RealClearMarkets Articles

Colorado Governor Jared Polis did something almost unheard of for a Democratic elected official: defied union bosses by vetoing legislation that would have expanded their power to force workers to join a union or pay union dues. After all, unions are one of the major sources of financial and “volunteer” support for Democrats. The union bosses' political machine is funded by dues collected from workers—many of whom are forced to pay union dues or lose their jobs.  Of course, the workers have no say in which politicians receive support from the unions....

Buc-ee’s, the creator of the world’s greatest gas/charging stations and accompanying convenience stores that are beyond football field length, doesn’t need a law to compensate its employees well. Just the same, Buc-ee’s doesn’t consult “supply and demand” charts to happen on the “right” employee wages. Which means Buc-ee’s is a wonderful rejection of left AND right and their increasingly bogus economics. To see why the above is true, consider the new Buc-ee’s location in Pass Christian, MS. Mississippi is a poor state by U.S....

I’m not a big fan of the 19th Amendment. Don’t get me wrong—I value women as much as men—I just think when it comes to rational decision-maki… oops, phone’s ringing. I’ll be back. Where was I? Have any of y’all ever been squirrel hunting? Women are like squirrels. The last time I went was with my buddy Jeff Brooks. We were in college and floated down the Pamunkey River. Because we were on the river and not walking through the woods making noise, we got to witness squirrels in their natural habitat. One: they are constantly...

Artificial intelligence is undergoing a fundamental shift toward cost efficiency, accessibility, and real-world applications over sheer scale. This was highlighted during the DeepSeek craze that rattled markets amid (debated) rumors the company only spent $6 million to develop its model, but aside from that episode, the broader narrative of AI commodification and declining costs has only just begun. In tech, it’s key to remember the early stages of innovation often see infrastructure layer companies attracting massive capital inflows to build out foundational systems – typically...

The U.S. Senate last week confirmed the Trump Administration’s new IRS Commissioner, for U.S. Rep. Billy Long. Unfortunately nothing in Long’s record suggests he’s up to the task of rebuilding the IRS’s credibility with the American public. The IRS has lost its way and needs a major rebuild. I’ve been a tax professional for more than 35 years and the performance of the IRS has fallen through the floor. And Commissioner Long, a 69 year-old, six term ex-Congressman from Missouri, is a former auctioneer with no accounting or tax training and no...

Donald Trump’s policies aren’t what won him a majority of voters in the most recent election, or a majority of electoral votes in 2016. More realistically, it was Donald Trump who won the presidency both times. Opinion pieces continue to gloss over this. Take a recent piece by the great Kathleen Parker at the Washington Post. Writing about Hannah Arendt and her discovery of the “lonely” and “needy” Germans who fell for Hitler, Parker saw the past in the present. In her words, “There’s no denying similarities between this description...

For the past 25 years, America has been plagued by a troubling trend. The number of publicly traded companies in the U.S. has fallen by 43 percent, while the number of sponsor-backed private firms has surged fourfold. There are now 2.5x as many private equity-owned companies as public ones. Meanwhile, public markets in countries around the world—including key economic competitors—are booming. The number of publicly traded companies globally has grown by nearly 35 percent. These are symptoms of deeper problems facing American businesses: rising costs, regulatory overreach, and a...

Imagine you’re climbing a mountain with a backpack full of heavy stones. You’re strong and have the will to manage, but the weight is significant. It is always a pain, and it always slows you down. This is, more or less, what taxes are for small business owners.  For more than 50 years, the National Federation of Independent Business has tracked the top issues facing small business owners (alongside other metrics like revenue and employment growth). This extensive research history shows that taxes have been the most consistent issue faced by Main Street.  To stretch...

In the classic movie The Godfather, Michael Corleone advises a young man to get a business degree to supplement his fine arts education to better provide for his future children. “This contempt for money is just another trick of the rich to keep the poor without it,” says Corleone. European regulators’ contempt towards large U.S. businesses shows a similar manipulative cynicism towards its people. While the European Union (EU), through its Parliament and governing European Commission, has adopted onerous laws and imposed draconian fines for years, mostly against the...

Since its release this month in 1949, far before the advent of the internet—let alone artificial intelligence—George Orwell’s timeless novel 1984 has left generations with one primary warning: “Big Brother is always watching.” Now more than ever, it feels in America that Big Brother truly is here. While many opine about the dangers of private companies holding information and data about civilians, the real warning that 1984 gives us—which may be in our near future—is a consolidation of governmental entities that hold our information and data. In...

Do you take Amazon or Walmart dollars? In the question it’s easy to see the problem with bitcoin, and other well-known speculations. People aren’t prone to storing their wealth meant for essentials in speculative instruments. Which is why bitcoin will never be broadly circulated as money. See its well-documented turbulence. Really, who would speculate on bitcoin while also using it as money? The question vivifies the problem. Money is a medium of exchange that makes it possible for products to be exchanged for products. But since Bitcoin’s biggest proponents make the rather...

As the tax debate  heats up in the Senate, Congressional Democrats are stepping up their misleading and inaccurate attacks on Republican tax cuts. Democrats in the House and Senate are all calling the tax bill a “billionaires tax cut,” a totally inaccurate description. Senate Minority Leader Schumer calls it a “billionaire giveaway.”  House Democrats falsely describe the bill as a $4.5 trillion tax cut for “billionaires and big corporations.”Unfortunately, the mainstream media, which should know better, is parroting the Democratic charges line for...

More than 230 years ago, one of the first acts of the First Congress in 1789 included a relatively mundane, but important, tax policy allowing a refund on excise taxes. Unfortunately, this has become a corporate subsidy for the tobacco and alcohol industries. This, seemingly trivial, provision refunded excise taxes on imports that are later exported. This makes the U.S. a desirable intermediary port for international supply chains, as there is no penalty for shipping through American ports. It is common practice in many countries and is usually entirely uncontroversial, unless...

Temu is a low-cost online marketplace that has had the temerity to achieve popularity with American buyers while also being Chinese. In response to Temu’s achievements in the world’s most competitive consumer market, Nebraska attorney general Mike Hilgers has filed a complaint that Temu installs “malware” of some kind that gives the company access to “sensitive information.”  That’s too bad, and it signals that American politicians are more in the business of protecting U.S. businesses from competition than they care about national security....

Make no mistake: The European Union has handed Mark Zuckerberg unprecedented access to European citizens’ digital privacy. Last week, Apple formally appealed the EU’s interoperability mandate, stating that it was doing so on behalf of European users whose privacy would be harmed by the ruling. In its appeal, Apple claims that companies have already requested access to users’ “most sensitive data — from the content of their notifications to a full history of every stored WiFi network on their device—giving them the ability to access personal information...

It’s easy to forget that individual saving in no way shrinks consumption. Short of placing money saved into a coffee can, to save is to shift consumptive ability to someone else. What’s true about individual saving is true about government savings. No act of parsimony shrinks the size of government either. That’s why Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) wouldn’t have worked even if it had worked.   Short of the savings being placed in a much bigger coffee can, government spending cuts born of efficiency, headcount reduction, mandate...

As the politics of the reconciliation bill get messier by the day, new data is shining light on the financial standing of Americans and how the economy is impacting them. According to a recent survey by Vanguard, more Americans are tapping into their retirement accounts for emergency expenses, such as covering medical bills and preventing foreclosure or eviction. In one sense, it is great to see that Americans have access to retirement accounts for emergencies and that they are accumulating wealth in these accounts, but it is also important to remember to keep these accounts intact for a...

There is no sense living in a free country without prosperity. Think Klaus Schwab of the global elites, “You will own nothing but be happy.” How charming. If we want to own something, we should understand the system that creates prosperity and then protect it. Are you aware that many economists have no idea how prosperity is created? Their fallback position is “it’s complicated.”  No, it is not. We come from nature, from planet Earth. Understanding nature gives us a starting point for the mechanics of prosperity. Students of nature have described...

The ability of shareholders to attend corporate annual meetings, ask questions, and express their views is considered by many to be critical to effective corporate governance. For example, a post in the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance noted that: “While it is not explicitly a legal right, shareholders expect to be able to ask questions at shareholder meetings, and companies have long included time for questions from shareholders at their annual meetings.” However, the rise of virtual meetings may have made it too easy for corporations to ignore...