With each passing year, people are becoming warier and warier of Obamacare. WSJ has the results of a new survey on attitudes toward the ACA conducted by Mercer. It found that only 9 percent of companies now believe Obamacare won’t raise their health care costs significantly, compared to 20 percent last year and 25 percent in […]

I’m sure some readers are growing weary of the back-and-forth on Russia over the past few months, but I hope they will indulge me in one more response to Thomas Graham’s reply to me and other critics of his original piece. Replies from several of us generated his latest, “A Response to the Critics.” Several […]

The Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling against Myriad Genetics is a triumph for common sense and the common good, and for scientific research and legal fundamentals as well. The decision means that all of the existing patents on human genes—some 15,000 of them—are no longer valid. It affirms a century of legal precedent that prohibits patents […]

The news from the White House today brings the United States significantly closer to yet another Middle Eastern war. Concluding that “forces loyal” to the brutal Syrian dictator Assad had used chemical weapons against rebels, President Obama is stepping up the “scope and scale” of aid to the forces seeking to drive Assad from power. […]

Today’s Supreme Court ruling that naturally occurring human genes are not patentable may be the most important of the year so far. The unanimous decision reversed a lower court’s judgment that a company could hold patents on individual genes, effectively preventing anyone else from doing any research or testing on these genes without the patent […]

California Governor Jerry Brown’s decision not to spend the state’s surplus on new programs is looking smarter by the day, as the state’s pensions crisis is even uglier than official numbers have indicated. Both Moody’s and the Government Accounting Standards Board have spent the past few months making changes to the way local governments report […]

The Greek government’s decision to close the state broadcaster created a political crisis today as thousands of disgruntled employees and sympathetic union members went on strike, causing public transportation to completely shut down and flights to be canceled in Athens and other cities. At least two smaller political parties threatened to leave the coalition government […]

Yesterday Angela Merkel warned that green energy policies are weakening Germany’s competitive advantage in the global economy. Germany, like the rest of Europe, is paying a lot more for electricity today than it did seven years ago. The country has made large investments in solar and wind power, more expensive energy sources than oil and […]

Vocational and for-profit schools may soon pay a greater penalty for their graduates’ failure to find a job. The U.S. Department of Education is reviving efforts to pass “gainful employment” regulations, which would require schools to meet certain criteria or else lose their eligibility for federal student aid. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports: The announcement […]

Workers aged 60-74 now command better wages on average than workers 25-59, according to a new Brookings Institution study: Using one standard benchmark of individual worker productivity—hourly wages—workers between 60 and 74 now earn more than an average worker who is between 25 and 59. The hourly pay premium for older men was about 22 percent […]