Free Republic

Democrats are trying to put the last nail in the coffin of the Budget Control Act of 2011, one of the few remaining semblances of fiscal restraint left in Washington. This week, the House likely will vote on a plan to raise the law’s discretionary spending caps by at least $357 billion for 2020-2021. As has far too often become the case in Congress, none of the proposed new funding will be paid for with cuts to other programs. The country is over $22 trillion in debt. It is past time for Congress to get serious about spending reforms and...

Andrew Yang, a businessman who is running for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that his proposal to provide every American with a $1,000 guaranteed monthly income would help "solve the problems that got Donald Trump elected in 2016." "To me the main driver of his victory was that we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, the swing states he needed to win," Yang said.

Booker announced the figure in an email to supporters. The sum puts him near the back of the pack in fundraising with roughly 10 months to go before the start of primary voting. Of those candidates that have announced their figures, only the entrepreneur and rank outsider Andrew Yang announced raising less.

UBI is like putting a Band-Aid around America’s ruptured aorta—it might help, but it won’t stop our economy from flat-lining. Here’s why: Andrew Yang thinks automation will result in mass unemployment, and therefore we need a UBI to soften the blow. Both the economic logic and evidence suggests otherwise. Begin with this logic: Employment is determined by the ratio between productivity and output. All other things being equal, higher productivity (getting more done each hour) means fewer jobs, while higher output (making more stuff) means more jobs. If both productivity and output increase at the same rate, then employment does...

Tweet: Richard Spencer @RichardBSpencer Trumpism was the fantasy that America can be we saved. Yangism is the awareness that it can't. Tweet: Andrew Yang @AndrewYang Replying to @AndrewYangVFA America is set to become majority minority by 2045. That’s 27 years from now. This will be a truly dangerous time particularly as we are decimating the most common middle class jobs (e.g. retail, truck driving etc). Economic stress adds to social polarization and violence. Andrew Yang, the 44 year-old New York tech entrepreneur running for the 2020 Democratic nomination, has one distinction he might want to lose: He is the preferred...

It could have been the fact that Yang, a dark-horse contender for the Democrat presidential nomination, gave a speech at Harvard where he predicted that within ten years, roving gangs of Caucasian youths would be roaming the streets of America, attacking Asian people because white people were jealous of their professional success. That is, after all, what white people do all the time to black people right now. Right? Let’s hear it straight from the same mouth that wants to give every American $1000 a month: Who is going to be the boogie man of the next 10 to 20...

I have a feeling this guy is going to be the 'Hope and Change' guy for Democrats come 2020. He supports everything from universal basic income to upholding Roe v. Wade. It's worth observing him to see how his personality and emphases (automation, decline in American life expectancy, middle America's economy, using military budget to fund infrastructure) set him apart from the others in the leftier than ever pack.

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang criticized the media Monday for its coverage of President Trump, saying that it has failed to explain his appeal. "I would say I think our media has done us a disservice by overly simplifying why Donald Trump is our president today,” Yang said at a rally in Chicago. Yang said that the media was wrong to blame Trump's election on racism, Russia, ignorance, immigration, Facebook, or the FBI, among other narratives. “The reason Donald Trump is our president today is we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs,” he said. Yang, whose upstart campaign has recently...

Four years ago, Democrats were gearing up for a pre-determined outcome, the anointing of Hillary Clinton as the party’s presidential candidate. Convinced they were “on the right side of history,” Democrats believed Hillary was destined to succeed Barack Obama, America’s first black president, by becoming our first female president. The only real opposition to Mrs. Clinton’s nomination came from Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont who had never previously identified as a Democrat. The weakness of Hillary’s candidacy was exposed in the 2016 primary campaign, when Bernie and his wild-eyed supporters very nearly derailed her nomination, being foiled by...

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) The Democrat presidential nomination battle is already a three-ring circus, and the far left elements of the Democrat base are going to make sure it stays that way. Yesterday, ex-Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, who is struggling to gain a foothold in the race, found himself in trouble with the social justice warrior crowd when his effort to imply that a woman may well win the nominating contest fell flat with the humorless left. The first mistake Hickenlooper made was accepting CNN’s invitation to get a little (very little, given CNN’s dwindling audience)...

Dr. Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, promoting "Free to Choose" on the show Donahue.Worth watching....Donahue...actually conducted a decent interview.

Thomas Sowell now fears U.S. may not resist 'siren song' Revered economics columnist Thomas Sowell’s warning that Americans may not resist the “siren song” of socialism recalls the late legendary economist Milton Friedman’s warning of the inevitable “drift” toward collectivism that any society with a free enterprise system must constantly battle.

Quotations from Friedman, variously attributed: Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government-- in pursuit of good intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player. The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion...

Milton Friedman's prescient notions regarding Antifa and all like-minded communist brownshirts: Why Communism Must Lead to Corruption

For political observers of a certain vintage, long-shot presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s proposal to give every American adult $1,000 a month brought back a distinct memory from 1972. That year Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern also proposed writing a $1,000 check to every American — $1,000 a year, however (there’s been a lot of inflation since then). To put it mildly, it did not go over well. Even though McGovern eventually abandoned the proposal, and even though it was similar to the “negative income tax” idea crafted by famed free-market economist Milton Friedman and briefly considered by Richard Nixon, the...

Today’s Campaign Update, Part II (Because The Campaign Never Ends) By now, we all know that Irish Bob O’Rourke is a fake “rising star” in this year’s Democrat presidential nominating contest. Irish Bob always was little more than a pure media creation, and he is now struggling on the national stage mainly because the same media that created and supported him in his 2018 run against Ted Cruz has now moved on to campaigning for Kamala Harris and The Commie. But there are two real rising stars in the Democrats’ nominating battle, and their names will probably surprise you: Andrew...

Presidential candidate Andrew Yang is campaigning on the platform of Universal Basic Income. He says everyone from MLK to Milton Friedman to Richard Nixon were for it. But were they? The answer won't surprise you.

Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang wants to cut circumcision in the U.S. so American parents don’t feel pressured to have the practice performed on their sons. “From what I’ve seen, the evidence on it being a positive health choice for the infant is quite shaky,” the 44-year-old serial entrepreneur told the Daily Beast. Yang, who tweeted last week that he was “against the practice” of circumcision, said if he were president he would work to “inform parents that it is entirely up to them whether their infant gets circumcised, and that there are costs and benefits either way.” “It’s sort...

The unlikely presidential run of Andrew Yang, who is proposing a $1,000-a-month “freedom dividend” to every adult in America, rolled Friday into San Francisco, where some 3,000 supporters listened to the New York tech entrepreneur warn about how artificial intelligence and robotics are taking jobs. The 44-year-old son of Taiwanese immigrants who met each other at UC Berkeley has already surpassed expectations — virtually nonexistent when he got into the race — by inspiring enough donations to qualify for the Democratic primary debate in June.

It looks like he might and he’s doing it his own way. Andrew Yang is among the crowd of Democrats running for the nomination for President in 2020. His key issue is called a Freedom Dividend. Yang proposes a $1,000 guaranteed payment to every adult in America. It’s his take on a Universal Basic Income.Yang is not a politician. You, like me, have probably never heard of him even though he’s been running for a year. He’s never held elected office. He doesn’t think that’s a strike against him, however, because President Trump also isn’t a traditional politician. He...