Free Republic

During Tuesday’s first presidential debate between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrats’ nominee vowed to raise taxes on average Americans. The former vice president said, as he previously has, that in the first days of a Biden administration, he would undo the landmark taxes cuts signed into law by President Trump in 2017. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, crafted by Republicans in Congress, cut taxes for every bracket, and overwhelmingly for the middle class. Joe Biden: “I’m going to eliminate the Trump tax cuts” Joe Biden’s tax plan shows he is completely out of touch...

Sparrows were ubiquitous when I was very young, they nested in our garage, filled neighborhood trees and lent their rather tuneless chatter to the soundtrack of growing up middle class in middle America in the middle of the last century.  I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free, For His eye is on the sparrow, And I know He watches me. You know, back when men were men, women were free to be women and even the below average children learned in school that America was good and communism was bad. Rather than the other way around. Sparrows...

Politicians across the Western world like to speak fondly of the “middle class” as if it is one large constituency with common interests and aspirations. But, as Karl Marx observed, the middle class has always been divided by sources of wealth and worldview. Today, it is split into two distinct, and often opposing, middle classes. First there is the yeomanry or the traditional middle class, which consists of small business owners, minor landowners, craftspeople, and artisans, or what we would define historically as the bourgeoisie, or the old French Third Estate, deeply embedded in the private economy. The other middle...

A "very big" tax cut for middle-class Americans will be announced over the next 90 days, President Donald Trump said in an interview Wednesday. "We will make that permanent for the middle class," Trump told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo in an interview from the World Economic Forum in Davis, Switzerland, where he also added that further initiatives are coming on healthcare. "We've done well with health care. We got rid of the individual mandate. That was a thing people couldn't do, they couldn't afford it, they didn't want it," said Trump. "They were forced to pay a number and not...

These days, when you listen to the gloom of the media and many of the presidential candidates, you have to wonder what country these Debbie Downers are talking about. Former Vice President Joe Biden recently declared, "The middle class is getting crushed. And the working class has no way up." Sen. Bernie Sanders stews that President Donald Trump's policies have brought "handouts for billionaires and hunger for the poor." Mayor Pete Buttigieg claims that many working families are struggling so much financially they don't have enough income to be able to "afford a two-bedroom apartment." The Washington Post says that...

Democrats in Virginia may override local zoning to bring high-density housing, including public housing, to every neighborhood statewide — whether residents want it or not. The measure could quickly transform the suburban lifestyle enjoyed by millions, permitting duplexes to be built on suburban lots in neighborhoods previously consisting of quiet streets and open green spaces. Proponents of “upzoning” say the changes are necessary because suburbs are bastions of segregation and elitism, as well as bad for the environment. The move, which aims to provide “affordable housing,” might be fiercely opposed by local officials throughout the state, who have deliberately created...

NEW YORK — Many New Yorkers may dream of buying a home, whether it's a Brooklyn Heights brownstone or an almost suburban house in eastern Queens. But a new report suggests housing is unaffordable for the typical worker in all five boroughs. In the report published Thursday, ATTOM Data Solutions crunched housing and wage numbers for 473 of the nation's more than 3,000 counties nationwide. It determined affordability by assuming a 28 percent maximum "front-end" debt-to-income ratio. That means a buyer purchasing an affordable home would not be spending more than 28 percent of their income on house payments including...

I recently wrote op-eds that ran in the Wall Street Journal and on these pages that showed median household incomes under Donald Trump have soared from $61,000 to an all-time high of $66,000 in less than three years into the Trump presidency. This is tremendous news and documents substantial middle-class prosperity in Trump’s first three years in office. The $5,003 rise in middle-class incomes is especially impressive given that incomes only rose by $1,200 in the seven years under Obama — after the recession ended. If the media, liberal think tanks and Democrats in Congress were truly concerned about the...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Friday released a new plan laying out how she would pay for her "Medicare for All" proposal that would not directly raise taxes on the middle class, responding to pressure and criticism from other Democrats in the presidential race. The plan is a shift from Warren's progressive rival in the 2020 primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has said tax hikes on the middle class will be necessary to help pay for Medicare for All. “We don’t need to raise taxes on the middle class by one penny to finance Medicare for All,” Warren wrote...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren pledged Friday not to raise middle-class taxes to fund her "Medicare for All" plan, responding to pressure she faced as she emerged as a front-runner in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.In a new outline, Warren's campaign said her single-payer health plan would cost the country "just under" $52 trillion over a decade, which includes $20.5 trillion in new federal spending. It estimates the proposal would cost just less than the estimated $52 trillion in spending for the current system over 10 years. The Massachusetts Democrat's campaign said her plan would give every American "full...

Do you hear that dull thud sound? That’s the sound of Elizabeth Warren beating her head against reality. Unlike Bernie Sanders, Warren hasn’t been willing to admit that taxes will have to go up to pay for Medicare for All. All she’ll say is that “for middle-class families, for hard-working people costs are going to go down.” Warren wants us to imagine is a system in which taxes go way up on top earners but people in the middle are better off.Monday the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget released a new estimate of what it would take to...

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.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders wants to tax billionaires out of existence, or at least make them an endangered species. His proposed wealth tax of up to 8 percent per year would mean “the wealth of billionaires would be cut in half over 15 years,” he says.The progressive tax would start at 1 percent on retained wealth over $32 million, rising to 2 percent over $50 million, and so on, reaching to the top rate of 8 percent on wealth over $10 billion. Whatever is left would be taxed again the following year, and every year until it was gone.Let’s...

Last week, Elizabeth Warren walked into an interview that was supposed to be easy: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The liberal talk show host made it clear long ago that he’s no supporter of President Trump. He spent most of the interview joking around with the Democratic presidential hopeful, asking softball questions. But then he asked a serious question about the cost of her proposed “Medicare For All” scheme. “How are you going to pay for it? Are you going to be raising middle-class taxes?” Colbert asked. Now she could have done what a normal person would do: answer...

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” 2020 presidential candidate South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) stated that fellow 2020 candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has been “extremely evasive” on whether her Medicare for all plan will raise taxes for the middle class. Buttigieg said, “Senator Warren is known for being straightforward, and was extremely evasive when asked that question, and we’ve seen that repeatedly. I think that if you are proud of your plan and it’s the right plan, you should defend it in straightforward terms. And I think it’s puzzling that when everybody knows the answer to that...

Over a Million Households Climbed to Middle Class Under Trump, Census Data Shows More than 1.2 million American households moved to above $50,000 in annual income between 2016 and 2018, according to Census Bureau data released on Sept. 10, a sign of a growing middle class.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) refused to say if she would raise taxes on the middle class in order to pay for Medicare for All during the third Democrat debate in Houston, Texas, on Thursday evening. Joe Biden (D) lauded his progressive challenger Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for being forthcoming on how he would pay for his Medicare for All plan, admitting that middle class taxes will go up. The issue was also presented to Warren, but she repeatedly dodged the question, refusing to say if she would raise taxes on middle class families. Warren said we all owe a “huge...

Here’s a sad reality: In order to raise a family in an expensive coastal city like San Francisco or New York, you’ve now got to make $350,000 or more a year. You can certainly live on less, but it won’t be easy if your goal is to raise a family, save for your children’s education, save for your own home and save for retirement (so you can actually retire by a reasonable age). A middle-class lifestyle is a reasonable ask. But thanks to inflation, it has gotten a lot more expensive if you want to have children. The median wealth...

Once again, a traditional symbol has become a target of those who attack private property rights and the American way of life. In this case, the symbol is the lawn – those closely-cropped grassy areas that surround most single-family homes. The basis for the attack is very typically environmentalism and racism. The messenger is an article in The New York Times. Its title is unassuming enough – “The Great American Lawn: How the Dream was Manufactured.” The vehicle is an embedded seven-minute film, produced by David Botti. The Attack The film’s first minute summarizes the environmental concerns: More water is...

Jonathan Guzman and Mayra Finol earn about $130,000 a year, combined, in technology jobs. Though that is more than double the median, debt from their years at St. John’s University in New York has been hard to overcome. The two 28-year-olds in West Hartford, Conn., have about $51,000 in student debt, plus $18,000 in auto loans and $50,000 across eight credit cards. Adding financial pressure are a baby daughter and a mortgage of around $270,000.