Free Republic

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il moved early this month to wipe out much of the wealth earned in the past decade in his country's private markets. As part of a surprise currency revaluation, the government sharply restricted the amount of old bills that could be traded for new and made it illegal for citizens to have more than $40 worth of local currency. It was an unexplained decision -- the kind of command that for more than six decades has been obeyed without question in North Korea. But this time, in a highly unusual challenge to Kim's near-absolute authority,...

Israeli company finds oil beneath Rosh Ha'ayin By Lior Zano, The Marker Last Update: 24/12/2009 13:36 An Israeli oil exploration company on Thursday announced that it had found a huge amount of oil and gas during drilling below the city of Rosh Ha'ayin this week. Givot Olam Oil Exploration Limited Partnership said that more than 60 percent gas was measured in the drill, indicating the first such find in Israel. Advertisement The company said it was too soon to determine what significance the find would bring to Israel, but added that it would become clear over the next few months...

Average Russian Is 8 Times Poorer Than Average European Economics / Russia Dec 13, 2009 - 10:54 AM By: Pravda The latest research indicated that the size of the average European’s savings account is seven times greater than that of the average Russian. It would seem that the reasons are obvious – Russians are seven times poorer than residents of the European Union. However, it’s only a part of the picture. Sociologists say that 70% of Russians do not have bank deposits and 50% of them have no savings at all. Therefore, the average Russian is 8 times poorer than...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new Internal Revenue Service unit set up to catch rich tax cheats hiding their wealth in complex business entities is rapidly taking shape with the hiring of hundreds of employees. The IRS high wealth unit, part of a broader effort to combat international tax evasion, is focusing on "the entire web of business entities controlled by a high wealth individual," IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman told a tax conference this week. Another IRS official told Reuters "hundreds" of people have already been hired to staff the new unit, including some from within the agency. "We have drawn...

“The Wealth You Leave and the Wealth You Receive” (Mark 10:23-31)Today I want to talk to you about wealth. Two kinds: “The Wealth You Leave and the Wealth You Receive.” Our text is the Holy Gospel for today, and in it Jesus speaks of the wealth you need to leave in order to enter the kingdom of God, and he speaks of the wealth you then receive once you have entered. Wealth is a subject that all of us seem to be interested in. Wealth is something the rich have but want more of. The poor don’t have it but...

President Obama stressed the need for Wealth Redistribution before and after his campaign; it is a nebulous phrase that needs to be analyzed. We might consider why there is the need to redistribute wealth, other than the obvious reason to consolidate constituency strength among the poor and disaffected. Progressive Socialists build their power base among the poor, the workers (Union type), and at the Universities, there are few honest Liberals that will argue this point. Why does the need exist for Wealth Redistribution? The underlying cause is poverty. Jesus said the poor will always be with us, yet the Communist...

In a post published Oct. 24, 2008, I described what Halloween 2009 would be like for American children if Barack Obama became the nation's 44th president. In light of the fact that the community organizer from Illinois went on to win the election, I decided to republish an updated version of that post.

For those who have studied most closely the decades of Charlie Rangel’s financial tangles and fiscal subterfuge, one doggedly puzzling question overshadows all the rest. How does Rangel have so much money and where did it come from? This is a man who draws a salary from the government of about $175,000 a year. It’s a comfortable salary, but it certainly isn’t going to make anybody this rich — especially someone living in one of the world’s most expensive cities. Rangel did not inherit a fortune and did not marry one. And nor had he built some huge fortune before...

<p>Ask almost any Democratic politician the most important economic facts about income distribution in America, and you are almost certain to hear the following three points: (1) incomes have fallen substantially over the past ten years; (2) labor's share of income has fallen significantly behind the pace of new productivity and innovation; and (3) income distribution has worsened dramatically over the past generation and over the past decade in particular, with people at the top getting a bigger fraction of total personal income.</p>

Jürgen Ringbeck, Senior Vice President - Booze and Co: “It is very sad to see how weak political support for the tourism sector is, specifically in the more developed countries. (Tourism) is the key platform to connect the world and transfer wealth from developed to developing countries.”

"A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future.” President Obama State of Union Speech The distribution of income is central to one of the most enduring issues in political economics. On one extreme are those who argue that all incomes should be the same, or as nearly so as possible, and that a principal function of government should be to redistribute income from the haves to the have-nots. On the other extreme are those who argue that any income redistribution by government is bad… Alabama Constitution: “That the...

The rich have been getting richer for so long that the trend has come to seem almost permanent. They began to pull away from everyone else in the 1970s. By 2006, income was more concentrated at the top than it had been since the late 1920s. The recent news about resurgent Wall Street pay has seemed to suggest that not even the Great Recession could reverse the rise in income inequality. But economists say — and data is beginning to show — that a significant change may in fact be under way. The rich, as a group, are no longer...

The rich have been getting richer for so long that the trend has come to seem almost permanent. They began to pull away from everyone else in the 1970s. By 2006, income was more concentrated at the top than it had been since the late 1920s. The recent news about resurgent Wall Street pay has seemed to suggest that not even the Great Recession could reverse the rise in income inequality. But economists say — and data is beginning to show — that a significant change may in fact be under way. The rich, as a group, are no longer...

One day , the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people live. They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family. On their return from their trip , the father asked his son , "How was the trip?" "It was great , Dad." "Did you see how poor people live?" the father asked. "Oh yeah , " said the son. "So , tell me , what did you learn from...

A small parish (församling) in the Östermalm neighbourhood of Stockholm has more money to spend than it has people to spend it on. The parish has now petitioned government authorities to allow it to amend its regulations so that money can used to help poor people living in other Stockholm parishes. Fewer than 100 individuals in the Hedvig Eleonora parish in Östermalm receive social assistance. As a result, the parish has now sought permission from the Swedish Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency (Kammarkollegiet) to amend its regulations in order to be able to direct its resources towards those in...

July 17, 10:02 In an interview with CBS News, President Barack Obama noted that increasing taxes on the wealthy is a ‘good idea’ when it comes to finding a way to pay for his proposal to nationalize the healthcare industry. As noted in my previous article, increasing taxes is nothing new for Obama or any other Democrat – it is simply what they do. However, it was somewhat disturbing to hear how Obama described the wealthy. Here are a couple of statements from his interview: I think the best way to fund it is for people like myself, who have...

As the economy struggles, and most of us with it, a few more join the seven-figure clubThe number of millionaire families in the Bay Area jumped 10.2 percent, from 123,621 to 136,120, according to a report from Merrill Lynch and Claritas. Similar gains were won by the wealthy in Los Angeles and San Diego, according to The World Wealth Report. What, no word on Fresno? Scott Anderson, a senior economist with Wells Fargo, takes issue with the report. "As a reading of the health of California's wealthy, I'm not sure that's the best indication to go by," Anderson told the...

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) founder Wade Rathke wants to use the Internet to overthrow the capitalist system. He said so in his new book, Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families, in which he serves up some community organizing war stories, and offers his thoughts on the future of organizing. Rathke, a pioneer of the so-called welfare rights movement that aims to get Americans on welfare, devotes an entire chapter of his book to what he calls "The 'Maximum Eligible Participation' Solution." It is a strategy for orchestrated crisis that savvy leftist groups across...

A number of warnings have gone out about the printing of money. The Federal Reserve has been injecting money into the economy by buying US Treasuries in an attempt to keep down interest rates. Their efforts thus far are beginning to fail as bond rates are starting to climb. As we all know, the US Treasury has been forced to issue ever increasing amounts of bonds to finance Congress’s irresponsible spending. The chilling part is the bulk of the Stimulus money has yet to be spent meaning the US Treasury will have to significantly ramp up its bond sales to...

Population: 9.2 million Citizens among the 20 richest persons on Earth: 2 We Swedes might be awfully PC as well as awfully overtaxed, but at least we know something about running companies.. The secret behind our success: we tax private income and consumption, not our companies and we don't believe in having huge national deficits. The article: "The family which owns clothing giant Hennes & Mauritz is now on a par with the Swedish state as the largest shareholder on the Stockholm stock exchange. Shares in H&M have shot up 20 percent since the start of the year, giving the...

They make up the largest and most loyal constituency within the Republican party, but social conservatives get little respect from party leaders, nominees, or elected officials. Not only have Republican elites rarely engaged the moral, cultural, and family issues dear to their base, but the popularity of Barack Obama and the gravity of the economic crisis have spooked them further. From ex-governors Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney to congressional leaders John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, most national GOP leaders seem more convinced than ever that social issues should remain on the back burner as the party seeks to rebuild for...

The war on success, war on wealth, war on prosperity, and now the war on profitability, continue at full force. And, this time, it's on the college campuses of two prominent U.S. universities.

... over the past four decades, much has been undone. Under the guise of a new, “social” justice, political leaders have turned our native ethics upside down. Profit-taking is now seen as gouging; success is greed; businessmen are predators. This creeping socialist transformation of our culture has finally broken the back of the American economy.

A recent study and findings report released by the US Census Bureau entitled Income, Earnings and Poverty Data from the 2007 American Community Survey reports that Plano Texas is now the Most Affluent big city in America.

Retailing wonder-woman Karen Katz was featured as a "magical thinker" in the Sept. 21, 2007, edition of Time magazine. The Neiman Marcus president and CEO said that the number of U.S. households worth more than $5 million was greater than ever before, and consumers had an increased appetite for all things luxe. "Many other retailers have jumped on the luxury bandwagon, wanting to get their piece of the action. It's forced us to say, 'Where do we go?' And we're kind of moving up," Katz told Time. "We've decided there's this category we've named 'high luxury.' It's even more luxurious,...

Scientists have found that the pleasure women get from making love is directly linked to the size of their partner’s bank balance. They found that the wealthier a man is, the more frequently his partner has orgasms. “Women’s orgasm frequency increases with the income of their partner,” said Dr Thomas Pollet, the Newcastle University psychologist behind the research. He believes the phenomenon is an “evolutionary adaptation” that is hard-wired into women, driving them to select men on the basis of their perceived quality.

A liberal pillar of the media is taking a decidedly conservative position. The Washington Post says in an editorial that the wealthy already are pulling their weight when it comes to taxes. “In 2006, the top 20 percent of earners paid 70 percent of all federal taxes. On average, they paid 26 percent of their income to the government,” the editorial states. The numbers are particularly powerful for the richest of the rich – the top 1 percent of taxpayers. They account for 28 percent of all taxes, handing over 31 percent of their income to the government. Meanwhile, the...

With the trillions in spending by the new Administration for the federal budget, and bailouts, our new President has two problems to solve: 1. He needs to keep and expand his support base, some quarters of which are uneasy with the magnitude of the spending. 2. He needs to raise a lot of money in taxes to pay for his initiatives. The way this administration will address these problems will create winners and losers in new tax policy. President Obama has already stated that income tax increases would not affect those making less than $250,000. This is called ‘economic justice'...

When President Barack Obama moved into the White House earlier this year, he took several of his fellow Chicago millionaires with him. Newly released disclosure reports show virtually all of the top Chicagoans serving in the West Wing had assets valued at a million dollars or more at the end of 2008. In several cases, the reports provide the first detailed look at the finances of some of the president's top aides and friends from Chicago who have risen with him. They also show the salary haircut many have taken to be in the White House, at least until they...

The Obama Administration’s proposal to restrict the deductions from income taxes for charitable donations is said to have been inspired by research conducted by Arthur Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University, and published in his book Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism. The basic finding of the research is that hard-hearted conservatives donate more to charity than bleeding-heart liberals. “The very fact that so-called conservatives donate more should be enough to raise anyone’s suspicions about the equity of allowing these tax deductions,” said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. “I mean, when have these people every...

Print ShareThisA United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.

Blackstone Group LP CEO Stephen Schwarzman said up to 45% of the world's wealth has been destroyed by the global credit crisis in little less than a year and a half," he told the Japan Society. "This is absolutely unprecedented in our lifetime." ......He put part of the blame on credit rating agencies. Rating companies have been the focus of intense criticism for granting top "AAA" ratings for complex bonds that later plummeted in value, resulting in subsequent rating cuts, in many cases to junk status. "Once you bought into ... the Triple A paper and it turned out was...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. households suffered a record-large 9 percent drop in wealth and pared debt in the fourth quarter as a deepening recession battered confidence and finances, Federal Reserve data showed on Thursday. Household net worth dropped by $5.1 trillion from the prior quarter to $51.5 trillion. For the full year, net worth dropped by $11.2 trillion, reflecting steep declines in the housing and stock markets. The declines in household net worth were the largest since quarterly and annual records began in 1951 and 1946, respectively, the Fed said. Since a second-quarter 2007 peak of $64.4 trillion, household wealth...

Yay, Onto the city-state of Columbus, in the land known as OHIO, comes LORD HIGH OBAMA, Destroyer of Wealth, Slayer of Rich People, Master of all who obey, and his Democrat Minions, bringing "Change!" in the form of Economic misery and empty plattitudes onto the masses of Government Employees layed out before him! "25 JOBS!" he yells, "I HAVE SAVED 25 JOBS!" shouts the deliver of false promise. "Let the Evil Lord LIMBAUGH say something about THIS!", he bellows. The huddled masses in the unemployment line down the block hear THE ONE, but there is no joy in thier hearts,...

We have been under a sustained financial and psychological assault since the election of Zero last Novemeber. In the last six weeks alone, we have been barraged by an onslaught of radical plans and programs, while our financial future is put in serious jeopardy. We have seen that the actions of an out of control governement in Washington have stripped us of over $ 15 trillion worth of home values, stock values, and savings, with no accountability and no plan to fix it. Today, fellow Americans, we take our country back. Enough crying in our beer, moaning to each other,...

“For the better part of three decades, a disproportionate share of the Nation’s (sic) wealth has been accumulated by the very wealthy” - Barack Obama’s “A New Era of Responsibility Barack Obama won the 2008 election based on two factors: American dissatisfaction with the direction of the country and his verbal ability to sway independents, undecideds and knock-kneed Republicans with hopeful rhetoric. Well-meaning, but misguided Americans enthusiastically support him, not wanting to be perceived as part of the problem. Ironically, only by resisting the Obama agenda until their last breath can conservatives now be part of the solution. Many people...

A generation or two of American school children have grown up without a clue about how wealth is created. If they ever think about the people who organize and create businesses, the people who actually create wealth and carry out the innovations that cause the rest of us to prosper, they think in terms of responsibility for bad things like pollution, discrimination, and other crimes. Entrepreneurs are the heroes of capitalism, the brave risk takers who see a need and fill it. Most fail, but those who succeed provide jobs, products, innovation, and tax revenues to the rest of us....

Fairness or Prudence? The pugnacious little devil that he was, Theodore Roosevelt, in 1912, ran against his own handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, split the Republican vote, and handed the presidency to Woodrow Wilson. Wilson, formerly President of Princeton University, is the only man ever elected United States President to have possessed a PHD. Much more subdued in personality than Roosevelt, but no less rigid, his unwillingness to placate the Republican coalition, and specifically Henry Cabot Lodge, the United States of America never became member of the League of Nations, Wilson’s own brainchild conceived to protect the world from war....

I got this earlier today, from a reader: Jonah, a few years ago, I lived in Manhattan (we met briefly one year at a cocktail hour at some bar on 2nd Av when I was at [job description withheld]). My bride and I together were pulling down about 400k per year. (btw, we didn't feel rich, we didn't act rich, and Bernie Madoff never took us into his confidence, either.) At the same time, every dollar we earned was being taxed about 50% (I mean, taxed where I could see it being taxed) . So who were we working for?...

There was one line in Obama's Address to the Nation last night that just floored me. It came near the beginning of the speech where he lays out the causes for our economic troubles: "A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future." Wow. I don't think there is a more telling statement of the Obama administration's philosophy than that single statement. What did we learn? According to Obama: 1. Wealth is not earned. 2. Wealth is a commodity that governments can transfer from one segment of the population...

Barack Hussein Obama will propose a massive business tax on greenhouse gases in his FY 2010 federal budget to be presented this week.The massive tax increase and power grab was buried at the end on article on Obama's forthcoming budget proposal in The New York Times:On energy policy, Mr. Obama’s budget will show new revenues by 2012 from his proposal to require companies to buy permits from the government for greenhouse gas emissions above a certain cap. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the permits would raise up to $300 billion a year by 2020. Since companies would pass their...

With the debate over the "Porkulus" bill in Congress (or, as I like to call it, "Pork and Awe"), there has been a great deal of related discussion over why the bill will work, or won't work, to stimulate the economy and create much-needed jobs and economic growth. However, much of the debate has devolved into partisan bickering. It might help to take a step back, and consider the differences between government and private spending in a more general sense. To begin with, what does the stimulus package claim to do? Apparently, it authorizes the government to spend money, in...

The Republicans often aren't very good at explaining basic economic principles to listeners who might be able to help combat these socialist takeovers. Today, Stephie actually asked Michael Steele a good question that, if answered properly, could illuminate a lot of Americans and help erode support for government bailouts and debt. The question is: Why aren't government jobs good economic stimulus, whereas private sector jobs are GREAT economic stimulus? Steele gave some marginal answer, it was OK and forgettable. The answer is that government jobs do NOT create the wealth that powers the economy, government takes wealth out of the...

Why There Won’t Be a Revolution Americans might get angry sometimes, but we don't hate the rich. We prefer to laugh at them. The poor you will always have, the good book says, but as for the rich man, he will wither away like a delicate flower in the midday sun. The first prediction has certainly been borne out, but the second part (James 1:11) had not yet come to pass by the Panic of 1907, when Theodore Roosevelt warned of a coming reckoning against the "malefactors of great wealth." Nor by 1990, when former Nixon aide Kevin Phillips predicted...

The poor you will always have, the good book says, but as for the rich man, he will wither away like a delicate flower in the midday sun. The first prediction has certainly been borne out, but the second part (James 1:11) had not yet come to pass by the Panic of 1907, when Theodore Roosevelt warned of a coming reckoning against the "malefactors of great wealth." Nor by 1990, when former Nixon aide Kevin Phillips predicted that Americans would rise to extract revenge on "the rich who got the benefits of the go-go years" of the 1980s. As late...

The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it. Proverbs 10:22 In the U.S. we live in an extremely wealthy land. No one denies that. Along with that wealth came a wisdom to form a government that had checks and balances in place to prevent one branch from becoming too greedy for more power. But what we've built here in the U.S. can be taken away quickly if we're not careful, and I believe we're rapidly approaching that point. Republics rise and republics fall. We may think we have control over our destiny, but we...

WEF 2009: Global crisis 'has destroyed 40pc of world wealth' The past five quarters have seen 40pc of the world's wealth destroyed and business leaders expect the global economic crisis can only get worse. By Edmund Conway in Davos Last Updated: 5:42AM GMT 29 Jan 2009 Steve Schwarzman, chairman of private equity giant Blackstone, said an "almost incomprehensible" amount of cash had evaporated since the financial crisis took hold. "Business will be very different," he added. His comments came on a day of the World Economic Forum characterised by the gloom of its participants and warnings that the crisis will...

Market Economy Under Socialist System A Monthly Review Deficit Control: The official trade deficit for 1996, announced by the Vietnamese government, was $4 billion, 17% of the country's GDP. Despite repeated warnings by international organizations on the adverse effects of an uncontrolled deficit on the economy, the government has not succeeded in preventing high-ranking Vietnamese Communist Party members throughout its echelon and military from arbitrary imports for their semi-official trading enterprises. To deal with this problem, the government repeated its 1996 measure of setting more limits on imported goods. The Ministry of Planning and Investment announced it would "limit, but...

Scientists have found that the pleasure women get from making love is directly linked to the size of their partner’s bank balance. They found that the wealthier a man is, the more frequently his partner has orgasms. “Women’s orgasm frequency increases with the income of their partner,” said Dr. Thomas Pollet, the Newcastle University psychologist behind the research. He believes the phenomenon is an “evolutionary adaptation” that is hard-wired into women, driving them to select men on the basis of their perceived quality. The study is certain to prove controversial, suggesting that women are inherently programmed to be gold-diggers. However,...

Pity the poor global warming alarmists such as Al Gore, James Hansen of NASA, and the Weather Channel's Heidi Cullen. They went way out on the limb in promoting the absolute certainity of global warming and now Mother Nature is sawing it off behind them with the coldest weather in decades. To spare themselves complete embarrassment, you might have noticed that many media outlets and global warming promoters are backing off from that term and are now using "climate change" more frequently. Last Friday, one of the big global warming promoters on the Huffington Post, Kevin Grandia, publicly struggled over...