Month: June 2024

Authored by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a lawsuit against pro-life advocates, alleging violations under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a law that prevents interfering with women entering abortion clinics.

The civil suit seeks a monetary penalty and an injunction preventing repeat offenders from continuing their activity, marking a departure from the criminal cases that have been brought to prosecute violators of the FACE Act in recent years. In previous cases, the DOJ has asked the court to sentence the alleged offenders to 11 years in prison for each offense.

The DOJ filed the lawsuit on June 20 in the Middle District of Florida against five people for violating the FACE Act two years ago at the Fort Myers Health Center, a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic.

The case alleges that five people brought operations at the Fort Myers Health Center to a halt for at least one hour on Jan. 27, 2022. As a result, several patients had their appointments rescheduled or canceled, and one employee quit working there after eight years.

Named in the lawsuit are Calvin Zastrow of Michigan, a longtime pro-life advocate; Kenneth Scott of Florida, who has been charged numerous times for pro-life advocacy at abortion clinics and often represents himself in court; Chester Gallagher of Tennessee, a former police officer who left his job to advocate for the unborn; Eva Zastrow of Michigan, a missionary and pro-life activist; and Katelyn Sims, also known as Katelyn Velasco, of Texas.

The defendants trespassed onto a reproductive health center’s property, blocked the entrances, and temporarily stopped operations at the center, the complaint alleges.

The defendants were charged locally in Lee County and found guilty. Several pro-life minors were also arrested for the incident and charged locally with trespassing.

The defendants have been charged in previous FACE cases and are unlikely to stop showing up at abortion clinics, according to the complaint.

Stephen Crampton, senior counsel for Thomas More Society, will represent some of the defendants, who have been advised not to make statements about the case.

“This prosecution is yet another example of our two-tiered justice system ... whereby defenders of life are aggressively prosecuted while most who violently attacked churches and pro-life pregnancy centers are not brought to justice,” Mr. Crampton told The Epoch Times.

“While we are pleased the DOJ has pulled back from its effort to inflict draconian criminal punishment on these gentle pro-life advocates, we are disappointed that they have decided to relentlessly pursue these peaceful, nonviolent demonstrators and seek civil penalties—including ruinous fines—for events that occurred years ago and which resulted in local law enforcement already taking action, as our federalist system of government rightly contemplated,” he said.

Blocked Door

On Jan. 27, 2022, a Planned Parenthood security coordinator noticed the defendants arriving across the street from the Fort Myers Health Center at about 7:45 a.m. in several cars with out-of-state license plates, according to court papers. By 8:25 a.m., the center’s management was instructing employees to park at a tile outlet store’s parking lot next door and to wait for the security coordinator to escort them into the building.

As employees arrived to work, the abortion protesters allegedly shouted “baby murderer” and “you’re going to hell” at them, the complaint said. A Planned Parenthood doctor was instructed to stay in her car due to the protests, and the DOJ says she was unable to enter the business until 10:30 a.m.

The Lee County Sheriff’s Office then received reports from the Fort Myers Health Center that protesters were preventing individuals from entering the building, according to the complaint.

Some defendants walked onto the property in front of the sheriff’s deputies and toward the door, while yelling, “They are killing babies inside and you are not doing anything about it.”

A woman arrived for services while some defendants were blocking the door. The Planned Parenthood security officer had to pry open the door and the woman had to squeeze past the protesters to enter, court papers say.

Sheriff’s deputies arrested one protester for trespassing. Another was still sitting in front of the door and refused to leave. He was also arrested for trespassing.

Two other protesters went to the back door where employees had entered and tried to get in, but the door was locked, court papers say.

The protesters tried to shove signs under the door, and according to the DOJ, employees inside were frightened by the protesters’ attempts to get in the back door and grabbed weapons, including a scalpel and an IV pole, to defend themselves if the protesters got inside.

Those protesters were also arrested for trespassing.

Repeat Offenders

The defendants violated the FACE Act by blocking doors and intimidating women and abortion workers, the DOJ alleges, adding they have done it before and are likely to continue to commit such violations.

Mr. Gallagher, Mr. Zastrow, and his daughter, Ms. Zastrow, have been criminally convicted in a previous FACE case and await sentencing. The Zastrows await court for other cases in Michigan.

Each criminal case carries up to 11 years in federal prison. Instead of prison, this civil case asks for a penalty of $20,516 for first violations and no more than $30,868 for subsequent violations, plus damages of $5,000 for each person allegedly aggrieved by the defendants.

It is unclear how many people the DOJ is counting as aggrieved in this incident.

The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.

Raising a child can be expensive, often costing hundreds of thousands of dollars from birth through to adulthood.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, shows the 10 most expensive metro areas to raise a child in, among the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Costs include food, housing, childcare, healthcare, transportation, and other necessities.

All figures are as of February 2024. Data is from SmartAsset.

Methodology: SmartAsset used MIT Living Wage Calculator data to compare the living costs of a household with two working adults and one child to that of a childless household with two working adults in extensive metro areas.

Boston Tops the List

Raising a child in a large U.S. metro area costs an average of $25,181 per year.

The Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA, area is the most expensive, at $37,758 annually. Childcare costs $22,806 annually, and additional housing needs cost $5,425.

The San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley metro area comes in second, with an annual cost of $35,642 per child. Washington, DC, ranks third with an average cost of $35,554. Washington also leads the country in childcare costs alone at $24,886 annually.

Additional housing costs are higher in the San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad area, amounting to $7,056 annually. Meanwhile, the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara area tops the list for food, healthcare, and transportation costs.

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out Ranked: The Most Valuable Housing Markets in America.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

It takes a lot of gumption to go on television and repeatedly lie to more than 300 million Americans.  I honestly don’t know how Joe Biden does it.  I suppose that after you have been lying for your entire career, lying comes as naturally as breathing does.  Sadly, there are still millions of Americans that are falling for his lies after all this time.  Biden would like for us all to believe that the economy is “booming”, that the southern border is under control, that our communities are safe, and that Ukraine is going to win their war against Russia.  Our entire society is literally crumbling all around us, and Biden and his minions have brought us to the brink of global war.  I am entirely convinced that he has been the worst president in U.S. history, and that is really saying something.

Ultimately, Joe Biden is just another slimy politician that is trying to save his job.

I get that.

But come on man, how can anyone actually believe the nonsense that he is shoveling?

There are a few numbers that Biden can cherry pick to try to make himself look good, but here are 21 facts that Joe Biden doesn’t want you to know…

1. It takes the typical U.S. household $1,069 more a month just to purchase the same goods and services that it did three years ago.

2. Two-thirds of the respondents to one recent survey indicated that they had to take action to deal with rising financial stress within the past year.  Those actions included “cutting back on spending, skipping monthly bills, or taking an additional job”.

3. Home insurance rates have risen by 38 percent since 2019.

4. Home rental prices are up 30 percent since Joe Biden entered the White House.

5. A whopping 61 percent of U.S. renters cannot afford the rent on a median-priced apartment in the United States right now.

6. Gasoline prices are up 46 percent since Joe Biden entered the White House.

7. The average rate on a 30 year fixed mortgage is up 148 percent since Joe Biden entered the White House.

8. According to Zillow, the monthly mortgage payment on a typical home in this country has almost doubled during the past four years.

9. One recent poll discovered that 44 percent of retired Americans are considering going back to work because the cost of living has become so oppressive.

10. New home sales fell 11.3 percent last month.

11. Pending home sales are dropping at the fastest rate ever recorded.

12. According to the House Budget Committee, there have been more than 8 million migrant encounters nationwide while Joe Biden has been in the White House.  We truly are in the midst of an immigration crisis that is far greater than anything that we have ever witnessed before.

13. Thanks to our unprecedented immigration crisis, the homeless population in the city of Chicago actually tripled in just one year.

14. Murder rates are up by double digit percentages in many major U.S. cities this year.

15. Continuing jobless claims just shot up to the highest level in almost three years.

16. The number of job openings in the United States has dropped to the lowest level in more than 3 years.

17. Rite Aid just announced that it will be closing 27 more stores.  That is on top of more than 500 stores that it has already decided to shut down.

18. Walgreens plans to close approximately one-fourth of its 8,600 U.S. stores.  If the economy really was “booming”, why would they be doing this?

19. Today, 20 percent of the entire population of the state of California is living in poverty.

20. According to one recent survey, 46 percent of Americans don’t even have 500 dollars saved up.

21. So far, the U.S. has spent a total of approximately 175 billion dollars on the war in Ukraine, and the Russians are still winning.

Over the past three and a half years, there has just been one epic failure after another.

The nightmarish withdrawal from Afghanistan set the stage for the entire Biden presidency.  Everything that Biden and his minions have touched has gone sour.  In fact, usually the best thing that Biden and his minions can do to solve a problem is to do nothing at all.

Have you ever known someone that has a knack for royally messing things up no matter how hard they try?

Unfortunately, Biden and his minions aren’t just incompetent.

They have blended extreme incompetence with sheer evil, and now they are asking voters to give them a chance to run America for another four years.

But if we stay on the path that we are on, will our nation even survive?

If we want to turn things around, we need to do the exact opposite of what we have been doing.

And we better move fast, because the clock is ticking…

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been languishing in a Russian jail since March of last year after his arrest on allegations of espionage. Soon after his detention the US formally designated him “wrongfully detained”.

Former President Donald Trump in last night’s debate with President Joe Biden hammered the administration on the lack of action on freeing the journalist. Trump vowed that if re-elected he would secure Gershkovich’s release very quickly upon entering office.

“I will have him out very quickly, as soon as I take office, before I take office,” Trump said from the CNN debate stage, and continued: “As soon as I win the election, I will have that reporter out.”

Trump sought to paint a general picture of the world “laughing” at us, especially leaders like Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin. Trump also said the only way Biden has gotten Americans released from foreign prisons is by handing overseas despots billions of dollars upon their demanding it.

The Republican frontrunner specifically referenced $6 billion ‘given’ to gain the release of five detained Americans in Iran in 2023, in reference to freeing up frozen Iranian assets that had been held primarily in South Korea.

Trump claimed that Putin is now demanding “billions of dollars” for Gershkovich’s release and that Putin “is laughing at this guy” – in reference to Biden.

This week, starting Wednesday, Gershkovich’s trial began in secret in Ekaterinburg, which is the city some 900 miles away from Moscow where Russia’s FSB arrested him last year. He appeared in court behind the typical defendant’s glass cage.

Watch Trump go after Biden on the issue of the journalist’s detention:

Trump says he will free WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich detained in Russia as soon as he wins election pic.twitter.com/boMelquqKt

— Horizon News (@Horizonnews07) June 28, 2024

WSJ’s Editor in Chief Emma Tucker has stated: “This bogus accusation of espionage will inevitably lead to a bogus conviction for an innocent man who would then face up to 20 years in prison for simply doing his job. And an excellent job he was doing, at that.” Trump on Thursday night hailed him as a “good guy”.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Nearly eleven months ago, in August 2023, the New York Times reported that U.S. officials had estimated that some 500,000 Russians and Ukrainians had been killed, wounded, or missing in the then 18-month Ukrainian War.

Both Russia and Ukraine underreport their losses. Hundreds of thousands of additional casualties have followed in the 28 months of fighting.

In the West, the mere mention of a negotiated settlement is considered a dangerous appeasement of Russia’s flagrant aggression. In Russia, anything short of victory would be seen as synonymous with the collapse of the Putin regime.

Yet as the war nears two and a half years this summer, some facts are no longer much in dispute.

Controversy still arises over the circumstances of the 2014 overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Russia charges that the West engineered the “Revolution of Dignity” – an effort to westernize the former Soviet republic, to expand the borders of Europe right to the doorstep of Russia, and eventually to fully arm Ukraine as a member of NATO.

Westerners counter that most Ukrainians wished to be part of Europe and independent from Russian bullying – and they had a perfect right to ask to join either NATO or the EU or both despite anticipated escalating tensions.

After the heroic Ukrainian defeat of the 2022 Russian bid to take Kyiv, there have been few significant territorial gains by either side.

Like the seesaw bloodbath on the Western Front of World War I, neither side has developed the momentum to force the other to negotiate or grant concessions.

As nuclear Russian threats against Europe mount, NATO is seeking to regain deterrence capabilities by boosting defense budgets, incorporating robust frontline nations Sweden and Finland, and uniting over shared concerns about Russian aggression.

Many in the U.S. cheer on the conflict as a necessary proxy war to check Russian aggression and bolster NATO’s resistance.

But unlike third-party wars during the Cold War, now the Western client, Ukraine, is fighting directly against the chief antagonist of European NATO members.

Arming a proxy in a war waged against the homeland of a nuclear adversary is a new and dangerous phenomenon.

The West counts on supplying Ukraine with more and better weapons than a richer, larger, and more populous Russia.

But Ukraine’s problem is not so much weapons as manpower. Nearly a fourth of Ukraine’s population has fled the country.

Ukraine may have suffered some 300,000 causalities. The average age of its soldiers is over 40 years. It already lacks sufficient forces to replay the failed 2023 counter-offensive. The Russian plan of attrition is to wear down and bleed out the Ukrainian people.

In a geostrategic sense, the new alignment of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea is starting to gain opportunistic support from illiberal Middle East regimes, Turkey, and the Islamic world in general.

The Biden administration’s respective approaches to the Ukraine and Gaza wars continue to be utterly incoherent.

It lectures our strongest ally Israel on the need for a ceasefire, proportionality, a coalition wartime cabinet, and the avoidance of collateral damage. The administration considers the terrorist Hamas almost a legitimate state.

However, Biden and the American diplomatic establishment urge Ukraine to keep fighting without negotiations. They urge Kyiv to seek critical disproportionality through superior weaponry, including hitting strategic targets inside Russia.

The U.S. has overlooked the cancellation of Ukrainian political parties and elections by the Zelensky administration. America does not seem to care about Ukrainian collateral damage to the borderlands. And it considers the Russian government a near-terrorist state.

No one in the West, at least prior to the Russian February 2022 invasion—neither the prior Obama, Trump, and current Biden administrations or the Ukrainian government itself—had considered it even possible to regain by force the Crimea and the Donbass absorbed by the Russian invasion of 2014.

Add up all these realities, and the only practicable way to avoid another near-one million dead and wounded would be a settlement, however unpopular.

It would entail the formalization of the 2014 Russian absorption of Crimea and Donbass.

Russia would then agree to withdraw all its forces to its pre-2022 borders. Ukraine would be fully armed but without NATO membership.

Both sides would agree to a demilitarized zone on both sides of the Russian-Ukrainian border. Russia would brag that it prevented its former province from joining NATO while finally institutionalizing its prior incorporation of the Donbass and Crimea.

Ukraine would be proud that, like heroic 1940 Finland, it miraculously stopped Russian aggression. It would remain far better armed than at any time in its history and soon enjoy a status similar to that of non-NATO Austria or Switzerland.

The deal would anger all parties. But it would make public what most concede privately—and stop the ongoing destruction of Ukraine and the further slaughter of an entire generation of Ukrainian and Russian youth.

In what’s likely messaging intended for both Israel and a potential incoming Trump administration in the US, Iranian officials are becoming more open about the possibility of building a nuclear bomb. Tehran’s official policy, backed by years of consistent statements by the Ayatollah, has been to insist its nuclear program is only for peaceful energy purposes, and that nukes go against Islamic morality. 

Currently, it is no secret that the Islamic Republic has been drastically increasing the quantity and purity of its enriched uranium – which has hastened over the last year, after an already upward trajectory since Trump pulled out of the JCPOA nuclear deal in 2018. 

The New York Times in a fresh report says an unprecedented trend is cause for serious alarm: “For the first time, some members of Iran’s ruling elite are dropping the country’s decades-old insistence that its nuclear program is entirely for peaceful purposes.” This comes just as Iran – which remains the archnemesis of Israel – is about to pick a new president after Ebrahim Raisi’s recent death in a helicopter crash.

“Instead, they are publicly beginning to embrace the logic of possessing the bomb, arguing that recent missile exchanges with Israel underscore the need for a far more powerful deterrent,” continues the NY Times.

Tehran is fully aware of its status as a ‘threshold state’ and is using this to project strength in its broader standoff with Israel in the region:

In interviews with a dozen American, European, Iranian and Israeli officials and with outside experts, the cumulative effect of this surge appears clear: Iran has cemented its role as a “threshold” nuclear state, walking right up to the line of building a weapon without stepping over it.

And yet Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu has warned many times over the years that he will not allow Iran to achieve nuclear status. He has vowed to launch a preemptive attack should Tehran cross this line. 

But this has not stopped an official close to Iran’s supreme leader from recently explaining that if the country were to face an existential threat, it would “reconsider its nuclear doctrine” — as quoted in the Times report. 

Without doubt, Iranian leaders have in the back of their minds the examples of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Both gave up their WMD programs and nuclear aspirations, and soon after were invaded, overthrown, and executed (and in Gaddafi’s case he was killed on the street by NATO-backed rebels).

Below are some key sections from the lengthy NY Times investigative report…

* * *

How fast to achieve a bomb?

And they caution that while Iran could now produce the fuel for three or more bombs in days or weeks, it would still take considerable time — maybe 18 months — for Iran to fabricate that fuel into a warhead that could be delivered on missiles of the kind it launched at Israel in April.

Gaza tinderbox has raised the stakes

“Iran is sending a clear message that if the pressure of sanctions continues, if assassination of its commanders continues and if Washington or Israel decides to tighten the noose, it will then break all the chains,” said Hossein Alizadeh, a former Iranian diplomat who defected in 2010. He spoke from Britain, where he now lives.

Practicing preemptive strikes

While the U.S. and Israeli air forces often practiced what it would take to bomb Fordow, even building a mock-up of the site in the Nevada desert, military officials say it would take repeated, precise strikes by the United States’ largest “bunker buster” to reach down that deep.

Anti-nuke Fatwah still officially in place

Iran has insisted that it cannot manufacture or use nuclear weapons because of a 2003 “fatwa,” or religious edict, issued by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The country said the fatwa remained in effect even after Israel stole, and then made public, a huge archive of Iranian documents that made plain the country was trying to design a weapon.

Coordinated statements signaling policy change

If Israel threatened Iran’s nuclear facilities, General Haq Talab said in a speech in mid-April, “it’s entirely possible and imaginable that the Islamic Republic will reconsider its nuclear doctrine and policies and reverse its previously stated positions.”

A few weeks later, Mr. Kharazi told Al Jazeera that Iran had the capacity to produce a nuclear bomb, but that it has not decided to do so.

“If Iran’s existence is threatened, we will have no choice but to reverse our nuclear doctrine,” he said.

And in late May, Mr. Araghchi said at a conference in Doha, Qatar, that Israeli attacks “could force others to rethink their security calculations and their nuclear postures.”

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

You know the term “authoritarian.” You think you know what it means. 

An authoritarian dad, boss, or government says: my way or the highway. They are forever barking orders and see compliance as the answer to all human problems. There is no room for uncertainty, adaptation to time and place, or negotiation. It’s ruling by personal dictate while tolerating no dissent. 

To be authoritarian is to be inhumane, to rule with arbitrary and capricious imposition. It can also mean to be ruled impersonally by a machine regardless of the cost. 

Sounds like a conventional government bureaucracy, right? Indeed. Think of the Department of Motor Vehicles. Think of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy which are right now issuing edicts that will end in the ability of your washing machine to clean your clothes and your car to go the distance. 

They have been doing this to us for many decades, with or without the permission of Congress or the president. The agencies have become literally out of control in the sense that no one can control them. 

Any society managed by a large and intrusive bureaucratic machinery is necessarily authoritarian. A government that is not authoritarian is necessarily limited in size, scope, and range of power. 

Let’s say you have a political leader who has routinely called for less in the way of authoritarian rule by bureaucracies. He intends to use whatever power he has to curb the autonomous rule by administrative bureaucracies and subject them more to the wishes of the people, who should ideally be in charge of the regime under which they live. 

Such a leader would not be called an authoritarian. He would be called the opposite, an emancipator who is trying to dismantle authoritarian structures. 

If all of the above makes sense to you, try to make sense of this news story in the New York Times. It’s about the growing efforts on the part of many activists to resist a second term of Donald Trump. 

In passing, the story says: “If Mr. Trump returns to power, he is openly planning to impose radical changes — many with authoritarian overtones” including “making it easier to fire civil servants.”

The story quickly adds that he intends to replace the fired employees with “loyalists.” Maybe. But consider the alternative. The president is supposed to be ostensibly in charge of 2 million plus bureaucrats that are employed by 400-plus agencies in the executive branch — but they don’t actually have to carry out the policies of the elected president. They can in fact completely ignore him. 

How is this compatible with either democracy or freedom? It is not. There is nothing in the Constitution about a vast army of bureaucrats who rule behind the scenes that is in no way reachable or manageable by elected representatives. 

The attempt to pull back, rein in, and otherwise do something about this problem is not authoritarian. It is the opposite. Even if “loyalists” replaced the fired employees, that would be an improvement over a system of government in which the people truly have no control at all. 

Two years into Trump’s first term, the administration came to figure out that this was a problem. The administration intended some dramatic turns in policy in a number of areas. All they experienced was dogged resistance from people who believed they and not the elected president were in charge. Over the next two years, they undertook many efforts to at least solve this problem: namely, the president should be in charge of the government that falls under his jurisdiction. 

This only makes sense. Imagine you are the CEO of a company. You discover that the main divisions that actually run the company care nothing about what you say and cannot be fired even if you demand it, and yet you are personally held responsible for everything these divisions do. What are you going to do?

It is not “authoritarian” to unseat or otherwise attempt to gain control over that for which you are held responsible, professionally or politically. That is truly all that the Trump people are suggesting. This is nothing other than a Constitutional system: we are supposed to have a government by and for the people. That means that the people elect the administrator of the executive branch. At a minimum, the winner of the election needs to be able to have some influence over what the agencies in the executive branch do. 

And for suggesting this and trying to make it happen, Trump is called an authoritarian. Prepare yourself: this will be said millions of times between now and November and following. Can the mainstream media just flat-out change the meaning of a term like this? They can but there is also every reason to push back and not let it happen. 

Language is a human construct. The more vibrant and fast-moving society is, the more the language changes. That can be a wonderful thing. In fact, one of my favorite books to read in off-hours is H.L. Mencken’s The American Language, written by this genius when he was otherwise censored for his views in wartime. 

It’s a marvelous chronicling of the evolution of American usage, published in 1919, but oddly pertinent even today, applicable to the dwindling number of people who can still form coherent sentences. 

When it comes to vocabulary, there are two schools of thought broadly speaking: prescriptivist and descriptivist. The prescriptivist view is that words have embedded meanings that you can trace from other languages and should be used as intended. The descriptivist approach sees language as more a living experience, a tool of utility to make communication possible, in which case anything goes. 

As Americans, we mostly accept the descriptivist outlook but this can go too far. Words cannot mean literally anything, much less the opposite. But this is exactly what is happening. It’s the same with the word “democracy,” which is supposed to mean the people’s choice, not whatever elites dish out to us. If Trump is the choice, so be it. That is the unfolding of democracy. 

If we want the president to be the CEO of the executive branch of government — and that’s a pretty good description of what the US Constitution establishes — then the administration ought to have that managerial authority. If you don’t like it, take it up with the Founders. 

Again, any society managed by a large and intrusive bureaucratic machinery is necessarily authoritarian. A government that is not authoritarian is necessarily limited in size, scope, and range of power. 

Any one president who takes action to curb the power and reach of arbitrary authority is not an authoritarian, but rather one who seeks to give authority back to the people. Such a man would be an emancipator, even if everyone said otherwise. 

Many cities around the world have become very expensive to buy a home in, but which ones are the absolute most unattainable?

In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’ Marcus Lu highlights a number of housing markets that are deemed to be “impossibly unaffordable” in 2024, ranked by their median price-to-income ratio.

This data comes from the Demographia International Housing Affordability Report, which is produced by the Chapman University Center for Demographics and Policy.

Data and Key Takeaway

The median price-to-income ratio compares median house price to median household income within each market. A higher ratio (higher prices relative to incomes) means a city is less affordable.

See the following table for all of the data we used to create this graphic. Note that this analysis covers 94 markets across eight countries: Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

According to the Demographia report, cities with a median price-to-income ratio of over 9.0 are considered “impossibly unaffordable”.

We can see that the top city in this ranking, Hong Kong, has a ratio of 16.7. This means that the median price of a home is 16.7 times greater than the median income.

Which Cities are More Affordable?

On the flipside, here are the top 12 most affordable cities that were analyzed in the Demographia report.

Cities with a median price-to-income ratio of less than 3.0 are considered “affordable”, while those between 3.1 and 4.0 are considered “moderately unaffordable”.

See More Real Estate Content From Visual Capitalist

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out Ranked: The Most Valuable Housing Markets in America.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

Americans in upper-income groups are concerned about their ability to pay bills, with more than 15 percent of this demographic taking up additional jobs over the past year, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

As of April 2024, 32.5 percent of respondents earning over $150,000 annually were worried about making ends meet over the next six months, up from 21.7 percent in April of last year, the June survey showed.

This percentage is higher than for those in the income groups of $100,000 to $149,999, $70,000 to $99,999, and $40,000 to $69,999. Only individuals who earned less than $40,000, the lowest income group, were more worried than the $150,000-plus group.

Among all income levels, the percentage of people anxious about their ability to pay bills was higher in April 2024 compared to a year ago. The share of respondents concerned about making ends meet rose among those already paying their bills on time, with the increase most prevalent among people who are younger, female, or in higher income groups.

In April last year, 20.7 percent of individuals who could pay all of their bills were worried about the next six months. In 2024, this jumped to 26.2 percent.

The various income groups behaved differently in how they handled their tighter financial situations over the past year.

Among the $150,000 group, 15.3 percent took an additional job, the highest among all income levels. This group borrowed the least from formal sources but was the second-highest when it came to borrowing from family or friends.

People earning less than $40,000 ranked at the bottom in terms of taking up an additional job. However, they ranked second-highest in borrowing from formal sources and were at the top in terms of borrowing from family or friends.

Only 8.8 percent of individuals in the $150,000 or more group skipped their monthly bills or debts or made partial payments, the least among all income levels. Those making above $100,000 cut back the least on essential as well as discretionary spending.

The survey shows that while upper-income groups were more worried about higher prices impacting their ability to pay bills, a smaller proportion were forced to cut down on spending compared to their lower-income counterparts.

A June 10 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York presented a more upbeat outlook, finding that U.S. households have become “more optimistic” about their future financial condition.

“Year-ahead expectations also improved, with a smaller share of respondents expecting to be worse off and a larger share of respondents expecting to be better off a year from now,” it said.

Inflation Burden

As high-income groups come under increasing inflationary pressures, discount retail chains are reporting an increase in the number of customers from this demographic. In March, Dollar Tree said their outlets saw a traffic uptick from relatively wealthy shoppers last year.

During an earnings call in May, Walmart executives also said that they saw “higher engagement across income cohorts, with upper-income households continuing to account for the majority of the share gains” in the recently reported quarter.

Historically, people with higher incomes have shopped at the company’s stores, said Doug McMillon, Walmart CEO. Such groups have usually been selective in the categories they buy.

“So, if we offer them the right items at the right prices, whether that’s in-store, first party, or marketplace, they’ll respond to that. And so, as we’ve been able to expand our assortment online, we can appeal to more people.”

In an August survey by Achieve, a digital personal finance firm, the majority of respondents said they were not anywhere close to reaching their definition of financial freedom.

However, just above half of them were optimistic and believed their journey towards financial freedom was getting better.

“We’re seeing far fewer Americans with the goal of becoming ‘rich’ and many families pivoting to just trying to be able to pay their bills on time. With all of the economic pressures facing American families, financial freedom is currently more about making ends meet,” Brad Stroh, co-founder and co-CEO of Achieve, said.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has until Monday to report to prison after the Supreme Court rejected his 11th hour bid to remain free while he pursues an appeal of his conviction for two counts of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee.

US District Judge Carl Nichols had previously put Bannon’s sentence on hold as he pursued his appeal, saying that Bannon had presented a “substantial question of law or fact likely to result in reversal” of the conviction.

That, however, was rejected by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in May – leaving him only the Supreme Court to help him avoid time behind bars.

Bannon has argued that he was acting on the advice of counsel when he refused to comply with the subpoenas.

He must report to prison on July 1.

As the Epoch Times notes further, Bannon through his lawyers asked the Supreme Court to intervene. In the application, lawyers said it would be unfair for Mr. Bannon to start serving his sentence before the full appeals court and justices consider overturning the recent appeal rejection.
“If Mr. Bannon is denied release, he will be forced to serve his prison sentence before this court has a chance to consider a petition for a writ of certiorari, given the court’s upcoming summer recess,” the lawyers wrote.
Department of Justice attorneys, on the other hand, urged the Supreme Court to reject the application. They said Mr. Bannon “cannot make the demanding showing necessary to override the normal requirement that a convicted defendant begin serving his sentence.”

Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), chairman of the House Administration Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight, told the court in a brief that the panel that subpoenaed Mr. Bannon produced flawed subpoenas because it failed to comply with House regulations, as it did not have a ranking member appointed by the Republican minority.

“Notwithstanding the applicant’s indictment and sentencing, the select committee’s enforcement of the subpoena and the prosecution of Mr. Bannon for failing to participate in a deposition was factually and procedurally invalid,” Mr. Loudermilk wrote. “As such, this court should conclude that the entire prosecutorial process against the applicant was tainted and must be dismissed as a matter of law.”

Peter Navarro, another former adviser to President Trump, is already serving a sentence after being convicted of contempt of Congress after also declining to cooperate with subpoenas from the same committee.