Free Republic

As Obamacare began its roll out last week, it is an opportune time to discuss the reality of Obamacare. In order to pay for the elderly, illegal immigrants and other low-income households, Obamacare raises taxes on wealthier Americans (wealth redistribution). In addition, Obamacare set a goal to get as many healthy young Americans enrolled as possible. In other words, enroll healthy young people who don’t want to pay for healthcare insurance. Even worse, Obamacare will charge hefty premiums to the healthy and lower premiums to others. According to a study by the American Action Forum, healthcare premiums for young people...

Local Mosque in the Hyde Park area of Leeds, England. The UK’s official religion is dwindling at a record speed, with the decline of the Church “approaching rock bottom,” experts warn. While Christian congregations age, most British mosques are bringing more and more young people on board. Public mosque services attract thousands of British Muslims, but when you check out a church, there are hardly a dozen participants at Sunday morning worship, RT’s Polly Boiko reports from London. “The decline of churches in the UK is long term, now it just happens to be approaching rock bottom. So 95...

Like the car salesman in National Lampoon’s Vacation (played by Eugene Levy) said: “You think you hate it now, but wait ’til you drive it!” The same applies to the Affordable Healthcare Act (aka, Obamacare). levycar The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka, Obamacare) may be the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Congress and signed by a President .. and that covers a lot of ground. Why is it so bad? For one, do you REALLY want government in charge of your healthcare? Other than that, Obamacare distorts the healthcare market enormously. See the American Action Forum...

Anti-bullying initiatives have become standard at schools across the country, but a new UT Arlington study finds that students attending those schools may be more likely to be a victim of bullying than children at schools without such programs. The findings run counter to the common perception that bullying prevention programs can help protect kids from repeated harassment or physical and emotional attacks.

Chris Conover takes to the pages of Forbes to discuss whether or not young people will take the plunge next year and buy health insurance as required by ObamaCare. His conclusion? Not if they’re smart. A recent study by the National Center for Public Policy Research shows that: About 3.7 million of those ages 18-34 will be at least $500 better off if they forgo insurance and pay the penalty.More than 3 million will be $1,000 better off if they go the same route. Consequently, many more will opt to pay the extremely modest tax rather than fork over many...

As we begin a new semester at George Mason University, it is an appropriate time to review the miserable lot for young men in the US. And young women as well. Let’s start with healthcare premiums under the “affordable” healthcare act. According to a study by the American Action Forum, healthcare premiums for young people will rise dramatically, particularly for young men. obamacare-premiums-620xa Homeownership for the young? And USA Today found that homeownership rates are falling most for people aged 25-34. ustodaymilen And 16-19 unemployment rates remain appallingly high. Higher than Detroit’s unemployment rate! And much higher than the national...

"What do we do about our kids?" The group of parents sat together in my office, wiping their eyes. I'm a high school pastor, but for once, they weren't talking about 16-year-olds drinking and partying. Each had a story to tell about a "good Christian" child, raised in their home and in our church, who had walked away from the faith during the college years. These children had come through our church's youth program, gone on short-term mission trips, and served in several different ministries during their teenage years. Now they didn't want anything to do with it anymore. And,...

I wanted to act since I was six years old, after seeing “Star Wars,” but my goals were more “wear a sweet costume and pretend to be cool” than “be famous.” So the fact that I was cast in the Nickelodeon sitcom “iCarly” at age 14 and catapulted into tween stardom was both an exciting and unexpected journey. When “iCarly” first started growing in popularity back in 2007, my castmates and I quickly felt the swell in attention. I started getting invited to movie premieres, designers were sending me clothes, old friends were reaching out, and I could no longer...

Computer games may have cut youth crime in Norway by as much as a quarter over the last decade, social research outfit Nova has argued on the release of Norway's latest crime statistics. Norway has seen a dramatic drop in youth crime over the last decade, according to figures from Statistics Norway released this week, with just 7.8 percent of 15-20 year olds charged with an offence in 2011, compared to 10.3 percent in 2002. "What we see is that young people spend more time in front of their screens, and this changes the conditions for youth crime," Nova's lead...

Unintended Consequences: How the “relevant” church and segregating youth is killing Christianity. I recently spent six-months doing a rotation as a hospital chaplain. One day I received a page (Yes, hospitals actually still use pagers). Chaplains are generally called to the rooms of people who look ill: People gray with kidney disease, or yellow with liver failure, discouraged amputees, nervous cancer patients. In this room, however, was a strikingly attractive 23 year-old young lady sitting up cheerfully in the hospital bed, holding her infant daughter and chatting with family and friends. Confused, I stepped outside and asked her nurse, “Why...

A (New) Lost Generation: As the media focus on a slight drop in unemployment, an ugly trend gets ignored: the declining participation of young Americans in the job market. We'll pay for this for decades to come. We keep hearing the job market is "improving" or even "solid," with 162,000 new positions created in July and unemployment falling to 7.4%, the lowest since 2008. But one group is sitting it out. And it's the one that most enthusiastically embraced Barack Obama in both of his presidential elections: America's young. Their unemployment rate is a shocking 16.1%. Increasingly, those ages 18...

As high schools and universities turn out more and more students (like George Mason University), I felt it was time to review the economic environment facing the young people in the US, aka “Millennials.” My conclusion? This is no country for young people. At least in the current state of affairs. Let’s start with healthcare premiums under the “affordable” healthcare act. According to a study by the American Action Forum, 45% of respondents who are currently covered report they would no longer purchase health insurance and would instead pay the penalty each year if their premium costs increase 30% in...

If you’re a young person who happens to be reading this and you somehow have yet to figure out that our esteemed president’s crowning legislative achievement relies directly on you volunteering to pay what in many cases will amount to at least a couple thousand more dollars a year for a health insurance plan that you in all likelihood will not need to use very much… then you really haven’t been paying attention.That’s a couple thousand dollars you should’ve/would’ve/could’ve used as part of a down payment for a house or a car, for payments on your student loans, or just...

Officials in Long Beach, California are warning residents about a potential “bash mob” possibly planned for Friday afternoon. Bash mobs are unruly crowds that group together to race through streets committing petty crimes such as assault and property damage, reports CBS LA. One of these mobs happened in downtown Long Beach on July 9, and investigators discovered another one planned for 2 p.m. today, July 19. “The Long Beach Police Department takes this issue very seriously and will be prepared to arrest anyone whose intent is to commit criminal acts,” Long Beach Police Sgt. Aaron Eaton said. “We will continue...

Late last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the homicide rate for those 10 to 24 years of age has hit a 30-year low. Let’s credit USA TODAY for running an article on this news while acknowledging that this report was lost in the tireless news coverage of the George Zimmerman trial verdict. One of the cable news networks may have put an expert on air about the positive results of this study, but I doubt it. There’s not much drama in statistics, after all, especially those showing that things are safer.The CDC study echoed...

This Is For Trayvon !! Baltimore police say they are investigating a witness account that a group of black youths beat a Hispanic man near Patterson Park Sunday while saying, "This is for Trayvon."

When the last reports came out showing that youth unemployment had reached 16.2 % in the United States, alarm bells began to be heard in some quarters. This is more than double the rate of unemployment of the adult population. The rate is fast approaching the average youth unemployment rate in Europe which stands at approximately 24%. Can we learn from the European experience? Using data compiled by the economic freedom indices of the Fraser Institute in Canada, and the Heritage Foundation, in the United States, we recently looked at how economic freedom, labor regulations, social spending, and regulatory climate,...

Starting in 2014, Obamacare will attempt to get almost every American to obtain health insurance. The system desperately needs healthy young people, millions of whom don’t have health insurance, to sign up because their money is needed to subsidize treatment for older, sicker Americans. But will they? Young people will be asked to buy policies that don’t reflect the low risk they have of getting sick. Obamacare allows health insurers to vary premiums based on age, but they can charge older customers only up to three times as much as healthy young customers, while most insurers have as much as...

The Obama administration has been doing a pretty poor job hiding their desperation when it comes to convincing the young people that they need to subsidize the entire system that they should sign up for insurance through ObamaCare — because without getting them to pay more money into the system than they’ll actually need to use, that whole “affordable” thing is going to fall apart pretty quickly.The White House and ObamaCare’s supporters are mounting a full-scale campaign to tout the law’s supposed benefits and convince Americans to sign up en masse, and according to a new poll from the Kaiser...

Media outlets lately have emphasized the challenge of enticing healthy young adults to sign up for ObamaCare, "exactly the type of person insurance plans, states and the federal government are counting on to make health reform work," as the L.A. Times put it. These pieces are useful as far as they go, but miss a key point that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito managed to convey in many fewer words during last year's Supreme Court argument on ObamaCare. Mr. Alito pointed out that young, healthy adults today spend an average of $854 a year on health care. ObamaCare would require...