By D. Eric Schansberg, Ph.D., and member of the Bluegrass Institute Board of Scholars A prevailing wage is a legal arrangement designed to set minimum compensation for public-sector construction workers at rates above those determined by market supply and demand – typically at rates near “prevailing” compensation for union workers. Modern-day legislation establishing prevailing –…
With their attentions locked on the ensuing football season, Kentuckians must be forgiven if they don’t become excited enough to perform an end-zone jig in response to Gov. Beshear’s recent press release trumpeting more than 100 federally funded new jobs in the commonwealth. Xerox Corporation is going to use federal taxpayer dollars to hire more…
Bluegrass Institute President Jim Waters will be the keynote speaker at the fourth annual Commonwealth Freedom-Liberty Conference on Friday, Aug. 23 and Sat., Aug. 24 at the Griffin Gate Marriott Resort 1800 Newtown Pike in Lexington. Click here for more information, including a complete schedule of conference events. Organizer Richard Treitz stated that the goal of the conference is to empower Americans so that “liberty and…
Herculean efforts by labor bosses at Kentucky’s teachers unions to convince lawmakers that charter schools are neither needed nor wanted in the commonwealth have succeeded. Our commonwealth remains one of only eight states without charter schools – publicly funded schools operated differently than the traditional public schools. For example, the principal of a successful charter…
Milton Friedman was remembered Thursday for being ahead of his time when it came to school choice, as well as his commitment to economic and political freedom at the Milton Friedman Legacy Day, sponsored jointly by the Bluegrass Institute and the Friedman Foundation for Education Choice. The event, which was held at Midwest Church…
“Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own,” was the pearl of wisdom I recently borrowed from the late Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. Though I originally used the quote in reference to the Kentucky State Fair Board’s willingness to forgive debt obligations from the Louisville Arena Authority worth millions of…
It’s understandable why the KFC Yum! Center authority would accept the forgiveness of most of its debt to the Kentucky State Fair Board with the same enthusiasm demonstrated by the University of Louisville basketball team when the Cardinals returned the NCAA championship trophy to that arena this spring. But that doesn’t make it right. In…
It wasn’t the famous Kentuckian Abraham Lincoln’s most memorable line, but this fable from an 1864 presidential speech Lincoln gave in Baltimore serves as a rebuke for those who loosely employ terms like “liberty” and “freedom”: “The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator,…
Confusion and consternation about Obamcare is not limited to what’s happening in Washington. A lot of questions also remain unanswered about the health-care policy’s Medicaid expansion in the states, including Kentucky.
Whether it’s failing schools, public-pension liabilities or an infinite number of other challenges plaguing the commonwealth, our nation’s poverty problem elicits one single tired solution from bigger-government apologists: throw more money at it. Note President Obama’s renewed push in his State of the Union address for once again raising the minimum wage. Supporters believe poverty…