Free Republic

In the four years since the Great Recession officially ended, the productivity of American workers — those lucky enough to have jobs — has risen smartly. But the United States still has two million fewer jobs than before the downturn, the unemployment rate is stuck at levels not seen since the early 1990s and the proportion of adults who are working is four percentage points off its peak in 2000. This job drought has spurred pundits to wonder whether a profound employment sickness has overtaken us. And from there, it’s only a short leap to ask whether that illness isn’t...

Is there such thing as “class” in America? Not if you ask Rick Santorum. The once and possibly future GOP presidential candidate spoke to a Republican gathering in Lyon County, Iowa late last week and shared this piece of advice with his party: “Don’t use the term the other side uses.” That includes the “middle class.” Santorum proceeded to tear into President Obama for constantly invoking the term “middle class” in his speeches about the economy. “Since when in America do we have classes?” Santorum asked. “Since when in America are people stuck in areas or defined places called a...

Occupy Wall Streeters claimed that they were populists. Their ideological opposites, the Tea Partiers, said they were, too. Both became polarizing. And so far populism, whether on the right or left, does not seem to have made inroads with the traditional Republican and Democrat establishments. Gas has gone up about $2 a gallon since Barack Obama took office. Given average yearly rates of national consumption, that increase alone translates into an extra $1 trillion that American drivers havencollectively paid in higher fuel costs over the last 54 months.Victor DavisVictor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution,...

It's good to be the king ... of class warfare hypocrisy. While he lectures his political opponents about their neglect of middle-class America, President Obama is headed to Martha's Vineyard. Again. Because nothing spells populist like a $7.6 million, 9.5-acre estate owned by one of Chicago's wealthiest corporate financiers. The sprawling summer manse of David Schulte is actually a downgrade from the Obama family's previous summer digs. The $21 million, 28.5-acre Blue Heron Farm that had hosted Obama and his massive entourage since 2009 isn't available for rental anymore because a British mogul snapped it up. But don't be bumming....

President Obama has been rolling up his sleeves campaigning across the country delivering a surreal stump speech message supposedly aimed at the middle class: big government works, Obamacare is manna from heaven, the wave of recent scandals are “phony” figments of the imagination, and all economic problems are the fault of the Republicans. Conveniently, he leaves out the bankruptcy of Detroit, a city run by his own party for more than half a century. His message is so stale and unconvincing, that even The New York Times and Washington Post have noticed. Both papers, usually loyal to Obama, remarked that...

How? Just move people from low income neighborhoods into middle class neighborhoods. This brilliant stratagem is being promoted by Shaun Donovan, Obama's newly appointed head of HUD. According to Donovan, the middle class is the middle class because they have all the advantages of living in middle class neighborhoods. After all, middle class neighborhoods have better "schools, jobs, transportation, and other important neighborhood resources that can play a role in helping people move into the middle class." Move people from low income neighborhoods with poor "assets" into neighborhoods with good "assets" and presto they will have middle class jobs and...

President Obama made his fourth or fifth, or maybe it's the seventh or eighth, pivot to the economy on Wednesday, and a revealing speech it was. We counted four mentions of "growth" but "inequality" got five. This goes a long way to explaining why Mr. Obama is still bemoaning the state of the economy five years into his Presidency. The President summed up his economic priorities close to the top of his hour-long address. "This growing inequality isn't just morally wrong; it's bad economics," he told his Galesburg, Illinois audience. "When middle-class families have less to spend, businesses have fewer...

President Obama tried to move past months of debate over guns, surveillance and scandal on Wednesday and reorient his administration behind a program to lift a middling economy and help middle-class Americans who are stuck with stagnant incomes and shrinking horizons. In speeches in two small college towns in the Midwest, Mr. Obama lamented that typical Americans had been left behind by globalization, Wall Street irresponsibility and Washington policies, while the richest Americans had accumulated more wealth. He declared it “my highest priority” to reverse those trends, while accusing other politicians of not only ignoring the problem but also making...

Mea Culpa: The president is planning a major speech in Illinois Wednesday on economic policy. You don't need a crystal ball to predict what he'll say. But here's what he arguably should say. My fellow Americans, eight years ago, I stood here on the steps of Knox College to deliver a commencement address, and I took the opportunity to lay out my vision for economic opportunity. The speech was an indictment of President Bush's idea of a go-it-alone "ownership society." The key to America's greatness, I argued, came from government programs like Social Security, from government regulations, and from government...

While Barack Obama is enjoying extravagant parties with Hollywood celebrities and taking opulent vacations, America's middle class is being decimated by his policies. Certainly Obama deserves to be condemned for the Nixonian corruption and Carteresque incompetence of his administration, but what Obama is doing to middle class Americans is just as despicable. He's slowly, but surely squeezing them into oblivion. Sadly, many Democrats are fine with this because they've calculated that a poor voter or better yet in their eyes, a voter dependent on welfare and food stamps, is more likely to support them than a voter in the middle...

Another decade, another Gatsby. The actors change but the message put forward in the adaptations of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 book stays the same. The 1920s were as ephemeral as a Champagne bubble. A fake stock market, an illicit liquor business and other falsehoods made Jay Gatsby and others like him into correspondingly false millionaires. The pleasure of the rich, “careless people,” as a character calls them, came at a cost to the rest, especially the middle class, the small people, mere ants in black tie to be trampled by giants like Gatsby at their parties. The inaccuracy here starts...

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney says the president is traveling to Texas tomorrow because while there’s lots of gridlock and partisan infighting in Washington, the Lone Star State is home to the kind of economic growth Obama wants to highlight. President Obama will tour a high-tech high school and a chip-machine manufacturer near Austin on Thursday. So, why Texas, where Rick Perry credits Republicans for the state’s economic success?

Taxes: A new study shows President Obama's budget would significantly boost taxes on the middle class. Funny, we seem to recall him promising voters that only the rich would pay for his grandiose spending plans. According to the analysis from the nonpartisan but liberal-leaning Tax Policy Center, Obama's budget would hit wealthy families hardest, with the top 20% of income earners shouldering almost 90% of the tax hike. But families at every income level would end up paying more if Obama's budget were enacted, including those making less than $10,000 a year.

One of the first things you learn when living in New York is that what qualifies as wealthy somewhere else seems barely middle-class here. On the Upper West Side, where I live, it’s hard not to feel as if Manhattan is impossibly expensive for young professionals. The average nondoorman, one-bedroom apartment in the neighborhood rents for about $2,500 a month. Oatmeal-raisin cookies at Levain Bakery cost $4 each. A pair of sensible, unstylish walking flats from Harry’s Shoes can set you back $480. I suppose, by comparison, that the $198 chef’s menu at Jean-Georges doesn’t sound so ridiculous. New Yorkers...

When President Obama was selling his signature health care reform bill back in early 2010, he described it as the "largest middle-class tax cut for health care in history." The costs would be largely paid by taxing insurance companies "that stand to gain a lot of money and a lot of profits" and by making "sure that the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share on Medicare." [snip] But a closer examination finds that ObamaCare's three biggest taxes — a Medicare surcharge, the so-called Cadillac tax and an insurance premium fee — will increasingly hit the middle class because of how...

White House spokesman Jay Carney “not disputing” Obama budget would “raise taxes on middle class Americans.” The White House has confirmed that President Obama’s forthcoming budget contains an income tax increase on middle class Americans. During a Friday, April 5 White House press briefing, spokesman Jay Carney replied “I’m not disputing that” when asked if a particular Obama budget proposal would raise income taxes on the middle class. The proposal in question is known as “Chained CPI.” The term is a Beltway euphemism for measuring inflation at a different, slower pace. Many tax and budget items are indexed to inflation,...

  videohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0TSQaKMK2w   Jim Rogers decries the growing uncertainty and recklessness of global central planners as the world enters unchartered financial markets: For the first time in recorded history, we have nearly every central bank printing money and trying to debase their currency. This has never happened before. How it’s going to work out, I don't know. It just depends on which one goes down the most and first, and they take turns. When one says a currency is going down, the question is against what? because they are all trying to debase themselves. It’s a peculiar time in world history.I own the...

OXON HILL, Md. (AP) - Returning to the national stage, Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Saturday that the Republican Party must broaden its message to grow. "We must leave no American behind," she said in a populist speech that electrified supporters at a conservative summit in suburban Washington. "And we must share our powerful message of freedom and liberty to all citizens - even those who may disagree on some issues." Palin has maintained a low profile during last year's election. She's expected to play a limited role in the future of the GOP but shared several recommendations Saturday....

Big Government: We almost never agree with President Obama's favorite economist Paul Krugman, but he recently spoke the truth about where Obama's policies are taking the country. It should scare anyone with a pulse. Krugman, after speaking at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C., was asked about the debt crisis. After arguing it's no big deal in the near term, Krugman admitted that "Eventually we do have a problem. The population is getting older, health care costs are rising ... . Something is going to have to give." What's that something?

They’re not contributing members. They take away jobs from Americans, leech off the social benefits system and commit a number of crimes besides the whole “illegal entry” deal. Jails tend to be full of illegal aliens for a reason. "Every day, like the rest of us, they go out and try to earn a living. Often they do that in a shadow economy — a place where employers may offer them less than the minimum wage or make them work overtime without extra pay. And when that happens, it’s not just bad for them, it’s bad for the entire economy....