Free Republic

When Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed a minimum wage bill into law in March, it was the highest statewide wage floor in the U.S. It was also the most convoluted, setting three different wages and raise schedules depending on the area's population. ‎ Wages will rise to $12.50 in rural Oregon, $13.50 in mid-size regions and $14.75 in greater Portland, all by the year 2022. But before the ink was even dry, Democrats, who control the state House, Senate and governor's office, announced they wanted to change the bill that was rammed through in a five-week legislative session despite fierce...

Nearly half of unemployed Americans have quit looking for work, and the numbers are even worse for the long-term jobless, according to a poll released Wednesday that paints a grim picture of the labor market. Some 59 percent of those who have been out of work for two years or more say they have stopped looking, the Harris Poll of unemployed Americans showed. Overall, 43 percent of the jobless said they have given up, according to the poll released in conjunction with Express Employment Professionals, a job placement service. "This is a tale of two economies," Express CEO Bob Funk...

Opponents of Britain's European Union membership have edged into the lead over the past two weeks, according to a YouGov poll which indicated President Barack Obama's intervention failed to swing support behind "In" vote in a June 23 referendum. The online survey for The Times taken on April 25-26 showed support for the Out campaign had risen 3 percentage points to 42 percent since a similar survey on April 12-14, while support for the "In" campaign had risen 1 percentage point to 41 percent.

Despite his proclamation that he "saved the world from a Great Depression," the fact is that Obama will be the first President ever to not see a single year of 3% GDP growth - but only cynical fiction-peddlers would mention facts at a time like this. In yet more legacy-defending narrative, Obama told The NYTimes today that his biggest failure was being unable to sell his success in putting the American economy back on track to the American people (no matter the actual realities) careful to blame Republicans for slowing growth "by a percentage point or two." And then in...

Despite his proclamation that he "saved the world from a Great Depression," the fact is that Obama will be the first President ever to not see a single year of 3% GDP growth - but only cynical fiction-peddlers would mention facts at a time like this. In yet more legacy-defending narrative, Obama told The NYTimes today that his biggest failure was being unable to sell his success in putting the American economy back on track to the American people (no matter the actual realities) careful to blame Republicans for slowing growth "by a percentage point or two." And then in...

As president, Donald Trump would sell off $16 trillion worth of U.S. government assets in order to fulfill his pledge to eliminate the national debt in eight years, senior adviser with the campaign Barry Bennett said. "The United States government owns more real estate than anybody else, more land than anybody else, more energy than anybody else," Bennett told Chris Jansing Sunday on MSNBC. "We can get rid of government buildings we're not using, we can extract the energy from government lands, we can do all kinds of things to extract value from the assets that we hold." In a...

Donald Trump said in an interview that economic conditions are so perilous that the country is headed for a “very massive recession” and that “it’s a terrible time right now” to invest in the stock market, embracing a distinctly gloomy view of the economy that counters mainstream economic forecasts. The New York billionaire dismissed concern that his comments — which are exceedingly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a major party front-runner — could potentially affect financial markets. Over the course of the discussion, the candidate made clear that he would govern in the same nontraditional way that he has campaigned,...

Donald Trump said in an interview that economic conditions are so perilous that the country is headed for a “very massive recession” and that “it’s a terrible time right now” to invest in the stock market, embracing a distinctly gloomy view of the economy that counters mainstream economic forecasts. The New York billionaire dismissed concern that his comments — which are exceedingly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a major party front-runner — could potentially affect financial markets.

Fact Checker Trump’s Nonsensical Claim He Can Eliminate $19 Trillion In Debt In Eight Years Donald Trump, in an interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa In a revealing interview, Trump predicts a ‘massive recession’ but intends to eliminate the national debt in 8 years By Glenn Kessler April 2 The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Robert Costa sat down with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Here's how the interview went. Donald Trump: “We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt.” Bob Woodward: “How long would that take?” Trump: “I think I could do it fairly quickly,...

"I think we’re sitting on an economic bubble. A financial bubble... We’re not at 5 percent unemployment. We’re at a number that’s probably into the 20s if you look at the real number. That was a number that was devised, statistically devised to make politicians – and in particular presidents – look good. And I wouldn’t be getting the kind of massive crowds that I’m getting if the number was a real number." "I’m talking about a bubble where you go into a very massive recession. Hopefully not worse than that, but a very massive recession. Look, we have money...

California lawmakers and union leaders have reached a tentative deal to raise the state minimum wage to $15 an hour over the next several years, the Los Angeles Times reports. Gov. Jerry Brown (D) is expected to make the formal announcement as early as Monday. According to the L.A. Times, the minimum wage will jump from $10 to $10.50 an hour in 2017 and will increase by $1 every year after that until reaching $15 an hour in 2022. Business with fewer than 25 employees will have an extra year to comply. "The governor and stakeholders have all been negotiating...

I have always known in my gut that the 2008 recession was deliberately caused by the democRATS as an election year strategy. They learned in 1992 that a bad economy was enough to get a democRAT elected to replace a republican incumbent. In 2006, the democRATS took control of Congress and began to put this strategy into action. However, a quick look into the history of the 2 bills I had previously suspected to be the root cause (Sarbanes/Oxley and Frank/Dodd) shows that one was passed in 2002 and the other in 2010, so neither one of those directly precipitated...

Inequality has risen. Jobs are going overseas. The more the stock market rises, the more the working class feels crushed by globalization. And all of this has occurred exactly as Democrats have engineered it. Stuff happens, they say. The truth hurts. Take it from Larry Summers, once one of President Obama's leading economic advisers: "One of the challenges in our society is that the truth is kind of an equalizer," Summers reportedly said in a candid moment in 2009. "One of the reasons that inequality has probably gone up in our society is that people are being treated closer to...

Warren Buffett bemoaned the “negative drumbeat” on the U.S. economy from presidential candidates in his annual Berkshire Hathaway Inc shareholder letter on Saturday, saying they are misleading Americans into believing their children will be worse off than they are. “It’s an election year, and candidates can’t stop speaking about our country’s problems (which, of course, only they can solve),” Buffett wrote, italicizing “they” for emphasis. As a result of their dour outlook on the U.S. economy, many Americans now believe that their children will not live as prosperously as they themselves do, the 85-year-old Buffett said. “That view is dead...

After a series of stunning declines through the month of January and the first half of February, global financial markets seem to have found a patch of relative stability at least for the moment. But that does not mean that the crisis is over. On the contrary, all of the hard economic numbers that are coming in from around the world tell us that the global economy is coming apart at the seams. This is especially true when you look at global trade numbers. The amount of stuff that is being bought, sold and shipped around the planet is falling...

So the S&P 500 is out of correction for now and the coast is clear. NOT! This is exactly what we've been predicting would happen – after reaching new lows, stocks would have to bounce before they inevitably resume their longer-term trend, which is down. But stocks haven't been the only victims of late. Just a couple weeks ago the January nonfarm payroll report came in at 151,000 jobs. So much for the expected 190,000! And of the ones reported, they were mostly low-wage jobs. Pile that on top of the disappointing Christmas and retail sales in December. Not to...

Remember Obama phones? Now it's Obama loans. The Obama administration is trying to muscle in on the small-dollar loan market, in part by muscling out the online lending industry. It is ordering banks to go against the advice of their regulators and step up small-dollar lending to economically disadvantaged customers. It's toying with the idea of offering banking services, including consumer loans, through the Postal Service. And this week we learned the Treasury Department is asking for $10 million to provide small loans to people with questionable credit through community development organizations. It's ACORN going into the payday loan business....

A heated argument erupted Thursday at a hearing on the IRS, with Democrats and Republicans trading charges about the work of the Oversight Committee. Two Democrats on the panel accused their GOP colleagues of repeatedly holding hearings on the IRS for political reasons. In his opening statement, Oversight Committee ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) complained that the hearing was the 23rd held about the IRS in recent years. "Unfortunately, Republicans have become obsessed with investigating any and every allegation relating to the IRS, no matter how small," he said. He said Republicans are frustrated that they have never found...

The headline you'll read is that the Rubio plan cuts taxes by $6.8 trillion over a decade. This needs to be put in the context of the $42 trillion of revenue the federal government is projected to collect over the next ten years. So it's a big score, but it's not so big when compared to the larger tax revenue picture. Rarely are these two numbers associated, as they always should be. Needless to say, they are not in the TPC report. TPC themselves admit that they lack the capacity to do a macroeconomic analysis of the plan. In other...

U.S. stocks tumbled Monday morning to their lowest level in 22 months as a fresh drop in oil prices amid continuing fears of economic slowdown pushed investors to the perceived safety of government bonds and gold. "Is the market throwing out the baby with the bath water?"said James Meyer, chief investment officer at Tower Bridge Advisors, referring to the "rapid fall in prices for the high flying tech and biotech names that have been leading the market for the past 12 months." "The former leaders of the previous bull cycle are the ones that get taken to the woodshed in...