Free Republic

Socialist genius Bernie Sanders has figured out what's really ailing America. Our store shelves have too many different brands of deodorant and sneakers. Just look at all those horrible, fully stocked aisles at Target and Walgreens and Wal-Mart and Payless and DSW and Dick's Sporting Goods. It's a national nightmare! If only consumers had fewer choices in the free market, fewer entrepreneurs offering a wide variety of products and fewer workers manufacturing goods people wanted, Sanders believes, we could end childhood hunger. Nobody parodies the far left better than far-leftists themselves. In an interview with financial journalist John Harwood on...

A new play, World Factory, asks the audience to run a clothing factory in China – and even the creators have been surprised at how people have behaved.The choices were stark: sack a third of our workforce or cut their wages by a third. After a short board meeting we cut their wages, assured they would survive and that, with a bit of cajoling, they would return to our sweatshop in Shenzhen after their two-week break. But that was only the start. In Zoe Svendsen’s play World Factory at the Young Vic, the audience becomes the cast. Sixteen teams sit...

**SNIP** Professor Garrett makes the controversial point that carbon dioxide emissions, which are a major cause of runaway climate change, can only be stabilized by a complete collapse of the global industrial economy or society builds the equivalent of one nuclear reactor per day. "Stabilization of carbon dioxide emissions at current rates will require approximately 300 gigawatts of new non-carbon-dioxide-emitting power production capacity annually - approximately one new nuclear power plant (or equivalent) per day," Garrett says. "Physically, there are no other options without killing the economy." Every week new scientific reports are published that note how industrial civilization is...

Congress is forgetting its duty: to improve jobs and wages for Americans We are living in a political world of the UniParty; it’s sort of like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a historic commodity and – in these modern times – financial derivative exchange based in Chicago. Naturally, the UniParty isn’t quite as obvious as the Chicago floor traders standing in a trading pit, calling out orders, prices, and quantities of particular commodities while dressed in color-coded jackets indicating their function on the trading floor; nor are those in the Senate usually observed gesticulating with complex hand signals to communicate the...

Nothing quite so blatantly sums up the victory of neoliberalism in 21st-century London, and that city’s relentless commodification of every aspect of its literary and historical legacy, like Platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross. If anything, the vulgarity and banality of Platform 9 ¾ are too blatant; it’s a crack in the façade that demonstrates how thoroughly London has become Londonland, a nearly convincing scavenger-hunt simulation of itself, chock-full of royal bones and references to Dan Brown novels. To enter Westminster Abbey – which is still nominally a house of worship for the Anglican Communion, rather than a historical theme...

For years, my scientist brother Tom was the nonpolitical Stossel. I defended free markets on TV, and he studied blood at Harvard and Brigham and Women's Hospital. Mom asked me when I'd get a "real job" like his. Then the crusade against capitalism reached his world. Medical "journalists" demanded that corporations distance themselves from medical research. They'll bias the results, "put profits before people" and sell dangerous goods. Tom didn't notice this "conflict of interest crusade" until he joined the scientific advisory board of a biotech company and learned how difficult it is to bring medical innovation to market. Now...

The whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence. The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” — Henry Hazlitt, “Economics in One Lesson” One of the greatest fallacies of recent generations is the argument that free market capitalism has failed and that said failure is responsible for America’s moribund economy, the ongoing destruction of the middle...

MADISON (AP) — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker tells a German audience that young people around the world will be stronger if a new trade agreement between the United States and the European Union can be reached.Walker made his comments Tuesday at the Hannover Messe trade show.A recording of his comments provided to The Associated Press shows the likely Republican presidential candidate voiced his support for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP. Negotiations between the U.S. and EU began on it in 2013 but many Europeans remain skeptical over concerns about environmental protections, labor security and other issues.Walker referenced...

Move over War on Women and "internalized racism," the Left has a new catchprase: "internalized capitalism." That's the new buzzword that's being bandied about by the left over the last few months. Haven't heard of it yet? The website "Black Girl Dangerous" has this quick definition: "Because of internalized American capitalism, I accept that there is only so much love and appreciation to be handed out, and more of it will go to those who perform well. There are so few resources for people of color, period. Not to mention our vibrant intersectional identities and creative work." And, according to...

May 1 marks what is known as May Day, a celebration of international workers chosen by the socialists and Communists of the Second International to recognize the Haymarket affair in Chicago’s Haymarket Square of May 1886. In order to ring in the holiday, we thought it apt to share 10 books on socialism and Communism and their impact on mankind. 1) The Marx-Engels Reader by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels This book contains the core works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which provide the intellectual basis for socialism and Communism. 2) The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek One...

If it snows, it is global warming. If it’s hot, it is global warming. Everything is global warming and must be redressed immediately or the earth will perish It’s late April 2015 and it is still quite cold and the growing season is behind – an unusual late and frigid spring. The trees are just now sprouting green leaves and a few brave ones have even bloomed. If you ask the environmentalists, it is global warming. If it snows, it is global warming. If it’s hot, it is global warming. Everything is global warming and must be redressed immediately or...

Do Americans, excluding the Marxist in the White House, actually believe private enterprise is obligated to share or "redistribute" their profits with the general public; albeit paid employees, the unemployed or complete strangers? If I have a job and my neighbor doesn’t, or God forbid I make more money, am I obligated to give this person a percentage of my income? Is “Bob” going to give me his money if I lose my job and become homeless? Hell no! People open businesses to make money…period! It’s not rocket science or a Right-Wing conspiracy. It’s called risk, work, reward! If a...

Hillary Clinton, without a hint of irony, has reportedly called for “toppling” the 1 percent. So the putative favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination intends to target those who — like herself, her husband and the benefactors of her family foundation – are the wealthiest of the wealthy. If Mrs. Clinton is seeking to upend a system that pays off a select group of elite insiders who profit by undertaking cronyistic, anti-free market acts, I applaud her. But if Mrs. Clinton is rather seeking to punish the few who have amassed great wealth by producing goods and services for their...

Interventionism, Allegedly a Middle-of-the-Road Policy A second group seems to be less radical. They reject socialism no less than capitalism. They recommend a third system, which, as they say, is as far from capitalism as it is from socialism, which as a third system of society's economic organization, stands midway between the two other systems, and while retaining the advantages of both, avoids the disadvantages inherent in each. This third system is known as the system of interventionism. In the terminology of American politics it is often referred to as the middle-of-the-road policy. What makes this third system popular with...

Imagine you're a Cuban who has somehow managed to catch the cablecast of Melissa Harris-Perry's MSNBC show today. The topic is President Obama's opening toward Cuba. You're scraping by on the average Cuban monthly salary of $20/month and are thrilled at the prospect of getting a better-paying job if and when American tourists start coming in numbers. Then suddenly you hear Harris-Perry fretting that there could be a "downside" for Cuba in letting in those American tourists. They could be a "plague" for Cuba. Impose their cultural "hegemony." !Ay caramba! View the video here.

Two days ago I ordered online a used copy of Milton & Rose Friedman's classic "Free to Choose," hoping a liberal loved one would be willing to read it. That doesn't look like it's going to happen, so now I'm tempted to send the book to Barney Frank—since it's apparent that, like many liberals, he doesn't understand the most basic notions of how free markets work. On Steve Kornacki's MSNBC show today, Frank described business creators as being "given privileges." Barney then added this mind-boggler: "there's only a limited amount of space, there's only a limited amount of businesses. Your...

In terms of skills and education, Israel probably has the highest level of human capital per person in the whole world. Yet it’s per capita output is mediocre – in the middle of the developed country pack. Why is that? Because Israel has been slow to adopt capitalism. How do I know that? Because Bibi Netanyahu told me that in an interview in Dallas, several years before he became prime minister. Once he became Israel’s leader, he was been able to do something about it. In recent years Israel has become a center for entrepreneurship, innovation and capitalist spirit. But...

"This gap between the 1% and the rest of America, and between the US and the rest of the world, cannot and will not persist," warns renowned trader Paul Tudor Jones during his recent TED Talks speech, as he addressed the question - can capital be just? Hoping to expand the "narrow definitions of capitalism," that threaten the underpinnings of society, Tudor Jones exclaims, "we're in the middle of a disastrous market mania," adding "one of worst of my life." Perhaps most ominously, he concludes, historically this ends "by revolution, higher taxes or wars. None are on my bucket list."...

A man I know was a top executive at a major American media company, one of the biggest and most influential in the world. A young man came into his office one day asking to display a rainbow sticker with the words “safe space.” This was a decade ago and this man, a faithful Catholic, felt confident he could demur without reprisal though he could see the veiled threat of being “outed” as less than gay friendly, as a homophobe.But, in these post-Brendan Eich days, it is doubtful my friend would feel as safe to say no because things...

The best environment for man is the environment of liberty.” – Václav Klaus Liberty is a fundamental human right and the cornerstone of our existence. But in our current world, liberty is being attacked from all directions, whether through higher state control or individuals themselves. Liberty is in search for its protector. Those that value and actively promote the ideals of freedom and liberty are few in such an enclosing environment. In the following article, Claudio Grass, Managing Director at Global Gold Switzerland, ventures into a discussion with one of the vanguards of liberty, former President of the Czech Republic,...