Free Republic

In the United States—as in all of the world’s wealthier nations—ending poverty is not a matter of resources. Many economists, including Timothy Smeeding of the University of Wisconsin (and former director of the Institute for Research on Poverty) have argued that every developed nation has the financial wherewithal to eradicate poverty. In large part this is because post-industrial productivity has reached the point where to suggest a deficit in resources is laughably disingenuous. And despite the occasional political grandstanding against welfare, there is no policy, ideology or political party that is on the books as pro-starvation, pro-homelessness, pro-death or anti-dignity....

What if you could receive a guaranteed basic yearly income with no strings attached? Didn’t matter how much money you made now, or in the future. Nobody would ask about your job status or how many kids you have. The check would arrive in the mailbox, no matter what. Sounds like a far-fetched idea, right? Wrong. All over the world, people are talking guaranteeing basic incomes for citizens as a viable policy. Half of all Canadians want it. The Swiss have had a referendum on it. The American media is all over it: The New York Times’ Annie Lowrey considered...

Can giving people money help solve wealth inequality? Y Combinator, a prestigious Silicon Valley accelerator program for startups, is wading into a new “world changing” project: basic income. On Tuesday, Y Combinator said in a blog post that it would conduct a short pilot study in Oakland, Calif., “a city of great social and economic diversity” that “has both concentrated wealth and considerable inequality.” The accelerator has also hired Elizabeth Rhodes, a PhD in social work and political science from the University of Michigan, where she completed research on health and education in slum communities in Nairobi. Y Combinator defines...

Our current welfare system is clearly a mess. The federal government currently funds 126 separate anti-poverty programs, at least 72 of which provide either cash or in-kind benefits to individuals. For example, there are 33 housing programs, run by four different cabinet departments, including bizarrely the Department of Energy. There are currently 21 different programs providing food or food purchasing assistance. These programs are administered by three different federal departments and one independent agency.  There are eight different health care programs, administered by five separate agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services. And six cabinet departments and five...

Imagine if everyone was guaranteed healthcare and an income floor. People would still pursue their calling in life. In fact, they could do so more freely with more creativity and daring without the fear of not making ends meet. It would unleash the enormous creative potential that lays dormant within the hearts and minds of so many office workers, toiling away as their best ideas and dreams wither away.

Tech's favorite policy, universal basic income, is about to get its first big test 6,000 Kenyans will get cash grants for at least a decade By Ben Popper on April 18, 2016 10:07 am Over the last two years Silicon Valley has fallen in love with a striking economic theory. As former Facebook executive Sam Lessin wrote recently, "ThereÂ’s been a dinner-time revival of the old conversation about the inevitable need for a guaranteed basic income in the United States." ItÂ’s ironic that in the heart of winner-take-all venture capital culture, there is a growing call for a massive...

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton spent a great deal of time debating the merits of raising the minimum wage at the last Democratic debate on April 14. Sanders, ever the radical, stood behind the popular $15 minimum wage figure that will soon take hold in California and New York. Clinton, who's long pushed for $12, updated her position in support of $15 figure. Both could be misguided. While raising the minimum wage does make sense on paper — working people need to make more to survive than they can on today's minimum wage, so we should give them more money...

In 2012, voters in California approved a measure to raise taxes on millionaires, bringing their top state income tax rate to 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation. Conservative economists predicted calamity, or at least a big slowdown in growth. Also that year, the governor of Kansas signed a series of changes to the state's tax code, including reducing income and sales tax rates. Conservative economists predicted a boom. Neither of those predictions came true. Not right away -- California grew just fine in the year the tax hikes took effect -- and especially not in the medium term, as...

At the end of this past week, The Washington Post ran a long story on the Center for Freedom and Prosperity (CFP), an organization that I have long supported. It appeared that the original goal was to do a hit piece on CFP because it had been a leader in the fight for global tax competition and smaller government. The irony was that the authors of the story quoted a number of people from around the world... ...who support bigger government and higher taxes, to the effect that those at the CFP had been highly successful in blocking a number...

John Tamny, of Forbes and RealClearMarkets, has penned a highly original and stimulating look at the economics of money and banking: Who Needs the Fed? I sang the praises of his remarkable Popular Economics when that came out, and now this just-published book has me singing them again, in a new key. Let me note up front that there are substantial parts of this book with which I, so far at least, disagree. I have exchanged some emails with Mr. Tamny on these issues and nothing has been resolved. This is a not A Bad Thing: it can be actually...

When Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed a minimum wage bill into law in March, it was the highest statewide wage floor in the U.S. It was also the most convoluted, setting three different wages and raise schedules depending on the area's population. ‎ Wages will rise to $12.50 in rural Oregon, $13.50 in mid-size regions and $14.75 in greater Portland, all by the year 2022. But before the ink was even dry, Democrats, who control the state House, Senate and governor's office, announced they wanted to change the bill that was rammed through in a five-week legislative session despite fierce...

Nearly half of unemployed Americans have quit looking for work, and the numbers are even worse for the long-term jobless, according to a poll released Wednesday that paints a grim picture of the labor market. Some 59 percent of those who have been out of work for two years or more say they have stopped looking, the Harris Poll of unemployed Americans showed. Overall, 43 percent of the jobless said they have given up, according to the poll released in conjunction with Express Employment Professionals, a job placement service. "This is a tale of two economies," Express CEO Bob Funk...

Opponents of Britain's European Union membership have edged into the lead over the past two weeks, according to a YouGov poll which indicated President Barack Obama's intervention failed to swing support behind "In" vote in a June 23 referendum. The online survey for The Times taken on April 25-26 showed support for the Out campaign had risen 3 percentage points to 42 percent since a similar survey on April 12-14, while support for the "In" campaign had risen 1 percentage point to 41 percent.

Despite his proclamation that he "saved the world from a Great Depression," the fact is that Obama will be the first President ever to not see a single year of 3% GDP growth - but only cynical fiction-peddlers would mention facts at a time like this. In yet more legacy-defending narrative, Obama told The NYTimes today that his biggest failure was being unable to sell his success in putting the American economy back on track to the American people (no matter the actual realities) careful to blame Republicans for slowing growth "by a percentage point or two." And then in...

Despite his proclamation that he "saved the world from a Great Depression," the fact is that Obama will be the first President ever to not see a single year of 3% GDP growth - but only cynical fiction-peddlers would mention facts at a time like this. In yet more legacy-defending narrative, Obama told The NYTimes today that his biggest failure was being unable to sell his success in putting the American economy back on track to the American people (no matter the actual realities) careful to blame Republicans for slowing growth "by a percentage point or two." And then in...

As president, Donald Trump would sell off $16 trillion worth of U.S. government assets in order to fulfill his pledge to eliminate the national debt in eight years, senior adviser with the campaign Barry Bennett said. "The United States government owns more real estate than anybody else, more land than anybody else, more energy than anybody else," Bennett told Chris Jansing Sunday on MSNBC. "We can get rid of government buildings we're not using, we can extract the energy from government lands, we can do all kinds of things to extract value from the assets that we hold." In a...

Donald Trump said in an interview that economic conditions are so perilous that the country is headed for a “very massive recession” and that “it’s a terrible time right now” to invest in the stock market, embracing a distinctly gloomy view of the economy that counters mainstream economic forecasts. The New York billionaire dismissed concern that his comments — which are exceedingly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a major party front-runner — could potentially affect financial markets. Over the course of the discussion, the candidate made clear that he would govern in the same nontraditional way that he has campaigned,...

Donald Trump said in an interview that economic conditions are so perilous that the country is headed for a “very massive recession” and that “it’s a terrible time right now” to invest in the stock market, embracing a distinctly gloomy view of the economy that counters mainstream economic forecasts. The New York billionaire dismissed concern that his comments — which are exceedingly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a major party front-runner — could potentially affect financial markets.

Fact Checker Trump’s Nonsensical Claim He Can Eliminate $19 Trillion In Debt In Eight Years Donald Trump, in an interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa In a revealing interview, Trump predicts a ‘massive recession’ but intends to eliminate the national debt in 8 years By Glenn Kessler April 2 The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Robert Costa sat down with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Here's how the interview went. Donald Trump: “We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt.” Bob Woodward: “How long would that take?” Trump: “I think I could do it fairly quickly,...

"I think we’re sitting on an economic bubble. A financial bubble... We’re not at 5 percent unemployment. We’re at a number that’s probably into the 20s if you look at the real number. That was a number that was devised, statistically devised to make politicians – and in particular presidents – look good. And I wouldn’t be getting the kind of massive crowds that I’m getting if the number was a real number." "I’m talking about a bubble where you go into a very massive recession. Hopefully not worse than that, but a very massive recession. Look, we have money...