Meme - Bonchie @bonchieredstate: "They all slandered Javier Milei as a “far-right” psycho. All he did was dramatically lower poverty and inflation and balance the budget in just one year. It’s almost like the legacy media is filled with imbeciles."
"His legions of fans call him "the crazy" and "the wig" due to his ferocity and unruly mop of hair, while he refers to himself as "the lion." He thinks sex education is a Marxist plot to destroy the family, views his cloned mastiffs as his "children with four paws" and has raised the possibility people should be allowed to sell their own vital organs."
"Argentina Elects Javier Milei in Victory for Far Right. Argentina's next president is a libertarian economist whose brash style and embrace"
"Javier Milei: Argentina's far-right outsider wins presidential election"
"In one year, Milei:
Balanced the budget by cutting spending
Cut red tape
Opened international trade
Ended high inflation
Restored economic growth from deep recession"
The bar for "far right" is incredibly low nowadays
Argentina exits recession in win for libertarian president Milei
Javier Milei Got Rid of Rent Control in Argentina. Housing Supply Skyrocketed - Newsweek - "With Argentina's inflation reaching 211.4%—the highest in 32 years—rent prices were adjusted every 12 months, and leases had to last at least three years. The law, introduced in 2020, ended up distorting the real estate market and hurting both landlords and tenants. The law aimed to provide tenants with more financial security, but by the end of last year, an estimated one in seven homes in Buenos Aires was sitting empty as landlords chose not to rent them out in Argentine pesos. Deposits were capped, and it was nearly impossible to end tenancies early. For many locals, finding a new apartment had become "mission impossible." But after the repeal, Buenos Aires saw a doubling of available rental units, and rental prices have stabilized. Under the new rules, landlords and tenants have more freedom to agree on lease terms. If the duration isn't specified, it defaults to two years. "We've seen a significant increase in rental apartments, and in some cases, we had to lower prices in pesos because of fewer viewings," Soledad Balayan, head of the real-estate agency Maure Inmobiliaria, told Argentine newspaper La Nación. Since Millei's repeal of rent control laws took effect on December 29, the supply of rental housing in Buenos Aires has jumped by 195.23%, according to the Statistical Observatory of the Real Estate Market of the Real Estate College (CI)... President Joe Biden has proposed federal rent control measures, saying they're needed to protect tenants from corporate landlords. He proposed limiting rent hikes to 5% a year for the next two years for landlords with more than 50 units. Vice President Kamala Harris has also recently indicated support for rent controls, saying at her first major rally since becoming the nominee that she wanted to "take on corporate landlords and cap unfair rent increases." In 2019, after Oregon passed a statewide rent control measure, she praised the bill on Twitter. Biden's plan was meant to last two years, which the White House argues is enough time to build more housing that would relieve some of the affordability issues, particularly in cities. However, critics argue that even with exemptions for new construction, rent caps discourage building more homes. "Evidence shows that rent caps may push landlords to convert rental units into condos, cut back on maintenance, and become more selective about tenants," read a Cato Institute analysis of Biden's proposal."
Clearly, the solution is to force homeowners to rent out spare spaces. If they don't, their houses must be confiscated
Argentina Scrapped Its Rent Controls. Now the Market Is Thriving. - "For years, Argentina imposed one of the world’s strictest rent-control laws. It was meant to keep homes such as the stately belle epoque apartments of Buenos Aires affordable, but instead, officials here say, rents soared... Landlords are rushing to put their properties back on the market, with Buenos Aires rental supplies increasing by over 170%. While rents are still up in nominal terms, many renters are getting better deals than ever, with a 40% decline in the real price of rental properties when adjusted for inflation since last October... Milei’s move to undo rent-control regulations has resulted in one of the clearest-cut victories for what he calls “economic shock therapy.” He is methodically taking apart a system of price controls, closing government agencies and lifting trade restrictions built up over eight decades of socialist and military rule in an effort that has upended the lives of many Argentines... In 2022, there were some 200,000 empty properties in Buenos Aires, up 45% from 2018, according to a report by Cedesu, a Buenos Aires-based policy group that focuses on urban development. Finding an affordable apartment under the rent-control law was difficult... Monthly price increases are now at their lowest rate since 2021 as more apartments become available, according to Zonaprop, Argentina’s largest real-estate website... With Argentina’s history of high and volatile inflation, property owners took steps to protect themselves from inflation that would quickly eat into the rents if they were forced to wait 12 months before raising prices. They instead jacked up the starting price for new leases, making it far too expensive for many people to sign a new contract. That resulted in the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Buenos Aires costing 27 times the price of 2019, according to Zonaprop. Some landlords tried to sell. Others listed them on short-term rental sites such as Airbnb, where tourists paid in dollars. Landlords also focused on renting to people within their social circle, resulting in a big black market with informal rental deals that skirted government rules, economists say. Many apartment owners simply mothballed their properties."
Argentina poverty levels slide, though many still feel the pinch - "Argentina's poverty rate fell sharply in the second half of 2024, the government's INDEC statistics agency said on Monday, a turnaround for libertarian President Javier Milei after his shock austerity had initially plunged millions into hardship. The 38.1% rate was down from an eye-watering 52.9% in the first half of last year after Milei took office in late 2023, devaluing the peso currency and taking what he calls a "chainsaw" to state spending to overturn a deep fiscal deficit."
Argentina: has Javier Milei proved his critics wrong? - "“He’s crazy,” Gullo said admiringly at a rally for libertarian economist and then-candidate Javier Milei on the outskirts of Buenos Aires in late 2023, noting his eccentric image, unconventional ideas and lack of government experience. “We’re tired of the same old politicians who say they’ll fix things and never do. We have faith that a madman can change Argentina.”... Political analysts initially predicted the former TV commentator would struggle to get much done. His ideas were too radical, his personality too irascible, his three-year-old La Libertad Avanza coalition too inexperienced. Yet Milei has used executive powers to get around his lack of a majority in Congress, enacting hundreds of deregulation measures and putting the opposition on the back foot. He has also slashed public spending to deliver a primary fiscal surplus every month this year — after more than a decade of uninterrupted deficits — without setting off widespread protests threatened by his opponents... More importantly — and perhaps surprisingly — polls consistently show he has retained the support of half of Argentina’s population. “The economic and social cataclysm they predicted never came,” Milei told the Financial Times in October. “I have a 50 per cent approval rating after carrying out the biggest austerity programme in our history. It’s a miracle, isn’t it?” Milei has reason to boast: he has stabilised a notoriously turbulent economy that had fallen into its worst crisis in two decades after the left-leaning Peronist government printed billions of dollars’ worth of local currency to fund spending... Dante Sica, a former production minister for a centre-right government who runs the ABECEB real economy consultancy, claims that the labour market has begun a painful but necessary shift “after creating no new formal private sector jobs in over a decade”... Peronist governments, led by Fernández and her late husband, Néstor Kirchner, nearly doubled the size of Argentina’s public sector from 2003 to 2023, spending heavily on welfare programmes and running deficits to help pay for them. Poverty rates fell sharply. But as inflation increased in the mid-2010s, wages began to fall."
Zach Weissmueller on X - "100 economists, including Piketty, signed a letter warning of the economic "devastation" in the short-run if Milei were elected. Monthly inflation was 25% when he entered office. It's now below 3%. (Still bad! But a huge difference). They predicted he'd aggravate the fiscal crisis. First surpluses in over a decade. To give the critics their due, poverty spiked and remains high, though Argentina is woefully bad at measuring poverty rates according to the World Bank. The hope is that with the tough but necessary cuts, economic growth will follow, and poverty will decrease. The tweet below indicates some reason to hope this process is underway, but we will see, and this will be the true test of Milei's approach. We should see a clearer picture by the mid terms in Oct 2025, which will serve as the first real referendum on the Milei agenda. For now, reflect on the fear-mongering of these 100 economists, their incorrect predictions, and their implicit endorsement of Milei's opponent, Argentina's former economic minister, the embodiment of the status quo that led the country to this point."
Alec Stapp on X - "Milei repeals rent controls in Argentina. The results in Buenos Aires since last October:
- housing rental supply up 170%
- rents down 40%"
Gustavo Ventura on X - "Argentina's inflation is converging to 2% (the rate of peso depreciation in the stabilization plan). No price controls whatsoever. If this works, it will be the first successful stabilization attempt based on crude fiscal discipline that I remember."
Why the left hate Milei so much
Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸 on X - "Javier Milei explains perfectly why “you can’t give sh*t leftists an inch.” 😂 “You can’t negotiate with leftists. You don’t negotiate with trash because they will end you! “They don’t care if they ruin your whole life. Why? Only because you don’t think like them. “And since they can’t beat us with real arguments, they just use the repressive apparatus of the state, with loads of taxpayer money to destroy us, and yet they’re still losing! “Sh*t leftists are losing the cultural battle! For the first time ever, they are cornered, those sh*t leftists!”"
Demian Reidel on X - "Have you heard about the so-called Argentinian economic miracle? I have news: there is no miracle. This is a lie. I am the chairman of President Milei’s council of advisors, and I want you to know that there is no miracle here at all. You read that correctly. No miracle whatsoever. What you are witnessing is the most impressive turnaround in the country’s history. We slashed wasteful spending that once enriched the few at the expense of the many. We brought down inflation—a tax that disproportionately burdens the poor. As a result, we lowered poverty rates by more than 11% and lifted millions out of poverty We eliminated the thousands of pickets that made travel across the country a nightmare. Imagine the relief of breathing in fresh air after years of suffocating congestion. Welfare programs? The left’s favorite: they mostly served politicians. They even stole food from the poor. Yes. They stole food from the poor. Now, welfare flows directly to those who need it most. At the core of our strategy, we eradicated the source of the macroeconomic instability that had plagued our nation for so long: we eliminated the fiscal deficit. We now run a fiscal surplus, which has dramatically reduced our country risk—from the 3000s to the 700s. A miracle, some say? How dare they! This is not a miracle. This is hard work. This is putting the country first, not politicians. Why is the opposition protesting so fervently? Not because they care for the people or the nation, but because they fear the truth—that they have been the problem all along. Their time is over. Again, this is not a miracle. This is hard work. This is having a vision, formulating a plan, and executing it without fear. This is having the guts to do what is right. This is president @JMilei leadership. The jig is up for the left. They have nothing, and they never did. They do not love the poor. They love poverty. Now, tell me again that this is a miracle. We didn’t know it was impossible—so we did it. Viva la libertad, carajo!"
Ontario reveals cost of moving alcohol to convenience stores and long-term plan for LCBO - "Workers at LCBO stores walked off the job in early July, claiming that allowing convenience stores to sell ready-to-drink beverages would lead to store closures and ultimately job losses. The strike lasted more than two weeks and resulted in a promise from the LCBO to keep all stores open, even if revenues flatlined... By 2027, the province expects revenue from the LCBO to sit at $8.5 billion -- $800 million higher than the government was projecting before, even with lower consumption. “This increase is primarily driven by the LCBO’s expanded role as a wholesaler in the new alcohol marketplace, in addition to its continued role as a retailer, partly offset by the impacts of consumption trends,” the fall economic statement explained."
Left wingers hate choice and love monopolies, because they think companies exist in order to serve their workers, not customers
Michael A. Arouet on X - "There is a new career path for wannabes who have never worked a single day in real jobs. They decide to become left green politicians and tell hard working people how they need to live their lives, and corporations how to run businesses. Results can be seen in various countries."
Luctor on X - "In NL we had a minister who wanted extra money on climate policies: How much? EUR 28.000.000.000, - How much do we gain - someone asked. The answer: 0,000036 degrees less heating What strikes me most is the demeanor: not blinking his eyes once… 🤷"
Parents across GTA warned by some private daycares that they may pull out of $10-a-day program - "In the letter, they are told that the current structure of CWELCC has made it difficult to “remain financially sustainable.” The letter noted that the daycare may also need to opt out of CWELCC in the coming months. “In its current form, the CWELCC program’s cost control framework places significant restrictions on how we can allocate funds, which limits our ability to invest in our center in ways that benefit the children, families, and staff,” the letter read. “Additionally, the increasing level of control the government will have over our operations, including how we spend money, is making it more difficult for us to make improvements and decisions that ensure our daycare remains a vibrant, thriving, ‘home away from home’ environment for everyone.”"
Ontario cutting funding from daycare centres not in $10-a-day program - "Ontario’s deal with the federal government to join the $10-a-day program committed the province to create 86,000 new child-care spaces. But, so far, while there have been about 51,000 new spaces, only 25,500 of those are within the $10-a-day system, officials say. The province says a federal cap on the percentage of for-profit spaces within the system is hampering growth, as municipalities are having to turn down applications for thousands of potential spaces because they are created by for-profit operators."
Meme - Hot Takes Nobody Asked For: "Money for nothin', chicks for free."
Olayemi Olurin @msolurin: "I really hate the "no person who works a full time job should live in poverty" discourse because it should simply be that nobody deserves to live in poverty. We gotta let go of this idea that we work in exchange for worth. People are innately worthy + deserving of the basics"
Alex: "Nobody should work full time either"
Government workers on the prospect of DOGE-fueled layoffs: 'It kind of feels like we're being villainized'
Governments have a responsibility to employ as many people as possible, even if they're not doing anything
Matthew Lau: Schools should stop teaching lies about capitalism - "“Our capitalist system,” I have just learned, “is one of the main reasons our planet is getting stripped away and destroyed.” That is according to the Toronto District School Board, which made the claim in the November edition of its EcoSchools newsletter to promote something called “Buy Nothing Day” on November 29. The TDSB says that by buying nothing for a day people can protest consumerism and help the environment. The reality, of course, is just the opposite: capitalism and buying things are nothing to protest. Nor are they responsible for “our planet getting stripped away and destroyed.” From 1900 to 2021, world average life expectancy rose from 32 years to 71 years — an astonishing increase that was not the result of people buying nothing and consuming nothing. Quite the opposite: it was the result of the widespread advances in technology, medicine and overall economic productivity driven by capitalism that enabled people to increase their consumption. One reason people live longer and better lives than they used to is that modern economies and technologies protect against environmental disasters. The global death rate related to climate and weather catastrophes is today less than one per cent what it was a century ago. That capitalism is responsible for planetary destruction and other environmental harm is also nonsense. In addition to longer and better lives, capitalism has delivered a high degree of environmental cleanliness. Mass production of the automobile cleaned cities by ridding streets of horses and disease-attracting horse manure. Vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, air fresheners, washers and driers, ventilation systems, disinfecting wipes — the virtually unlimited products that make our immediate environments cleaner are today all affordable and widely available because of capitalism. In response to left-liberals who say the private market and capitalism are responsible for polluting the air and water and destroying the earth, Milton Friedman liked to point out that countries with government-run economies, such as the former Soviet Union, had worse pollution than the United States. In 1984, a United Nations report identified East Germany as the most polluted country in Europe; in 1990 the Washington Post reported that Bitterfeld, an East German city south of Berlin, was “the dirtiest place in the most polluted country in the world, according to government statistics and Greenpeace.” So bad was communism for the environment that even in the capitalist world much pollution came from communist countries. Studies by a joint U.S./Soviet research center near Vienna, the same Washington Post story said, “have traced pollutants falling on Western European countries back to their source: East Germany and its neighbors.” An East German automobile put about 100 times more carbon monoxide into the atmosphere than Western cars, while East Germany put about five times as much sulfur dioxide into the air as West Germany. In line with Friedman’s observation that capitalism and private ownership were good for the environment because “nobody takes care of somebody else’s property as well as he takes care of his own,” a 2003 article on economic freedom and environmental quality published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas cited evidence that in countries with stronger property rights, environmental outcomes such as sanitation, restricted deforestation and access to clean water were better than in countries with weaker property rights. Similarly, a 2014 Fraser Institute study found that countries with the most economic freedom had cleaner air than those with the least. In condemning capitalism, the TDSB newsletter predictably attacks the “deadly activities of the fossil fuel industry, which continues to pollute, burn, and ransack the planet in the face of mounting human suffering” — a claim again contradicted by the facts, which show fossil fuels have helped power literally billions of people out of poverty. Elsewhere the newsletter highlighted a recent climate change conference organized by the TDSB the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, which was attended by 250 teachers and keynoted by a representative from the David Suzuki Foundation. One workshop encouraged teachers to integrate “age-appropriate climate action into their classrooms, schools, and communities,” while another explored how public schools can “address the climate crisis that students are experiencing here and now” and a third concerned “engaging students in environmental advocacy.” Enough with the climate action, advocacy and activism. When will the TDSB get around to teaching students indisputable facts — such as the widespread benefits of capitalism?"
Left wing indoctrination in schools is a far right conspiracy theory and misinformation
Understanding the necessity of economic growth - "Oxford economics professor Daniel Susskind’s recent book, Growth: A History and A Reckoning, underscores both the historical novelty of the concept of sustained economic growth and why democratic capitalism needs it to continue to be a priority... Permanent stagnation resulted in all human cultural narratives assuming the economy was a zero-sum exercise in which the only way of improving incomes was at the expense of someone else. As sociologist Jack D. Douglas put it, “the zero-sum game is really the most ancient way of thinking, found in all primitive societies and highly exaggerated in peasant mentality.” Ubiquitous belief in the zero-sum model was self-reinforcing: the resulting focus on redistribution limited the possibility of sustained growth. Oxford’s Eric Beinhocker argues this is because “societies that believe in a fixed pie of wealth have a difficult time engendering cooperation and tend to be low in mutual trust,” both of which are required for capitalism and trade to flourish. In addition, economic historian Deirdre McCloskey suggests, the denigration of rich people “as clever thieves or obsessive misers or lucky inheritors” discouraged people from striving to join their ranks. The reflexive reversion to redistributing instead of creating incomes resurfaces during periods of slow economic growth. But emphasizing redistribution further drains life from what the German sociologist Max Weber called the optimistic “spirit of capitalism,” something clearly evident in the malaise that infects much of the western world today. In the fast-growing 1950s John Kenneth Galbraith lamented that “inequality has ceased to preoccupy men’s minds.”... Susskind emphatically rejects the recent “de-growth” movement’s belief in shrinking the economy. The permanent recession that would result would have enormous consequences. During the long slump in the 1930s, not to mention the slow growth of the last 10 years, people became susceptible to the siren call of dictators and autocrats promising to deliver higher incomes even as they undermine the values supporting democratic capitalism. As the economist Diane Coyle says, the luxury of “no growth is for the rich,” not the masses... According to the philosopher Michael Novak, the breakthrough idea of capitalism was not the profit motive (which has existed forever) but the very idea that sustained growth was possible. And yet, Susskind concludes, economists still have not developed a fully-satisfying working model of what sustains economic growth since “the deeper you go, the less useful these explanations become” about what creates the right culture and institutions. And perhaps that’s to be expected. After all, the Industrial Revolution launched without the advice or encouragement of economists."
Left wingers hate economic growth, but also have zero sum thinking about the economy. Ironic. But then, they're obsessed with Revolution
Terence Corcoran: Hoodwinked by anti-capitalist potboilers - "The real meaning of the title of their book is found in their push for a Big Government Fix of the entire economy. They envision a “whole of government” approach that will involve “predistribution” and taxation policies, more taxes on the rich, more government regulation, and strengthened public corporations. Never mind the price benefits of free markets, they say, and instead focus “more holistically on all the ways that market power is used against stakeholders.” Canada needs, they say, to “change our philosophy and tackle the mindsets that have prevented us from doing so in the past.” Every sentence in The Big Fix is mishmash of fuzzy logic and false premises aimed at demolishing free markets. They claim that “Private markets are dependent on the state for their existence and operation,” which is not true. “Every firm is given a licence to operate by the state,” which is not true. “Any form of property right, including the rights of capital holders or investors, is enforceable by the state,” also not true."
Weird how the solution to a lack of competition is more government control, rather than more competition
Opinion: Declining tax competitiveness is failing Canada’s young people - "starting a business and pursuing prosperity for one’s family and community seems an impossible dream for members of my generation, largely because Canada’s tax structures punish risk-takers, deterring innovation and stifling the market. When 90 per cent of businesses are doomed to fail, such dream-chasers are unicorns — maybe even fools. But prosperity depends on people taking risks. That’s why policy-makers need to improve the market environment by lowering the overall tax burden on businesses to encourage risk-taking and reward entrepreneurship. Ottawa could start by reversing course on this year’s capital gains tax hike. Without dreamers, innovations that could shape our everyday lives will remain unrealized. What often goes unmentioned in biopics or memoirs of successful dreamers is the head start they got in an environment supporting entrepreneurship instead of simply taxing it. Canada is experiencing a general decline in entrepreneurship. One recent survey found that we have 100,000 fewer individuals starting businesses than 20 years ago. Unfortunately, this decline is likely to persist. Canada is steadily making it harder for young risk-takers to succeed. The message from raising the capital gains inclusion rate from 50 to 66.7 per cent is clear: frankly, we aren’t that interested in your dreams or ideas. This year Canada fell from 15th to 17th in the Tax Foundation’s ranking of international tax competitiveness. The decline was largely driven by the hike in the capital gains inclusion rate, which now stands well above the OECD average. In terms of taxes on capital gains and dividends, Canada now ranks 35th out of the 38 countries surveyed. For young entrepreneurs and foreign investors alike, higher tax on capital gains doesn’t just mean less payout if they do succeed; it signals that the government doesn’t recognize the critical role innovators play in building prosperity. The capital gains hike is especially harmful to those who need to raise capital and secure funding, since rewards have to be commensurate with risks. By shrinking the after-tax reward, Canada discourages the risk-taking we need to keep our economy growing. Even our corporate tax rates are higher than in most of our peer nations — 26.2 per cent compared to an OECD average of 23.9 per cent. This means that scaling up a business is costlier, which means less demand for employees and new equipment, which spells bad news for productivity and our already stagnating standard of living. Even Scandinavian countries, often considered high-tax jurisdictions, rank far higher than Canada in corporate tax competitiveness. In the Tax Foundation’s ranking, Sweden, Finland and Norway are sixth, seventh and 13th, respectively, while Canada ranks 26th. Yet these countries are better able to balance a strong social safety net with a dynamic business environment. On the World Happiness Index ranking for people under 30, they blow Canada out of the water, ranking 18th, seventh and 20th, respectively, versus our 58th... Then there is the debt burden, my generation’s grey cloud. Since 2015, the Trudeau government has run 10 consecutive deficits and added $1 trillion to the national debt . Who will have to pay that down and service the interest? Younger Canadians. So it should surprise no one that our cohort is pessimistic about government . Taxing away the prospect of dreaming big is just another nail in the coffin. It sends a message: Quit while you’re ahead."
Left wingers hate the rich and success, so
Timothy Snyder on X - "The problem isn’t government waste. The problem is that billionaires don’t pay taxes."
Austen Allred on X - "The federal government spends $6.2 trillion/year. Jeff Bezos's net worth is $217.5 Billion. If the government took 100% of Bezos's net worth it would spend it in 12.8 days. Taking 100% of the net worth of one of the richest billionaires would float us for less than two weeks.
"As of September 13, 2024, the combined net worth of all US billionaires was $6.22 trillion. This is based on an analysis of the Forbes Real Time Billionaire List by the Institute for Policy Studies." If we took every single penny US billionaires have we'd spend it in a year."
Left wingers just hate the rich and prosperity (which is why they promote degrowth and mock the idea of infinite growth)
Thread by @Will_Tanner_1 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App (Will Tanner) - "I don't give a fuck about making it to Mars. I want healthcare. Which apparently is more out of reach then Mars."
"This claim is common and absurd, with anti-achievement rhetoric framed as if 1) the choice is between Mars and utopian welfare programs and 2) there's no good reason to go to the Red Planet. Both are entirely false; we should settle Mars and ignore as I'll show in the 🧵👇
First is the anti-achievement welfare claim, which basically is this: any "extra" money needs to be thrown toward welfare, whether in "healthcare," food stamps, "free rent," or some other scheme. This comes up the most with space exploration and settlement, but really is attached to any achievement of note. At heart, it's an argument for favela world; according to the proponents of it, what doesn't matter is the human spirit, but rather the material conditions of the perpetually incompetent. So we shouldn't build cathedrals, make train stations aesthetically appealing, colonize Mars, or explore the Mariana Trench. Instead we should just pour one dumptruck of cash after another into the black pit of turning every Section 8 house into a mansion and every murder suspect into a chemical engineer in the name of "alleviating" conditions that are never going to change. This was a feature of anti-space exploration/settlement protests as soon as the space program began, but particularly once it became and expensive process of landing on the moon. We even got the song "Whitey on the Moon," in which the mumbler behind the mic complains about his rent and contrasts that with the titanic achievement of landing on the lunar surface, arguing that society should instead care about his sister's rat bite and his rent. Funnily enough, there are healthcare lines in it. LBJ and Nixon evidently bought the ridiculous argument, as LBJ poured money into his "Great Society" money pit and then Nixon ended the Apollo missions in 1972, before the real work and progress on the Moon could start. Expense, of course, was blamed; meanwhile, the welfare schemes ballooned in cost and only made things worse
And that's really the important thing: the programs funded by the cutting of human achievement just make everything worse. They don't cure the root causes of favela world, of crime and bastardy; they just try and fail, in quite expensive fashion, to alleviate the symptoms. And for that we get a worsening of everything, as seen with the Great Society: now the communities meant to be benefitted have gone from 80% two-parent homes to 80% out of wedlock birth, and all the crime that such conditions bring, particularly in terms of gang violence, petty crime, and drug dealing.
So, what is better: colonizing space (with benefits to be discussed below) or increasing crime and out of wedlock births? I'd say the former. And that's really the decision. The choice isn't between utopia and expensive space programs. The utopia is phantom and likely to go much the opposite way. Rather, it's between funding human achievement and subsidizing human vice. I'd say the former is better.
The other thing is the welfare programs crowd ignores the benefits of space exploration and colonization. Take GPS, velcro, memory foam, current air and water purification technology, CAT scan technology, and advancements in home insulation technology. None would be here without the relatively restrained space program of the mid-twentieth century; imagine what would be achieved, all the little and big things that benefit life, with similar levels of investment and advancement today! But that's just scratching the surface, the look at the present and the near future. The other thing is that the "green" movement would actually be possible with advanced space exploration. Mining on Earth, dirty and polluting, would be obviated by harvesting the minerals in asteroids and Mars. Robots and nuclear technology would have to advance tremendously, and would, providing cleaner energy and safer, cleaner labor. Mars could become the planet on which heavy industry happens, with Earth returning to a managed Arcadia free of new pollutants and the strain imposed by mass heavy industry. Meanwhile, everything related to those huge strides forward, from the semiconductors needed in asteroid-mining robotic units to terraforming Mars to make it useable for heavy industry would, like in Apollo, jump forward dramatically and have secondary, tertiary, and further removed benefits never even contemplated before the strides toward achievement began. @SpaceAgeHerr had a great podcast on some of the heavy industry aspects of this and what would be required to make it happen.
Admittedly, that's all far in the future. But it's nearly possible even with current technology, and the strain imposed by trying to achieve it could and would pull everything else forward with it, as happened with Apollo. And just exploring Mars, just beginning to take a closer, human look at what's around us, is entirely possible now, as @robert_zubrin has noted in his books. We had the tech needed in the 90s, just not the will to use it; now SpaceX has made it all the more possible, all the more within our grasp. The overarching benefit for humanity is that, unlike the welfare insanity proposed as the alternative, having a difficult to advance against frontier is a huge benefit to the human spiritJust look at @elonmusk; he has a goal and a willingness to achieve it, the seemingly impossible task of, as a private citizen and private company, settling the Red Planet. Surely that was inconceivable to most in the early 2000s, but he saw the opportunity and challenge and grasped at it rather than running away. The result? Not only is he at the doorstep of landing on the Martian surface, but he's one of the very, very few billionaires, or even men, with a metaphorical chest. He's used his wealth not just to sit in splendor, but to bend the world to his will, to advance what he sees as needing advancement, from freedom of speech online to pushing Trump into office. Who else is like that? The other tech oligarchs backed down and shut down free speech online when the FBI did nothing more than send some nasty emails. The financiers and bankers are wealthy, but don't impart their will on the world; they just divert away a percentage of the accomplishments of others. Few industrial titans are left...other than Musk. So nearly no one is. Perhaps Trump, in a different way. But nearly no one. Why? Because Musk has a frontier to fight against, something to accomplish. He's not stewing in his own wealth and pleasure, pointlessly consuming and sitting around, as members of his own class and the welfare recipients are known for. Instead he sleeps under cardboard in his office, when necessary, and has dramatically changed things in America as he readies to change things forever on Mars. That's different, that's a spirit.
And that's why the "healthcare not space" argument is devilish. Pouring sums into the welfare program regime just make things worse, from the actual lives of the recipients to the degraded spirits of all involved. But achieving something, battling against and defeating the force of nature? That improves life while building the spirit, that's what Mars stands for"
Left wingers always demand more money for social welfare, and when that fails, the problem is that not enough money was spent. At some level, this is because a bigger state is the goal regardless of results
Keywords: space spend money earth welfare, "pennies for the hungry", "spend money on space exploration"
