Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Madsen Pirie
“Britain has a million young people doing nothing. Not studying, not training, not working. The ONS counted 981,000 NEETs in April to June 2026, and 393,000 of them were unemployed and looking for work. The number has been climbing for four years. Only one EU country, Romania, now has a higher NEET rate than ours. This is not just a statistic. It is a slow waste of talent, energy and ambition. … We might limit job-seeking benefits for under-25s to six months. After that, the benefit stops and a job starts. Every young claimant still out of work at six months would be offered a fixed-term public service job. … Those who refuse the place would not receive benefit. The deal is simple. Society will not leave you idle, and you will not be paid to stay idle.” (09/30/26)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/putting-a-million-neets-into-work
Source: Town Hall
by John R Lott, Jr.
“Gun control advocates have condemned the Justice Department’s decision to stop criminally enforcing the nearly 60-year-old 1968 federal ban on licensed dealers selling handguns to law-abiding 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds. They say it will cause the loss of life. ‘That’s because young Americans are disproportionately likely to commit gun violence,’ claims the GIFFORDS Center’s Executive Director Emma Brown. It is true that young people commit crime at relatively high rates, but they are also more likely to be victims of crime. A 20-year-old woman facing a stalker needs protection as much as a 21-year-old woman does. Young adults also face substantial risks of becoming victims: Reported rapes are 32 percent more likely for ages 18 to 20 than for people ages 21 to 23, and the younger group’s homicide rate is 7 percent higher.” (09/30/26)
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnrlottjr/2026/09/30/gun-control-advocates-really-dont-think-there-is-any-age-at-which-people-should-own-guns-n2683821
Source: Common Dreams
“A group of Senate Democrats on Wednesday pushed US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to pay back the nearly $1 million in Medicare payroll taxes that he reportedly owes from his years as a hedge fund manager. In a letter to Bessent, the senators pointed to a recent court ruling clarifying the scope of a self-employment tax loophole that is widely exploited by hedge fund managers and private equity executives. During his confirmation hearing last year, Bessent cited the then-pending litigation to justify his decision not to pay $910,000 in payroll taxes he potentially owes the Internal Revenue Service, and pledged to set up ‘a reserve fund to address any contingency related to this issue.'” (09/30/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/news/scott-bessent-payroll-taxes
Source: The Dispatch
“The Scientific Republic | Interview: Tony Mills.” (09/30/26)
https://thedispatch.com/podcast/remnant/the-scientific-republic-interview-tony-mills/
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille
“The process of paying taxes manages to add insult to injury by making it burdensome to comply as you cough up the money the government steals from you. The time lost keeping up on tax rules, filing paperwork, and calculating our own mugging is stolen from the rewarding areas of life, and the costs are diverted from productive activities. How much do we lose in satisfying government’s demands? A new report answers that question in painful detail, just in time for the October 15 extended filing deadline.” (09/30/26)
https://reason.com/2026/09/30/filing-taxes-will-cost-americans-544-billion-this-year/
Source: United Press International
“Core inflation, the key economic measure preferred by the Federal Reserve, rose by 3% in August on an annual basis, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Wednesday. The core inflation marker, which excludes volatile food and energy, rose by 0.2% for the 12 months ending in August. The overall personal consumption expenditures index marked a 3.4% annual increase and a 0.3% bump for the month. Wednesday’s report on annual inflation comes in cooler than expected. The Dow Jones consensus estimate forecasted a 3.7% increase in the personal consumption index for the year ending in August and a 0.3% increase for the month.” (09/30/26)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2026/09/30/core-inflation-increase-august-2026/6511790776647/
Source: Free Talk Live
“Sal the Agorist is back with Jack sitting in for Mark Edge. First up is Alan Orwick, co-founder of Quai Network, who talks about what the team has been working on, including Qi, a coin tied to energy that’s meant to be spent like cash.” (09/30/26)
https://soundcloud.com/freetalklive/samep21
Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson
“A Democratic majority in the House will have to do the bulk of the political work on a third Trump impeachment irrespective of the outcome in the Senate: In case of a small Democratic majority in the Senate or continued Republican control, Democrats will have reasons—substantive reasons and reasons having to do with political calculation—to give the case against Trump and his allies a full, extensive airing in the House rather than hastily sending articles of impeachment over to the Senate, because, absent some currently implausible scenario, a small Democratic majority in the upper chamber would produce the same result as a small Republican majority: The articles would fail to produce a conviction, which requires a two-thirds majority. That is, unless some Republican senators can be shamed into acting like the thing they always boast about being: patriots.” (09/30/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/trump-impeachment-rubio-hegseth-bessent-democrats-midterms/
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“More than 100 academics linked to British institutions have unwittingly assisted China’s espionage operations against the UK via a front company working for its intelligence and security services, MI5 has warned. In the highly unusual public alert, the UK’s internal security service warned universities and academics that continuing ties with China General Technology Research Institute (CGTRI) could ultimately lead to criminal charges for aiding a foreign state. Security minister Dan Jarvis said MI5’s warning exposed attempts by Chinese intelligence agencies to use British academic research to undermine UK national security. A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in London said the accusation was ‘imaginary and purely fabricated’.” (09/30/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy7zrljp527o
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Dan Grazier
“The Iraq War was already four-years-old when I walked down the ramp of a C-17 at Al Taqaddum Air Base in April 2007. The fact that I am writing these words is proof that I survived that deployment and a subsequent one to Afghanistan in 2013. In the years since, I transitioned back into civilian life, established a new career, and saw my kids grow up and escape the nest. … Had anyone told me while I was dodging IEDs in the summer of 2007 that I would be asked to write a column at the age of 48 about the last American troops leaving Iraq today, I would have rightly questioned what the United States was doing there. I believed at the time that we were fighting terrorists and helping to create a free Iraq. Two decades later, I have no idea why we were really fighting there.” (09/30/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-withdrawal-iraq/
