Free Republic

This Atlantic story reveals how Americans lived 100 years ago. (HT Warren Smith) By the standards of a middle-class American today, that lifestyle was poor, inconvenient, dreary, and dangerous. (Only a few years later – in 1924 – the 16-year-old son of a sitting U.S. president would die of an infected blister that the boy got on his toe while playing tennis on the White House grounds.)So here’s a question that I’ve asked in one form or another on earlier occasions, but that is so probing that I ask it again: What is the minimum amount of money that you...

For a good chance at a happy life, head to Australia, which one again topped the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Better Life Index, which looks at the quality of life in member countries. The (OECD) — an international economic organization — analyzed 34 countries in 11 categories, including income, housing, jobs, community, education, environment, civic engagement, health, life satisfaction, safety, and work-life balance. (You can read the full methodology here.) We looked at the countries with the highest overall scores, and highlighted a few of the criteria on the following slides. Researchers compared data from 34 countries that...

1. Vacations 2. New vehicles 3. To pay off debt 4. Emergency savings 5. Retirement savings 6. Medical care 7. Dental work

During debates and speeches, politicians often bring up the financial burden that’s placed on the middle class. We talk about the middle class as though they are this singular entity, who used to thrive until they underwent persecution by the evil 1%. But, realistically speaking, the middle class and the 99% are not really synonymous. So, who are the middle class? In its discussion of historical middle class societies, The Economist reports, “Their members are neither rich nor poor but somewhere in-between…’Middle-class’ describes an income category but also a set of attitudes…An essential characteristic is the possession of a reasonable...

As we go into this Christmas week, you should count your blessings that you live in 2014. Would you prefer to live as the French King Louis XIV did (1643-1715), or as you do today? The average low-income American, who makes $25,000 per year, lives in a home that has air conditioning, a color TV and a dishwasher, owns an automobile, and eats more calories than he should from an immense variety of food. Louis XIV lived in constant fear of dying from smallpox and many other diseases that are now cured quickly by antibiotics. His palace at Versailles had...

The U.S. is still the leading manufacturing nation on earth and the percent of GDP that manufacturing occupies has remained about the same for the past 30 years. By Michael Newkirk, director, SAS

Prepare for change as world tilts to the east American Account Irwin Stelzer “THIS too shall pass,” King Solomon’s advisers told him to engrave on a ring, and refer to it whenever he felt depressed. Or so the legend goes. Not a bad idea for bankers beset by still more dodgy paper to write off, for shareholders at loss-making Lehman Brothers and ailing Morgan Stanley (first-quarter earnings down 58% year-on-year), and for homeowners as they watch the equity in their homes evaporate. Some of our current crises will indeed pass. However, it would be a mistake to believe that when...

A potential collaboration between Telenor and Telia could result in extremely high speed broadband for 1.8 million Swedish households. Computer Sweden magazine reports that Telenor has invited Telia for talks about the new vdsl2 technology. The cost of developing a vdsl2 network in Sweden is estimated at 10 billion kronor ($1.5 billion). "The best thing would be for Telia, Telenor and Tele 2 to reach an agreement on how best to finance the investment," Telenor's Swedish CEO Johan Lindgren told Computer Sweden. If implemented, the system is expected to grant almost two million Swedish households access to a broadband capacity...

March 2002 The "Poverty Rate": America's Worst Statistical Indicator By Nicholas Eberstadt Due to fundamental defects in the method by which the U.S. poverty rate is calculated, it is incapable of offering an accurate assessment of living standards at any point in time, much less a dependable view of longer-term trends. To the quantitatively inclined, the United States's federal statistical service stands as one of the wonders of the modern world. Yet despite all its extraordinarily useful and reliable information, that same service regularly showcases a dreadful numerical embarrassment: the now-famous U.S. “poverty rate.” In theory, the poverty rate is...