Free Republic

Milton Friedman 1978. From a lecture given at Stanford University, he instructs students and faculty on how free markets are the number one tool in the universe to reduce poverty. In the video he disparages government programs that discourage productivity, undermine minority advancement, and actually create poverty...

Less than half (46%) of U.S. kids younger than 18 years of age are living in a home with two married heterosexual parents in their first marriage. This is a marked change from 1960, when 73% of children fit this description, and 1980, when 61% did, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of recently-released American Community Survey (ACS) and Decennial Census data. Rapid changes in American family structure have altered the image of who’s gathering for the holidays. While the old “ideal” involved couples marrying young, then starting a family, and staying married till “death do they part”, the...

“Independent journalist” Jeremy Scahill is a blogger at The Intercept, which was co-founded by Glenn Greenwald. He is also a colossal moron: I'm very glad I was able to visit Cuba several times before US tourists try to turn it into Cancun

The number of women in the United States who gave birth dropped last year, according to federal statistics released Thursday, extending the decline for a sixth year. The National Center for Health Statistics reported Thursday that there were 3.93 million births in the United States in 2013, down slightly from 3.95 million in 2012, but 9 percent below the high in 2007. According to the report, the general fertility rate in the United States — the average number of babies women from 15 to 44 bear over their lifetime — dropped to a record low last year, to 1.86 babies,...

The number of beneficiaries who receive compensation from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps, has topped 46,000,000 for 37 straight months, according to data released by the Department of Agriculture (USDA). In September 2014, which is the latest data from the USDA, there were 46,459,998 Americans who received assistance from the SNAP program. The number of beneficiaries has exceeded 46 million since September 2011, a total of 37 months, or more than three years. [snip]Households on food stamps in September got an average of $252.69 during the month, and the program benefits cost taxpayers $5,748,809,023....

One in five young adults—ages 18 to 34 years old—live in poverty, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. “More millennials are living in poverty today, and they have lower rates of employment, compared with their counterparts in 1980,” the Census states. “One in five young adults lives in poverty (13.5 million people), up from one in seven (8.4 million people) in 1980.” …

If government anti-poverty programs focused on individual outcomes, the results would be those like Lance from Michigan. His father on death row and his mother a prostitute, Lance wandered into Florida and lived behind a dumpster at a 7-11. Hungry, dirty and homeless, he later found a place to live, became sober, got a job and will go to college on a scholarship. We don’t hear stories like that attributed to government assistance. That is because there are over 90 government welfare programs ranging from cash payments to housing and nutrition that are projected to cost $14 trillion over the...

In the United States—as in all of the world’s wealthier nations—ending poverty is not a matter of resources. Many economists, including Timothy Smeeding of the University of Wisconsin (and former director of the Institute for Research on Poverty) have argued that every developed nation has the financial wherewithal to eradicate poverty. In large part this is because post-industrial productivity has reached the point where to suggest a deficit in resources is laughably disingenuous. And despite the occasional political grandstanding against welfare, there is no policy, ideology or political party that is on the books as pro-starvation, pro-homelessness, pro-death or anti-dignity....

The compassion shown by Officer William Stacy to desperate Alabama mother Helen Johnson captured the nation's attention at a time of strained relations between the police and black Americans. Instead of arresting her for stealing five eggs to feed her starving family on Saturday, Stacy bought the carton and the touching hug they shared afterwards caught on video by a stunned passer-by went viral. But it got even better on Wednesday when Officer Stacy and some colleagues arrived at 47-year-old Johnson's home with two truckloads of food to keep her and her children and grandchildren fed through Christmas.

The Census Bureau reported in a study released this week that 65 percent of American children lived in households taking aid from one or more federal program as of the fall of 2011. "Almost two-thirds (65 percent) of children," said the Census Bureau, "lived in households that participated in at least one or more of the following government aid programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Medicaid, and the National School Lunch Program." How to be dependent on government is now one of...

A historic number of America's youth – 2.5 million children – are homeless according to a report recently released by the National Center on Family Homelessness. These children, the report shows, are victims of a number of variables that contribute to homelessness including single motherhood, racial disparities and low household incomes. The report, based on data compiled from the U.S. Department of Education and the Census Bureau, reveals that many of the nation's homeless children are on the verge of losing their housing, don't have a fixed residence, are living in places not designated for human beings, or are living...

Let me see here. According to the history books, Civil Rights were won in the 60s with the signing of the Civil Rights Act pushed by Republicans and signed into law by Lyndon Baines Johnson. Al Sharpton now wants to secure his place in history as the Supreme Black Leader of our generation by going back to the past and creating a “New Civil Rights Movement?” On December 13, 2014, Sharpton looks to lead yet another March on DC to correct police across the nation. “We are not advocating violence, we are asking that police violence stop.” – Al Sharpton...

Friday's jobs data proves it - America is back baby!!! Or is it all totally manipulated statistical shenanigans? A quick glimpse at the following charts two rather uncomfortably 'non-recovery-like' lines - of structural unemployment and the percent of the US population of Food Stamps - would suggest that for much of America, the recovery never happened... and in fact has got worse...  

Cain was a witty fellow. He asked one of the best-known rhetorical questions, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Of course he was not. But that was irrelevant. He was covering up something. About what he had done to his brother. So, when I hear the phrase “my brother’s keeper,” I look around for casualties. Earlier this year we saw President Obama more than Abel to raise Cain’s phraseology. His “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative is a $200 million public-private partnership to help mentor and assist young black and Latino boys in maneuvering the admittedly treacherous terrain of growing up. Since this...

As LifeNews previously reported, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released its national abortion report last month and the new statistics show the number of abortions in the United States have declined to a historic low. However, unfortunately, a new analysis reveals that out of the ten states where the most abortions occurred, 60.48% of the babies killed were African American and Hispanic. blackbaby6According to the Census Bureau, Blacks and Hispanics comprise only 13.2% and 17.1% of the population respectively; however they get 37.3% and 22% of all abortions. Additionally, while it definitely isn’t news that Planned Parenthood targets minority...

The U.S. birth rate reached an all-time low in 2013, as the number of babies born in the country declined for the sixth straight year since the peak in 2007, a new report finds. The country's birth rate dipped to 62.5 births per 1,000 women between ages 15 and 44, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That is 10 percent lower than the birth rate in 2007, which was 69.3 per 1,000 women, and a record low since the government started tracking birth rates in 1909, when birth rate was 126.8. In 2013,...

(CNSNews.com) – In New York City, 77.56% of the abortions in 2011 were performed on Black and Hispanic babies, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The Abortion Surveillance report published by the CDC, for which the latest abortion numbers are for 2011, show there were 76,251 abortions in New York City that year. For that total, 9,550 abortions were of white babies, which is 12.5% of the total; 35,188 babies were black (46.1% of total); 23,959 were Hispanic (31.4%); and another 7,554 “other” abortions, 9.9%, which includes Asians and Native Americans, as...

When it comes to poverty, the two biggest states, California and Texas, offer a vivid contrast: Results matter more than well-meaning intentions, and work beats welfare. Once again, California has the highest poverty rate in the nation at 23.4%, according to a new Census Bureau report that takes into account the variable cost of housing from state to state as well as noncash benefits such as housing vouchers and food stamps. (The official poverty measure assumes the same costs throughout America.) This broad poverty measure shows that Texas' poverty rate dropped to 15.9%, the national average. Along with the nation's...

DAVIS (CBS13) — A UC Davis economics professorhas determined there is no American Dream. Gregory Clark is sharing his research as a hard truth with no hope—whether or not you can get ahead in America is as predictable as any formula. In fact, he says, the formulas for social mobility in the United States show there’s nothing to dream about. “America has no higher rate of social mobility than medieval England, Or pre-industrial Sweden,” he said. “That’s the most difficult part of talking about social mobility is because it is shattering people s dreams.” Clark crunched the numbers in the...

Nearly one in five U.S. households will celebrate Thanksgiving on food stamps this year, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on participation in the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program. Back in fiscal 2000, there were 106,061,000 households in the United States and, according to a USDA report published in November 2012, there was a monthly average of 7,335,000 households—or 6.9 percent—getting food stamps that year. As of this August, according to the most recent data released by USDA, there were 22,729,389 households on food stamps. That equaled 19.75 percent of 115,048,000 households in the country...