Free Republic

There's a lot of discussion these days about Capitalism versus Socialism as an economic system. Most Democrats, including Harris and other left-leaning people, favor Socialism. The key tool for them to bring this about is to tax the rich and give it to the poor to even out the distribution of income. That is a flawed solution to the problem. First, it assumes that an equal distribution of income is a desirable goal. It is not. It's the human condition to want to improve one's lot in life. If the gov't makes everyone's income the same, it removes the desire...

Casey Means was a Stanford-educated surgeon. Her brother Calley was a lobbyist for pharma and the food industry. Both quit their jobs in horror when they realized how many people were being killed by the systems they participated in. This is an amazing story. Chapters: 0:00 Intro 0:54 Who Are Casey and Calley Means? 10:32 Seed Oils and the Lies of the Food Pyramid 22:20 Vaccines for Newborns 34:41 Why Is the Medical Industry Ignoring This? 44:38 The Spiritual Crisis 52:23 Chemicals Linked to Cancer and Early Puberty 1:00:13 Ozempic 1:15:35 The Birth Control Pill 1:30:12 The Rise of Dementia...

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) defended Vice President Harris’s newly unveiled economic agenda, saying it will help ensure the economy is working properly. “I do because I’ve been an attorney general, just like the Vice President, I pursued price gouging statutes and their violations when it comes to the price of gas in Kentucky, and we won and ultimately returned millions of dollars to our people. This isn’t about trying to price fix. It’s just making sure that the economy is operating the way it should, that this is really supply and demand, which we all respect,” he said on...

Mark Cuban is issuing a big warning to self-insured employers: If your company receives pharmacy rebates through employee benefits, prepare for an eventual lawsuit. "It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when," he wrote on X on July 22. "The inevitable class action suit will dwarf the tobacco settlements." Mr. Cuban's comments come as large employers are beginning to face lawsuits from their workers over claims of mismanaging health and pharmaceutical benefits and violating their fiduciary duties under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. ERISA requires self-funded employers acting as health plan fiduciaries to make an effort...

The New York Times had the temerity to actually blame free markets for Venezuela’s descent down the economic cesspool under socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro. Who in their right mind would actually consider Venezuela a beacon of capitalism in South America? Apparently The Times. The newspaper claimed in a July 28 news item that “in recent years, the socialist model has given way to brutal capitalism, economists say, with a small state-connected minority controlling much of the nation’s wealth.” The newspaper, whose report was addressing the dubious presidential election results in the socialist country, cited no specific cohort of "economists" who...

Bernie Sanders has single-handedly brought the term “democratic socialism” into the contemporary American political lexicon and shaken millions of Millennials out of their apathy towards politics. Even if he does not win the Democratic nomination, his impact on American politics will be evident for years to come.Sanders has convinced a great number of people that things have been going very badly for the great majority of people in the United States, for a very long time. His solution? America must embrace “democratic socialism,” a socioeconomic system that seemingly works very well in the Scandinavian countries, like Sweden, which are, by...

After replacing the elite school’s American flag with a Palestinian one, anti-Israel activists at George Washington University called to “liberate” the world from “colonialism, imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, and Zionism,” as pro-Palestinian activists on college campuses continue to reveal the true agenda behind the spreading demonstrations. In a clip from Sunday, an anti-Israel protester at George Washington University’s “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” is seen advocating for a world free from various policies and ideologies, including “colonialism” and “capitalism,” while envisioning an imminent collapse of the current system. “Each and every one of you believes in a world liberated from colonialism, imperialism,...

White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jared Bernstein dismissed concerns that the economy is under-performing, saying "I can't get myself worked up over mere statistics in the GDP or CPI. Folks don't eat the GDP. The CPI includes volatile components like food, energy, and housing. If we exclude the price spikes in these areas inflation doesn't look so bad." "A key strength that our Republican critics overlook is that government spending remains robust," Bernstein added. "Under Bidenomics we're not at the mercy of private sector investments for economic growth. Their anti-social quest for increased profits is supplanted by a...

Exposes BS about Sweden. Not socialist, walked away from socialism, they have school choice, no minimum wage, etc...

Space X CEO Elon Musk and Argentinian President Javier Milei have met in Texas and spoke about working together to promote free markets and potential lithium projects. President Javier Milei’s chief spokesperson said that during their visit to Tesla’s Austin headquarters, the two talked about a range of issues, including the need to boost declining birth rates globally and the pursuit of technological advancement while upholding “liberty.” Musk has previously expressed his admiration for Milei’s unabashed support of private enterprise as well as his distaste for what he considers to be socialist excesses.

Eight-year-old Phung Xuan Vu and his 10-year-old brother were responsible for fetching food for their family, which was in the constant grip of hunger. They were living in Vietnam in the 1980, so this required ration cards. One of the family's most important possessions was a booklet of vouchers for food. As the older child, Vu's brother took care of the booklet, knowing that if he lost it, the family would have nothing to eat. The vouchers inside were printed on waxy yellow tissue paper. They meant the difference between going hungry and having something to eat, although it was...

Capital One announced on Monday it was acquiring a rival financial services company in a massive stock deal as Americans continue to be plagued with credit card debt, according to The New York Times. The McLean, Virginia-based bank announced it would acquire Discover Financial Services in a $35.3 billion all-stock transaction, The New York Times reported. The acquisition of Discover would give Capital One more market power due to Discover having a payments network of its own at the same time as credit card debt continues to mount for consumers, according to The Wall Street Journal. The acquisition could face...

en. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) called on President Biden to keep a Missouri aluminum plant open, after it was reported that its operation would be curtailed by Jan. 28. Hawley issued a statement on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday after reports that Magnitude 7 Metals, the second-largest U.S. aluminum smelter, is going to lay off most of its staff. “This cannot be allowed to happen,” Hawley wrote Thursday. “The plant accounts for nearly 30% of the nation’s aluminum. It’s vital to national security. President Biden must invoke the Defense Production Act and keep it open.” Hawley referenced...

Pope Francis says many things that, in my opinion, just regurgitate leftist talking points, so I have many questions for this supposedly religious man who is supposed to look out for the best interest of the people, especially the poor. The pope frequently denounces capitalism as some kind of enemy of the poor, but capitalism is the best system to lift poor people up through opportunity instead of making them dependent on the government, so I would ask him: Isn't it better to give people economic opportunities than to have them depend on a master, a powerful government, for their...

My favorite social-media post in recent weeks (from a Seattle-based engineer named Grant Slatton) seems esoteric, but is quite insightful: "We don't talk enough about how insane aluminum foil is. Imagine telling some ancient person we have so much abundance in our time that we use very thin metal as a disposable paper-like wrapping and it costs essentially nothing." Seriously, Americans are so used to our unparalleled abundance that we don't pause and appreciate what this means in the context of human existence. An NPR story on the history of aluminum notes that "it used to be more valuable than...

Major retailers have experienced a wave of store closures in 2023, an 80% surge from the year prior, Coresight Research reports. The top reasons include bankruptcy of one major chain and some stores just not performing well in certain areas. The continued growth of online shopping is another factor, and other retailers said that theft is a major reason for their decision to close some stores, according to CBS News. When Bed Bath & Beyond filed for bankruptcy in April, it led to the closure of 866 stores, a Coresight report finds. The second largest number of closed stores was...

San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston claimed the city’s homelessness problems were “absolutely the result of capitalism,” and it was “counterproductive” to arrest people openly doing drugs. Preston’s District 5 includes the Tenderloin District, an area known for its open-air drug market. Nearly half of the city’s homeless population lived in this district in 2022, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The Democratic Socialist supervisor argued his district was particularly affected by homelessness because of the country’s economic structure. “I think what you’re seeing in the Tenderloin is absolutely the result of capitalism and what happens in capitalism to the people at...

But just because an economic system generated wealth and innovation doesn’t mean it guarantees a good society," Obama said. "Because from the outset, market-based systems have been compatible with slavery, caste systems, colonialization, war, exploration, corruption, fraud, autocracy, the poisoning of our natural environment." As Obama listed, the audience applauded. The former president went on to credit Democratic governments for "moderating capitalism's excesses" with a "social safety net." According to him, it will take "young leaders to help us think and act anew" about "creating an economic system that supports and sustains our democratic values."

Do you feel as if everywhere you turn something else is pushing the United States closer to the brink? You’d be right. It’s by design. Called “the Cloward-Piven Strategy,” our nation is being thrust into the center of every kind of disaster, expeditiously, by whoever it actually is that is running the show. The ultimate process is to “speed-up the destruction of our economy by overwhelming it.” The goal is to foist us into an economic crisis leading to the collapse of the United States as well as capitalism. A two-class system will then rise out of the ashes –...

The Clinton Foundation is back, and it’s headed to Ukraine. Founded by former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the foundation put its annual “Clinton Global Initiative” on a hiatus for a few years when their relevance ebbed and fundraising dried up, but their scandal-plagued charity has returned with a plan to provide humanitarian relief to warn-torn Ukraine, complete with a benediction from Pope Francis. The Clinton Foundation’s shady dealings were exposed in 2015 by Peter Schweizer in the bestselling book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses...