News Story of the Day: The U.S. labor market remains strong, despite signs that the nation might be on the verge of a recession.
According to the Department of Labor, the U.S. economy added 312,000 new jobs in December, beating market forecasts of 182,000. The unemployment rate did rise from 3.7 percent to 3.9 percent because more people entered the workforce searching for jobs.
The average wage climbed 11 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $27.48 per hour. The 12-month rate of hourly wage gains rose from 3.1 percent to 3.2 percent.
So, 2018 created 2.64 million jobs, a three-year high.
Chart of the Day: The Italian economy is worsening, and it is impacting the eurozone’s strength – or lack thereof. But the key question is: Has Italy slipped into a recession (chart courtesy of Bloomberg).
Illustration of the Day: The most entertaining Twitter account is President Donald Trump’s. He is the troll king, sending his opponents into seizures. The latest one? His tweeting of a Daily Wire creation:
Quote of the Day: Cafe Hayek’s Don Boudreaux penned a letter to a college-student reader:
I fully agree that we Americans ought not stand idly by. And by advocating free markets, including free trade, I and other skeptics of government intervention emphatically do not advocate standing idly by. Indeed, we advocate an amount and quality of economic activity that in the face of tariffs and other government interventions is impossible.
Eliminating tariffs, subsidies, and other government interventions clears paths for hundreds of millions of ordinary people to better pursue their own economic objectives using their own unique knowledge of time, place, and circumstances. With government out of the way, we get more active and creative entrepreneurship. We get more and better – “permissionless” – innovation. We get more productive cooperation and healthy competition.
And we get much less waste. Resources are allocated by people spending their own money in competitive markets rather than shuffled by state officials spending other people’s money in political settings. Under the reign of markets, inefficient uses of resources are quickly discovered and stopped. Under the reign of politics, inefficient uses of resources are long camouflaged and subsidized.
What you mistake for China’s rulers “working hard to grow that economy” is, in fact, China’s rulers standing in the way of economic growth. They are working hard to artificially prop up politically favored sectors of that economy and, in so doing, to stifle the entrepreneurship and consumer sovereignty of the Chinese people. The result is slower economic growth and less prosperity in China. And what you mistake for our government standing “idly by” is our government standing out of the way – standing out of the way of entrepreneurs, investors, businesses, and consumers actively cooperating and competing in the countless creative ways that are necessary to ensure maximum possible economic growth and widespread prosperity.
Tweet of the Day: Any country should accept as much immigration as possible. It should never be a social engineering experiment by the government, nor should it require taxpayer-funded spending. If you want to come to a country, then do so on your volition without assistance. This is why a border wall is far more preferable than a physical barrier.
This tweet shows what the perfect system is:
When my family landed, not a dime was spent by the gov’t. There was no support. We were on our own; and proud to be.
My father landed on a Mon and was laying bricks at a job-site by Fri. My mother went to work in a factory.
With hard work, we prospered. As did so many. https://t.co/PoM0GUHmPD
— Queen Paola 🇨🇦 🇮🇹 🇩🇪 (@Paola_Dec1231) January 4, 2019
Video of the Day: Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has become The Man in Washington as of late. He should have maintained this persona the entire time since entering the swamp, not cozying up to RINOs and dinosaurs. In any event, Senator Paul is hitting it out of the ballpark, including on foreign policy, trying to convince the leftist media that permanent occupation isn’t feasible.
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