The Heritage Insider: Why UK will be fine after Brexit, what Michigan is doing right, how to help young people get jobs, ABA targets conservative opinions, and find out how welfare reform affected poverty

August 13, 2016

 

 

The British economy will be just fine after Brexit, and one reason is that it has much better institutions protecting the rule of law than Europe. Michigan has done very well since cutting taxes and spending and passing right-to-work. Ontario can take heart. One easy way to make sure young people have opportunities is to lower the minimum wage. The American Bar Association wants to punish lawyers for having conservative opinions. It’s been 20 years since welfare reform happened. Find out how that turned out. Plus, over 40 new studies, articles, speeches, videos, and events at The Insider this week. Visit to see what the conservative movement has been thinking, writing, saying, and doing to win battles for liberty.

 

 

The British economy will be just fine after Brexit. Jim Roberts identifies a number of reasons, including: “While the U.K.’s economy accounts for only about 17.5 percent of total EU gross domestic product (GDP), approximately 40 percent of all euro-denominated assets are held or traded in the U.K. This disparity highlights the crucial role of British-based finance in Europe. In the aftermath of Brexit, European cities such as Paris and Frankfurt are unlikely to be successful in tempting London-based financial firms to relocate. No other EU country is likely to match the very high Index scores of the U.K. on Rule of Law (ranked third in the world for property rights protection), Investment Freedom (ranked second in the world), or Financial Freedom (ranked third in the world). As The Wall Street Journal’s Jon Sindreu has noted, most ‘international financial contracts are written in English law.’” [Internal citations omitted.] [The Heritage Foundation]

 

Michigan is doing something right. In 2012, Michigan replaced its business tax with a simpler lower corporate rate of 6 percent and cut spending sharply. In 2013, the state’s right-to-work law went into effect. Since then, Michigan’s economy has grown 2.1 percent (which is higher than the national growth rate of 1.9 percent), the unemployment rate has been cut in half, and the state’s population began growing again after many years of decline. There are lessons here for Michigan’s neighbors to the north, write Robert Murphy, Joel Emes, and Ben Eisen: “Michigan’s strong economic performance in recent years suggests that neither Ontario’s geographic location nor its reliance on a large manufacturing base have doomed it to the weak economic performance documented here. Policy choices matter, and by looking to Michigan’s leadership, Ontario’s political leaders can find a number of reform options that may hold the potential to help jumpstart the provincial economy and begin to spur growth more similar to what Michigan has experienced.” [Fraser Institute]

 

Want to give young people more opportunities? Simple: Stop making it illegal for employers to hire them at a wage that reflects their typically low skills. Specifically, according to a new study by Preston Cooper, lowering the minimum wage to $4.25 for 16- to 19-year-olds “could boost the growth rate of youth employment by up to 8.9 percentage points, generating up to 456,200 jobs in the first year.” [Manhattan Institute]

 

Nice law practice you have there. It would be a shame if anything happened to it because of your conservative opinions. The American Bar Association’s new professional conduct rules relating to discrimination and harassment will inevitably infringe on the speech rights of lawyers, explains Eugene Volokh: “Say that you’re at a lawyer social activity, such as a local bar dinner, and say that you get into a discussion with people around the table about such matters — Islam, evangelical Christianity, black-on-black crime, illegal immigration, differences between the sexes, same-sex marriage, restrictions on the use of bathrooms, the alleged misdeeds of the 1 percent, the cultural causes of poverty in many households, and so on. One of the people is offended and files a bar complaint. Again, you’ve engaged in ‘verbal . . . conduct’ that the bar may see as ‘manifest[ing] bias or prejudice’ and thus as ‘harmful.’ This was at a ‘social activit[y] in connection with the practice of law.’ The state bar, if it adopts this rule, might thus discipline you for your ‘harassment.’ And, of course, the speech restrictions are overtly viewpoint-based: If you express pro-equality viewpoints, you’re fine; if you express the contrary viewpoints, you’re risking disciplinary action.” [Washington Post]

 

To do: Examine the impact of welfare reform on extreme poverty. Nearly 20 years ago, President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act into law. The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute will mark the anniversary by co-hosting a panel discussion looking at the effects of the reform on poverty. The discussion will be held at The Heritage Foundation at noon on August 16. [The Heritage Foundation]

 

 

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