Free Republic

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.

The Biden administration will likely complete regulations this week designed to punish gas-powered vehicles and pave the way for electric vehicles, whose average cost is roughly more than twice as expensive as average subcompact car. In its proposed rules published in May 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency wrote that it wanted to target vehicles that would phase-in over model years 2027 through 2032, stating, “EPA finds it appropriate to set new standards for model years after 2026 for both criteria pollutants and GHG at this time, rather than continuing its prior approach of coordinating the standards but setting them in...

...In December 1958, economist Leonard Read, the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, published a short essay in FEE's periodical, The Freeman. In the 65 years since its introduction, this masterly work has become the most recognizable element of the Austrian School of economics. "I, Pencil" was conceived as a fanciful anthropomorphism, the genealogy of that most common of household tools, the lead pencil. In those few pages, Leonard Read demonstrated the magic woven by the Invisible Hand of the free market. In the generations since, millions of us have learned to respect how countless different industries, countless people,...

Bidenomonics has been, and will continue to be, a disaster. This is what happens when lawmakers manipulate economies. No one should ever expect a different outcome when politicians enact ideas that they believe are so brilliant that they will overcome the laws of economics. The way out of this mess is to make a policy U-turn to both unleash the economy and expand precious liberty. President Joe Biden last week bragged that his economic policies — straight from the Democrats blueprint that says “borrow, tax, spend, regulate, then do it all again” — are working. But as we’ve noted, Bidenomics...

...The Heritage Foundation — a conservative think tank known for its pro-business allegiances — released a report Tuesday written by Alexander Salter, an economist at Texas Tech University, flirting with whether the US government should protect workers from free markets. Conservatives have long argued that the government should not tax, regulate, or subsidize industry because consumers are better off when companies are forced to compete for their dollars. However, the consequences of globalization for American manufacturing have caused many conservatives to reconsider the need for government intervention. Heritage, once the center of free-market conservatism, is now at this very crossroads....

The world’s central planners meet, speak, plan and party together. Whether they do so in Davos or New York, Paris or Washington D.C.; whether in the name of the WEF or UN or Congress or EU, these central planners share the same goal: to repeat so many seemingly-unrelated lies, so often and so vigorously, that they can get the public to believe that statism is the solution. Well, their solution will never be right, because their premises will never be right. Facts are facts, no matter what the dictators of Davos may say. For example, a few truths: 1. Carbon...

Were the Romans close to an Industrial Revolution? (Part 1) | February 25, 2022 | toldinstone

YouTube has a brand new censorship tactic that appears to be affecting small creators – and one that, on the face of it, makes no sense. Several livestreams posted on Google’s platform last weekend by truckers protesting in Canada have had their audience limited. The reason given to viewers trying to access the videos? They were too popular. “Video unavailable: This video is popular! Due to limited creator history, we’re limiting the number of viewers,” YouTube’s message reads, and then advises visitors to subscribe to the channel “to help this creator reach a broader audience.” No word, though, on whether...

If you had a financial incentive to do something that wasn't exactly honest, would you abandon your principles and take the cash? Apparently, that's what many medical providers and hospitals in America have been doing, especially since the beginning of the Biden administration. The numbers are staggering — both in money hospitals took in and the very real possibility that their actions caused people to die. If the accusations are true, what happened is truly evil and, I think, points directly to a cause: the removal of God and morality from society, replacing these brakes with what passes for modern...

Actor Jay Johnston has reportedly been fired from the cast of Bob's Burgers after it was revealed that he participated in the riot at the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. Johnston has been the voice of Jimmy Pesto on Bob's Burgers for about a decade now, and is also known for roles on productions like Mr. Show, Arrested Development and Anchorman, among others. On Friday, The Daily Beast reported that Johnston had been "banned" from working on Bob's Burgers. Two sources familiar with the situation at the Fox animated sitcom said that Johnston will not be allowed to...

Last week the corrupt media’s penchant for spinning all things conservative caused a near-fatal case of whiplash. The left began by chastising conservatives for supposedly building “its own echo chamber,” but by the next day, when news broke that Devin Nunes was resigning from Congress to serve as the CEO of Donald Trump’s new media company, the complained-of conservative ecosystem merely represented grift. Both narratives are false, however, which is precisely why leftists peddled them so hard. Axios launched the “echo chamber” accusation with its article titled, “Right wing builds its own echo chamber.” “Conservatives are aggressively building their own...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Wednesday she believed members of Congress should be allowed to trade stocks despite ethical questions, citing the “free market.” Pelosi, who routinely makes headlines with her husband for their prophetic ability to making winning trades, made the comment in response to a reporter who asked about a Business Insider story based on a five-month review that found a large number of lawmakers and their staffers had been late filing financial disclosures detailing their trades. “Should members of Congress and their spouses be banned from trading individual stocks while serving in Congress?” the reporter asked....

(CNN)The federal government announced a large hike in Medicare premiums Friday night, blaming the pandemic but also what it called uncertainty over how much it may have to be forced to pay for a pricey and controversial new Alzheimer's drug. The 14.5% increase in Part B premiums will take monthly payments for those in the lowest income bracket from $148.50 a month this year to $170.10 in 2022. Medicare Part B covers physician services, outpatient hospital services, certain home health services, medical equipment, and certain other medical and health services not covered by Medicare Part A, including medications given in...

The average transaction price for a new vehicle in America hit a record of $45,031 in September. It's the sixth consecutive month of record vehicle prices, according to Kelley Blue Book. That price represents a 12.1% increase (or $4,872 in cold, hard cash) over the same month a year ago and a 3.7% increase over the prior month.(The federal government, meanwhile, calculates new-car prices are up 8.7% year over year.)The reasons for the rapidly increasing prices of new vehicles are well documented, with inventory shortages caused by a lack of microchip availability cited as the latest problem. Last month, however,...

At least 34,000 home health workers in New York appear to have missed a deadline to get vaccinated under a new state mandate, according to preliminary state data, rendering them unable to work and deepening a shortage of home health aides. At the same time, the vaccination rate among home health workers as the deadline arrived on Thursday - 86 percent - exceeded the expectations of some union and industry leaders, and suggested that thousands of workers decided to get their first shot at the last minute to stay employed. Some industry leaders had predicted that as few as 70...

A winning Political Narrative is one that can bring All Americans to One Side, unite us against our Common Adversary, and paint a Bright Future to excite us all. The following essay presents such a persuasion. All honest Liberals and Conservatives are ultimately fighting the exact same thing: Greed. Both parties want to dismantle Greed, as they see it in the other’s ideology. To dismantle Greed, we must address its power source: top-down power structures. What are top-down power structures? Centralized governments, corporate monopolies, federal banks, the IMF, globalist institutions and institutionalized religions, and other shadowy structures where Few dictate...

Neoliberal economists prefer abstractions to proper nouns so they don’t have to assign actions or consequences to actual people. But the people involved in productive labor are not some “input” into the market, easily shuffled about like interchangeable pawns on a chess board. They are American citizens, whose competencies and concerns should matter intensely to their elected representatives. Yet here we are, as the European Union looks into manufacturing semiconductors, having discussions about the theory of comparative advantage with people who imagine the post-war consensus is still meaningful. A nation gains comparative advantage through dedicated work and application of labor...

This is why I think it should be referred to instead as the "blessed free market system." I admit, this change in nomenclature would be an uphill battle. In so many ways, the free market has improved our lives to such a degree that it would be completely impossible for the vast majority of humanity to imagine living like their forebears did just a hundred years ago.

“Be careful at this stone. Do you see the holes? A rattlesnake lives here,” Linda Rawles warns. She says it’s better to make a lot of noise to scare off the potentially deadly creature. That has also been Rawles’ approach to the presidential campaign: Make as much noise as possible to keep the worst, or more of it, from happening this November. The 61-year-old lawyer, like many in her age group, is doing all she can take make sure Donald Trump does not win reelection. She says that is because his rude, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic style has angered old allies....

Whenever people question the wisdom of the possibly-well-intentioned “stay at home” orders, there are those who scream "But this Virus is REAL! It really KILLS people!" – and accuse others of denying its reality. So, let’s start today with a clarification: We know. We agree. COVID-19, also known as the Wuhan Flu or the CCP Virus, is certainly real. It certainly does kill some people. Frankly, even those who refer to it as a hoax aren’t actually denying that it’s real. Even they acknowledge its existence; they are just saying that the danger is overblown, that it’s a genuine, occasionally...