Roundtable suffers from economic illiteracy.

Liaquat Ahamed, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning Lords of Finance, in The New Yorker: “Inequality comes in waves. The question is when this one will break.”

“An early systematic attempt to chart the evolution of inequality in this country was undertaken by Simon Kuznets, at that time a professor at Johns Hopkins, who, in 1955, published what turned out to be a seminal paper, “Economic Growth and Income Inequality.” Drawing on years of assiduously collected data—for which he later won a Nobel Prize—he reached a surprising conclusion. Like most economists, he had assumed that the general trend, in a capitalist economy governed by private property, would be for the rich to get richer—for inequality to increase steadily over time. That had been true in the initial stages of industrialization, he found, but since then the United States, England, and Germany had experienced a narrowing of economic disparity. And, as more data about more countries became available, Kuznets found that in most advanced economies the poor were catching up with the rich. It was, he said, “a puzzle.”

“The explanation appeared to involve two factors. First, there was the rise of mass education. Once countries had reached a certain level of industrialization, skills—human capital—became as important as physical capital in determining productivity, and a greater economic share accrued to those with more education, not just to those with money to invest. Second, politics took over from economics. The poor, with the weight of numbers on their side, realized that they could vote in favor of taxing the rich more heavily, redistributing the money to themselves in various ways.”

CNBC‘s Maggie Fitzgerald lists the recession signals flashing red.

Monetary

On Real Clear Markets, Jeffrey Snider says gold reminds governments they are not in control.

At FEE, Nicholas Anthony reports central banks are purchasing gold at record levels.

Tax

On Fox Business, Steve Forbes says indexing capital gains would be great for stocks.

Regulatory

In the Washington Times, Stephen Moore celebrates the natural gas boom.