Free Republic

Economic equality will never be possible because some people are too stupid to get ahead in the modern world, said Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, in a speech that is igniting a wave of criticism. Nick Clegg, Britain’s deputy prime minister, accused Mr. Johnson of “unpleasant elitism.” In the speech honouring the work of former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Mr. Johnson said natural differences between humans will always mean some will succeed and others fail. “I am afraid that violent economic centrifuge is operating on human beings who are already very far from equal in raw ability, if...

In the interest of transparency, Gov. Mark Dayton has released his tax returns for every year since 2009, back when he was just a candidate for the governor's office. He dropped his 2012 returns yesterday afternoon, and they reveal that last year was a prosperous one for our governor: Dayton took home his state salary of $116,125, as well as $92,381 from the family trust, and $130,291 in capital gains, for a total income of $343,234. That income puts Dayton among Minnesota's highest earners. Yet, according to his records, Dayton donated just $1,000 to charity in 2012.

Every year, new estimates of the incomes of the “top 1 percent” are reported with the requisite fanfare from Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics and Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley. And every year the press gets the numbers all wrong. “Worry Over Inequality Occupies Wall Street,” writes Justin Lahart of the Wall Street Journal. An odd worry, when stocks keep hitting record highs. In reality, top income shares always rise and fall with the stock market because of capital gains, stock options, and bonuses and fees tied to stocks. “Messrs. Piketty and Saez,”...

Talk about expensive real estate: A House seat can easily cost millions. Every cycle, a few wealthy candidates dig into their deep pockets to fund their own campaigns. This cycle is on track to be no different — except that Republicans dominate the ranks of potentially self-funding congressional candidates. Democrats constituted some of the richest candidates of 2012, including Reps. John Delaney of Maryland, Suzan DelBene of Washington and Scott Peters of California. All three made Roll Call’s 50 Richest list this year. But in 2014, Republicans boast far more self-funders among their recruits — at least nine so far....

Our sense of the force currently paralyzing the government is full of misconceptions -- including what to call it. To judge from the commentary inspired by the shutdown, most progressives and centrists, and even many non-Tea Party conservatives, do not understand the radical force that has captured the Republican Party and paralyzed the federal government. Having grown up in what is rapidly becoming a Tea Party heartland–Texas–I think I do understand it. Allow me to clear away a few misconceptions about what really should be called, not the Tea Party Right, but the Newest Right. The first misconception that is...

As we continue to knock down individual members from the long list of liberal talking points, another we can add to the scrap heap of history is that Republicans are the "party of the rich." In polling data during the 2012 election campaign, two and a half times more registered voters said that the Republicans' policies favor the rich versus those of the Democrats. Twice as many voters thought the Democrats' policies favored the middle class compared to those of the Republicans. And twelve times as many voters indicated that the Democrats' policies favored the poor over those of the...

Ninety years ago — in 1921 — federal income-tax policies reached an absurdity that many people today seem to want to repeat. Those who believe in high taxes on “the rich” got their way. The tax rate on people in the top income bracket was 73 percent in 1921. On the other hand, the rich also got their way: They didn’t actually pay those taxes. The number of people with taxable incomes of $300,000 a year or more — equivalent to far more than $1 million in today’s money — declined from over 1,000 people in 1916 to fewer than...

Occupy Wall Street won. In fact, the movement won even before taking to the parks in 2011. By the time the demonstrations started, America had already elected a president whose top priority was to reduce high-end income inequality — i.e., the inequality between the wealthy and everyone else. If Obamacare — at its heart a “spread the wealth” redistribution scheme — and a call for ever-more tax hikes on the rich and on businesses aren’t proof enough, there’s also Barack Obama’s recent speech at Knox College. The enormous disparity between the 1 percent and the 99 percent, the president argued...

One of the signature themes of the Obama administration is that the American dream is under attack due to "income disparity." The words divide the country into haves and have-nots, suggesting a national condition that needs to be corrected—presumably by "progressive" taxation as a mechanism for income redistribution. The American dream has traditionally been one of individual success that is rewarded and admired. But we are now urged to become zero-sum society in which those achieving the American dream are envied and even resented. The American dream is not politically affiliated. The last time it was alive and well was...

Occupy Wall Streeters claimed that they were populists. Their ideological opposites, the Tea Partiers, said they were, too. Both became polarizing. And so far populism, whether on the right or left, does not seem to have made inroads with the traditional Republican and Democrat establishments. Gas has gone up about $2 a gallon since Barack Obama took office. Given average yearly rates of national consumption, that increase alone translates into an extra $1 trillion that American drivers havencollectively paid in higher fuel costs over the last 54 months.Victor DavisVictor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution,...

President Obama made his fourth or fifth, or maybe it's the seventh or eighth, pivot to the economy on Wednesday, and a revealing speech it was. We counted four mentions of "growth" but "inequality" got five. This goes a long way to explaining why Mr. Obama is still bemoaning the state of the economy five years into his Presidency. The President summed up his economic priorities close to the top of his hour-long address. "This growing inequality isn't just morally wrong; it's bad economics," he told his Galesburg, Illinois audience. "When middle-class families have less to spend, businesses have fewer...

Marc Rich, the trader known as the "King of Commodities" who was pardoned in 2001 by President Bill Clinton just hours before he left office, has died in Switzerland. He was 78. Rich's Israel-based spokesman Avner Azulay says Rich died Wednesday and will be buried in Israel on Thursday. Rich fled the United States to Switzerland in 1983 after being indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury on more than 50 counts of fraud, racketeering, trading with Iran during the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis and evading more than $48 million in income taxes Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/06/26/financier-marc-rich-who-fled-to-switzerland-in-183-and-was-pardoned-by-clinton/#ixzz2XK1P5Jvd

A new Congressional Budget Office report shows that the rich get most of the benefit from various deductions and credits in the tax code, music to the ears of the soak-the-rich crowd. But since the wealthy pay nearly all the nation's income taxes, this is hardly a sign of unfairness. According to the CBO report, the government "spends" about $900 billion through deductions, exclusions, special tax rates and tax credits, with more than half going to the wealthiest 20% of households, while just 8% goes to the bottom fifth. Democrats, who ordered the report, celebrated the news, since it appears...

WASHINGTON—Wealthier households benefit significantly more than lower earners from big tax breaks such as deductions for mortgage interest and charitable giving, the government said in a study Wednesday. More than half the benefits of 10 major tax breaks go to the one-fifth of U.S. households at the top of the income scale, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The top 1 percent of earners reaps 17 percent of these tax breaks, which also include preferential treatment of investment income and the deduction for sales and income taxes paid to state and local governments. Other breaks, such as the per-child tax...

In the aftermath of 9/11, many young, strong Americans enlisted, willingly agreeing to sacrifice their lives if necessary to protect our countryÂ’s interests. TodayÂ’s wealthiest Americans have the same opportunity to put their countryÂ’s interests before their own. Politicians should not shy away from asking them to put forth not their lives but what are, for them, their modest Social Security checks. The philosophy of the investment management firm I founded 15 years ago focuses first on a companyÂ’s balance sheet and second on its income statement. This approach has served our clients well. The current debate over entitlement reform...

Obama’s big money corporate donors included: AT&T--$4.6 million Microsoft--$2.1 million Boeing--$1 million Chevron--$1 million Genentech--$750,000 Deloitte--$500,000 FedEx--$500,000 Coca Cola--$430,000 Bank of America--$300,000 Xerox--$250,000 ExxonMobil--$250,000 Northrup Grumman--$100,000 Verizon--$100,000 Obama also hauled in $250,000 checks from each of the following unions: The International Association of Fire Fighters, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and the National Education Association.

When President Obama first ran in 2008, he claimed his economic policies would "foster economic growth from the bottom up and not just from the top down." He said he'd put in place "an immediate rescue plan for the middle class" and would end the "tired, worn-out, trickle-down ideologies we've been seeing for so many years." Obama got all he wanted in his first two years in the White House, when Democrats had solid control of Congress — a massive stimulus, auto industry bailouts, temporary middle class tax cuts, vast new regulations on businesses and ObamaCare. But his policies produced...

Business majors who admitted they'd jump at the chance to take a $2 million insider trading tip still were willing to stop and help a victim in need. Investment bankers raking in the dough on Wall Street may get a bad rap for being selfish, but a desire to make boatloads of money won't automatically turn you into Scrooge McDuck, according to new research. A study published in the April issue of the Journal of Applied Social Psychology found that many people primarily driven by a desire for wealth are still willing to help someone in need. Previous research has...

One of the first things you learn when living in New York is that what qualifies as wealthy somewhere else seems barely middle-class here. On the Upper West Side, where I live, it’s hard not to feel as if Manhattan is impossibly expensive for young professionals. The average nondoorman, one-bedroom apartment in the neighborhood rents for about $2,500 a month. Oatmeal-raisin cookies at Levain Bakery cost $4 each. A pair of sensible, unstylish walking flats from Harry’s Shoes can set you back $480. I suppose, by comparison, that the $198 chef’s menu at Jean-Georges doesn’t sound so ridiculous. New Yorkers...