Labor

Academics and economists have repeatedly underestimated the impact that immigration and automation would have on the labor market. As data on productivity gains and labor-force participation clearly show, the notion that innovation ultimately creates jobs by allowing workers to focus on higher-level problems is an illusion. If it were true, then why aren’t we already seeing more of the 20 million prime-age men who have inexplicably dropped out of the labor force welcomed back in?

As Congress spends the next week and a half, if everything goes well, wrestling over how they can screw up healthcare in America even more, perhaps they should take notice of a new study from HealthView Services which highlights the fact that the real source of the healthcare crisis in this country is rising costs.

As Bloomberg notes, healthcare cost inflation is expected eclipse overall inflation and Social Security COLAs over the next decade.

Authored by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com,

Illinois is the perfect example of what happens when your state is run by fiscally irresponsible dunces for decades.

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

Chinese billionaire and Alibaba founder Jack Ma predicted this week that in 30 years, people will be working less than they do now. According to NBC: 

"I think in the next 30 years, people only work four hours a day and maybe four days a week," Ma said.

 

"My grandfather worked 16 hours a day in the farmland and [thought he was] very busy. We work eight hours, five days a week and think we are very busy."

Some very simplistic math from Moody's helps to shed some light on just how inevitable a public pension crisis is in the United States.  Analyzing a basket of 56 public plans with net liabilities of $778 billion, Moody's found that just a modest downside return scenario over the next three years (2017: +7.2%, 2018: -5.0%, 2019: 0%) would result in a 59% surge in new unfunded liabilities.  Moreover, given that total unfunded public pension liabilities are roughly $5 trillion in aggregate, this implies that a simple 5% drop in assets in 2018 could trigger a d