Free Republic

Declaring "old-fashioned capitalism has broken down to the detriment of consumers" and "Adam Smith has lost his way amidst these big corporations," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other congressional Democrats traveled to a red pocket of purple Virginia today to spell out their new agenda. **SNIP** After losing in 2014 and 2016, Schumer argued, Dems need to not "flinch" or "blink," but look in the mirror. "Democrats have too often hesitated from directly and unflinchingly taking on the misguided policies that got us here - so much so that too many Americans don't know what we stand for,"...

The idea of a universal basic income — monthly cash payments from the government to every individual, working or not, with no strings attached — is gaining traction, thanks in part to endorsements from Silicon Valley celebs. Some see it as a way to compensate for the traditional jobs with benefits that will be wiped out by robotics, artificial intelligence, self-driving vehicles, globalization and the gig economy. Others see it as a way to reduce income inequality or to create a more efficient, less stigmatizing safety net than our current mishmash of welfare benefits. “I think ultimately we will have...

As a society, we have done millennials a disservice. An entire generation of young people in America came of age during a decade of sluggish economic growth, and as a result, many are skeptical of free enterprise and capitalism. A stunning 2016 Harvard University survey of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 found that 51 percent of respondents do not support capitalism. Millennial support for avowed socialist Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary was proof that young people today aren’t enamored with capitalism. During the Obama years, the 18-29 age group heard countless presidential speeches railing...

Mark Levin's new book, "Rediscovering Americanism," an assault on the media and progressives and a call for Americans to take back their country, debuts today at No. 1 on Amazon. Showing the draw of the New York Times bestselling author and top syndicated radio host, his book is already on the way to becoming another big seller. "My new book covers a lot of territory — philosophy, history, economics, law, culture, etc. And I look deeply into what is meant by Americanism, republicanism, individualism, capitalism. What do we mean by natural law, unalienable rights, liberty, and property rights? From where...

LONDON — The rest of the planet bears a warning for President Trump’s plan to lean heavily on private business in conjuring a trillion dollars’ worth of American infrastructure: Handing profit-making companies responsibility for public works can produce trouble. In India, politically connected firms have captured contracts on the strength of relationships with officialdom, yielding defective engineering at bloated prices. When Britain handed control to private companies to upgrade London’s subway system more than a decade ago, the result was substandard, budget-busting work, prompting the government to step back in. Canada has suffered a string of excessive costs on public...

Alex Green: Why your kids hate capitalism THE CRUX - stansberryresearch.com From Alexander Green, Chief Investment Strategist, The Oxford Club: Equity investors rarely stop to think about it, but the stock market is the essence of capitalism: the private ownership of the means of production. With very little money and a quick phone call – or a click of the mouse – you can own a fractional interest in any of thousands of the nation’s most profitable businesses. The system is fair too. You will pay (and receive) no more or less for your shares than the wealthy do. And thanks...

Continuing from my previous article on the Democrat's war on free markets and unfair anti-capitalist regulations targeting indie software makers, I said that the best way to stick it to these big companies that back the socialist agenda of the DNC was to buy indie and boycott the big bolshevik businesses. I mean they got to where they were because of capitalism and now they want to ruin it for all of us just so they can avoid competition! SO! We here present our top 10 list of indie games you gotta play! Along with Top 10 Flash games online!...

A few years ago I did an article about net neutrality and government attempts to ban the internet or make it obsolete through over regulations and limited choices. This is something all the Democrats support doing in every facet of our lives. They want to make it a crime to even pee without permission by some expensive overpaid bureaucrat. The internet is the last great vestige of freedom of thought. The one place where we can read play and watch whatever we want when we want to. But liberals and big government supporters and the big bolshevik supporting corporations that...

Author and activist Naomi Klein was on a visit to Sydney last November when Donald Trump shocked the US and Western political establishment by taking the White House. "I think a great many of us felt that the world had just turned upside down, but [in Australia] I literally felt the world had turned upside down," she says, recalling that moment of supreme disorientation. Since then, unlike many American liberals, Klein has been fixated less by the drip-drip of revelations about the Trump campaign's murky links to the Kremlin, and more with what she calls the "corporate coup" taking place...

Lovers of socialism didn't like my column last week. I wrote that Venezuela's collapse shows the cluelessness of celebrities like Michael Moore, Oliver Stone and Noam Chomsky, who'd praised Venezuela's leader. Chomsky called me "an utter coward" for mocking him and said he expected "an abject apology." He won't get one. As Venezuelan-born filmmaker Thor Halvorssen puts it, "Chomsky provided cover for a regime where 11,500 infants died from lack of medical care." But assigning blame matters less than what should be done now. After the regime collapses, what comes next? How about trying capitalism? That's what Erick Brimen suggests....

Would the Mark Zuckerberg of 2017—who recently gave the commencement address at Harvard—have started Facebook? Likewise, would the Mark Zuckerberg of 2004—who was instrumental in building the world’s largest, most popular social networking website in the world—have given the 2017 commencement address at Harvard University? As has been well documented over the last several days—most notably by Rush Limbaugh—Zuckerberg’s 2017 commencement address was laden with socialistic language and ideas that run quite contrary to what is necessary to build a company with thousands of employees and whose annual revenue is measured in billions of dollars. (Ask Venezuelans.)

Venezuela descends into chaos. Its people, once the wealthiest in Latin America, starve. Even The New York Times runs headlines like "Dying Infants and No Medicine." My Venezuelan-born friend Kenny says his relatives are speaking differently. Cousins who once answered "Fine" or "Good" when asked, "How are you?" now say, "We're eating." Eating is a big deal in the country that's given birth to jokes about a "Venezuelan diet." A survey by three universities found 75 percent of Venezuelans lost an average 19 pounds this year. So are American celebrities who championed Venezuela's "people's revolution" embarrassed? Will they admit they...

Cronyism is alive and well in the Swamp. “We The People” who resoundingly voted to “Drain the Swamp” will lose if the status quo is allowed to win. “Status quo, you know, is Latin for ‘the mess we’re in’.”—Ronald Reagan Crony capitalism is defined as an economic system characterized by close, mutually advantageous relationships between business leaders and government officials. Many of our nation’s biggest companies come to the Washington Swamp, to hire lobbyists to preserve tax breaks, to use the power of government for competitive reasons or to secure government money for corporate projects. And Elizabeth Warren is happy...

Pope Francis saluted the role of entrepreneurs in spurring economic development, but said that business decisions must be based on the workers’ welfare, in a meeting with workers and management in Genoa on May 27. Speaking at the Ilva factory during his Saturday visit to Genoa, the Pope acknowledged that “there is no good economy without a good entrepreneur.” He spoke of the ability of entrepreneurs “to create: to create jobs, to create products.” However, the Pope went on to draw a sharp distinction between entrepreneurs and speculators. “The speculator does not love his company, he does not love his...

Speaking to workers and business people in Italy’s port city of Genoa Saturday, Pope Francis surprised his hearers by praising entrepreneurship and touting the importance of healthy businesses for the economy. “There can’t be a good economy without good businessmen, without their capacity to create and to produce,” he said, shattering his reputation as an enemy of the free market economy. The Pope recognized that the essential value of work and employment is only possible when companies are sound and successful. Without denouncing unemployment benefits, Francis insisted that state intervention wasn’t a real solution. “A monthly check from the state...

It's now been scientifically proven that the wimpier the guy, the more likely he is to be a socialist. No kidding. According to a new study, physically weaker men are more prone to support socialism, a trend psychologists say may be because they feel they can’t compete against stronger men and are therefore consider inequality more threatening.  According to the Times, U.K., Brunel University ran a study on 171 men, measuring everything from their strength, height, weight and even bicep circumference. What the university found was that the physically inferior men tended to be the ones who said they supported the redistribution...

Student also had her LinkedIn profile posted, called racist. Jessica Murphy, a 20-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay, recently published a column that represented the culmination of months’ worth of work and research, including a dozen public records act requests to the University of Wisconsin system. Her target? Biased classes offered through the public university system that indoctrinate rather than teach, and “degrade capitalism, praise Marxism and encourage a ‘social justice warrior’ ideology,” she wrote in her piece, headlined “Top Five Wasteful Classes in the UW System.” Published Monday by the MacIver Institute, a Wisconsin-based think tank...

 The May-pole is up, Now give me the cup; I'll drink to the garlands around it; But first unto those Whose hands did compose The glory of flowers that crown'd it.~  The Maypole, 1660Happy May Day comrades! Have you ever wondered  how this: Morphed into this?Maybe due to to a propaganda system masquerading as education? Producing stellar results like this: A recent study conducted by YouGov found only 33 percent of millennials are familiar with Lenin. Of those who are familiar, 25 percent view him favorably. The study also revealed, among other disturbing insights, that 32 percent of millennials believe...

A new book that sells the concept of Communism “in the simple terms of a children’s story” has failed to sell on Amazon.com — except in the category for true believers. “Communism for Kids” by MIT Press “unfolds like a story, with jealous princesses, fancy swords, displaced peasants, mean bosses, and tired workers,” its Amazon.com page explains. […] Scathing customer reviews give the book a rating of only 1.7 out of 5 stars, with comments noting communism has killed “over 60 million people” and asking, “If Communism is so great why are they selling the book. Isn’t that capitalism?” …

Nazly Sobhi Damasio, founder of La Feminista Descolonial, an feminist, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist platform, demanded this week that men and "white womxn" pay her "because they consume intellectual, emotional & creative labor 24/7 w/o my consent." Ms. Damasio further argued that she should be able to receieve that money and never be questioned about how she spends it, as that would be "gross, classist and frankly none of your business:" Damasio had made similar demands last week as well: She has also written extensively about "Zionism," "cis bodies," and other topics online: According to an article published in Latina, Ms....