Free Republic

Do you remember Occupy Wall Street and its many imitators across North America? It was three years ago next week that the movement went public and eventually set up tent cities across the continent. People camped out in parks, they held marches and meetings and demanded change. They demanded the one percenters pay their fair share. It was supposedly a grassroots reaction to the bailout of big business, the fat cats that run the banks. But of course we know those bailouts happened in 2007 and 2008 and Occupy, some might say the left's answer to the Tea Party, didn't...

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President Obama will propose a series of changes to the tax code in a budget plan Tuesday that would shift benefits from top earners to middle- and lower-income Americans, the White House said. In his 2015 budget plan, Obama will propose expanding or making permanent tax credits aimed at the working poor, families with young children, and college students. Dubbed auto-IRA, the proposal would require small business that don’t offer other retirement benefits to set up individual retirement accounts and sign workers up automatically, unless they opt out.

President Barack Obama plans to ask Congress in early March, as part of his fiscal 2015 budget, to reduce some of the tax advantages for employer-sponsored retirement plans for higher-income earners, according to published reports. Plus, the president wants to limit the value of all tax deductions, defined contribution exclusions and IRA deductions to 28% of income — and include an overall cap on all retirement accounts, including pensions, that could bring in $1 billion a year in new tax revenue, according to a Pensions & Investments report. According to the report, the proposals are designed to direct more of...

The federal overhaul has had a bumpy start, but with insurance payments they can handle, many have stopped gambling on their future Lost amid all the fury, however, have been the success stories.

Nearly four in five Americans who have enrolled in Obamacare need taxpayer-funded subsidies to pay for their premiums. According to the White House, 79% of those enrolled in Obamacare need subsidies because they cannot otherwise afford the premiums that have, in some cases, nearly doubled. Only 21% did not need subsidies. As Businessweek noted, people "earning up to four times the poverty rate—as much as $96,000 a year for a family of four"—can get Obamacare subsidies from the federal government.

...now “Inequality is unfair!” is blared by every anti-capitalist from President Obama to the pope, from the new mayor of New York City to the Occupy Wall Street rabble. And, of course, by The New York Times. In Obama’s world, if farmer Fred harvests 4 pumpkins and farmer John harvests 2, Fred has taken two-thirds of “the harvest” for himself. He should be ashamed. It’s unfair. It’s a crisis. Something must be done: “it challenges the very essence of who we are as a people,” says the President. That’s more of the same collectivism. Suppose that one man has an...

Is it a sin to be rich? Not if your resources are used to help others and create jobs. If you listen to most of the discussions of income inequality, it certainly seems like affluence itself is a crime. We hear increasing calls for higher taxes on the wealthy and other policies designed to redistribute income. We also need wealthy Americans to create those jobs. Start-ups in ventures that produce middle-class jobs require investments by those willing and able to take risks. Over the last five years, according to the Economist magazine, those start-ups have accounted for almost all of...

As we head into the 2014 midterm elections, one thing is certain: Class warfare will be the campaign stage again — it is the only way this president knows how to win, by dividing and conquering — with the tea party, Main Street and businesses large and small cast as the villains. Income inequity will be 2014's attack line for Obama and Democrats, this election cycle's class-warfare rhetoric. The first example is their pledge to rebuild the middle class with a minimum-wage increase. Republicans always get pegged for their supposed fidelity to the rich and to Wall Street. But the...

He uses statistics that ignore taxes and transfer payments. Faster growth is what the poor really need. Unlike the other presidents since World War II, he places inequality above economic growth as the organizing principle of U.S. economic policy. When a Democratic Congress passed the president's massive $800 billion stimulus bill, seven-eighths of the total went to transfer payments like Medicaid, food stamps and sending a check to millions of Americans who do not pay income taxes. Gallup's payroll-to-population ratio, the proportion of the American population working full time, has dropped almost two full percentage points in the last year,...

With it now declared to be an act of racism to dare refer to the federal government’s dramatically increased and disastrous role in our healthcare as “Obamacare” — even though President Barack Obama, himself, once did so proudly, before its onerous provisions were triggered and began to explode in the faces of the American people — let’s just note that the, ahem, Affordable Care Act is . . . not. So, unsurprisingly, President Obama desperately moves on to greener pastures: Class envy and warfare. Income inequality. As if anyone in their right mind would choose to live in a society...

President Obama on Wednesday declared that addressing income inequality would be the focus of “all” of the White House’s efforts “for the rest of my presidency.” In a sweeping address that touched on raising the minimum wage, investing in infrastructure and ending tax breaks for the wealthy, Obama warned that the American economy has become “profoundly unequal,” declaring economic mobility the “challenge of our time.” “The combined trends of increasing inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American dream, our way of life, and what we stand for around the globe,” he said in an hour-long speech...

I have believed for some time that the left is intellectually bankrupt. I can’t think of a single new idea from the left of the political spectrum since the end of the Vietnam War. The left has no idea what to do about our failing public schools. It has no solution to the problem of entitlement spending. It has no earthly idea what to do about all the problems in our health care system. There is no coherent proposal on the left to reform the tax system. I think it is no exaggeration to say that the left has no...

FRESNO, California (KFSN) -- Proposition 30 would increase the California sales tax by a quarter of a cent. The money raised would help fund education and public safety. Business and taxpayer groups opposed to Proposition 30 gathered in Fresno. They say taxes should not be raised in a down economy. But some students and educators at Fresno State say the initiative would give education a much needed $6 billion boost. "There's nothing in there about higher education but even that's irrelevant," Jon Coupal said. "There's no provision in there that adds new money to the education budget." Sean Kiernan said,...

Do the wealthiest Americans have a "moral" obligation to pay higher taxes? California Governor Jerry Brown thinks so. Under Prop 30, the two-time Democratic Governor is calling for a 3% tax hike on the state's richest 1% to help pay for the cash-strapped state's education system. "It takes a refined theory to say to billionaires that it's easier to take three weeks of school away from kids in Los Angeles than it is to take 3% away from people who make hundreds of millions of dollars a year," said Brown in an interview with The Financial Times. Prop 30 calls...

(VIDEO AT LINK) President Obama: "Too many folks still don't have a sense that tomorrow will be better than today. And so, the question in this election is which way do we go? Do we go forward towards a new vision of an America in which prosperity is shared?(continued)

One in seven Americans are on food stamps, but the government is pushing to enroll more — in many instances working to overcome Americans’ “pride,” self-reliance or failure to see a need. “Our common goal is to increase participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” the United States Department of Agriculture explains on its “Outreach Toolkits” page. “Our purpose is to ensure that those going through difficult times can feed their families healthy, nutritious food. By working as a team, we can accomplish these goals.” The USDA has adopted a range of strategies and programs designed to bring more people...

On Cenk Uygur's MSNBC show this evening, Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont who caucuses with the Dems, claimed that rich Americans "have not contributed one nickel to deficit reduction." Cenk of course failed to challenge Sander's certifiably silly assertion. View video here.

You might have thought that Mike Bloomberg—with his trans fat and smokes snatching—was the epitome of nanny staters. But the Big Apple mayor's got nothing on another New Yorker--Nicholas Kristof. In his New York Times column of today, Equality, A True Soul Food, Kristof preaches the urgent need for income redistribution as a means of . . . improving our souls. According to Kristof, "the toll of our stunning inequality is not just economic but also is a melancholy of the soul." And hey: what says soul improvement more than . . . raising taxes?! More excerpts and analysis after...

The United Nations says it can end poverty, stop global warming, and end the threat of contagious disease while also unlocking $7 trillion of hidden wealth from developing nations in the process. If this sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. In a new book launched with great fanfare at last month’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, The New Public Finance: Responding to Global Challenges, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) claims to offer “innovative financial mechanisms that could dramatically reduce the cost of managing global risks can now be implemented by governments across the world.”...