Free Republic

* Fewer suicides occur when minimum wages are higher during periods of elevated unemployment, according to a new study. * Every $1 increase in the minimum wage is associated with a 6% reduction in suicide for high school grads. * Boosting the minimum wage by $1 could have saved 27,550 lives from 1990 to 2015, the study says. Raising the federal minimum wage, which hasn't increased in more than a decade, might accomplish far more than simply offering U.S. workers a boost in pay. New research suggests that lifting the baseline wage could also stop thousands of Americans from killing...

If you went to bed early Tuesday, you were surprised to wake up Wednesday and learn that World War III has been delayed. No doubt you were also shocked that Iran blinked, oil prices were tumbling and the stock market was soaring. Once again, the Chicken Little chorus got everything all wrong. The sky isn’t falling and Donald Trump pulled off a huge victory. Oh, and he’s still president. Iran’s decision to pretend it was retaliating for the death of Qassem Soleimani by lobbing ineffective missiles is terrific news for America and freedom-loving people everywhere. So was Trump’s Wednesday offer...

California's New Dystopian Laws Californians, are you ready for the twelve-hundred new progressive laws that take effect this year? Get ready because many of these new rules come with stiff penalties. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8FhWH4uSdk&feature=emb_title  

The only thing that rivals President Trump’s tally of kept promises is the endless list of inaccurate predictions his critics have made about the U.S. economy.  Of course, we heard these apocryphal predictions even before Donald Trump won the 2016 election. For instance, in October 2016, the far-left publication Politico boldly declared that “Wall Street is set up for a major crash if Donald Trump shocks the world on Election Day and wins the White House.” The ability of Trump’s critics to predict our economic future hasn’t improved with age. Throughout 2019, numerous so-called “economists” and “experts” have taken a...

For all the media brouhaha over an imminent recession in 2019, President Donald Trump’s economy has continued to stupefy prognosticators going into the new year. The Wall Street Journal reported Jan. 1 in a piece headlined “The Bull Market is Charging into 2020,” that stocks across the globe “closed out one of their best years over the past decade, defying money managers who began 2019 expecting the bull market to be upended by threats from the U.S.-China trade fight and a slowdown in growth.” Stock indexes in the U.S., as well as Brazil and Germany, were up more than 20...

On December 19, 2019, by a vote of 385 Yeas to 41 Nays, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the United-States-Mexico-Canada Agreement Implementation Act (H.R. 5430). If passed by the U.S. Senate and signed into law, this 239-page bill would both approve and implement the now 2,410-page United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which is intended to replace the original 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). As The New American has previously covered (here, here, and here), there are many problems with the USMCA that outweigh any potential economic benefits — mainly how it would erode America’s national sovereignty in...

I consider myself to be a political “Independent”, a long time ex- member of the Republican Compromise Party, and never, never ever a member of the “Klan of New Bolsheviks Party” (formerly Democrats). No one has been a firmer supporter, in general, of President Trump, his policies, his patriotism, and his determination to “Make America Great Again”, than I have been, despite his actual or conjectured moral lapses over the years (lapses which have also surfaced in almost EVERY POTUS since our beginning)! Right from the beginning of his administration in January of 2017 he appeared determined to protect Americans...

One of the promises President Trump made to American voters is that he would shrink the federal government. With the latest announcement that the National Security Council is set to lose as many as 330 people, the President is closing in on that goal. The National Security Council has been at work in Washington, D.C., since 1947. Congress created it at the beginning of the Cold War to coordinate policy between the various government national security entities, such as the military and the CIA. President Truman was unenthused, resenting Congress's impingement on his ability to handle foreign affairs. Nevertheless, he...

At first glance, 2019 was a rough year for anyone in favor of an economy and society guided from the bottom up by people with the freedom to exchange, cooperate and think as they choose. The highly visible left flank of the Democratic Party, fully embracing socialism in name and approach, erupted with proposals that would drastically change the country in ways they intend and many more in ways they do not. Meanwhile, the Republican Party’s debt from its Faustian bargain with President Donald Trump began to come due.

In a 1981 interview on Today with Phil Donahue, a 39 year old Bernie Sanders says he is "not a capitalist." Sanders had just won his first term as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont. In explaining his case for Socialism he says, "Do I believe the profit motive is fundamental to human nature? The answer is no. I think the spirit of cooperation - that you and I can work together is better than compete against each other and destroy each other."

Donald Trump redefined the American political order with his stunning defeat of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a polarizing victory and he’s now under a highly disputed partisan impeachment. . . . Trump has passed broad tax cuts, began a dramatic rollback of regulations and appointed dozens of constitutionalist judges. Despite predictions the stock market would crash, the economy has boomed. He brought North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to the negotiating table — after dire warnings he was provoking a war. He forced the renegotiation of trade relations with Mexico and Canada, and launched a trade war with China...

For decades before President Donald Trump’s tax plan took effect, U.S. corporations with foreign subsidiaries had no (sane economic) choice but to keep their overseas profits abroad. After all, they’d face double taxation if they wanted to bring them home. Their profits were already taxed by the foreign country they’re operating in, and then to repatriate those funds would’ve required them to pay the U.S. corporate tax rate, which was then among the highest in the world. By year end 2017, right before Trump signed his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), upwards of $2.5 trillion in cash was parked...

BEIJING (AP) - China’s imports of soybeans surged in November following the announcement of an interim trade deal with the United States. Imports rose 53.7% over a year earlier to 5.4 million tons, according to customs data. Imports of U.S. soybeans more than doubled from the previous month to 2.6 million tons, according to AWeb.com, a news website that serves the Chinese farming industry.

Stocks climbed on Thursday, hitting new record highs, as the market rallied into the end of 2019. Stocks have been piling up new records as the market wraps up 2019. The S&P 500 has risen 2.9% this month and 8.6% this quarter, bringing the year-to-date gains to 29%. The benchmark has a chance at scoring a historic year: It is less than one percentage point away from posting the best annual performance since 1997.

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang is on to something: Americans could use a big "freedom dividend" -- that is, a guaranteed source of income on which they can rely month after month, free from the uncertainties of the job market and employment. But like many Democrats' ideas, Yang's otherwise brilliant insight is corrupted by an ideology that strangely sees the government as the engine of wealth creation and distribution. Yang's plan to provide a universal basic income of $1,000 per month to every American over age 18 sounds pretty good. All that money could go toward education, health care, job...

Washington -- What do you make of it? Merry Christmas greetings have been assaulting me from every corner. The assaults began about two weeks ago. I think I was in a CVS store buying aspirin for a splitting headache. No, possibly it was at the dry cleaners, and I was picking up a sweater. The person at the counter let fall a "Merry Christmas." I, of course, reciprocated and hurried off. I would have thought nothing of it, but it has continued for two weeks. Will it even continue after Christmas Day? What does it mean? In recent years, I...

On a single day in December 2015, Gary Jones, who resigned last month as president of the United Automobile Workers, spent more than $13,000 of the union’s money at a cigar store in Arizona. His purchases included a dozen $268 boxes of Ashton Double Magnums and a dozen boxes of Ashton Monarchs at $274.50 each. “Hi Gary, Thank you & Happy New Year,” read a handwritten note from the store. The purchases, documented by a federal complaint filed against a union leader in September, were part of more than $60,000 in cigars and cigar paraphernalia that Mr. Jones and other...

Robert Lighthizer discusses USMCA and addresses Mexican president Obrador at gathering in Mexico.

President Donald Trump’s United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement is finally up for a vote this week—just in time for Christmas. After nearly a year of delay, this gift for the American people represents an opportunity for freer trade and a chance to grow our economy, reduce prices on many goods, and increase our exports to the world, creating more and higher-paying jobs in the process. As we all know, just like with other Christmas gifts, you also can get the occasional ugly sweater that you really didn’t want. The same is true here. Some compromises were made to get USMCA through Congress,...

Expect the president to ride an economic tailwind to victory, with the S&P topping 3400 by Election Day [SNIP] U.S. economy could accelerate in 2020 Keep in mind that in 2020 the U.S. will have an impeached president running for re-election, with a record number of people working and unemployment near 50-year lows (see chart). I know everything is not perfect, but historically, a good economy has been an electoral advantage for an incumbent. My job is not to make political statements but to interpret how policies affect markets and help clients to profit from those facts. So far, what...