- Revisiting the Great Work of Medical Missionary Dr. Anne Livingston in Haiti
- Dick Cheney Was a Great Boss
- "I Beat Hitler!"
- Christmas Season in Western North Carolina
- 2026 US Senate Race in North Carolina
- The Fall of Man: John Calvin, Leibniz, and Deeper Truths
- Time of Reassessment America
- Has the Bethlehem Star Mystery Been Unveiled?
- Appeals Court Refuses to Dismiss Greenville County Republican Chairman’s Contempt Case
- The America That Once Was (A Christmas Memory)
- Is a Self-Proclaimed Drag Queen Performer Serving in a Leading Moral Arc Role at a Greenville Children’s Production of Annie?
- Project Ukraine and Ukrainian/CIA Intelligence
- The Busan Trade Summit between U.S. and China
- Merry Christmas from Times Examiner
- Republican Women's Club Hosts Freedom Caucus Members
It's a Wonderful President
- Details
- By Stephen Moore
I've been shocked that Americans are in such a grumpy mood as reflected in all the public opinion polls.
What a paradox: At the same time, we have peace and prosperity, including more income, more wealth, more of almost everything that we want to buy (yes, except for housing), Americans seem to think we have an "affordability crisis." In 2025 the median household income in the United States has risen to more than $86,000 a year -- an all-time high.
Every income group and every ethnic group is richer today than ever before. Hispanics now have a median household income above $70,000, which would make them rich in most countries where they or their parents came from.
Why Johnny Can't Read
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- By Stephen Moore
Reading and math scores are abysmal across the country, as national testing results keep documenting. Illiteracy rates are rising: The number of 16- to 24-year-olds reading at the lowest literacy levels increased from 16% in 2017 to 25% in 2023, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
In some inner-city schools, less than half of kids are reading or doing math at grade-level proficiency. Many high school grads can't read their diplomas.
As an economist, I would submit that this is our greatest crisis. It puts the future of American prosperity in grave danger. Also, the learning gap widens income and wealth disparities.
If Young People Want More Affordability, They Should Get Jobs
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- By Stephen Moore
Polls show that the age group of Americans most worried about "affordability" are the 20- and 30-somethings. That's young millennials and Gen Z.
Why are they so financially stressed out? One reason things seem so unaffordable to young people is that too many aren't working hard -- they are hardly working.
The latest Labor Department data indicate that fewer and fewer males between the ages 16 and 24 are in the labor force. It used to be that more than 70% had a job; now less than 60% do.
Labor force participation for men even into their 30s is at or near an all-time low. Men without jobs is a prescription for social chaos.
Want Lower Prices? More 'Affordability'? Move to a Red State.
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- By Stephen Moore
The buzzword of the month is "affordability," and based on the election results from New York, New Jersey and Virginia, voters think that's declining. Democrats think they've found a winning issue here to win back the hearts and minds of voters after the Trump sweep last year.
It's true that people are angry about prices. Steaks and hamburgers are more expensive than ever. So are coffee and rents and medical care. Many Americans are about to see a 10%-20% increase in their health care premiums starting in January.
The Case Against Jerome Powell
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- By Stephen Moore
It's hard to believe that a couple years ago Time magazine considered naming Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell as their Person of the Year. He may well have won, if it hadn't been for someone named Taylor Swift.
Powell has been idolized by the Left for one reason: He's been a thorn in the side of President Donald Trump for years. If Trump says "ying," Powell says "yang."
Last week Powell finally lowered the federal funds rate, and better late than never. But his speech to the media was a tirade against Trumponomics. He was filled with doom and gloom in his statement, telling global investors that the economy is growing at only 1.6% so far this year and is expected to grow 1.6% next year.
Europe Is Dying -- Are We Next?
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- By Stephen Moore
Let's start with a very simple truism: You can't have prosperity without people.
Human beings are the most valuable resource, because it is human ingenuity that creates, captures and cultivates all other resources. We as human beings are the custodians and protectors of the planet, not the destroyers of the planet (as the radical environmentalists would have you believe). The richer and more technologically advanced we become, the more likely we are to avert a catastrophic event like a giant meteor crashing into the planet and destroying all life.
Which brings us to a potentially ruinous trend: Many countries are literally running out of people.
'Drill, Baby, Drill' Is Working
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- By Stephen Moore
Well, so much for the vaunted renewable energy "transition" to save the planet. This was always a fable. We get 80% of our energy from fossil fuels, and with Donald Trump now in the White House, that ratio is rising, not falling.
A Reuters headline from recent days tells the real story: "US crude production to hit record 13.41 million (barrels per day) in 2025 before falling."
The data from the International Energy Agency tells the same story about clean natural gas: We're producing more of it than ever before. Why shouldn't we? The U.S. has greater access to clean, cheap, reliable and made-in-America natural gas than any other nation. Natural gas is far cheaper and less land-intensive than ugly wind and solar farms that industrialize America's natural landscape beauty.
As Many as 1 Million Kids Will Have School Choice This Year
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- By Stephen Moore
This is the dawning of the age of school choice.
The school bells will start ringing in the days and weeks ahead, but a record number of kids -- especially children from low-income families -- will be opting out of the traditional public schools. This year as many as 1 million kids will participate in public school alternatives, including voucher programs, tuition tax credits, scholarship programs or charter schools.
That's a good thing, right? After all, to paraphrase the famous axiom: When schools compete, kids win.
Desperately Seeking a Pro-Growth Democrat
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- By Stephen Moore
The most recent Wall Street Journal political poll shows that Democrats have swerved into a deep ditch.
Only three of 10 voters have a positive opinion of the Democratic Party, and that is the lowest this number has been for Democrats since Bill Clinton's first term in office. Republicans aren't very popular either -- but they have a big lead over the donkeys.
I'm not a cheerleader for the Republicans, and it's clear the GOP is not the solution to all our nation's problems. Republicans have been coconspirators in the runaway spending and debt crisis in Washington.
Trump Should Index the Capital Gains Tax for Inflation
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- By Stephen Moore
President Donald Trump should follow up on his historic "big, beautiful" tax bill with an extra booster shot for the economy by immediately indexing the capital gains taxes for inflation.
There is a reasonable chance he can do this without having to go through Congress. And our sources in the administration tell us Trump is interested in doing just that.
The tax on inflationary gains is patently unfair.
Consider a middle-class investor who bought a stock at the start of the Biden presidency for $10,000 and sold it off four years later at a valuation of $12,200. The investor would pay a tax of about $400 on the "gain" of $2,200. But over that time period, prices of everything rose on average by 22%, thanks to Bidenflation, so the investor didn't really gain anything.
The Biggest Conservative Victory in 30 Years
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- By Stephen Moore
Everyone knows that the "big, beautiful" tax bill signed into law on the Fourth of July lowers tax burdens for families and businesses. It also averts a $4 trillion tax increase starting next year. That's enough reason to heartily celebrate.
But what isn't well known is that this new law doesn't just change tax policy. It includes dozens of other long-sought policy goals -- what I call "hidden gems." Here is a list of some of the major policy victories:
The law is the most aggressive federal advancement of school choice by allowing low-income parents to direct education dollars to private, charter or Catholic schools that are better for their kids.
For America to Win the AI Race, Keep Government's Hands Off
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- By Stephen Moore
At the birth of the internet age in the early 1990s, the U.S. and Europe took opposite approaches to advancing this new economy-changing technology.
Europe tried the approach of industrial policy: They allowed government to regulate, subsidize and then tax the swarm of new tech companies that emerged.
Here in the U.S., Congress and the Clinton administration made a wiser choice. We passed laws that kept internet startups regulation-, tax- and lawsuit-free. It was the Wild West of startup technology companies. A Darwinian race to excellence and survival. Some of the big initial companies like AOL, Netscape and MySpace gave way to superior competitors like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Facebook.
Congress Should Just Say No to a Remittance Tax
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- By Stephen Moore
The House-passed "big, beautiful" tax bill is a tremendous achievement and a giant sparkplug for growth. The bill extends all the Trump tax cuts of 2017, thus heading off a $4 trillion tax INCREASE next year. It expands health savings accounts, includes expensing of major capital and research expenditures by businesses, allows more money for school choice, and includes "no tax on tips" and no tax on overtime pay. And that's just for starters.
But there were also a few bad tax policy changes. One of the worst is the 3.5% tax on noncommercial "remittances" -- payments typically made by foreigners from U.S. financial institutions to parties outside the United States. Certainly, we need to tighten rules to make sure that money stored in the U.S. does not find its way into the hands of criminal syndicates, drug cartels or other bad actors.
Why the CBO Almost Always Gets It Wrong
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- By Stephen Moore
These days it seems that a mysterious group called "the CBO" rules the world, or at least Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, it's not very good at predicting things, and its bad calls can lead to bad policy results.
The Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation predict what will happen with spending, tax revenues and deficits from new bills and congressional budgets.
They have made headlines with their absurd warning that the Trump tax bill to extend the 2017 tax cuts and other reforms like eliminating taxes on tips would add trillions to the debt over 10 years.
Trump's Own Regulators Declare War on Coal and Its Investors
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- By Stephen Moore
In one of the most convoluted lawsuits of all time, a cabal of state attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission are now accusing financial firms BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard of monopolistic behavior. The complaint asserts that these firms bought coal stocks and then helped impose radical environmental restrictions on the companies they partially own so that coal output would fall and the price of coal would rise. The lawsuit alleges that this strategy generated "supra-competitive" profits for those investors.
Yes, Let's Attract the Best and the Brightest
- Details
- By Stephen Moore
Situated on the outskirts of Sacramento is California's largest master-planned community, McClellan Park. It has homes, offices, restaurants, a hotel and even a 2-mile-long runway that serves jets. But 30 years ago, the location was a starkly different story: an Air Force base that had just been shuttered, costing 11,600 jobs.
Fundamental to this remarkable transformation was a federal program that incentivizes investment -- and stimulates job creation -- throughout the United States. That program, the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program, still exists today. And amid uncertainty across the economy and in the financial markets, Republicans and Democrats alike should come together to support the program's expansion.
Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at Freedom Works. He is also author of the new book: "Govzilla: How The Relentless Growth of Government Is Devouring Our Economy." To find out more about Stephen Moore and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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