Free Republic

Membership in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has tripled since Donald Trump’s election in November to over 19,000 paying members, a report from the Los Angeles Times reveals. The group, founded in 1982, is now the largest socialist organization in the United States and recently published a “Resistance Rising” strategy to combat the Trump administration. “On November 8, voters in the United States narrowly elected an openly racist, misogynist and nativist candidate for president,” the organization’s website reads. “We must understand ‘Trumpism’ as a cross-class white nativist alliance; the median family income of the 62 percent of white voters...

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,The point is the present system cannot endure.Despite all the happy talk about "recovery" and higher growth, wages have gone nowhere since 2000--and for the bottom 20% of workers, they've gone nowhere since the 1970s.Gross domestic product (GDP) has risen smartly since 2000, but the share of GDP going to wages and salaries has plummeted: this is simply an extension of a 47-year downtrend.Last month I posted one reason Why We're Doomed: Our Economy's Toxic Inequality (August 16, 2017). The second half of why we're doomed is stagnant wages. Why do stagnating...

In their passion to achieve a government-crafted utopia, the liberal/progressive movement often does more harm than good. This is because their tool of choice – the government – can only apply superficial solutions that come with harmful side effects. Efforts to correct “income inequality” and “fight poverty” through government entitlement programs are a prime example. As columnist George Will recently asked and answered, “[W]hat if large causes of poverty are not matters of material distribution but are behavioral – bad choices and the cultures that produce them? If so, policymakers must rethink their confidence in social salvation through economic abundance.”...

Imagine that you were elected to a federal office several years ago and had a safe seat with all the perks attached, including salary, expense account, and influence with corporate CEOs and other titans of industry.  Suppose further that you knew that the future would be prosperous when you left office because the connections you made would make you a fortune as a lobbyist.  Moreover, since unseating an incumbent is a herculean task, you felt that you were set for life.  In fact, as soon as you got elected, you began raising money and preparing for re-election.  Governing and legislating...

Executive leadership coach Lolly Daskal has worked with hundreds of millionaires and billionaires. The secret to their success doesn't boil down to one specific habit, routine or personality trait, she tells CNBC: "The secret of the true billionaire is what's going on on the inside." "There's so much literature out there about how to succeed," she continues. "Most of the books talk about 'how': Do this and you will be that. But it doesn't work that way. We have it backwards. What we really need to do is to figure out who we are on the inside. We need to...

On the 100th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s birth there are countless commentaries about the promise shown by our youngest elected president and the grief felt when high hopes were dashed in Dallas. Remembering JFK is worthwhile for many reasons, but one set of reasons is likely to be overlooked. Our nation’s youngest president might be able to tell us something about our oldest. John F. Kennedy and Donald J. Trump have more in common than devotees for either would want to admit. Both were second sons of successful and domineering fathers. Both grew up in wealth and privilege, though...

The 3.5 million high-net-worth individuals located in the Asia Pacific region makes the market increasingly important for the luxury sector, as the affluent group's appetite for high-end continues to grow. Countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are becoming an increasingly important part of consumerism in the luxury market. Countries that make up the association such as Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam are expected to become the fourth largest economy by 2020. “The ASEAN nations are part of a high-growth region where we are active in terms of member growth and hosting...

Having bestowed the presidency on a candidate who described their country as a “hellhole” besieged by multitudes trying to get into it, Americans need an antidote for social hypochondria. Fortunately, one has arrived from Don Boudreaux, an economist at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and proprietor of the indispensable blog Cafe Hayek. He has good news: You are as rich as John D. Rockefeller. Richer, actually. Some historians estimate that on September 29, 1916, a surge in the price of Rockefeller’s shares of the Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey made him America’s first billionaire. Others say he never...

The Fed likes to brag about the “We saved the world” recovery. However, the unfortunate truth of the matter is a record Half of American Families Live Paycheck to Paycheck. Does it Matter? Let’s investigate. Unprepared for Nearly Anything * 50% are woefully unprepared for a financial emergency. * Nearly 1 in 5 (19%) Americans have nothing set aside to cover an unexpected emergency. * Nearly 1 in 3 (31%) Americans don’t have at least $500 set aside to cover an unexpected emergency expense, according to a survey released Tuesday by HomeServe USA, a home repair service. * A separate...

Summary: Although people living in consumer-based cultures such as the US often believe that they will be happier if they acquire more money, the findings of a newly published paper suggest that there may be downsides to this pursuit.

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.)You could, however, afford the state-of-the-art phonograph of the era. Obviously, you could not download music.So here’s a question that I’ve asked in one form or another on earlier occasions, but that is...

A reminder that people who possess great wealth in a time of poverty are directly causing that povertyÂ… Here is a simple statement of principle that doesnÂ’t get repeated enough: if you possess billions of dollars, in a world where many people struggle because they do not have much money, you are an immoral person. The same is true if you possess hundreds of millions of dollars, or even millions of dollars. Being extremely wealthy is impossible to justify in a world containing deprivation. Even though there is a lot of public discussion about inequality, there seems to be far...

The White House released financial disclosures for many of its senior officials Friday — a group of some of the wealthiest people ever to join a presidential administration. The documents provide a snapshot of what the employees’ finances looked like when they joined government service in January, but they do not give a full account of how those people are disentangling from business assets that could pose possible conflicts of interest. President Donald Trump, a billionaire New York businessman, and Vice President Mike Pence, the former Indiana governor, are not legally required to file new financial disclosures until next year....

The Socialist senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, set off a Twitterstorm yesterday with a tweet that was hard to believe. We are living in a nation which worships wealth rather than caring for the poor. I don't think that is the nation we should be living in.— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 18, 2017 Needless to say, this towering hypocrisy did not go unnoticed in the Twitterverse: @BernieSanders Says the man who owns 3 homes one which cost over $600,000. I'm guessing you have homeless people you're housing? Do as I say, not as I do?— lc65265 (@lc65265) March 18,...

The actress's hip museum of a house in the Hollywood Hills, an ode to the obsessive joy of collecting, is as charming, imaginative, original and fun as the actress-author herself ....Originally, the house belonged to Robert Armstrong, the ship's captain in King Kong, who uttered the last line in the movie, It was beauty killed the beast,' " explains Carrie Fisher, documenting the uniquely star-studded pedigree of her spectacular three-acre spread high in the Hollywood Hills. "After that, Bette Davis lived here for a while before it was bought in 1933 by Edith Head, who did most of the major...

In the Trump era, excess is in and modesty is out. After years of stealth wealth, humility and downsizing, the president-elect is ushering in a new era of living large, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller said Wednesday. "We used to be more into modest living," the Yale professor told CNBC, speaking about the years after the financial crisis. "Now people are thinking, '[that] doesn't work.' You know? You have to live big-league and you're on your way." While there's no empirical evidence pointing to this shift, Shiller said the excitement is visible at Trump rallies and in the stock market....

Stock wealth climbed by $494 billion and housing by $554 billion The wealth of U.S. households climbed to a record $90.2 trillion in the third quarter, driven by a powerful buildup in both real estate and stocks. Stockholdings—both directly and through retirement accounts like 401(k)s—climbed by $494 billion last quarter while real estate, which is primarily people’s homes, rose in value by $554 billion, according to a Federal Reserve report released Thursday. The report shows that U.S....

Donald Trump loves the idea of infrastructure. He brings it up all the time. He wants to make an infrastructure bill a priority in his first 100 days as president. And Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have said they’d love to work with him on this."We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals," Trump promised cheering supporters on election night. "We're going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it."The...

Pensions for having held elected office were never a part of the vision for America and President-elect Trump is emblematic of a return to the American citizen-servant Demonstrating a lack of understanding of America’s founding principles, a murder (that’s a bunch of cackling crows, for those who don’t know) of philosophizing academics are recommending that President-elect Donald Trump divest himself of his fortune before taking office. Only ignorance of this nation’s founding could prompt individuals, who call themselves ethics experts, to make such a call. Institutionalized politics has managed to destroy the original intent of anyone seeking to serve, and...

It’s a new term for the old leftist dream of redistribution over wealth creation. President Obama has finally stopped blaming George W. Bush for America’s current economic mess. Now it’s Ronald Reagan’s fault. Obama didn’t use those exact words or make that explicit claim in his Knox College speech last week, but that’s the gist of it. The Great Recession and its slow-growth, high-unemployment aftermath are really just the culmination of three decades of pro-market economic policies that favored the rich at the expense of the middle class. Here’s how Obama rewrites economic history: The shared national purpose of World...