Free Republic

Nearly 80,000 Californians collected six-figure taxpayer-funded pensions in 2018, as retirement costs leave half the state's cities at "high risk" of serious financial distress, according to an analysis. Transparent California, a free-market think tank, found that 6 percent of retired government workers collected more than $100,000 in 2018, an 85 percent jump since 2013. Those payouts represented 20 percent of the $51.7 billion in total pension payments. Taxpayers spent a record-high $40 billion to cover the costs of public sector retirees in 2018, the report also found. The median household income in California is $75,277. The six-figure payouts propel thousands...

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts sat down with New Hampshire Public Radio on Wednesday for a lengthy discussion of her many different "plans." All her proposed solutions to our nation's problems end in more taxation, bigger government, and less freedom. Radio host Laura Knoy asked Warren what, if any, limits Sen. Warren's proposed plan to eliminate college student debt would have. In short, the Massachusetts Senator told the Granite State that if you're a college graduate earning $250,000 or more, sorry pal, you will not have your debt cancelled. And if you are very rich, you will more or less...

Not that long ago there was a broad political consensus that a fair and economically efficient tax system has a broad tax base and low tax rates. The grand bargain was no special interest loopholes and low tax rates to boost the economy and jobs. As recently as the 1980s, Democrats and Republicans alike joined together to pass a tax reform that lowered income tax rates to 28 percent, while eliminating deductions and carve outs. Nearly every Senate Democrat, including Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, Joe Biden, Bill Bradley, and Howard Metzenbaum, voted for this new tax system. It worked. SNIP...

Most Americans have to work to earn a living. But the rich are different: They get most of their income not from labor but from what they own — companies, stocks, real estate and the like. These income-generating assets are what economists call capital. And because capital is heavily concentrated among the rich, the U.S. government taxed earnings derived from capital at a higher rate than earnings made through labor for the entirety of the 20th century. But that’s no longer the case, according to economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California at Berkeley. In their...

More people are leaving the New York region than any other major metropolitan area in the country. More than 1 million people moved out of the New York area to other parts of the country since 2010, a rate of 4.4 percent — the highest negative net migration rate among the nation’s large population centers, US Census records show. The number of people leaving the region — which includes parts of New Jersey, Connecticut, the lower Hudson Valley and Long Island — in one year swelled from 187,034 in 2015 to 223,423 in 2016, while the number of international immigrants...

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders proposed an annual wealth tax topping out at 8% for the richest Americans, offering the farthest-reaching Democratic plan to pay for expanded government programs and break up concentrated fortunes. Mr. Sanders’s plan would hit more households and raise more money than the tax proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, his chief rival for progressive voters. According to an analysis by economists who consulted with both campaigns, Mr. Sanders’s plan would generate $4.35 trillion over a decade, compared with Ms. Warren’s $2.75 trillion. Mr. Sanders’s plan would increase federal revenue by about 10%, all from around...

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders has released a plan to eliminate $81 billion in past-due medical debt and use bankruptcy courts to process other existing and future medical debt. Four things to know: 1. The plan calls for the federal government to negotiate and pay off past-due medical bills in collections that have been reported to credit agencies. 2. The campaign chose $81 billion based on a 2018 Health Affairs study. Researchers found one in six Americans have past-due medical bills on their credit report totaling $81 billion. Fifty-three percent of those bills amount to less than $600 each....

On Stephen Colbert's CBS late night show, the host challenged Elizabeth Warren on the issue of single-payer healthcare, which she unequivocally supports. He attempted to nail the leftist Senator down on the question of whether or not middle class Americans' taxes would have to go up (they would, a lot) in order to fund the program she and Bernie Sanders have proposed. She ducked, he drilled down further, then she ducked again -- prompting the comedian to call her out on it, seemingly to her surprise: “You keep being asked in the debates, how are you going to pay...

It was widely reported earlier this year that the new state budget imposes an additional one percent tax on restaurant meals bringing that total ‘meals tax’ to 7.35%. What you may have missed is that the 7.35% tax will also be imposed on many ready to eat prepared foods at the supermarket that have never been taxed before. “It is simply a money grab, that’s all it is,” said Senate Minority Leader Sen. Len Fasano (R-North Haven). Republicans say it was sold to the public as a simple one percent tax hike on restaurant meals. But the list from the...

Carl Icahn, the legendary investor, has told employees that he is moving his company from New York to Miami and a report said his decision to move is based on the Big Apple’s higher taxes. Icahn, 83, whose net worth is about $20.4 billion, is set to move his home and business from the city due to the taxes, sources told Bloomberg. The report said that it is not uncommon for billionaires to settle in the state which is one of seven without a personal income tax. The report pointed to New York’s 8.82 percent rate. …

Senator Warren’s proposal would hit fortunes above $50 million with a 2 percent annual wealth tax. Fortunes above $1 billion would be taxed annually at 3 percent. Why is this a bad idea? Recent research and analysis convincingly argues that the plan would collect a fraction of the revenue that Warren’s advisers expect. Lawrence Summers, the economist and former Treasury secretary, and Penn professor Natasha Sarin argue this from the U.S.’s experience with the estate tax. And economists Matthew Smith, Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick present preliminary estimates suggesting that the Warren proposal would raise half as much as projected....

The nation is more than a decade past the Great Recession, and most places are seeing a strong economic recovery and improved living standards. Not in Chicago, and not in Illinois. August statistics from the National Association of Realtors noted the city and state’s real estate market has severely underperformed, a trend forecasted to continue in the third quarter of this year. While the Midwest and the nation as a whole saw a very minor dip in home sales and surging Midwest home prices, Chicago missed the wave. Home sales in the Windy City experienced a 13.3% plunge, and the...

Americans must accept more of the world’s refugees into their job markets and neighborhoods, says a Washington Post op-ed by Walter Mondale, the Democrat presidential candidate who lost 49 of 50 states to President Ronald Reagan in November 1984. “There is hope,” Mondale says in his op-ed, continuing: While most Americans do not have the privileges my office afforded me in 1979, nor the platforms upon which to speak out, there are steps everyone can take to make a real, tangible impact. Contact your representatives in Washington. Make the case for an increase in refugee admissions. Speak up against this...

More people are leaving Orange and Los Angeles counties than are moving in, according to census data. A breakdown of last year’s census numbers shows Orange County had 20,104 more people leave than move in, marking the 10th worst net out-migration among big counties in the U.S. L.A. County had 98,608 people leave, marking the biggest net loss in the U.S. Gabriela Aragon, of Santa Ana, isn’t surprised to hear about exodus. “If I want a nice three bedroom home … you think you’re not gonna be able to afford it here so maybe elsewhere,” she said.

In dueling campaign rallies, former Vice President Joe Biden and President Trump made their argument to voters in Iowa. Biden joined his Democratic opponents in calling for higher capital gains taxes to pay for his pet programs. Democrats are racing to the left in a desperate attempt to mollify their radicalized base. Almost every 2020 Democratic presidential candidate is abandoning capitalism. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who has said she is a "capitalist to my bones," sings the same chorus with her massive wealth tax plan. Her campaign estimates that it would cost the American people $3 trillion over 10 years....

This week, Sen. Bernie Sanders upped the ante on free stuff the legion of Democratic presidential candidates are promising voters. In what he called a “revolutionary proposal,” Sanders says that if elected he would forgive “all student debt” — that’s $1.6 trillion worth — and end “the absurdity of sentencing an entire generation to a lifetime of debt for the ‘crime’ of getting a college education.” It would be hard to devise a plan that would shower more benefits on the wealthy than this one. Just 12% of college debt is owed by those in the bottom quarter of income...

Thanks in large part to the Trump-GOP tax reform law passed in December 2017, residents of high-tax states like New York, New Jersey, and California are leaving in high numbers — and the exodus is only just beginning, say experts. “It took a few months for taxpayers to realize the dollar implications – until they actually filed their tax returns this year,” Alan Goldenberg, a principal at Friedman LLP, told Fox Business. “It quantified the impact of the loss of the SALT deduction when people saw it in front of their eyes on their tax return.”

It’s known here as The Exodus. People are leaving Illinois in droves. Republicans blame the state’s high taxes and its unfunded pension liability, which tops $130 billion. Democrats believe it’s the state’s lack of investment in education and infrastructure. One thing is certain: Illinois’ population has declined by 157,000 residents over the past five years, making it one of only two states — West Virginia is the other — to lose people over the past decade. Illinois’ predicament is a perfect storm of declining manufacturing, stagnant immigration, declining birth rates, young people leaving for college and never coming back, long-standing...

... Democrats in Congress visited the White House on Tuesday, and they emerged to say that they and President Trump had agreed to spend $2 trillion on public works ... The question is who is going to pay for all this? The annual federal budget deficit is already nearing $1 trillion. House Democrats couldn’t even pass a budget outline because their left flank wants $67 billion more in domestic spending than the leadership offered. Republicans want more for defense. And that’s before any infrastructure blowout. Democrats have been saying they won’t agree to raise the gasoline tax unless Mr. Trump...

For over six years, California has had a top marginal income tax rate of 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation. About 150,000 households in a state of 40 million people now pay nearly half of the total annual state income tax. The state legislature sold that confiscatory tax rate on the idea that it was a temporary fix and would eventually be phased out. No one believed that. California voters, about 40 percent of whom pay no state income taxes, naturally approved the extension of the high rate by an overwhelming margin. California recently raised gas taxes by 40...