Free Republic

It turns out that all Americans, regardless of income, spend a large percentage of their income on what economists categorize as luxuries. People who make the most money spend the biggest chunk of their incomes on luxury goods, but even the poorest households spend a significant amount on luxuries, according to an analysis released recently by Deutsche Bank Research. The wealthiest families (the top fifth of earners) spend around 65% of their incomes on luxury goods and 35% on necessities, according to the study, which looked at spending habits between 1984 and 2014. Middle-income households weren’t far behind: They spend...

Caribbean Foreign Ministers, including Belizean Foreign Minister Wilfred Elrington, attended a meeting in Grenada yesterday with two officials from the new U.S. administration of President Donald Trump. “Basically I thought they wanted to tell us they still have an interest in us and to hear our concerns and interests, and so we told them the various ills confronting our region,” Elrington told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) following the talks. UnderSecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas A Shannon Jr. and Acting Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Francisco Palmieri, met with the foreign ministers on the sidelines of the...

If you were to ask a group of Americans to pinpoint poverty in this country, a good many would tell you you to turn a watchful eye to the inner-city blocks. Perhaps others would suggest you look at the isolated valleys of rural Appalachian coal mining towns. But few would point you to the suburbs, our country's neatly manicured, leafy green mazes of driveways and cul-de-sacs. That's a shame; it's this very misperception that makes the issue so pernicious. In recent decades, the number of suburbanites living in poverty has increased at an alarming clip. In 1990, there were 9.5...

A quality of life study conducted by the website 24/7 Wall Street formulated a list of the 50 worst cities to live in America, and some commonly referenced shanty towns headline it. The 50 worst cities list was not kind to the state of Michigan, which contributed two cities to the top 10, and is home to the number one worst city to live in the US: Detroit.

The United States is a nation built on the values of equal opportunity, hard work and self-determination. It prides itself on the belief that in this land of opportunity any woman, man and child should be able to reach their full potential. The challenge is to create the environment in which people can thrive. That includes a strong social compact in which government, business and the social (non-profit) sector invest in the well-being of individuals and families and ensure pathways to opportunity and success. At the most basic level that begins with ensuring access to life's basic needs, including quality,...

There's only one "program" that will make a difference. PBS NewsHour aired a story last year about Milwaukee, saying many residents call the city "the worst place to be a black man in America." It talked about last year's riots in the city after a cop shot a black man. One black Milwaukee resident explained that this is "what happens when you inflict poverty" on poor black residents. "Inflict poverty"? In the 50 years following President Lyndon Johnson's launch of the "war on poverty" in 1964, government spent over $22 trillion on welfare and various anti-poverty programs. The problem in...

CEOs receive $38 million to $70 million per year and more, plus benefits. (We don’t know, of course, what President Trump “earns.”) Then, these CEOs fire thousands of their employees. Companies are closing. People continue losing jobs. Others remain unemployed. Nearly one out of four children in the U.S. are homeless and/or hungry. This extreme wealth is truly obscene. How many cars, houses, boats and $50,000 coats do the 1 percent need to maintain their status and rip off everyone else, as Trump has? A mean-spirited Trump and Congress now propose a budget that would sharply reduce health care for...

In Nevada, we will know the difference between a moderate Republican and a Socialist by Friday Free enterprise has done more to reduce poverty than all the government programs dreamed up by Democrats.—Ronald Reagan In a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 24 states have a majority of births financed by Medicaid. In other words, a majority of births in nearly half of our nation are born into poverty. This is progress according to Progressives Socialists, the champions of big government (not the little guy) and the architects of the disaster known as Obamacare. So why would Socialists double...

In a column from December of 2015, the Wall Street Journal’s Mary O’Grady unveiled a rather inconvenient fact that poverty warriors on the American left and right would perhaps prefer remain hidden: from 1980 to 2000, when the U.S. economy boomed, the number of Mexican arrivals into the U.S. grew from 2.2 million in 1980 to 9.4 million in 2000. The previous number is a clear market signal that the U.S. is where poverty has always been cured, as opposed to a condition that requires specific U.S. policy fixes. O’Grady’s statistics came to mind while reading a recent New York...

Operation Food Search is launching an expanded summer program this week, providing free meals to children under the age of 18 who would normally eat breakfast and lunch at school. Some of the meals will come from food truck-like vans. Starting Monday and continuing through Aug. 11, program leaders plan to distribute more than 100,000 meals to hungry children in St. Louis and St. Louis County, exceeding last year’s record. The summer program, now in its sixth year, has grown from providing 5,000 meals in 2012, Executive Director Sunny Schaefer said....

More than 36 percent of teenage girls in America are depressed or have suffered a recent major depressive episode, according to a study published in Translational Psychiatry. For boys, the rate is 13.6 percent. What are we doing to the kids? It isn't just one study. Research throughout the last several decades has shown a consistent pattern of rising anxiety, depression, suicide and suicide attempts among American adolescents. A 2001 paper published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis found that the suicide rate tripled between 1950 and 1990. The rise in depression and other psychological suffering cannot be written off...

The number of people homeless in the US city of Los Angeles has soared in the past year, a new report shows, despite efforts to combat the problem. The homeless population in the city grew 20% while the numbers for the wider Los Angeles County were even higher at 23%, the figures revealed. Experts say soaring rents and a high cost of living are major factors. Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn described the figures as "staggering". "Homelessness in LA County has grown at a shocking rate," she said in a statement. "Even as work is being done to get...

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high Oh your daddy’s rich and your ma is good-lookin’ So hush, little baby, don’t you cry. — Lyrics to “Summertime,” sung by Ella Fitzgerald Ella Fitzgerald knew a lot about the haves and have-nots. She grew up poor and at 17 had been homeless and hungry for a year before she was “discovered” at The Apollo in Harlem in 1934. Think of the millions of hungry children in rich America today who might never be “discovered” or are kept from realizing their talents. And for them...

Because if you have power to change your situation, then you don't need to rely on them There is nothing liberals hate more than the suggestion that people with problems in their lives have the power to solve those problems, on their own, by making changes in their lives. They freak out at any such suggestion and paint it as “blaming the victim.” But it is really not that at all. It is simply a recognition that people make their own decisions and form their own attitudes, and that they have the power to change those decisions and attitudes if...

Former U.S. Democrat Representative Corrine Brown was found guilty on 18 of 22 charges for fraud and tax evasion during trial verdict Thursday in federal court in Jacksonville. Brown was found guilty of taking tens-of-thousands of dollars from her One Door for Education Foundation, a charity for poor and impoverished children, and putting the money into her personal accounts for use in maintaining an indulgent lifestyle. She was also found guilty of conspiring within the scheme to defraud donors to the foundation, and guilty of attempts to impede/obstruct the investigation.

Venezuela is no stranger to protests, but the recent uprisings have rocked the country and stirred questions about the nation’s future.This past week, the “mother of all protests” has seen upward of 2 million Venezuelans take to the streets demanding an end to the notoriously corrupt Maduro regime.Beginning on what would be the 207th anniversary of the country’s independence from Spain, frustrated Venezuelans have taken to the streets demanding change. So far, three Venezuelans have been killed in the marches, hundreds have been injured, and 500 have been arrested.In the span of just over 20 years, President Nicolás Maduro, his...

American Indians are the poorest of all of America's ethnic groups. Why? After all, the government has granted them massive reservations and created entire agencies to look after them. Well, maybe that's why. Naomi Schaefer Riley, author of "The New Trail of Tears," explains. We've all heard about how many bad things the U.S. government did to American Indians in the past. But what about today? Like most people, the only time I hear about today's American Indians is when people are outraged about sports mascots or team names, like the Washington Redskins. But sports teams' names are the least...

“Jobs and free mass housing ... These are fundamental rights and the situation of extreme poverty demands it,” a Kadamay representative told teleSUR. Representatives of homeless families who occupied thousands of vacant government-built homes for over a month delivered a firm “wake-up call” to the Philippine Senate Tuesday, telling officials that the wretched social conditions and government neglect forced them to act. Now, the group is demanding jobs and free mass housing — or they'll have no choice but to continue their campaign of redistributing idle homes to the needy. “They said those who occupied the Bulacan houses were lazy,”...

If budget-cutters in Washington decided to eliminate food-stamp benefits to New Yorkers, the city’s politicians would be denouncing the cruelty of the “Republican war on the poor.” Yet Mayor Bill De Blasio and the city council are already inflicting the same sort of pain on low-income New Yorkers by denying them access to one of the nation’s most effective anti-poverty programs: Walmart.When he was mayor, Michael Bloomberg supported Walmart’s efforts to open a store in New York, but the company faced unremitting resistance from unions and elected officials, and it gave up the fight once de Blasio moved into Gracie...

LEXINGTON, MS (Mississippi News Now) - More than 100 jobs could soon be coming to the city of Lexington in Holmes County. Emerald Transformer announced today it will open a new factory on Bowling Green Road. More jobs, more tax dollars and more exposure - that's what folks here in Lexington hope Emerald Transformer can do for their small town. Signs are going up and the company officials prepare to breath new life into this 100,000 square foot building. Holmes County board president James Young and his team said for years, the Lexington warehouse has sat empty. "This is something...