Free Republic

A new survey by the UN Population Fund shows that the most common reasons people name for not having more children are financial in nature.As Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports, among 14 countries surveyed, respondents named financial limitations or job instability as the most common reasons to have fewer children than they desired in all. Commonly, financial reasons, also including housing and childcare costs, made up the top 2 or even top 3 of the issues most often cited for lower fertility, for example in India, Indonesia, South Korea, South Africa, Brazil, Morocco, Hungary and Germany.You will find more infographics at...

Executives from Jack Daniel’s parent company, Brown-Forman Corp., warned that the business is seeing pressure from cannabis, weight-loss drugs and lackluster demand from Generation Z. Brown-Forman CEO Lawson Whiting told analysts on an earnings call that the “same big three” is the reason that there has been lower demand for liquor. “We’ve been saying that for 1.5 years now. And I know on the sell-side that the world seems to be a little bit split on the extent of the pressure that it’s putting on our category. We’d be naive if we didn’t say that there isn’t some pressure coming...

Margaret Sanger promoted birth control as the path to eliminating minorities and the disabled to clean up the gene pool. Planned Parenthood, her legacy, jumped on abortion as a means to accomplish this goal. That isn't hyperbole. It is just a fact. Mike Wallace called her a hero. The entire Democratic Party turned her into a saint and has poured tens of billions into Planned Parenthood to accomplish that goal. And now Colorado Democrats are openly justifying their plan to subsidize abortions for the poor because, well, poor kids are expensive to the state. 2/ Let me break down what's...

California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara has traveled extensively, including to overseas destinations, at taxpayer expense — and not always with a clear work purpose, according to an investigative report by KGO-7. The issue arose earlier this month when Lara turned up at a conference in Bermuda with industry executives, rather than at a state legislative hearing, as thousands of homeowners are still waiting for help after the Los Angeles fires. KGO, the San Francisco-area ABC News affiliate reported Monday: 7 On Your Side obtained and analyzed hundreds of public records that detail at least 46 cross-country and international trips all...

Electric cars are up to twice as expensive as petrol or diesel vehicles to run... Running an electric vehicle (EV) can cost more than 24p per mile, while a diesel vehicle is 12.5p .. 80p per kilowatt hour ... A typical electric car will travel 3.3 miles for every kWh of electricity used, meaning rapid and ultra-rapid chargers currently cost the equivalent of 24.1p per mile. ... This is about double the average diesel car, which will do 43 miles per gallon, resulting in a cost of 12.5p per mile at current prices. A typical petrol car costs 14.5p per...

Raising a child can be expensive, often costing hundreds of thousands of dollars from birth through to adulthood.This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti, shows the 10 most expensive metro areas to raise a child in, among the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Costs include food, housing, childcare, healthcare, transportation, and other necessities.All figures are as of February 2024. Data is from SmartAsset.Methodology: SmartAsset used MIT Living Wage Calculator data to compare the living costs of a household with two working adults and one child to that of a childless household with two working adults in extensive metro areas.Boston Tops...

President Joe Biden’s climate proposals will substantially increase average Americans’ home expenses for purchases like appliances, according to data from the Alliance For Consumers (AFC). The financial burden of the Biden administration’s policies targeting household appliances totals $9,166 in new costs for average Americans per home, according to the AFC. The Biden administration has set its sights on a number of appliances to regulate as a part of its green agenda, including gas furnaces, water heaters, air conditioners and more, in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions. “Any government-imposed efficiency mandate creates a burden for American families and businesses for...

In 2021, the median salary for Americans 25 to 34 was $52,156 per year. Meanwhile, the cost of the average wedding was around $30,000. What’s wrong with this picture?You have young couples getting together, struggling to pay their bills, maybe with college debt to pay off, probably getting ready to work on a kid – which we all know is insanely expensive these days – and they’re going to spend $30,000+ on a one-day ceremony. Let’s also not forget that a man is supposed to spend a “two-month salary” on an engagement ring. That’s another $8,692 of that median salary....

If you’ve read much of my writing, you know that I consider myself an expert on Disney — not in the way that leftists who think you should wear masks in perpetuity are “experts” on pandemics, but a genuine expert. Disney has been part of my family life from the beginning. My parents honeymooned at Walt Disney World just months after it opened, and my siblings and I (and later my nieces) grew up on Disney movies and TV shows. Disney’s woke content and political meddling in Florida hurt us as a family. We’re not boycotters by nature, so even...

Six-figure salaries have long been seen as a milestone for gauging success — the peak between the arduous grind of climbing the income ladder and breathing a deep sigh of relief. Those with a $100,000 salary earn more than double the median individual income for 2021, which might imply financial comfort on first glance. But when accounting for taxes and cost of living in America’s largest cities, those six-figures will feel much smaller.Ultimately, to have the purchasing power of $100,000, you will have to earn a substantially higher salary. With this in mind, SmartAsset set out to determine the salary...

Michael Hugo, the chair of the Framingham Democratic Committee, argued in a city council meeting that crisis pregnancy centers are a danger to the community because their screening might not catch a birth defect, the result of which would be the live birth of an expensive-to-care-for disabled child.Best to be sure to kill them before they have a budgetary impact.Hugo is not just the chair of the Democrats in this one town in Massachusetts, but the director of policy and government affairs for the Massachusetts Association of Health Boards.Nice to know. If you are planning on getting medical care in...

The United States for months has been urging European countries to repatriate captured ISIS fighters and their families from northeastern Syria, to no avail, and the U.S. is not about to incarcerate them in Guantanamo Bay, President Trump said on Monday. “We’re not bringing 50, 60, 70 – or even 10,000 people to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We’re not going to be paying them for the next 50 years – or paying to take care of them for the next 50 years.” He characterized the European response to Washington’s appeals as another example...

New York to Chicago by train in under five hours. It’s not science fiction, but old-school tunneling—a critical, yet oddly ignored, part of President Donald Trump’s forthcoming infrastructure plan that supporters say will cost the federal government virtually nothing, but experts say the proposal's deregulation approach amounts to a handout to Big Business. The plan calls for creating new high-speed rail lines deep underground—the basic idea behind the English Channel tunnel, or Chunnel, that whisks travelers at 186 miles per hour from London to Paris in just two hours and 20 minutes. That’s less time than the Amtrak from New...

Martha’s Vineyard August, 2014 Vacation Cost $400,666.30 in Transportation $2,425,085.50 were Spent in Transportation Expenses for Obama’s July, 2014 West Coast Fundraising Trip Obama Hawaii Christmas vacations over the past three years have cost taxpayers $15,540,515.10 in travel expenses alone; (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it obtained records from the U.S. Department of the Air Force revealing that the Obama family’s 2014 Christmas vacation to Honolulu, Hawaii, cost taxpayers $3,672,798 in flight expenses alone. Christmas in Hawaii is an annual tradition for the family and their most recent visit, from December 19, 2014, to January 4, 2015, marked...

(CNSNews.com) – Despite expanded health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), more people are going to hospital emergency rooms (ER) for treatment because they can’t get an appointment with a primary care physician, according to the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). “Nearly half of emergency physicians responding to a poll are already seeing a rise in emergency visits since January 1 when expanded coverage under ACA began to take effect,” according to ACEP, which gives overall emergency care in the U.S. “a dismal D+ grade.” In addition, 86 percent “expect emergency visits to increase over the next...

"Obamacare was sold on a trinity of lies." That ornate phrase, more suitable for the Book of Revelations or perhaps the next installment of "Game of Thrones," comes from my National Review colleague Rich Lowry. But I like it. Most people know the first deception in the triumvirate of deceit: "If you like your health insurance you can keep it, period." The second leg in the tripod of deception was "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor." But the third plank in the triad of disinformation hasn't gotten much attention: Obamacare will save you, me and the...

Romance isn't cheap. But in some places, a night out on the town is a lot more expensive than in others. Deutsche Bank recently came out with its second "The Random Walk" report, which looks at the changing prices of goods and services around the world. We're taking a closer look at how major cities fared on the report's "cheap date" ranking and highlighting a couple of specific items in the index. 1) SYDNEY: A date will set you back $229.77 Delivery of a dozen roses: $139 2 movie tickets: $35.90 Cab ride (3 km): $11.79 A "cheap date" includes...

The cost of health insurance for many Americans this year climbed more sharply than in previous years, outstripping any growth in workers’ wages and adding more uncertainty about the pace of rising medical costs. A new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit research group that tracks employer-sponsored health insurance on a yearly basis, shows that the average annual premium for family coverage through an employer reached $15,073 in 2011, an increase of 9 percent over the previous year. “The open question is whether that’s a one-time spike or the start of a period of higher increases,” said Drew...

Early in my career as a lawyer, I did a lot of work for insurance companies. I once had a case that provoked considerable laughter: a man was building an addition to his motel. He talked with his insurance agent about builders risk insurance, which would cover the structure while it was under construction, but decided not to buy it. One night, the structure caught fire and burned to the ground. The next morning at eight o'clock, the man was at his insurance agent's office, saying that he wanted to buy that builders risk coverage after all. Once the facts...

LONDON – A lawmaker at the center of Britain's growing expense account scandal said Saturday he has been humiliated by public revelations about his attempt to get taxpayers to pay for a duck hut on his country estate. Opposition Conservative Party legislator Peter Viggers' duck hut — used to shield ducks from predators — has become a potent symbol of expense account excess in recent days. He tried in vain to bill taxpayers 1,645 pounds ($2,600) for the structure — just one of many misdeeds in a scandal that has turned British voters against their elected representatives and led many...