Free Republic

Today we look at the welfare state set up by the National Socialist German Workers' Party in Germany. "Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz" = “The common weal above individual advantage”. This video is discussing events or concepts that are academic, educational and historical in nature. This video is for informational purposes and was created so we may better understand the past and learn from the mistakes others have made. Transcript linked below video.

Ask any budget expert in Washington to explain the ballooning deficit and debt, and Social Security and Medicare will be high on the list of causes. That’s wrong. The real driver, the elephant in the room, is means-tested social-welfare spending—Medicaid, food stamps, refundable tax credits, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, federal housing subsidies and almost 100 other programs whose eligibility is limited to those below an income threshold. True, Social Security and Medicare are a drain on general revenue and will become big fiscal problems if not reformed. But they aren’t the major source of our current...

Private debt forgiveness is the only response to the country’s bleak economic situation, according to the broadsheet.With Kiev’s gloomy financial prospects showing no sign of improving, one British newspaper is insisting that Western bondholders must forgive a substantial portion of the country’s arrears. “Kiev was already in a complex debt situation going into the war, having restructured its private debt in 2015,” noted the Financial Times broadsheet in an editorial published Sunday. “The country must now balance borrowing to fund the war with managing old debt obligations.” “Doing so is a tricky juggling act,” the paper’s editorial board observed, claiming...

LONDON — A record number of millionaires is expected to leave the United Kingdom this year, according to new research, with this year’s general election expected to further exacerbate the exodus. The Henley Private Wealth Migration Report indicates that Britain will experience a net loss of 9,500 high-net-worth individuals in 2024 — more than double last year’s figure of 4,200 (which in itself was a record-high figure). The U.K. came second to only China in Henley’s ranking, with the eastern Asian giant expected to see net outflows of 15,200 millionaires in 2024. The projections mark a stark turnaround for Britain,...

Artificial intelligence scientist Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI,” is urging the British government to enforce a universal basic income (UBI) to cope with the impact of AI technology. Universal basic income is a social welfare system in which the government provides every citizen with a standard minimum income. These payments are unconditional and transferred to citizens on a regular basis without any pre-qualification. The concept is in keeping with the Marxist ideal of wealth redistribution and has been proposed by socialist figures such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Hinton told BBC Newsnight that a universal basic income...

For Jews in America and around the world, Israel represents a thriving land of survival and opportunity, and not only for my people. Nowhere else in the Middle East are those of all races, religions, sexes and sexual orientations welcome to live in peace and prosperity. Now the dream is dying — thwarted by people who’d like nothing better than to see Israel wiped from the map. It’s a sad day across the United States and abroad as whiny, privileged college students and thrill-seeking provocateurs, egged on by leftist professors, the “mainstream” news media and numbskull politicians, foment pro-terrorist, anti-Jewish...

Like communities around the country, Chicago is hemorrhaging cash to deal with the devastating consequences of Joe Biden’s border disaster. On Monday, the Budget and Government Operations Committee of the Chicago City Council voted 20-8 to send Mayor Brandon Johnson’s request for $70 million in additional City funding to care for illegals to the full Council. CBS News reports that the request is part of a spending plan announced by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle in February. The State of Illinois and Cook County pledged a combined $250 million to help fund the crisis,...

Angry protestors fail to recognize that Murray is not a white supremacist. He’s a thoughtful researcher who has published more than a dozen scholarly books about things like the impact of welfare, the pursuit of happiness, and the meaning of libertarianism. Some of his work influenced presidents. One of his books influenced my way of thinking. The video above is my full interview with Murray. Transcript Follow along using the transcript. .....

In the debt ceiling agreement last spring, House Republicans passed legislation making modest changes to work requirements for certain government programs. Less than 12 months later, another congressional agreement could effectively undo that progress.Congressional leaders recently announced an agreement on a tax package, the rumors of which had been circulating for several weeks. The House Ways and Means Committee passed the agreement shortly thereafter. In so doing, committee members took another step toward expanding the welfare state, one that will lead to more low-income families on the government rolls than in work.Child Subsidy ChangesAs previously noted, the tax agreement made...

The greatest collapse of a mighty state, a large human so­ciety and a fruitful civilization of which we possess a reasonably ac­curate record, has been immortal­ized by Edward Gibbon’s histori­cal classic, The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire. Henry Adams remarked that Gibbon did not really explain the fall; but this criticism is not altogether just. As the following excerpts from The Decline and Fall show, the philosophic historian offered a number of reflections on the symp­toms and causes of the drama which he set out to describe: "This long peace and the uni­form government of the Romans introduced...

Lessons from Milton Friedman, Herbert Stein ... and Cloward-Piven. Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman scolded the Wall Street Journal for cheerleading an open-border immigration policy. "It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state," he warned. This leads to a “transfer state,” as the Heritage Foundation describes, the government taxing the upper and middle classes, transferring money to lower economic classes via subsidies and benefits. In other words, “The transfer state redistributes funds from those with high-skill and high-income levels to those with lower skill levels.” Heritage makes the assumption, “It takes the entire net tax payments...

Starting Monday, California becomes the first state to cover health care for all income-eligible people regardless of their age or immigration status.

This is the shocking moment a 17-year-old shot a 14-year-old dead on the streets of DC while his mother stood by and did nothing - before he was caught bragging about the shooting online. Surveillance footage shows the teen, believed to be Lorenzo Thompson, 17, in a black hoodie and balaclava raising a gun outside the Crown gas station at 14th and Euclid streets NW in Columbia Heights at about 11:30pm on November 3. The woman with red braids and wearing a white coat, believed to be Thompson's mother, watches on but does nothing to diffuse the situation.

From all those lists of best books of 2022, here’s one with the potential to change public policy debate and discourse for the better. It’s The Myth of American Inequality, and the three authors are two Ph.D. economists, former Sen. Phil Gramm and his long-ago Texas A&M colleague Robert Ekelund, and former Bureau of Labor Statistics assistant commissioner John Early. Their subject is government statistics — and how they present a misleading picture.. the authors’ conclusion is that long-standing complaints about the American economy — that the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer, that we declared war on...

As I have written many times, I don’t think that the federal measure of “poverty” in the United States was originally created with fraudulent intent to deceive the voters. However, as the measure of poverty has evolved over the years, the thing deemed “poverty” by the statistics no longer bears any meaningful resemblance to what normal people think of as poverty. Rather than measuring anything that might resemble actual physical deprivation, the statistics have evolved into an artifact to manipulate the voters. In a post about a year ago I described what I call the “poverty scam” as follows: [T]he...

Here’s a question where I’ll bet you think the answer ought to be completely obvious: Should the purpose of government “anti-poverty” programs be to help the beneficiaries rise from poverty and become successful and independent, or alternatively should the purpose of such programs be to entice the recipients of aid into a life of permanent dependency upon government handouts? From the earliest days of the anti-poverty programs back in the 1960s, the programs were sold to the public as being a temporary boost by which the poor could be helped to escape from poverty and achieve self-sufficiency. And yet, about...

She’s got a bevy of baby daddies and she doesn’t care who knows it. A Tennessee woman has hit back at haters who have criticized her for having 11 children with eight different men, saying she’s not ashamed of her unconventional family. The Memphis mama, known on TikTok as Phi, is frequently fielding questions about her children’s fathers on the social media site, where she has clocked up close to 100,000 followers. In a viral video back in August, Phi said there were even advantages to having so many men around. “Let me explain it,” she said. “If you have...

NEW YORK (AP) — The Biden administration has officially undone a Trump-era rule that barred immigrants from gaining legal residency if they had utilized certain government benefits, allowing for a return to a previous policy with a narrower scope. The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday said a new regulation for the “public charge” rule would go into effect in late December, although the Biden administration had already stopped applying the previous version last year. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement that the shift “ensures fair and humane treatment.” “Consistent with America’s bedrock values, we will not...

There are far too few workers in the U.S. to meet rising demand, a problem exacerbated by an aging population, low birthrates, and stifled immigration. It could become one of the biggest economic challenges of the next several decades.

Or you can buy the only grocery item that’s apparently inflation-proof: 99-cent AriZona iced tea. Context The annual Inflation rate currently stands at a 40-year-high of 8.5%, the highest level of inflation since December 1981. As prices surge, two categories have particularly hit Americans’ wallets. One is fuel, which reached an all-time record national average of $4.33 per gallon in mid-March, and fuel still remains at a near-high $4.12 per gallon as of this writing. Another is food, which as of February had experienced 7.9% year-over-year inflation. What the bill does The Food and Fuel Family Savings Act would give...