Iran War Throws Wrench In GOP Plans To Address Cost Of Living Concerns
'is the No. 1 issue that people are dealing with right now.'
Glenn Beck: The real reason you can’t afford a home (it’s not what you think)
Many Americans today feel as if home ownership is a pipe dream. The prices, even for modest homes, are just too steep.
But why? What’s the real reason homes have become so unaffordable?
The answer is multifaceted, says Glenn Beck.
No doubt the broken economy is part of the problem. “We have to fix the fraud,” he urges. “The latest numbers from the GAO, the Government Accounting Office, is that they estimate that our government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion every year based on fraud between 2018 through 2022.”
However, there’s another factor most are unwilling to grapple with: Our expectations have increased.
In the 1950s — “the golden era of America,” says Glenn — the average size home for a family of four was “983 square feet.” Today, it’s “2,500 square feet.”
“If I told you you could afford a modest home of that size (under 1,000 square feet) and raise your family in it, would you take it?” he asks.
But the main driver behind the skyrocketing price of homes, he says, is the increase in land prices.
“Why is land so expensive?” Glenn asks. “Because our government made it that way” through “zoning laws, permits, restrictions, [and] endless layers of EPA approval.”
“We didn't run out of land. We restricted the access to the land,” he emphasizes.
Add to that the immigration boom, which led to “an overwhelming demand for homes,” and you get the situation we’re in today.
But America has been in a similar predicament before and survived it, says Glenn. After WWII, millions of soldiers returned home eager to buy homes and start families, resulting in a housing shortage “far, far worse in many ways than what we're facing today.”
Our answer back then was simply to build faster.
“Homes were built in days, not months — days,” says Glenn, noting that “the GI Bill,” “the interstate highway system [opening] up the land that had never been reachable before,” and “the government [getting] out of the way” are what allowed this to happen.
“Prices rose at first because everybody needed a home, and then they stabilized because supply caught up with demand,” he continues.
But today, things are different.
Instead of “unleashing builders,” we’re “restraining them”; instead of “expanding supply,” we’re “constraining it,” says Glenn.
“This is why the most important number is not the price of a home. It is the ratio between a home price and income,” he explains. “In 1960, the average cost was two times the average annual income. Today it's over five times.”
“That's the difference between opportunity and exclusion; that's the difference between a young family starting a life and one stuck renting indefinitely.”
Today, we’re a nation that believes more in “obstruction” than “building” — a nation that cares more about the “planet” than “people.”
Once upon a time, “the country believed that growth was good, expansion was good, opportunity was something that you created, not something that you rationed,” says Glenn, “and somewhere along the way, that whole mindset of America changed.”
“We didn't lose the land. We didn't lose the resources. We've lost the will. And until that changes, this doesn't get fixed,” he warns.
Contrary to popular belief, the American dream isn’t dead, he insists. It’s simply on pause until we can fix the long list of issues barring many Americans from buying homes.
While we have little control over fraud, government regulation, and land prices, we do have control over our own mindsets. Glenn urges his listeners to remember that the American dream isn’t about status — “it’s about freedom and opportunity and hard work and faith and building a life with the people that you love.”
“Let's remember what it means to actually be happy,” he pleads.
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Young Adults’ Real Crisis Isn’t Affordability — It’s Lifestyle Expectation Inflation
It may be time for a renaissance of the old-fashioned American values of moderate expectations, frugality, and making do.Tax-exempt hospitals are not putting their patients first
There is something seriously wrong with American health care. Rising costs mean that Americans now pay nearly twice as much as people in similar countries, without getting better outcomes. “It’s complicated,” say those who want to keep prices high and rising. But some of it is simple, as my organization is showing with research on hospital systems like Cleveland Clinic.
Hospital executives are leading luxurious lifestyles while claiming that every dollar spent — on television commercials, Abu Dhabi real estate, or modern art — is 'health care.'
A longtime household name, Cleveland Clinic presents itself as an altruistic institution focused on health and patients. As a tax-exempt corporation, everything Cleveland Clinic does is subsidized by taxpayers, and it receives many other direct and indirect benefits in the interest of public health. Yet it pays executives millions, has massive holdings overseas, and maintains a collection of fine art.
Why are your health care bills and insurance premiums going up? Why is government spending and borrowing more and more to subsidize care? Look no farther than the misplaced priorities of profit-maximizing “nonprofit” hospitals like Cleveland Clinic.
Recent news has exposed massive waste and fraud against taxpayers in places like Minnesota, California, and Washington state. Yet the problem is deeper and more systemic. Rooting out actual theft is essential. So is confronting waste and abuse, especially within large health care institutions.
Last month, Save Our States launched a campaign calling out a massive hospital system run by the University of Miami. While its transplant center was failing, hospital executives were focused on building a lavish new lobby and expanding into Abu Dhabi.
Our new exposé on Cleveland Clinic found surprisingly similar luxury expenses. It has an in-house art museum, for example, boasting a "world-renowned collection" of nearly 7,000 pieces of contemporary art. Like many hospitals, it spares no expense on public relations and advertising — Cleveland Clinic even ran its own Super Bowl ad.
The clinic pays millions in executive salaries. Those executives are planning a massive new sports center with the Cleveland Cavaliers, to go along with their fancy foreign facilities in places like London, Toronto, and — once again — Abu Dhabi.
How do these expenses benefit American patients? And why should taxpayers subsidize any of it?
Some medical providers do pay taxes. A doctor with an independent practice gets taxed like any other business. But sell that practice to a tax-exempt hospital, even one with billions in revenue, and suddenly it becomes tax-exempt. At the same time, hospital-owned practices often start adding “hospital facility fees” on top of regular bills.
They charge patients more for the same services, then pay less in taxes. No wonder massive hospital systems buy up smaller practices and facilities. These are policy choices, not market forces, driving consolidation in health care. The result is lower quality, higher prices, and misplaced priorities.
RELATED: America has a spending problem Congress refuses to fix
For many Americans, the rising prices go first to their insurance, later showing up in rising premiums and lower take-home pay. And all Americans see the cost in taxes. Everyone pays somehow, in higher costs, less access to care, or both.
Meanwhile, hospital executives are leading luxurious lifestyles while claiming that every dollar spent — on television commercials, Abu Dhabi real estate, or modern art — is “health care.”
During its spending spree, Cleveland Clinic has faced allegations of deceptive billing, accusations of overcharging patients, reports of underpaying nurses, and stories of medical debt lawsuits brought against its own patients.
Our new site, ClevelandClinicBetrayedPatients.com, documents the misplaced priorities of this massive, taxpayer-supported hospital system.
Given that Cleveland Clinic is in Vice President JD Vance's home state of Ohio, hopefully he can make it a focus of his new appointment by President Trump to lead the “war on fraud.” The vice president and congressional leaders need to scrutinize spending at all subsidized hospitals — starting with the biggest.
The question is not: “Does it do some good somewhere?” One good program does not justify waste elsewhere. The question is: “Are any taxpayer dollars subsidizing waste, abuse, or unnecessary extravagance?”
Americans need health systems that respect taxpayers and put patients first. More than anything, we need the kind of competition that creates accountability, demands transparency, fosters innovation, and produces better services at lower prices.
Data centers are a hidden tax on your burger
Last September, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins warned that the United States has “offshored our food, our beef cattle, our citrus.” She put the problem plainly: “If we can’t feed ourselves, this is a national security issue.” Fair enough. So why does so much of government land-use policy push projects that devour farmland — hyperscale data centers, utility-scale solar farms, and the sprawling infrastructure that comes with them?
If Washington wanted to drive up land prices, make farming harder, and funnel a generation of acreage into non-agricultural uses, it couldn’t improve on the current playbook. The uniparty does this everywhere, and red states often lead the charge.
Data centers: The ‘cloud’ that drains the water
Texas is suffering through a long drought. Yet Amarillo has approved an 18 million square-foot data center on what used to be cattle country. Land-grabs tell only part of the story. Data centers also drink water — and they don’t act like the kind of clouds that bring rain.
Reports indicate the Amarillo facility alone could use 912 million gallons of water per year. Large data centers can guzzle up to 5 million gallons per day, matching the daily use of a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people. That kind of demand crowds out ranchers and farmers who already operate under tight margins and tight water allocations.
If food security is national security, then farmland is strategic territory. Let’s start acting like it.
Texas data centers used roughly 49 billion gallons of water in 2025, rising to 399 billion gallons by 2030 — enough to lower Lake Mead by more than 16 feet annually. Meanwhile, ranchers face reduced access, higher pumping costs, and deeper draws from shrinking aquifers. Less water means smaller herds, smaller harvests, and more pressure to sell.
That’s how the cycle locks in. Water becomes scarce. Ranching becomes less viable. Landowners get squeezed. Tech developers show up with wads of cash and tax incentives. Grazing land disappears for good.
On what planet does it make sense to trade the beef and food we need for speculative gains from chatbots and cloud-based generative AI?
Maybe Elon Musk has the right idea when he suggests building data centers in space. Texas doesn’t need them planted on top of its ranches.
Some red states now treat these projects as untouchable “economic development,” even when they wreck local quality of life. Ohio offers a telling example. An Ohio EPA draft permit for a data center states: “It has been determined that a lowering of water quality … is necessary to accommodate important social and economic development in the state of Ohio.”
That sentence says everything. Regulators will sacrifice water quality to accommodate the newest corporate appetite. Families and landowners can adapt.
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Solar ‘farms’ crushing farmland
President Trump has criticized the solar agenda from day one. He has called utility-scale solar inefficient and ugly — and he’s right about the aesthetics. Yet the administration now treats solar as a power source for data centers, while some MAGA influencers and pollsters try to sell the right on the plan. Pairing solar with hyperscale AI facilities accelerates the transfer of land out of food production.
Utility-scale solar typically requires five to 10 acres per megawatt. A solar build meant to feed a one-gigawatt hyperscale facility can swallow 5,000 to 10,000 acres. Supporters respond with percentages: Solar uses only a small share of total farmland. That dodge ignores where developers build. They don’t chase scrub. They target flat, well-drained, high-quality fields with cheap and easy access to transmission.
Follow the incentives. In states such as Indiana and Illinois, solar leases reportedly offer $900 to $1,500 per acre annually — far above the average return from corn and soybean ground. Landowners take the deal. Young farmers get priced out. Rural communities lose working land and the local economies that depend on it.
Reuters reported that in Indiana counties such as Pulaski, Starke, and Jasper, solar projects have secured 4% to 12% of some of the most fertile cropland. That’s not “marginal land.” That’s the kind of ground America needs to keep producing.
Tax breaks pour gasoline on the fire. Federal and state subsidies for data centers, solar farms, and battery installations push up land values and rents. In Pulaski County, Indiana, cropland rents reportedly jumped 26% since 2020 amid solar growth, outpacing state and national averages. Young families trying to farm don’t compete with subsidized megaprojects.
Indiana Republicans have compounded the damage by greasing the skids for carbon capture pipelines and special regulatory favors tied to the “Mid-States Corridor,” which will take even more farmland out of service.
Indiana’s own Department of Agriculture reports the state lost roughly 345,000 acres of agricultural land between 2010 and 2022. Residential sprawl drives much of that loss. Industrial conversion is accelerating — and data centers paired with solar build-outs speed it up.
So what exactly are these conservatives conserving?
Imports keep climbing. In 2023, imports supplied 59% of fresh fruit availability and 35% of fresh vegetables — up from 50% and 20% in 2007. America has the land to feed itself and then some, yet policymakers keep nudging production overseas. Mexico alone accounts for over half of imported fruits and vegetables, valued at more than $20 billion.
God gave this country an abundance of fertile land. He gave sun and rain to grow food. Our leaders now treat that ground as a blank canvas for industrial build-outs that don’t feed anyone.
If food security is national security, then farmland is strategic territory. Let’s start acting like it.
What ‘democratic socialism’ really means to young voters
Like a highly contagious mind virus, democratic socialism is spreading fast among young Americans. The numbers, the polls, and the election results all point in the same direction: A growing share of the next generation is not just flirting with socialism — it is warming to it.
One poll from late 2025 found that nearly 60% of Americans ages 18 to 24 — and well north of 50% ages 25 to 29 — said they would support a democratic socialist for president in 2028. That support even included about a quarter of self-identified Republicans and 42% of moderates.
America needs a return to proper free-market economic policies — and a cultural renewal that treats liberty not as a slogan, but as a birthright worth defending.
Recent local elections reinforce the point. Democratic socialist mayors on both coasts — Zohran Mamdani in New York City and Katie Wilson in Seattle — won close to 80% of the youth vote in their respective races.
Plenty of institutions deserve blame for this trend. Public schools. Teacher unions. Academia. Legacy media. Social media. Hollywood. Parents too. Each has played a role in shaping how young Americans see the country and what they think “fairness” requires.
But focusing on those inputs misses the deeper driver.
A troubling share of young Americans believes the economy is rigged against them.
In late 2025, the Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports conducted polls on how young Americans view the U.S. economy and the American dream. The results were bleak. Only about 2 in 10 young Americans said they expect their economic future and personal happiness to be better than their parents’. Roughly three-quarters said housing costs have reached a “crisis level,” and they believe their odds of owning a home are shrinking by the day.
That despair didn’t come from nowhere.
This generation came of age in the aftermath of the Great Recession. They watched corporate bailouts become routine and “crony capitalism” harden into a feature of the system. They watched politicians arrive in Washington broke and leave rich, often by playing stock-market games that would end careers in the private sector.
They grew up under the shadow of foreign wars that burned trillions on “nation-building” while much of America decayed. They watched the dollar lose value as Washington normalized out-of-control spending, money printing, and debt accumulation. They watched manufacturing shrivel while leaders prioritized globalism over domestic production, dimming the prospects for secure, high-paying jobs.
RELATED: The party that made life more expensive wants credit for noticing
Put it together, and you get a generation primed to reject the system — and open to any ideology that promises to punish the winners and rewrite the rules.
Layer on the post-9/11 surveillance state, and the picture darkens further. Many young Americans have never lived in a country where privacy and liberty felt secure. They’ve grown numb to constant monitoring and to platforms that decide what they see, share, and believe. It should not surprise anyone if their commitment to free speech, property rights, and personal liberty weakens under that pressure.
That is why diagnosing the rise of democratic socialism requires more than blaming schools or Hollywood. Those are symptoms and accelerants. The cause is deeper: America has drifted away from too many of the principles that made it a beacon of freedom and a land of opportunity.
If that is true, the remedy won’t come from scolding young Americans for their politics. It will come from proving, again, that free markets can build a stable life, that honest work can buy a home, and that the rules apply to the powerful as well as the weak.
To reduce the appeal of democratic socialism, America needs a return to proper free-market economic policies — and a cultural renewal that treats liberty not as a slogan, but as a birthright worth defending.
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