Free Republic

Editor's Note: This column was authored by Emilie Dye.No one likes to think about people being unable to pay rent and losing their homes. But as I learned in high school reading Henry Hazlitt, “The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” And the eviction moratorium, which the CDC extended this week for the second time, completely ignores landlords.Since September 2020, the government has essentially forced landlords to...

San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced Thursday the city has launched a guaranteed income pilot program for artists affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The six-month program will target artists in the neighborhoods hardest hit by the pandemic, providing 130 people with $1,000 each month. “The arts are truly critical to our local economy and are an essential part of our long-term recovery,” Breed said in a statement. “If we help the arts recover, the arts will help San Francisco recover.” To qualify, artists affected by the pandemic must be living in one of 13 chosen San Francisco ZIP codes and...

Folks...it is becoming apparent that the Democrats are pursuing policies that are going to collapse our economy. They are also taking steps to make sure they never leave power. What is a person to do? We have the examples of Argentina and Venezuela clearly before us. Anyone have some helpful ideas? Ferfal of Argentina has a blog spot and wrote a book, but information from our situation here would be helpful.

Following today's release of the latest Personal Income and Spending data, Wall Street was predictably focused on the changes in these two key series, which showed a surge in personal income (to be expected in the month when the $900BN December 2020 stimulus hit), coupled with a far more modest increase in personal spending.But while the change in the headline data was notable, what was far more remarkable was data showing just how reliant on the US government the population has become.We are referring, of course, to Personal Current Transfer payments which are essentially government sourced income such as unemployment...

In the five years before the COVID-19 pandemic, low-income Californians had begun to see substantial wage gains that were slowly chipping away at the long-growing income inequality gap between the state's haves and have-nots. But the coronavirus pandemic is “likely stripping away many of these gains,” according to a new report from the Public Policy Institute of California. The current coronavirus-induced recession has hit low-income workers the hardest, while higher-income workers, largely able to work from home, have escaped relatively unscathed. And the extent of the job losses among low-wage workers — particularly African Americans, Latinos, workers without college degrees...

The previous article, Wealth is Created, leads us perfectly to this post. Some of the ideas in this article are from chapter two of Organic Wealth fittingly entitled, Equal Transactions. I’m not going to give away all the gold here; there’s much more that’s left out of this article. But please keep reading for enough nuggets for some mind blowing revelation. Free market capitalism produces new wealth. To put it another way, the so-called wealth pie just gets bigger. The reason the wealth pie grows is because our economic system is based on equal transactions. Just the idea that...

The amazing strength of the data in that report show what the American economy, and American workers, can achieve—if given the right policy environment and opportunities. Based on a Census Bureau report released last Tuesday, the current debate over economic policy might come down to a question of numbers. Which would you prefer: A $1,200 “stimulus” check while not working during lockdowns, or a nearly $4,400 pay increase in a growing job?The Census report, which chronicled changes in income and poverty in 2019, documented the state of the economy well before the coronavirus hit. But the amazing strength of the...

The survey revealed noticeable economic differences between male couples and female couples, as well as same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples. Same-sex married couples had a higher median income than opposite-sex married couples, $107,210 compared to $96,932. In same-sex marriages, though, male couples earned more than female couples, $123,646 versus $87,690. According to the survey, same-sex married households were more likely to be in the workforce than opposite-sex married households, 84.6% compared to 80.4%.

Does anyone else have an “Am I being given crazy pills” moment when somebody trumpets some version of a universal basic income nowadays? On Tuesday the Parliamentary Budget Office published a response to a request by Independent Group Sen. Yuen Pau Woo; Sen. Woo had asked the PBO to estimate the costs of a federal guaranteed basic income for all Canadians between the ages of 18 and 64. The senator proposed that the income amount ought to be in line with Ontario’s aborted 2017 pilot project on basic income: $16,989 for individuals, $24,027 for couples. He wanted to know the...

The coronavirus lockdowns are America’s most regressive government actions since the draft. Even as liberals have quickly noted the virus’s disparate incidence, they have ignored the inequities of government responses. Ironically, these responses have been most regressive in states with the most “progressive” governments. In just four months, coronavirus has gone from takeoff to lockdown in the U.S. America’s first Wuhan virus case appeared on Jan. 21, and the first American died Feb. 12. California went into lockdown March 19, followed by New York the next day, and New Jersey on March 21. Two months later, America is only now...

They work hard, but they are not rich. He is a local police officer in a suburb of a midwestern city. His annual salary is $67,620 -- exactly the national average for his job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. She is a registered nurse at the local Catholic hospital. Since their youngest joined his siblings in high school last fall, she has resumed working full time. Her annual salary is now $77,460 -- also exactly the national average for her job. Where does their money go? The biggest chunk goes to the government. They pay federal income taxes,...

I’ve said it a million times: I support mitigation, and I support our stay-at-home order. But I cannot make any sense of how Governor Jay Inslee has been enforcing these policies. This week, Inslee emphasized that the state will resume public day-use of state parks, but with no overnight camping. Uh, Jay … walk five minutes in any direction from your Olympia office. You’ll see hundreds of people overnight camping with no social distancing. We also have those campers in Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, Bremerton, and all other cities in the region. **SNIP** Tuesday’s Seattle Times had a story about how...

Who the hell are these politicians to imperiously decide who’s “essential” and who’s not? Non-essential, they hiss, pointing a finger at you. Non-essential! If you’re non-essential, these tinpot dictators with their catastrophically wrong “models” tell you, stay home. Lose your job, your business, your life. What the hell do they care? You’ll take it and you’ll like it! Nicht wahr? As certain Germans used to say. Isn’t that so? Jawohl! They’ve got theirs, Jack. And it comes with State Police chauffeurs. They’re just trying to do the Reich, I mean right thing. At long last, finally, working people are starting...

CNBC apparently had no problem treating Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-UT) coronavirus plan to give “every” American $1,000 as a rational idea. CNBC came right off the bat to make the senator look like some sort of philanthropist: “GOP Sen. Mitt Romney proposed on Monday sending every American adult $1,000 to ease the financial pain of the coronavirus pandemic that has tanked global markets and threatened to grind U.S. economic activity to a halt.” Did the outlet consider the irony that such a policy could require massive spending and tax increases that would further “grind U.S. economic activity to a halt”?

An income-based MBTA fare option could attract tens of thousands of new rapid transit and bus riders and could prompt hundreds of thousands more trips on the RIDE paratransit service, according to an ongoing T study. If the MBTA set the qualifying income at 200% of the federal poverty level, between 50,000 and 90,000 new commuters would ride the subway or bus every year, MBTA Deputy Director of Policy and Strategic Planning Lynsey Heffernan told the T's board Monday.

To achieve the American Dream, it helps to be filthy rich. That's the upshot of a new survey that found nearly three-quarters of the top 1% of income earners in the U.S. think they've reached that classic, if somewhat hazy, benchmark of economic success and independence. By contrast, only 37% of those in the middle class believe they're living the dream. The top 1% - who earn at least $500,000 annually - are living "dramatically different life experiences" than middle- and low-income Americans, according to a poll from Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) signaled that she is open to a universal basic income – an idea that has been championed by fellow presidential contender Andrew Yang (D). Warren expressed her willingness to consider a UBI, which quite literally amounts to the government handing individuals and families a “basic” income per month regardless of employment or income status, in a Washington Post survey that asked, “Should the federal government pay a universal basic income to every American adult?

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a front-runner Democrat in the 2020 presidential race, seems to have a plan for every problem under the sun, from free child care, to free college, to climate change solutions, to “Medicare for all.” However, she has proposed only one plan to pay for all these “free” offerings, which, according to her own estimates, will cost our nation a whopping $52 trillion: raising taxes on the rich. In January, Warren proposed a “wealth tax” of 2 percent on Americans with $50 million-plus in assets and 3 percent on those with assets over $1 billion. After being criticized...

Key Takeaways 1. Middle-class incomes, after adjusting for inflation, have surged by $5,003 since Donald Trump became president in January 2017. 2. These surges in income, have occurred at exactly the time when many liberal economists and media talking heads were shouting “recession.” 3. These latest income numbers also squarely contradict the claims by Democratic presidential candidates.