Free Republic

Did the Roman Empire help to spread Christianity, and if so, in what ways? Pax Romana During the times of Christ and the Apostles, the Roman Empire was the dominant world power and they subjugated all nations which they conquered, but they also allowed them certain freedoms, like the freedom to worship in their own way. The mighty empire brought a domineering power to the world, but it also brought a peace that the world had not known for some time. It was called “Pax Romana,” which is Latin for Roman Peace and so the Romans brought a state of...

Economic study suggests we're heading for a Blade Runner future Earlier this month, a group of economists released the results of a massive study looking at the economic prospects of people from across the United States. What they found was that the U.S. is like a patchwork quilt of different countries, where some regions offer people the economic prospects of a typical developed nation — and other regions are more like a developing country. This study debunks a few myths about the United States, including the idea that wealthy nations have wealthy citizens. It's a powerful reminder that nations are...

It seems as if, everywhere you turn these days, there are studies claiming to show that America has lost its upward mobility for people born in the lower socioeconomic levels. But there is a sharp difference between upward "mobility," defined as an opportunity to rise, and mobility defined as actually having risen. That distinction is seldom even mentioned in most of the studies. It is as if everybody is chomping at the bit to get ahead, and the ones that don't rise have been stopped by "barriers" created by "society." When statistics show that sons of high school dropouts don't...

Forget about the 1 percent versus the 99 percent. It’s really more like the 0.000001 percent versus everybody else. A tiny group — mostly comprising the Obama White House, a bunch of Washington Democrats, progressive economists, and the media elite — continues to fixate on income inequality as America’s greatest challenge. Most everybody else, the 99.999999 percent, sees things differently. Surveys continue to show Americans most worried about jobs and economic growth, not the income gap between the top and bottom. It’s a rational view given new employment data from the government. The January jobs report showed only 113,000 net...

My Sunday column tried to take the ongoing debate over marriage and upward mobility in a slightly different direction, by prodding social liberals to acknowledge the ways in which their own ideological vision and its victories – legal and cultural both – have played a role in the married, two-parent family’s decline. I don’t think my argument has won many converts, but rather than respond to the responses right now I wanted to highlight one of the arguments that inspired the column in the first place: This essay from Steve Randy Waldman, which makes the case that “marriage promotion” as...

RENO, Nev. (KRNV & MyNews4.com) -- News 4's Joe Hart holds an exclusive interview with Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan, discussing Mitt Romney's recently leaked comments recorded at a private fundraiser, and what Ryan thinks Romney meant by those comments.

Yesterday on CNN’s State of the Union, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels said the following about the current GOP presidential field: I don't think they're yet talking about the things…that have a lot of zeros attached to them, the ones that are threatening to kill not just an economy but the entire idea of America, the idea of upward mobility from the bottom and tomorrow is better than today…I'll tell you what's bothering me a little bit [is] the president is clearly in very desperate political shape. And it seems more clear every day. And I worry a little bit, ironically,...

nearly one year into Barack Obama's presidency and we have experienced changes that were unimaginable for the prior 233 years in the United States of America. We have watched the government take over car companies, banks, mortgage companies and even hint at oil and gas being nationalized. The startling moment for me was the idea to de-construct Obama and bore it down to the barest roots of his ideology and what it really means to the average person in America...it is an all-out onslaught on upward mobility. Obama's radical Communist agenda manifests itself in the simple fact that via his...

Among those classified as poor, there is rapid turnover. Browning cites studies showing that 45% of the non-elderly poor in any year are not poor one year later. Within 3 years, 70% are no longer poor.

Despite claims that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, poverty is nowhere near the problem it was yesteryear -- at least for those who want to work. Talk about the poor getting poorer tugs at the hearts of decent people and squares nicely with the agenda of big government advocates, but it doesn't square with the facts. Dr. Michael Cox, economic adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Richard Alm, a business reporter for the Dallas Morning News, co-authored a 1999 book, "Myths of Rich and Poor: Why We're Better Off Than We Think," that...

<p>"About 47 percent of black households could be considered middle income in the year 2000, according to an analysis of census data by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank focusing on black issues. By contrast, about 64 percent of white households were middle income."</p>