Democrats are about to try, and almost certainly fail, to secure paid parental and family leave for most American workers. That could still be an achievement, if it starts a conversation about how to provide American workers with the flexibility they need to manage family needs.California and New Jersey, the two states with paid family leave programs, have shown how it can benefit not only mothers and children but also employers. In California, which has offered paid parental leave since 2004, m

Viewpoints Sept. 30, 2013

China’s eagerly anticipated “hard landing” hasn’t happened yet, and recent indicators make me wonder (not for the first time) if it ever will. In the past two months, the Chinese economy has actually shown signs of accelerating.Constant pessimism in financial markets about the country’s prospects is only partly guided by economic analysis. There’s also the faith-based view that growth as rapid as China’s simply can’t go on ― and that a non-democratic country really shouldn’t expect to prosper. M

Viewpoints Sept. 30, 2013

A new set of projections released last week by Medicare’s actuaries has drawn much attention, in part because it suggests the deceleration in the growth of health costs we’ve seen over the past few years is ephemeral. The actuaries attribute the slowdown to the “lingering effects of the economic downturn and sluggish recovery” and to increases in cost sharing.Both of these explanations have serious shortcomings ― and that, in turn, suggests something larger is in fact at work.The assertion that

Viewpoints Sept. 30, 2013

NEWPORT BEACH ― Politicians and economists now join investors in a ritual that typically takes place on the first Friday of each month and has important consequences for global markets: anticipating, internalizing, and reacting to the monthly employment report released by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Over the last few years, the report has evolved in a significant way ― not only providing an assessment of the economy’s past and current state, but, increasingly, containing

Viewpoints Sept. 29, 2013

House Republicans trying their damnedest to stop Obamacare in its tracks aren’t the only ones who foresee chaos when state health-insurance exchanges open next week. President Barack Obama himself has told Americans to expect “glitches” and “hiccups.”That’s an understatement. It’s the surest bet since the 1936 presidential election: Things won’t work perfectly when the gears begin turning on the giant new public health-insurance sales machine, the likes of which the U.S. has never seen. Exchange

Viewpoints Sept. 27, 2013

The latest announcement from the U.S. Federal Reserve delaying the start of a slowdown in asset purchases gives Asian markets a bit of a reprieve but does not change the basic picture that the U.S. is embarking on a gradual normalization of its monetary policy.The big question is whether that normalization will keep driving investors out of Asia’s markets, further sapping the wind from the region’s economic sails and all but wrecking the most vulnerable economies, as happened in 1997 during the

Viewpoints Sept. 26, 2013

The government is on the alert as massive inflows of foreign capital are putting upward pressure on the Korean currency, threatening to erode the competitiveness of Korea’s exports.The Ministry of Strategy and Finance hurriedly convened a meeting Tuesday with chief financial officers of major export companies to discuss measures to stabilize the currency markets. The ministry’s move was prompted by the Korean won’s sharp rise against the greenback on Monday. It wanted to make sure that Korean ex

Editorial Sept. 25, 2013

The government has given the left-leaning Korean Teachers and Educational Workers’ Union an ultimatum that it would be outlawed unless it amends its constitution that accepts dismissed teachers as members.The Ministry of Employment and Labor served the final notice Monday, telling the 60,000-member powerful union to follow its order by Oct. 23 or face losing its hard-won legal status.Under the current law on trade unions, an organization is not regarded as a trade union if it allows those who ar

Editorial Sept. 25, 2013

As a judge sentenced him to life in prison yesterday, a smile spread across Bo Xilai’s face. Perhaps he grasped the irony. He’d lost inside the courtroom. At the top levels of China’s leadership, though, his methods have won.Chinese state media have tried to proclaim Bo’s conviction as a triumph for the rule of law and a powerful blow in the party’s battle against corruption. Editorials have praised President Xi Jinping for his fearlessness. In fact, most Chinese understand that this was a polit

Viewpoints Sept. 25, 2013