Occupy Wall Street’s pathetic first birthday last week confirmed that the longstanding reports of the movement’s death have not, in fact, been exaggerated. So why are we keeping it alive by talking incessantly about income inequality instead of focusing on what really matters — opportunity and upward mobility? All this …
George Bernard Shaw supposedly said that England and America were “two nations divided by a common language.” A similar problem applies to progressives and conservatives today. Both the left and the right talk about rebuilding, saving, restoring, defending, or rescuing an American Dream that is said to be slipping, fading, …
With mounting concern over America’s welfare state and growing dependence on government, the producers of “Atlas Shrugged: Part II” hope the timing of their movie brings clarity to the debate. It makes its big-screen debut on Oct. 12, less than a month before Election Day. At the Heritage’s Bloggers Briefing yesterday, …
In Alan Colmes’s view, social welfare programs have made America “exceptional.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Colmes’s preposterous article in The Wall Street Journal Monday, “How Democrats Made America Exceptional,” gave me a momentary flashback. I recalled vividly my days in Denmark as an impoverished university student. One …
Like an eager kid who desperately wants to be included in his cooler older brother’s activities, America looks to the European Union for cues on sophisticated governance. But what happens when that cooler older brother is middle-aged, unemployed, and still living in your parents’ basement? This is America’s dilemma. Will …
Our newest video highlights a recent paper on welfare reform by Heritage’s Robert Rector and Kiki Bradley. In the video and this new report, we reveal some startling statistics: Welfare spending is climbing faster than spending for education, defense, and even Social Security and Medicare. After adjusting for inflation, welfare …
From Heritage Senior Research Fellow Robert Rector’s latest analysis of Obama’s Trillion Dollar Debt Plan: The recently passed U.S. House of Representatives stimulus bill contains $816 billion in new spending and tax cuts. Of this sum, $264 billion (32 percent) is new means-tested welfare spending. This represents about $6,700 in …
We’ve heard a lot lately about “redistribution of wealth.” What would the American Founders think? Property rights provide the foundation of prosperity. As Americans, we’re accustomed to a revolutionary guarantee that we may labor, earn wages and acquire property — and rest assured that what we earn and acquire will …
