Personal Finance

If any constitutional amendment can be hated, it would be the 16th Amendment. Passed by Congress in 1909 and ratified by the states in 1913, it allowed Congress to “levy income taxes without apportioning them among the states based on population.” At first the collection of revenue came…

On the first Sunday following Donald Trump’s sweeping November 5 victory, CBS’s 60 Minutes featured a somber post-election analysis carried out by Scott Pelley, the former CBS Evening News anchor who previously treated President Biden to two absurd softball interviews. Pelley’s apparent disappointment at the election result was outshone only by his seeming lack of…

With no White House press briefing since October 30, Thursday’s briefing was the first since Tuesday’s general election and, with the massive red wave yielding a Trump presidency and possibly a Republican Congress, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre faced a room of reporters (ostensibly most being supporters) full of questions about the administration’s reaction to this thorough rebuke.

CBS News was largely dominated late Tuesday into Wednesday by out-of-touch, elitist tongue lashings toward Trump voters as too stupid to understand how the economy works, ABC News had takes of their own that, surprisingly, grew largely more and more sensible as the night wore on, creating a remarkable turn for a few hours by the network with the horribly biased and hostile newscasts, Good…

The Fraser Institute in Vancouver, Canada, just published, for 2024, its annual Economic Freedom of the World Report. There are many ideas about what freedom means. Economic freedom, which the Fraser Institute focuses on, is of key and central importance. It is about the extent to which individuals have control of their economic life.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich now makes videos, like I do. In fact, his channel, Inequality Media, is very much like Stossel TV. He also reaches people via social media platforms, gets millions of views and covers economic topics. Reich does almost exactly what I do, except ... Reich is repeatedly wrong. It’s understandable. Despite being frequently introduced as “economist Robert Reich…

It’s been more than two months since Vice President Kamala Harris was deeded the Democratic presidential nomination. During that time, she has not held a news conference or sat with many mainstream journalists to answer serious questions about how she would lead the country and who she would choose as her advisers. On Saturday, riding high on her first debate win against Trump, Harris accepted…

The debate tone was set with the first question. Debate co-moderator David Muir, ABC’s news managing editor, asked Vice President Kamala Harris: “I want to begin tonight with the issue voters repeatedly say is their No. 1 issue ... When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?”

A newspaper story several years ago reported about an elementary school teacher who held elections in his class. The students picked their candidates — one little boy competing against one little girl. The little boy stood up before the class and shared his ideas for changes that would improve their lives. The little girl stood up and promised that everyone who voted for her would get ice…

Tuesday marked the first White House press briefing in 21 days and, along with the fact that Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre still found a way to show up nearly an hour late (by starting a 2:30 p.m. briefing at 3:12 p.m.), Fox’s Peter Doocy returned with a stunning doozy by asking about President Biden attacking Israel and Vice President Kamala Harris code-switching between audiences. Along…

The government, for the past year, has overstated joblessness by 818,000 jobs. That revision comes on top of the monthly revisions already made. It is probably not a conspiracy to help Joe Biden and Kamala Harris look good or they would have waited until after the election, not before early voting, to announce the revision. But it is troubling that the government data was off by so much and…

We’ve been told, over and over and over again, that Kamala Harris is the candidate of “joy.” Tim Walz, upon accepting his vice presidential nomination, thanked her for “bringing back the joy.” Rolling Stone gushed that Harris’ “new politics of joy is the best way to fight fascism.” The New York Times headlined, “Harris used to worry about laughing. Now joy is fueling her…

The liberal media can spin Wednesday’s inflation report however they want (and they have in some wild cases), but nothing changes the underlining facts how Americans continue to struggle. Even though one AP reporter eagerly wondered if “the inflation problem is solved”, Fox’s duo of Peter Doocy and Edward Lawrence showed up at that day’s White House press briefing to give both Karine Jean-…

Network news coverage of the July CPI report, with its slightly lower rate of inflation growth, has garnered somewhat mixed coverage across the dial, with reports ranging from sycophantic to factual.