Free Republic

Pope ends first leg of his three-nation South American tour with impassioned plea to safeguard the environmentDelivered message in Ecuador, which has one of the world's most diverse ecosystems but is also reliant on oil He said: 'As stewards of these riches, we have an obligation toward society and toward future generations' (...) 'As stewards of these riches which we have received, we have an obligation toward society as a whole and toward future generations,' Francis said. 'We cannot bequeath this heritage to them without proper care for the environment, without a sense of gratuitousness born of our contemplation...

Last week, President Obama held a summit on poverty at Georgetown University. There, he explained that unrest in major American cities could be traced not to lack of values, but to simple lack of cash -- and that lack of cash, he suggested, could be attributed to simple lack of luck. "The top 25 hedge fund managers made more than all of the kindergarten teachers in the country," Obama stated. "You pretty much have more than you'll ever be able to use or anyone in your family will ever be able to use. There's a fairness issue involved here." He...

In the second part of an exclusive interview with B&B Media, Professor Walter E. Williams explains how the government’s ability to force one individual into giving his or her property (taxes) to another is, in essence, slavery.

Campaigning for reelection, President Barack Obama often talked about the importance of everyone paying their "fair share" of taxes. The assumption was that there was general agreement about what fair share means. The underlying message is that those who earn more should pay more than they already are; that what the top 10 percent are paying is just not enough. This week, a Wall Street Journal article titled "Top 20 Percent of Earners Pay 84 Percent of Income Tax" by Laura Saunders provides a different perspective than we are used to hearing regarding who pays what income taxes. Nearly "half...

It’s now possible to sell a new product to hundreds of millions of people without needing many, if any, workers to produce or distribute it. At its prime in 1988, Eastman Kodak, the iconic American photography company, had more than 145,000 employees. In 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy. The same year Kodak went under, Instagram, the world’s newest photo company, had 13 employees serving 30 million customers.

Where are you, country? Why can’t I find you? Why have you gone away? Adapting Cindy Lou’s song about the loss of Christmas spirit in Whoville expresses the sadness for what as been lost in my country. When I was a young boy in the small town of Piedmont, Missouri, the local physician, Doc Jones, would come to your house if you were sick. People paid him in cash, or perhaps some other goods. No one imagined they had a “right” to have someone else pay Doc Jones. It was their solemn duty, part of leading a responsible and moral...

>I’ve periodically cited the great 19th-century French economist, Frederic Bastiat, forhis very wise words about the importance of looking at both the seen and the unseen when analyzing public policy.Those that fail to consider secondary or indirect effects of government, such as Paul Krugman, are guilty of the “broken window” fallacy.There are several examples we can cite.A sloppy person, for instance, will think a higher minimum wage is good because workers will have more income. But a thoughtful analyst will think of the unintended consequence of lost jobs for low-skilled workers.An unthinking person will conclude that government spending is good...

The GOP accepts the notion of climate change - but not the way Democrats wanted them to.Senate Republicans head-faked Democrats on climate change Wednesday, agreeing in a floor vote that the planet’s climate was changing, but blocking language that would have blamed human activity. In a complicated maneuver that was the first politically perilous test for Senate Republicans, the new majority party split up the votes that Democrats had hoped would force the GOP into an awkward roll call on whether they believed in the science behind climate change — just hours after President Barack Obama slammed Republicans in his...

The income gap and income inequality is a hot button topic in the United States that has taken center stage in political debates and college classrooms in recent years. Economic Nobel Laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman have argued in The New York Times that income inequality is a major issue that requires political action to remedy. President Obama even hails income inequality as “the defining challenge of our time.” So what real problems does the income gap propose for American citizens and the country’s future, why is it such a major issue, and what can be done about it, if anything at...

The right is dropping the ball when it comes to Thomas Piketty’s much heralded and totally flawed book on inequality, “Capital in the 21st Century.” This long and lugubrious opus is really an open sore, replete with so much absurdity that shooting it down should be like shooting fish in a barrel. The left has embraced this rant against capitalism — and conservatives should be tying them to it, to expose where all the class-war rhetoric would really bring us.

Pope Francis demands wealth redistribution. He forgets St. John Paul's recognition of the "positive role of business, the market, private property" as "the model which ought to be proposed" for the Third World. Addressing U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other officials on Friday, the first supreme pontiff from Latin America called for "the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the state." Excuse the irreverence, but his holiness may be forgetting the hundreds of millions of souls whose lives have been improved, lengthened, even saved by maximizing capitalism and minimizing government.

The most efficient way to destroy a society is to fragment it and turn the pieces against each other. Language plays a big part in getting America out of the way so that a liberal utopia can be constructed in its place. Here is one way our rulers are using our money to encourage foreign colonists not to learn English: The inability to speak English is now considered a determining factor to receive federal disability benefits. Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) sent a letter obtained exclusively by the Free Beacon to Acting Commissioner of...

President Obama is dividing America into two nations—one rich, the other increasingly poor with both more likely to elect Democrats. In fairness, Obama inherited an economy not performing well even before the financial crisis. His recovery has managed only 2.4 percent growth; however, George Bush’s expansion accomplished about the same and then collapsed. Since Bush took office, the U.S. economy has created only 4.7 million jobs—about 30,000 a month and less than one-fourth of those needed to keep pace with population growth. Technology is important. The digital revolution and the consolidation of news and entertainment into the internet, cable,...

The combined wealth of the world’s richest 85 people is now equivalent to that owned by half of the world’s population—or 3.5 billion of the poorest people—according to a new report from Oxfam. In a report titled “Working for the Few” released Monday, the global aid and development organization detailed the extent of global economic inequality created by the rapidly increasing wealth of the richest, warning of the major risks it poses to “human progress.” […] Oxfam said that based on its polls conducted across the world, it is believed that there are many laws and regulations designed to benefit...

A cutoff of benefits for the long-term unemployed has left more than 1.3 million Americans with a stressful decision: What now? Without their unemployment checks, many will abandon what had been a futile search and will no longer look for a job—an exodus that could dwarf the 347,000 Americans who stopped seeking work in December. Beneficiaries have been required to look for work to receive unemployment checks. Some who lost their benefits say they’ll begin an early and unplanned retirement. Others will pile on debt to pay for school and an eventual second career. Many will likely lean on family,...

The new family minister has called for the introduction of a 32-hour working week for parents of young children, stating her plan would be funded by taxpayers. Manuela Schwesig said on Friday that mothers and fathers with children under the age of three should not work the current 40-hour week. […] But according to the Berlin-based German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), the plan from the center-left SPD would cost taxpayers €140 million ($191 million) a year. …

The total number of people in the United States now receiving federal disability benefits hit a record 10,988,269 in December, up from the previous record of 10,982,920 set in November, according to newly released data from the Social Security Administration. The average monthly benefit paid to a disabled worker also hit a record of $1,146.43 in December, up from a previous high of $1,130.34 in December of last year. Spouses of disabled workers also got a record average monthly benefit of $308.13 in December, up from a previous high of $304.31 in August. Children of disabled workers also received a...

Federal auditors said Friday the Social Security Administration still struggles with a basic problem — figuring out who is dead and who is not. The question is a crucial one, since federal agencies rely on the administration to cross-match data on deceased persons and avoid paying out federally funded benefits to people who aren’t alive, or to establish accurate benefits for survivors. The administration also maintains a “Death Master File” that is available to the public. “SSA’s methods for processing death reports may result in inaccurate, incomplete or untimely information for users of its death data,” the Government Accountability Office,...

Either President Obama needs a new speech writer, or he needs a new set of economic policies. Actually, he needs both. Can anyone think of a more boring, banal, irrelevant, or stale speech than the one he gave this Thursday in Washington D.C.? The speech was allegedly on the economy, but more likely it was to divert attention from the Obamacare catastrophe. Whatever the motive, his idea that the defining challenge of our time is to reduce income inequality is completely wrong. In truth, the defining challenge is to restore more rapid economic growth, create substantially more jobs, and significantly...

President Obama declared rising income inequality a “fundamental threat” to the United States on Wednesday. Speaking in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., Obama pledged that for the remainder of his presidency, his administration would “focus all our efforts” on addressing an issue that threatens the economy and the American Dream. The hour-long speech had all the trappings of a serious policy address, presenting a legislative agenda for the remaining three years of the Obama administration. But Democratic strategists, liberal economists, and political scientists questioned whether it marked a real shift in focus. Obama has long decried the...