Free Republic

The price of happiness depends a lot on where you live, according to a new report by the investment group Advisor Perspectives. The analysis is based on the now-famous work by Princeton researchers Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, who found that higher incomes only make people happier to a point. Up to about $75,000 per year, the more a household earns, the happier people are. After that benchmark, however, additional income "buys life satisfaction but not happiness." The team separated these two issues by distinguishing fun from happiness. More money still leads people to have more life experiences and greater...

The unconstrained political warfare symbolized by House Speaker John Boehner's pledge to sue President Obama for allegedly abusing his executive authority pushes this presidency farther down a rocky road that Bill Clinton and George W. Bush would painfully recognize. In one key respect, each president's tenure has followed a similar arc. Each initially sought the White House promising to bridge the nation's widening partisan divide. Clinton pledged to transcend "brain-dead policies in both parties" with his "New Democrat" agenda. Bush declared himself a "compassionate conservative" who would govern as "a uniter, not a divider." Obama emerged with his stirring 2004...

The year 1776 saw both the U.S. Declaration of Independence and publication of Gibbon’s "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."Today the United States stands on the top of the podium of world powers: however, does a Roman fate await? A visit to the dramatic Pueblo ruins in the American southwest, former home to a complex civilization that abandoned its settlements in the 12th-13th centuries A.D., warns us that circumstances can change, and dramatically. Archeology offers an education in patterns, possibilities and challenges that the U.S. should value and exploit for its future. For the U.S.,...

LONDON - America owes much of its freedom to its British heritage. But today, Britain is losing its freedom. Many Americans were stunned when British authorities arrested Liberty Great Britain party leader Paul Weston in April for publicly reciting Winston Churchill's criticism of Islam. The calendar might say it's 2014, but in Britain it's starting to feel like George Orwell's "1984" because "Big Brother" has decided that certain things can no longer be said. Arrested over Churchill Weston quoted from Winston Churchill's book, The River War, in which he wrote: "How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its...

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin congratulated US counterpart Barack Obama on America’s Independence Day Friday and expressed hope that bilateral relations would “successfully develop” despite their disagreements. Putin predicted that relations between Russia and the United States “will successfully develop on a pragmatic and equal foundation despite the difficulties and differences,” the Kremlin said. The two former Cold War adversaries “carry special responsibility for ensuring international stability and security” and “must cooperate in the interests of not just their own people, but the entire world,” Putin said.

One last dip into a big Pew survey we've been discussing about on the politics and policy views of Americans. Pew surveyed more than 10,000 adults earlier this year on topics ranging from their views of Hillary Rodham Clinton to taking the bus, and the report divides their responses along a set of political typologies that group respondents into generally coherent categories across the range of policy issues: i.e., the "business conservative," the "solid liberal," the young "next generation left." Across that spectrum, there is not surprisingly wide disagreement on racial progress in America and the steps government still must...

A couple of years ago, President Barack Obama, speaking on the economy, told an audience in Osawatomie, Kansas: "'The market will take care of everything,' they tell us. ... But here's the problem: It doesn't work. It has never worked. ... I mean, understand, it's not as if we haven't tried this theory." To believe what the president and many others say about the market's not working requires that one be grossly uninformed or dishonest. The key features of a free market system are private property rights and private ownership of the means of production. In addition, there's a large...

I think the points have been made: — Soccer is largely a tedious game featuring long stretches of uneventful play punctuated by the all-too-rare moment of scoring; — The clock concept is infuriating. We love the 45-minute halves with no commercials, but then the arbitrary one or three or six minutes of “extra time” violate every concept of precision that a clocked sport should have; — Soccer has its fan base, and it is not small; but the pressure on America to embrace it to some far larger degree is absurd. We simply never will as long as we...

Defenders of President Obama's release of five Taliban terrorists from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in exchange for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl cite as justification Israel's history of swapping hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for one or two Israel soldiers. As strong an ally and example of democracy as Israel is, especially in a region sorely lacking in either, Israel is not the United States. Israel has its own interests and purpose for its actions. The world looks to the United States for leadership and in this president and his administration it has found little. There are important...

Klinsmann Offers Brutally Honest Assessment Before Team Even Arrives In BrazilThe United States men’s soccer team has its work cut out for it at the upcoming World Cup. The United States is in what has been dubbed this year’s “Group of Death,” containing Germany, Portugal and Ghana. It will be very difficult for the U.S. to get out of Group G, and head coach Jurgen Klinsmann isn’t expecting a miracle in Brazil. In fact, he’s being brutally honest and realistic about his club’s chances. “We cannot win the World Cup because we are not at that level yet,” Klinsmann said,...

Here at GPS, we love deep data dives. We also revel in the fact that America continues to be the melting pot that it has always been. So we were interested to see a piece on Slate.com last week analyzing the most common languages spoken in each state using U.S. census data. This first map is predictable – other than English, Spanish is the most spoken language in almost all U.S. states. But watch what happens when you remove Spanish from the equation. Now there is the melting pot. In Michigan, Arabic clocks in as the third most commonly spoken...

Andrew Tahmooressi, 22, was arrested for driving into Mexico with firearms A U.S. Marine Corps reservist who had been living in San Diego will remain in a Mexican jail after firing his attorney. Andrew Tahmooressi, 22, was expected to testify before a Mexican judge during a court hearing Wednesday. Instead, he fired his attorney. Now the case is up in the air. On Monday, Tahmooressi's mother Jill told NBC 7 that her son said his attorney had instructed him to lie under oath. Tahmooressi was arrested April 1 after driving his black Ford pickup over the border at San Ysidro...

Russia is going to suspend the operation of all American GPS sites on its territory, starting from June 1, said Russia’s deputy PM, Dmitry Rogozin, who is in charge of space and defense industries. "Starting June 1, we will halt the work of those stations on Russian territory,” Rogozin said. Rogozin pointed out that American GPS ground stations are located in Russia under an agreement that dates back to 1993 and 2001. “Under this agreement there are 11 GPS stations on the territories of 10 [Russian federal] subjects,” he said.

Do you guys think that Muslims will use Harvard's decision to perform a Black Mass as propaganda to prove that the United States is indeed the Great Satan we are always accused us of being? I do think so, this will be a ripe chance for Jihadis to justify their attacks on us, as a righteous and genuinely holy war. Americans openly worhsiping the Devil in a Satanic ritual and this might very well be plastered all over the Muslim media in the Middle East.

A growing number of Syrian Christian leaders are traveling to the United States to plead with lawmakers to stop sending arms to the rebels. The most recent visitor is the Patriarch of the Church of Antioch, His Beatitude Gregorios III, who is based in Damascus. For the first three years of the civil war, Syria’s Christian leaders have not been frequent visitors to the U.S., in part fearing reprisals when they return to Syria, but also because they have been reluctant to engage in what they see as political issues. But with the civil war now in its fourth year,...

In February, the United Nations released a remarkably comprehensive report on North Korea's human rights abuses. The report interviewed 320 people, including a number of survivors from the notorious secret political system, and concluded that the country was committing human rights violations “without any parallel in the contemporary world.” So how did North Korea respond? With indignant anger. For weeks now, North Korean state media have been offering various retorts to the United Nations. In April, a North Korean spokesman argued that the United States and its allies were running a "human rights racket." Then, a few weeks later, the...

Whether the Cold War is back, it's an apt moment to strike up a wider conversation about a couple of central questions from my book "American Betrayal." Why did the West fail to claim an ideological or moral victory at the apparent end of the Cold War? Did the West really even win the Cold War? If we go back in time and listen, we hear no consensus click over signs that an unalloyed U.S.-led triumph over communist ideology had taken place; nor do we find a sense of national thanksgiving for the forces of good -- or, at...

It's a common question: Is soccer in the United States really growing, beyond the mere literal sense of the word? Answer: Yes and no – though even some instances of “no” actually point to “yes.” Let me try to explain, starting with a brief flyover of central Virginia youth soccer. A few months ago the Richmond Strikers and Richmond Kickers youth clubs, fierce rivals and longtime members of the US Soccer Development Academy, announced that they were merging their Developmental Academy programs into a new entity called “Richmond United". This new joint venture would pool both clubs' talent and coaching...

PHOENIX — The Arizona Legislature gave final approval Thursday to legislation that allows business owners asserting their religious beliefs to refuse service to gays and others, drawing backlash from Democrats who called the proposal "state-sanctioned discrimination" and an embarrassment.