The study found that "the total amount of work withdrawn from the market is fairly substantial" after the free money arrives.
The payments from the government were associated with nearly a three-hour-a-week reduction in work by members of the family. They also found no evidence of "job quality or human capital improvements that advocates have hoped might accompany" the cash benefits.
We doubt any sensible person outside of Washington is at all surprised by this result. It only confirms human nature. Alas, we also doubt these results will change Kamala's position.
We've mentioned that the differences between left and right in America today aren't just ideological. It's cultural and lifestyle-based. Liberals are less likely to have or want kids. Much less patriotic – by their own admission. And now we have new and troubling evidence from Gallup of a widening marriage gap.
Today two-thirds of Republicans between the ages of 30 and 50 are married. Slightly less than half of Democrats in that age group are.
Gallup concludes this marriage gap has been persistent: "From 2000 to the present, the Republican marriage rate has averaged 18 percentage points above the Democratic marriage rate. The trend for independents, meanwhile, has been close to that of Democrats."
At the same time, marriage rates are falling for every group. Amazingly before the 1970s well more than 80% of the 30- and 40-somethings were married. And Democrats were as likely to be married as Republicans.
Why is the decline in marriage a problem?
First, because marriage produces children, and do we ever need more of them now?
Second, because married people are more successful and less reliant on the government than single people.
And third, married people are far happier and live longer than single people.
Loneliness is becoming a major cause of early death.
We've often argued that a misleading flaw of the concept of gross domestic product (GDP) is that it includes government consumption expenditures in the calculation. We could never understand why. More government – especially when the federal government is losing $2 trillion a year - is a negative, not a positive for the economy.
This brings us to the latest 2.8% reading of GDP for the quarter just ended. It was a solid number with GDP up 2.8%. Investment was up more than 7% – which is great news. BUT, once again our economic numbers cruncher, EJ Antoni, finds that government consumption outpaced private consumer spending.
Why don't we at least start this journey back to fiscal sanity with a freeze on federal spending for three or four years?
Democratic Reps. Jared Golden (Maine), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), Yadira Caraveo (Colo.), Don Davis (N.C.), Henry Cuellar (Texas) and Mary Peltola (Alaska) all voted for a resolution "strongly condemning" the Biden-Harris record.
"President Biden's and Border Czar Harris's far-left Democrat open border policies are to blame for this historic crisis, and in August 2022, Biden and his administration decided to make the border crisis significantly worse by formally ending former President Trump's successful Remain in Mexico program."
It's notable that three of the six Democrats represent districts that Trump won in 2020 and face tough re-election battles. They understand the political liability of Biden's open border policy.
Caraveo, Cuellar, and Perez are all members of the liberal Congressional Hispanic Caucus which had urged a no vote, claiming that Kamala was the "border czar" is "dis-misinformation."
Whether you call her "border czar" or "point person" or just the vice president who the president asked to address the root causes of the border crisis, it is clear that she failed. Her September 2022 assertion that "the border is secure" was plainly false.
5) VP Wannabe Mark Kelly Knuckles Under to Union Bosses
Arizona Senator Mark Kelly soared quickly to the top of Kamala Harris's list of potential running mates due to his record as a former astronaut and two-time winner in a key swing state.
As he rose, he drew flak from the same union bosses who helped the Democrats pick their nominee. They said his failure to co-sponsor the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act was a deal breaker.
"Why would the Democrats even consider a senator for the vice presidency if the senator doesn't support the PRO Act?" John Samuelsen, president of the Transport Workers Union, told ABC News.
The PRO Act is an umbrella bill that hands unions everything they've demanded to violate the rights of workers and employers who don't want to be unionized. It would prohibit employers from holding anti-union meetings at work, ban state right-to-work laws, bar employers from permanently replacing strikers, and make California's infamous anti-gig-worker AB5 national.
Faced with union pressure, Kelly buckled. The left-wing Huffington Post reports: "Kelly on Wednesday made clear in an interview with HuffPost that he would support the bill if it came to the Senate floor, affirming enthusiastic support for labor unions."
All of this is a reminder that when a Democrat runs on a presidential ticket, they must completely toe the party line. In 2000, the Harvard Crimson reported that when Al Gore picked Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate "all of Lieberman's centrist leanings (had to be) ditched for the position of number two yes-man."
