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Unleash Prosperity Hotline – Weekend Edition
Issue #719
02/24/2023, 02/25/2023, 02/26/2023
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1) Here's a Beautiful Headline
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Governor Sanders shared the headline – which we think was intended to be negative – with this note:
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The bill will move to the state House side next week, with committee action as early as Tuesday.
2) Who Does AARP Really Represent?
The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) purports to represent its 30 million senior citizen members, but in reality it’s a liberal advocacy group that never saw a social spending program or a tax increase it didn’t like. It also has incestuous relationships with private industry groups. The biggest conflict of interest is that it makes a king’s ransom on commission by selling AARP-branded health insurance products to its members sold by UnitedHealth.
Over the last 15 years, UnitedHealth alone paid AARP an estimated $8.2 billion in tax-free revenue, and a hefty portion of those billions is used to lobby for trillions in higher government spending. This probably explains why you seldom see AARP attacking the fees charged by major health insurers even though its members say that insurance premiums are a major burden. And why they joined hands with the insurers in endorsing Obamacare – even though it cut more than $700 billion from Medicare. It also supported the "Inflation Acceleration Act" even though it imposes price controls on drug companies (to save insurers money), likely delaying the race for a cure for cancer, MS, and Alzheimer’s.
As we argue at National Review:
"Congress should launch an investigation into AARP’s sneaky financial relationship with big insurers such as UnitedHealth. It may not be illegal, but it certainly calls into question just who’s calling the shots at one of the nation’s largest lobbies in Washington. AARP’s behavior and strange policy positions are a reminder that you can’t serve two masters."
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3) Americans Are Looking for Homes OUTSIDE of Woke High Crime, High Tax Cities
More than 20 percent of homebuyers living in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are searching for homes in more congenial areas.
Redfin, a realty company with a major presence online gathered data from some two million of its customers. It found, for example, that thousands of homebuyers in Los Angeles are looking to move to San Diego and Las Vegas, while residents of San Francisco are setting their eyes on Sacramento. In a long-term trend, the relocation plans of New York City residents are driving up prices in Miami and other parts of Florida.
Redfin has identified other liberal cities with serious population drains – “woke” cities like Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Seattle, and Hartford are losing population while entrepreneurial enclaves like Sacramento, Las Vegas, Miami, Tampa, Phoenix, Dallas, and Cape Coral, Florida -- the top destination cities searched by Redfin users – are gaining.
So much for liberals building workers’ paradises.
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4) Is Portland Becoming the Detroit of the West Coast?
Speaking of liberal paradises, Portland can now officially be labelled a basket case. Here is what we are learning from our spies in Portland and various recent news reports ([link removed]) :
They are now calling the city an “anarchic wonderland.” But it turns out normal people don’t much like anarchy. Years of riots, lawlessness, tent cities, high taxes, woke government and homeless people everywhere is chasing residents away from this former mecca of progressive governance.
One local media outlet in the city just lamented: “The city has switched from attracting new arrivals to repelling its current citizens. In Portland, many liberals are dodging stray bullets, losing catalytic converters to thieves and sidestepping tents. Then they open their tax bills.”
And we’re not talking about the summer of the 2020 riots.
According to Portland’s KGW-TV ([link removed]) , “every 42 minutes there is a report of vandalism in Portland,” often involving broken windows. There were more reports of broken windows last year than even during the year of riots in 2020.
“In 2022, there were 12,238 reports of vandalism citywide—including broken windows, according to data from the Portland Police Bureau,” KGW-TV reported. “The agency doesn’t separate broken windows from other types of vandalism. Last year’s numbers are up 27% from 9,660 vandalism cases in 2021. In 2020, there were 8,322 cases and 6,289 in 2019.”
Residents are fleeing. Census Bureau data confirm that Portland has now lost population three years in a row.
A recent analysis of the U.S. Postal Service by the National Association of Realtors examining data released this past week ([link removed]) shows the Seattle and Portland metro areas are leading the West Coast in net move-outs.
In Portland, Things Haven’t Gotten Much Better Since the 2020 Mayhem
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5) The Global Population Bust
Two recent headlines from Asian news reports explain why the real crisis facing the world may be the fall in birth rates and the disappearance of children.
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It’s hard to believe that not long ago we were all being told by the doomsday scientists that we were facing mass starvation because of the population bomb. China and Japan were supposed to be facing standing room only population.
Now both of those countries are on a trend line that would cut their population almost in half by the turn of the next century. Japan’s population DECLINED by half a million just last year.
Look at this chart of declining birth rates in Korea:
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Meanwhile the fertility rate in Europe is just slightly above 1.5 kids per woman of child bearing age, which is about half the rate of the 1950s and 1960s. Why is it happening? Many factors including first marriage ages have increased and first births are coming later. Many more women are completely childless.
The one major country where population is still expected to rise is the United States. Why? Immigration – America’s unappreciated demographic safety valve. Thank God for legal immigrants. They keep our country, young vibrant, innovative and number one.
6) Paul Krugman In The Classroom
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