Free Republic

In a recent tweet, a talented financial analyst and investor stated: “The “debt is unsustainable” narrative has been around for 40 years plus. What’s astonishing to me is how the people who push this narrative never ask themselves, “Why has it been sustainable for so long?”.There is a widespread idea that the fiscal imbalances of a world reserve currency issuer would end in an Argentina-style bankruptcy. However, the manifestation of unsustainability did not even appear as drastic in Argentina itself. Hey, Argentina continues to exist, doesn’t it?Excessive public debt is unsustainable when it becomes a burden on productive growth and...

The progressive left will never, ever understand what real Americans want from their government, because real Americans just want to be left alone by their government. They think we can be bought, they think we can be manipulated into jealousy which will override our natural instincts. They are wrong. The games that work on their weak-minded coastal voters doesn’t work in “flyover” country, and it never will. You hear it all the time: Why are these people “voting against their interests?” The vapid husks of humans on MSNBC ask that regularly. They think they can buy votes of Midwesterners and...

Witness the moral and fiscal confusion of New York’s welfare-obsessed leaders. The state’s Medicaid program is billions of dollars in the red. Gov. Hochul announced a plan last month to cut $1.2 billion in Medicaid funding, which she’ll finalize Thursday. Yet she’s also expanding Medicaid for children whose parents make too much money. She’s making a middle-class entitlement New York doesn’t need and can’t afford. Here’s the backstory.

Things we once enjoyed have suddenly gotten so much worse. Not just a little worse, but way worse. You pay more, you get less, and it sucks. Social media was on fire this week in the wake of the Claudine Gay incompetence scandal at Harvard, the 737 IKEA MAX airplane scandal at Boeing, and the ongoing scandal of fanatic, destructive DEI hiring rules at airlines, air traffic control towers, colleges, corporate America, and everywhere else that matters. Things got so wild that Elon Musk replied positively to one of my anti-DEI screeds, and Matt Walsh credited me for some of...

Occasional guest columnist Karl Brauneis writes, "The Threatened and Endangered Species Act actually did more for attorneys and environmental elites then it did for the wildlife it was designed to protect. The few got rich while the working men and woman and the forest itself suffered." In 1974 I was a rookie on the Bighorn Inter-Regional Fire Suppression Crew at Greybull, Wyoming. The crew name was later changed to the Wyoming Hot Shots. As a “new man” I was classified as a Government Service (GS) - 3 and made $3.08 per hour. We also earned overtime pay (time and ½)...

An intriguing shift is observed among almost a third of millionaires in the U.S., who now identify themselves as part of the middle class, according to MoneyWise. A Bloomberg study further reveals that 25% of America’s “regular rich,” earning at least $175,000 annually, perceive themselves as “very poor,” “poor,” or “getting by but things are tight.” This surprising self-assessment raises questions about the sustainability of such economic dynamics. Simultaneously, the housing market paints a challenging picture. Monthly mortgage payments, hitting unprecedented levels near $3,000, are contributing to historical highs in the US housing market. The perception of a $1 million...

Can an economy in which 10% of the households qualify as middle class claim to offer widespread opportunities for secure prosperity? No, it cannot.Defining the middle class is a perpetually popular parlor game because it's well-known that the foundation of widespread prosperity is a broad-based middle class and a sturdy ladder of social mobility that enables those below the middle class to work their way up to middle class security.Here's an example of a typical trope on the subject: What Does It Take To Be Middle Class?The topic is also a perennial favorite because the middle class is losing ground....

Only a small share of millionaires say they feel wealthy,.. Persistent inflation has taken a toll on most Americans’ financial security, making it harder to feel well off.. What does it take to be rich? “The short answer is more... Feeling “rich” is increasingly elusive. Even among millionaires, only 8% would characterize themselves as wealthy these days. Roughly 60% of investors with $1 million or more of investable assets said they are more likely upper middle class, ... Even doctors, lawyers and other highly paid professionals — also referred to as the “regular rich” — who benefit from stable jobs,...

"Bidenflation" stands at 16.7%, exposing a significant increase in prices since President Biden took office Real wages have declined under Biden's watch, forcing people to cut back on various expenditures The American economy is likely to experience a protracted period of stagflation, characterized by economic stagnation accompanied by high inflation "Bidenomics" is a failure, and Biden's misdirected energy policy is the root cause of these issuesMore than six out of every ten (61%) Americans live paycheck to paycheck.American credit card debt has surged by 38%, increasing from $743.5 billion in the first quarter of 2021 to a recent total of...

America’s middle class is being systematically eviscerated. When the Federal Reserve pumped trillions of dollars into the financial system during the pandemic, most Americans didn’t realize what that would do to them. That money certainly made the wealthy a whole lot wealthier, but it also dramatically increased the cost of living for the rest of us. So now inflation has been rising much faster than paychecks have, and the cost of living has become exceedingly oppressive. In fact, last year we witnessed the largest decline in real median household income in more than a decade… "The official tally is in...

The decline of California under one-party Democrat rule has been one of the long-running themes of this blog. Today Victor Davis Hanson discusses how California’s wealthy destroyed the middle class with policies whose baleful effects they knew wouldn’t fall on them.… “The irony is that, as we created more wealth and more leisure, because of the very success of the middle class citizen, the middle class citizen and his central role in western government was forgotten.” “California in the 1960s had the largest middle class in the United States. California had the finest educational system. California invented the idea of...

Victor Davis Hanson explains how the middle class in California is struggling due to high taxes and heavy regulations that fall heavily on small business owners. As a result, many are leaving the state, causing the middle class to shrink and leaving California with the highest number of homeless people and welfare recipients in the US

“This new policy by the Biden administration is a slap in the face to every consumer in the nation who worked hard to develop a good credit score. Forcing them to subsidize lower scored buyers adds insult to the injury of the higher fees they are now required to pay. This is the latest in a disturbing pattern of Biden’s big government intervention into the lives of hard-working Americans in order to push his progressive social agenda..."

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently announced a 2024 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, suggested on Saturday that the American middle class was “systematically” wiped out as a result of the COVID-19 lockdowns. “The strength of a nation comes from a strong economy and a vibrant middle class, and we have wiped out the middle class in the country systematically,” Kennedy Jr. told Fox News‘ Neil Cavuto.

American middle-class families, who are most likely to serve in the military and pay an overwhelming percentage of their income in federal taxes, are not benefiting from the policies of the Biden administration, a recent Monmouth University poll revealed. Only 10 percent of Americans believe the middle class has benefited a lot, while 51 percent say the middle class has not benefited at all. The numbers have only deteriorated under President Joe Biden’s leadership. “In the first months of his term, more said the middle class benefited a lot (19% in June 2021) and fewer said not at all (36%),”...

I struggle to find liberal policies that achieve what they claim to aim at.Which of course brings up the question: are they actually aimed at achieving what is claimed?Often, no. Usually no. Occasionally the liberals are merely stupid, not evil. But Occam’s Razor suggests that with a record of being always wrong, the Left isn’t actually trying to achieve what they say. With all those high-powered degrees at hand, at least a few of the policymakers must actually be intelligent.A great example is “affordable housing” programs. Have you noticed housing getting any more affordable? I sure haven’t. And that is...

The new Republican-controlled House of Representatives got off to a bumpy start by attempting to repeal last year’s addition of of $71.5 billion to the IRS budget. It’s a political stunt with no chance of passing the U.S. Senate. Hamstringing the taxman doesn’t make taxes go away, but it does make it harder for taxpayers to pay them, the government to collect them and public agencies to function. Defunding the IRS would aggravate an already egregious problem: Billions of dollars of uncollected taxes, mostly from corporations and the wealthy. From 2014 to 2016, the IRS estimated $500 billion per year...

Illinois finished poorly on Kiplinger list due to the impact on the middle class state's flat income tax rate, average combined state and local sales tax and high property tax burden.A new report lists the Land of Lincoln as the least tax-friendly state in the nation for middle-class families.The report was done by Kiplinger and ranked the 10 worst states for middle-class families when looking at the state's overall tax burden."Sorry, Illinois, but you're the least tax-friendly state in the country for middle-class families," the report said.Illinois finished poorly on the list due to the impact on the middle class...

Important to understand is that there is not one single new original idea in Klaus Schwab's so-called Great Reset agenda for the world. Nor is his Fourth Industrial Revolution agenda his or his claim to having invented the notion of Stakeholder Capitalism a product of Schwab. Klaus Schwab is little more than a slick PR agent for a global technocratic agenda, a corporatist unity of corporate power with government, including the UN, an agenda whose origins go back to the beginning of the 1970s, and even earlier. The Davos Great Reset is merely an updated blueprint for a global dystopian...

The great westward drive that began with Lewis and Clark has been steadily rolling backward. Southern California is filled with moving trucks headed to Arizona, Texas and Nevada. Those who can afford it, fly to Florida. The Russians were here once and then the Spanish. The American presence in California was more comprehensive and lasted longer, but may one day leave sagging Wells Fargo banks and decrepit mini malls filled with sushi places and nail salons the way the Spanish left their missions. It's a beautiful country, but so is Afghanistan and any number of otherwise unlivable places. Every other...