Free Republic

Here’s a quick and dirty guess: Upper-middle-class families in blue states–those President Obama calls “the rich”–will soon be paying 20% more a year in state and federal taxes. If you pay $100,000 off of a $300,000 income now, look for $120,000 in a couple of years. Federal income taxes are going up, and deductions are going down. That much we know. What we don’t know yet–but I would bet money on it–is if the 7.65% Social Security and Medicare tax ceiling will be lifted from $102,000 to $150,000 or so. Taxes are headed up at the state and local level...

In the July 2 issue of FORBES I posed these questions: What feeds the global liquidity surplus? On balance, is the global cash glut mainly the result of the U.S. Federal Reserve's loose money and the resulting lax loans? Or can it be explained by a new force--rapidly rising prosperity around the world? The answer mattered, I wrote. "If loose money [lax lending] is causing the liquidity surplus, then both economic growth and the bull rally are resting on thin ice." That would be bad and guarantee a hard landing. But if the 25-year Laffer-to-Google (nasdaq: GOOG) boom in innovation,...

First of all, this is not the same article that has been posted from Tech Central Station. It just has the same title.... I owe this title to writer Lee Harris. Last month Harris posed this headliner question in a piece he wrote for Tech Central Station's Web site, TCSDaily. Harris is right to ask; socialism's track record is abysmal.The milder forms of it have yielded economic stagnation where and whenever tried: England in the 1970s; France today. The more impatient strains--"socialism in a hurry," as Lenin reputedly called communism--did nothing but plunder economies and destroy lives. Their fine leaders...

If you can answer the riddle below, you'll be light-years ahead of the millions of other poor suckers trying to navigate their way through the turbulent early 2000s. What do these have in common: Google, Blind Date, China, India, Wi-Fi and (just to throw a curve) Max Oshman, the 17-year-old Web designer I wrote about in the last issue? Answer: They are key actors in what I am calling the Cheap Revolution. CEOs, listen up. If you are on the wrong side of this revolution, you'd better rethink your company's mission. Quickly. Consider: • Google. This red-hot Web site search...

Confirmation that the American economy remains on the right side of the grass arrived farm-fresh from North Carolina the other day. Chapel Hill-based James Smith, chief economist for the Society of Industrial & Office Realtors--Society?--says the economy grew 3.8% in the third quarter and will grow 4.2% in the fourth. Should we believe this obscure Smith from down in the piney woods? Why not? He's been shooting bull's-eyes on quarterly growth-rate estimates for the last two years. I like his methodology. He talks to business owners and consumers. How about that! Kudlow and Cramer, take note. Moreover, Smith talks to...