Free Republic

The United States should absorb as many as 11 million immigrants each year into its economy, NPR “Planet Money” founder Adam Davidson writes in The New York Times Magazine. “Few of us are calling for the thing that basic economic analysis shows would benefit nearly all of us: radically open borders,” he writes.His proposal would double the current U.S. population in only 29 years to over 637 million people.

Envy, I’ve often thought, is the very worst human emotion. The epic Biblical narrative of Cain’s slaying of Abel reminds us that people have been jealous of others’ successes and well-being from time immemorial. When mixed, however, with the near-obsession with inequality that dominates much public discourse these days, there’s a serious risk that envy — and desires to appease it — can start driving public policy in ways that aren’t economically wise or politically healthy. Remarks like “you didn’t build that” or François Hollande’s notorious 2012 “I don’t like the rich” statement don’t of course come out of a...

> Good Times for Dogs, Not So Good for Babies – A Reflection on the Perversity of Modern Culture By: Msgr. Charles PopeIn moral decline, both personal and cultural, the problem is that not only do we desire what is evil, we also stop desiring that which is good and holy. At the heart of desiring what is evil (or what is good, but to excess), are pride, greed, lust, and gluttony. Sloth and envy are more involved in no longer desiring what is good.Sloth is a kind or sorrow or aversion to the good things God offers to us, involving everything...

We are seeing the most dangerous trend ever. There is an agenda behind the curtain and that is to sustain government at all costs and that includes everything you own. I have warned that either government will move toward a totalitarian state or to real democracy – real Athens style without the career politicians. The latter is possible with civil unrest as we saw in Ukraine. This agenda requires no secret group of sinister corporations, Rockefellers, Rothschilds, or Bildebergs. This is plain old Adam Smith where those in government will never admit they are wrong so the reason they are...

Bernanke used to make $200,000 a year during his eight years as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He can make that in a single hour now on the international speaking circuit. He left office in February. By March, he was making up to three stops a week around the world. Bernanke is walking a well-worn path of former policy makers who leave power. Former presidents, former cabinet officials and former members of Congress have all turned their experience in public service into millions.

THE Irish singer Bono once described a difference between America and his native land. “In the United States,” he explained, “you look at the guy that lives in the mansion on the hill, and you think, you know, one day, if I work really hard, I could live in that mansion. In Ireland, people look up at the guy in the mansion on the hill and go, one day, I’m going to get that bastard.” Alexis de Tocqueville phrased it a little differently, but his classic 19th-century text contains the same observation. Visiting from France, he marveled at Americans’ ability...

Kerry: 'Root Cause of Terrorism' Is Poverty 'In many cases...' Jeryl Bier January 15, 2014 7:12 AM Secretary of State John Kerry covered a broad range of topics with his counterpart Pietro Parolin at the Vatican in Rome on Monday. Besides Syria, the Middle East peace process, Sudan, and Cuba, the subject of poverty came up during their discussions. In remarks following the meeting, Kerry linked poverty not only to terrorism, but to the "disenfranchisement of millions" [emphasis added]: We talked about the common interest of Pope Francis and President Obama in addressing poverty and extreme poverty on a global...

4. Make Everything Owned by EverybodyHoarders blow. Take, for instance, the infamous one percent, whose ownership of the capital stock of this country leads to such horrific inequality. "Capital stock" refers to two things here: the buildings and equipment that workers use to produce goods and services, and the stocks and bonds that represent ownership over the former. The top 10 percent's ownership of the means of production is represented by the fact that they control 80 percent of all financial assets. This detachment means that there's a way easier way to collectivize wealth ownership than having to stage uprisings...

The maniac who butchered a Brooklyn mom and her four young kids confessed that he did it because he was jealous of their way of life, a police source told The Post on Sunday. “The family had too much. Their income (and) lifestyle was better than his,” the source said. The bloody suspect was caught holding the kitchen knife he used during the Saturday night rampage inside the Sunset Park apartment where he had been staying with the victims, the source added. Ming Dong Chen, 25, an illegal alien from China, was nabbed as he fled out the front door...

Any attempt to equalize wealth or income by forced redistribution must only tend to destroy wealth and income. Historically the best the would-be equalizers have ever succeeded in doing is to equalize downward. This has even been caustically described as their intention. “Your levellers,” said Samuel Johnson in the mid-eighteenth century, “wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.” And in our own day we find even an eminent liberal like the late Mr. Justice Holmes writing: “I have no respect for the passion for equality, which seems to me merely idealizing...

In 1977 British journalist William Rees-Mogg saw that the West had lost its faith, and like a fish out of water or a drowning man was, "...desperately thrashing around for lack of oxygen. Since the time of Christ there has been no period in which there has been the same feeling of...spiritual impoverishment." (Idols for Destruction: The Conflict of Christian Faith and American Culture,Herbert Schlossberg,p. 2) Thirty-six years later, but for a faithful remnant, Christendom is dead and America's idolatrous, nihilistic post-Christian culture and narcissistic postmodern church are quickly following suit. While there are as yet many faithful churches, priests,...

(Reuters) - Witnessing friends' vacations, love lives and work successes on Facebook can cause envy and trigger feelings of misery and loneliness, according to German researchers. A study conducted jointly by two German universities found rampant envy on Facebook, the world's largest social network that now has over one billion users and has produced an unprecedented platform for social comparison. The researchers found that one in three people felt worse after visiting the site and more dissatisfied with their lives, while people who browsed without contributing were affected the most. "We were surprised by how many people have a negative...

The world's 100 richest people earned a stunning total of $240 billion in 2012 – enough money to end extreme poverty worldwide four times over, Oxfam has revealed, adding that the global economic crisis is further enriching the super-rich. “The richest 1 percent has increased its income by 60 percent in the last 20 years with the financial crisis accelerating rather than slowing the process,” while the income of the top 0.01 percent has seen even greater growth, a new Oxfam report said. For example, the luxury goods market has seen double-digit growth every year since the crisis hit, the...

Full Headline = Sign of National Resentment for the American Way of Life: Kristof Angry About Private Generators During Sandy RUSH: Now, over the weekend, a columnist in the New York Times by the name of Nicholas Kristof wrote a piece. He's all upset about the electrical grid failing in the Northeast during Hurricane Sandy. But that's not what made him mad. What made him mad was the reliance that some people had on private generators. He was upset about that, that some people had them and other people didn't. Here's the short version, according to David French at National...

If the United States were a healthy meritocracy, where talent and hard work pretty much determined how far we go in life, fair-minded people wouldn’t be demanding that rich people pay more in taxes. The general feeling would be that the race is fair and the wealthy have earned all they’ve got. The rest of us just have to work harder and smarter. But by no honest reckoning is the United States the “land of opportunity” it once was, and the race looks less fair every day. Advantages and opportunities are skewed to the few against the many, as is...

The real problem is that about half the country believes that business and the success that might flow from business is somehow contrived. About half the country believes that success is assigned, whimsically or arbitrarily, by guys in blue blazers who flick their cigar ashes at those whom they do not wish to succeed. It doesn't work that way, and we know it doesn't work that way. Mitt Romney, for example, was successfully portrayed to about half the country as a fellow who had it made from the beginning. His old man headed up a car company. He must have...

Obama: 'We Don't Believe Anybody Is Entitled to Success in This Country'

The release of over two decades of Mitt Romney's tax information on Friday must have been so anticlimactic for Team Obama --- not only does it turn out that Romney contributed a boatload of money towards the federal coffers, but he's also an almost wildly generous and charitable individual to boot. After the monumentally huge deal Team O made out of the tax returns, with dodgy "secrecy" ads and unsubtle fat-cat jabs out the wazoo, they don't seem to be seizing on the information with quite the fervor you would've expected.Yes, Romney is hugely wealthy, and hey, maybe some of...

CHARLOTTE, N.C.—Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker delivered a passionate defense of Democratic efforts to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, insisting it's about love of country. "Being asked to pay your fair share isn't class warfare. It's patriotism," Booker said, disputing an attack line often mentioned by Mitt Romney and his GOP allies. Everyone, Booker argued, must pay their "fair share" at a time when the country is facing the enormous burden of paying down debts incurred by two wars.

This is not a genuine vanity just because everyone is asking the question: what's the deal with Paul Ryan's hair? He used to look like a conservative Kennedy but WTH? Sorry for being a newbie.