Says Christian Schornich, the chief operating officer of the strike-bound Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, to the Tribune-Review:

 
“Most of our concerts are losses and designed to be this way because we are a nonprofit.”

 
Indeed, nonprofit rules are strict. But if you attempt to build any kind of solid financial future on a cracked foundation of losing, well, you’re going to continue to be a loser. “Success” based on losses is a recipe for failure.

 
So, what’s the solution for this nationwide problem? Writing in Forbes magazine four years ago, Ted Gavin suggested:

 
— Play fewer concerts per year. That would serve to create demand for the concerts played, fill respective concert halls more and, thus, cut the gap between ticket revenues and operating costs.
— Change the way orchestra musicians are paid. “The notion of ‘guaranteed work’ for orchestral musicians has to change to more closely align to the changing economic landscape,” Gavin wrote. That means the pay-per-concert model.
— Program based on audience and cost. “Grouping intimate ensemble pieces draw one audience — grouping philharmonic-size pieces draws another audience,” he said. “If you can’t use the musicians for the majority of the concert, the he or she shouldn’t be there — you’re wasting the orchestra’s money and depriving the musician of the opportunity to do something else with that time.”
— Ensure professionalism across the board. That should go without saying. But, notes Gavin, “The population of orchestra boards with socially active but business uninterested must stop.”

 
Some Pittsburgh principals might might think the above harsh. But Gavin’s suggestions are worth at least considering.

 
The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland finds the Pittsburgh economy to be a mixed bag in its October assessment. But here’s what it extrapolated out of the latest data for its headline: “A Rising Unemployment Rate.”

 
That’s not a very flattering headline for chamber of commerce types who paint a too-rosy climate at reality’s expense. (Yes, that’s what they’re suppose to do, they’ll retort.) But they’d have far more to toot-toot over if they worked harder to improve the situation on the ground instead of constantly buffing their rhetoric.

 
The Fed says that unemployment rate has “risen sharply over the course of 2016, possibly in part because of reduced activity in the energy sector.” That, of course, would be a reference to the shale gas and oil industries.

 
New residential building permits remain “relatively low” but home prices “have continued to see fairly strong gains.”

 
And though per capita consumer debt levels “remain low,” they did increase in the two-year period ending in the second quarter of this year.

 
While the Fed’s Pittsburgh assessment could be worse, what a shame it is not the same as its view of Columbus, Ohio: “Strong Employment Gains and a Low Unemployment Rate.”

 
There are news stories appearing nearly every week predicting the coming collapse of ObamaCare. And with good reason: Every time government attempts to command the marketplace, the marketplace slaps back and the “government economy” fails.

 
ObamaCare “health exchanges” are failing left and right. Other insurers are raising prices to cover the rising costs of destroying the “risk pool” concept — the fundamental underpinning of insurance — that has turned health coverage into an “entitlement.”

 
Still, there are those who can’t help but rationalize it all. Take, for instance, Cynthia Cox, associate director of health reform for the Kaiser Family Foundation. She pooh-poohs talk of an ObamaCare “death spiral,” telling the Tribune-Review that, hey, taxpayer subsidies will make everything hunky-dory.

 
Kaiser long has been a liberal, rah-rah-sis-boom-bah supporter of ObamaCare, by the way.

 
Because subsidies increase with premium increases, that shields policyholders from the full increases now being approved by the states (Pennsylvania included), thus making them more likely to keep their insurance, Cox told the newspaper.

 
But that will only enable insurers to keep raising costs. And it’s a frighteningly short jaunt to totally taxpayer-funded health insurance from there. Which is what government appears to want.

 
Colin McNickle is a senior fellow and media specialist at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).