Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts

John Stossel: Popular Nonsense

Repeat a lie often enough and it will be believed.      "Young people are exploited!" "Income mobility is down!" "Poor people are locked into poverty!" Those are samples of popular nonsense peddled today. Leftist economist Thomas Piketty's book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" has been No. 1 on best-seller lists for weeks (with 400    ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Poverty And Snow Storms

The exit route is obscured.     Many years ago, in upstate New York, there was a lady who was caught in a fierce snow storm that produced conditions called a "whiteout." That's when the snow is falling so thick and fast that all you can see in any direction is just sheer white. This lady wandered around in the storm, struggling to try to get home,    ... MORE

John Stossel: Earth Daze

Blinded by their "political" science.       "The heavens reek, the waters below are foul ... we are in a crisis of survival." That's how Walter Cronkite and CBS hyped the first Earth Day, back in 1970. Somehow we've survived since then, and most of life got better, although I never hear that from the worrywarts. Of course, some things got better       ... MORE

Wynton Hall: Seven Devastating Economic Facts

Hope and change made everything worse.         U.S. economic conditions in 2014 continue to languish, as millions of Americans remain jobless. Seven economic facts underscore America’s increasingly dire economic outlook. 1. A Record 91.8 Million Americans Are No Longer in the Workforce The latest Labor Department figures reveal that a    ... MORE

John Dietrich: The Poverty Hoax

Do the poor need Democrats, or is it vice-versa?      A major concern of progressives is their supposed interest in the fate of the poor. They purport to be the champions of the poor. But the truth is that they need the poor more than the poor need them, in a symbiotic relationship.  As much as 75% of the money allocated to the      ... MORE

Veronique de Rugy: Time For A Guaranteed Income?

Friedman and Hayek supported the notion.      Switzerland will soon hold a nationwide referendum on granting a guaranteed and unconditional minimum monthly income of $2,800 for each Swiss adult. In America, where Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty just celebrated its 50th anniversary of failing to achieve victory, liberals jumped on the  ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Dependency, Not Poverty

There is no material poverty in the U.S.     Here are a few facts about people whom the Census Bureau labels as poor. Dr. Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield, in their study "Understanding Poverty in the United States: Surprising Facts About America's Poor", report that 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning; nearly three-quarters      ... MORE

Roger Kimball: The Evils Of Capitalism

There is a link between limited government and prosperity. What’s the one thing everyone knows about capitalism?  Why, that it started out as a mean, nasty tool of greedy industrialists. “The Industrial Revolution,” we all learned, was a terrible Moloch that devoured children, put profits before people, and though it made great fortunes      ... MORE

Ronald Bailey: The President Is Wrong On Inequality

It is not the "defining challenge of our time."      Are the rich getting richer? Yes. Are the poor getting poorer? No. In fact, over the past 35 years most Americans got richer. Has income inequality increased in the United States? Yes. Does it matter? Well, President Barack Obama thinks so. In a December speech at the Center for American     ... MORE

Brian Doherty: Petty Law Enforcement Vs. The Poor

The state against the poor.     The New York Times recently noted a new trend in Los Angeles: strict enforcement of jaywalking laws downtown, including the little-known regulation that makes it a crime to enter a crosswalk after the red crosswalk light is flashing—even if that red light, as it often does in L.A., is counting down the seconds      ... MORE

Capitalism: The Solution To Mass Poverty

by Jaana Woiceshyn.            In a recent Vancouver Province column “Capitalism has a role in fighting poverty,” Mark Milke takes Pope Francis to task, rightfully, for attacking capitalism while at the same time calling for eradication of poverty. Milke is correct in recognizing the role capitalism plays in eradicating poverty. However, capitalism      ... MORE

National Review: The Fifty Year War On Poverty

Great for Democrats, not-so-good for the poor.    This year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s proclamation of a “war on poverty,” and the progress in this theater has not been encouraging.  Trillions of dollars have been spent, and the number of Americans living in poverty is higher today than it was ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: A Challenge To Our Beliefs

Do facts matter more than social visions?       Depressing news about black students scoring far below white students on various mental tests has become so familiar that people in different parts of the ideological spectrum have long ago developed their different explanations for why this is so. But both may have to do some rethinking,   ... MORE

Giving Free Money Is Better Than The Welfare State

Matthew Feeney on a guaranteed income.     The Swiss are set to vote on whether their country should introduce a basic national income of 2,500 Swiss Francs ($2,800) a month for every adult, regardless of their salary or net worth. A date for the vote has yet to be announced. Without the Swiss proposal being attached to drastic welfare reforms  ... MORE