Free Republic

Angus Deaton is doing some rethinking. Specifically, the 78-year-old Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist is re-examining his views on major topics like unions, immigration, and global trade. It's a big statement from someone who's spent over 50 years studying inequality, welfare, poverty, and "deaths of despair," and it comes as he sees economics in disarray. His most recent book, "Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality," came out in 2023 — it catalogs, among other topics, the role of economists in the US and tackles some of the problems he's identified. When I asked Deaton what prompted...

Why exactly does Obama want the “Strong Cities Network”? The Obama administration plans to create a global police force that counters “violent extremism” in the United States and elsewhere. The problem is that in Obama-speak “violent extremism” refers not only to jihadists wishing to harm Americans but also to conservatives and Tea Party activists. Just ask all the law-abiding right-of-center nonprofit groups targeted by Lois Lerner’s IRS during the Obama presidency. Ominously, President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch unveiled the Strong Cities Network last week at the United Nations. America’s chief executive, who speaks in hushed and reverent...

People with a liking for white furniture. Children in designer wear. Social media hotel-gym reviewers called things like Brianna. People who eat at Nobu on a non-ironic basis. Paulo Coelho readers. There is a prejudice about the crowd that Dubai attracts. I won’t pretend, during a trip here this week, not to have seen them at all. But the visit has been a better education in global affairs than was available in Davos over the same time. A landlocked town in a landlocked nation is a damn fool place to host the World Economic Forum. As the Houthis are giving...

ROME — Pope Francis has urged members of the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting at Davos this week to promote “far-sighted and ethically sound” models of globalization. The World Economic Forum “aims to guide and strengthen political will and mutual cooperation,” the pontiff told them, and “provides an important opportunity for multi-stakeholder engagement to explore innovative and effective ways to build a better world.” The process of globalization has by now “clearly demonstrated the interdependence of the world’s nations and peoples,” the pope said, and thus has “a fundamentally moral dimension.”

If your earnings rose by 34% from January 2020 to October 2023, congratulations, the purchasing power of your labor kept pace with higher costs.Official measures of inflation are a long-running tragi-comedy: comedic in the transparency of the distortions, and tragic in the consequences: what will you believe is true--the statistics or your lying eyes?The basic gimmick of distortion is to underweight whatever is eating away at the purchasing power of earnings and highlight the trivial items that are getting cheaper due to declines in quality and globalization. So your rent went up by $200 a month, or $2,400 a year,...

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Tuesday that American companies have complained to her that China has become “uninvestable” as the level of risk associated with doing business there has spiked amid factors such as changes to counterespionage laws and raids on foreign firms. U.S. companies doing business in China face a host of new challenges, including “exorbitant fines without any explanation” and “revisions to the counterespionage law, which are unclear and sending shockwaves through the U.S. community.” One example of seemingly arbitrary crackdowns U.S. companies face in China was a recent ban by Beijing of American chipmaker Micron Technology...

The Phoenix TSMC plant – the centerpiece of Biden’s $52.7bn US hi-tech manufacturing agenda – is struggling to get online. TSMC has pushed back plans to start manufacturing to 2025, blaming a lack of skilled labor. It is trying to fast-track visas for 500 Taiwanese workers. Construction of the plant has been hampered by accidents and misunderstandings. A former supervisor at the site blamed delays on disorganization from management and a lack of knowledge by bosses from Taiwan on adhering to safety codes and regulations in the US. When they started working at the site, all workers went through a...

According to the world’s most famous investor, the “incredible period” for the U.S. economy has been coming to an end in recent months. That’s a somewhat surprising statement from a man who has famously been ultra-bullish on the U.S. economy. But persistently high inflation, higher interest rates and the ongoing banking crisis have all made Buffett much more concerned about investment gains in the year ahead. His partner, Charlie Munger, echoed this sentiment. “Get used to making less,” Munger quipped.

China’s newest entrants to the workforce have been struggling with a difficult job market for years, but since COVID, the situation has deteriorated dramatically. In June, the unemployment rate for Chinese ages 16 to 24 hit a record high of 21.3%, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). That’s compared with a 4.1% unemployment rate for those ages 25 to 59. The official statistics don’t paint a rosy picture, but the reality on the ground may be even worse, according to Peking University economics professor Zhang Dandan. Because China calculates its unemployment rate by including only people actively seeking...

Millions of men are abandoning the workforce at an alarming rate, according to analysis of Census Bureau data by the Pew Research Center. The data reveals that 71% of young men (aged 25 years old at the time of the study) held full-time jobs, down from 85% in 1980. A survey conducted by the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank found that 25% of young Americans were out of work, many of whom had been laid off during the pandemic and have since struggled to find the right job. Real earnings for men without college degrees has dropped 30% since the 1980s....

Jane is a junior doctor working several extra locum shifts to make ends meet. Burnt out after the pandemic, and struggling with her physical and mental health, she would really like to take unpaid leave, but she cannot do so. Last month, her landlord hiked up her rent, then served her with an eviction notice when she said she couldn’t afford it. She now has to move for the fourth time in three years, and is back in a flat-hunting market where rents are higher everywhere. Trapped in her job, with her accommodation options diminishing and her time permanently constrained...

A dozen poor countries are facing economic instability and even collapse under the weight of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign loans, much of them from the world’s biggest and most unforgiving government lender, China. Analysis of a dozen countries most indebted to China — including Pakistan, Kenya, Zambia, Laos and Mongolia — found paying back that debt is consuming an ever-greater amount of the tax revenue needed to keep schools open, provide electricity and pay for food and fuel. In Kenya, the government has held back paychecks to thousands of civil service workers to save cash to pay...

A closed-door meeting of left-wing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) was held on January 16, 2003, in Washington, D.C. to consider how to apply international financial pressure through a global tax on the U.S. Bruno Jetin, a representative of ATTAC France, spoke to the gathering and acknowledged in private conversation that his group works hand-in-glove with the French Communist Party and the "Socialist parties on the Left." A representative of the embassy of France in the U.S. was listed as a participant. ATTAC stands for the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens. The International ATTAC Movement...

I have been warning for more than two years that the global beast system will be fully in place when we see the globalists succeed at implementing two key components: A global digital ID for all people and a new form of global digital money that will be designed to replace cash. They have been racing toward reaching each of these two goals and 2023 may be the year they succeed, although that still remains to be seen. One thing’s for sure. If they don’t succeed, it won’t be for lack of trying. On April 10, the globalists dropped a...

South Korea’s famous/notorious work culture is in the spotlight after the conservative government of President Yoon Suk Yeol on March 6 proposed expanding the allowable maximum working week from 52 hours (40 hours plus 12 hours of overtime) to 69 hours, or an average of slightly over 9.85 hours a day, seven days a week. The 52-hour cap was instituted just five years ago by President Moon Jae-in, whose opposition Democratic Party of Korea still controls the National Assembly. “The age of growth by squeezing the people is now over,” thundered DPK leader Lee Jae-myung, who favors a 4½-day week....

First came the so-called Sanhe Gods, male migrant workers who ventured from the hinterlands to Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and other metropolises in search of gainful employment, only to find themselves slaving away in Dickensian “shady factories.” Disenchanted with China’s “struggle culture” the ironically named Sanhe Gods adopted cynical mottos like “work one day and play for three” or “pick up your bucket and run,” in direct and provocative contrast to the motivational propaganda posters on Chinese streets, bearing messages like “Struggle in youth, a brilliant future to come,” “Fight unrestrainedly, chase dreams,” and “If you don’t work hard, no-one can...

[Caption] It’s a tightrope walk for the grouping at a time when US-China trade war has reached a peak. After having a bitter experience with Putin, Biden may need to maintain more restraint, simply to avoid another catastrophe in the Indo-Pacific The May 24 face-to-face meeting of the Quad leaders is considered very crucial against the backdrop of the ongoing Ukraine war. All the four heads of the Governments -- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US president Joe Biden, Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese -- came together on a platform to display strength and...

Robert Barnes: The biggest loser in this Russian Ukraine conflict has been the globalist visions of George Soros and his like crowd. Because a lot things aren't...global digital currency ain't coming any time soon. Global WHO control over pandemics they can try as much as they want legally, politically probably ain't coming any time soon and this is all because they misread Vladimir Putin and Russia frankly. That's what it boils down to. Alexander: Going back to globalization and the issue of globalization I saw that there was a whole group of business leaders who came along to Davos WEF...

Vast regions of Japan’s digital universe are stuck in the early aughts. Online banking, airline booking, major newspapers, you name it: Services that have been streamlined by the digital revolution in much of the world are, in Japan, still plagued by convoluted drop-down menus that lead to dead ends, and detailed forms that need to be printed, filled out by pen, and even returned by fax. In a country that justifiably prides itself on excellent customer service, something happens when it comes to relaying information through a user interface displayed on a flat screen. Japan’s high-quality, mostly physical public infrastructure...

Hundreds of Chinese surgeons and medical personnel have been accused of killing death row prisoners by removing their hearts for transplant even before the inmates had been officially declared dead, in a new academic paper. The findings, according to study co-author and PhD researcher Matthew Robertson, were that Chinese surgeons might have carried out a final coup de grâce in an execution process that began in front of a firing squad or through lethal injection. Even if the prisoner survived that trauma, removing vital organs would cause certain death. China considers data on the death penalty a state secret, but...