Meme - Charles Murray @charlesmurray: "I envy the first sentence of mimetic_sisyphus's post. A straightforward statement of reality that seldom gets said so clearly."
mimetic_sisyphus: "I think something the left has never really been able to accept is that for tens of millions of Americans, nearly all of their federal tax dollars are simply taken from them with no direct and very weak indirect benefits. It's a constant imposition, and there is no thank you."
Richard Hanania on X - "Socialist gets elected mayor of Seattle. She says “I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are super overblown. And the ones that leave? Like, bye.” The crowd laughs and cheers. Now, local leaders are worried that they're actually leaving. Starbucks is opening a corporate hub in Nashville, which actually wants business. The mayor says she wants the company to stay. How many times do we have to experience this? How is there never any learning? Socialism isn't just bad economics. It's spiritually rotten to be this hostile to truth and this hateful toward those who contribute most to society."
Fox News Politics on X - "A Seattle Democrat who praised socialist Mayor Katie Wilson's 'change' now admits he's 'gravely concerned' about the business exodus gutting the city — less than five months into her term. Starbucks just announced it will shift 2,000 corporate jobs to Nashville while cutting Seattle roles. The Columbia Tower Club, an iconic executive hub atop the city's tallest skyscraper, shut down after four decades. Wilson's response to fleeing millionaires? 'Like, bye.'"
Grifty on X - "MAYOR EATS HUMBLE PIE AFTER WEALTH TAX BACKFIRES
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson admits she was WRONG to call for Starbucks boycott after firm shifts thousands of jobs to Nashville over her millionaire tax. In a stunning New York Times interview, the 43-year-old Seattle mayor confessed her January 2026 union-rally call “I am not buying Starbucks, and you should not either” was “wrong” and “not productive” and caused “more harm than good.” Wilson had strongly backed Washington’s new 9.9% millionaire tax (effective 2028) and previously dismissed wealthy residents fleeing with a blunt “And to the ones that leave? Like, bye.” Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz directly blamed her policies for the decision to build a major new corporate hub in Tennessee. The company insists it will keep its Seattle HQ and even sponsor a new homeless shelter but the damage to local jobs is already done. More proof that when you do "wealth taxes" people leave..."
Fox News Politics on X - "Seattle's socialist mayor told residents to boycott Starbucks the day she got elected. When the company announced plans to leave, she said 'bye' and giggled. Now she's walking it back. Starbucks just committed $100 million and thousands of jobs — to Tennessee."
Ari Hoffman on X - "Gov Bob Ferguson tried & failed to convince Starbucks not to leave Seattle. Bob told KOMO he had "multiple personal conversations" with the CEO but the coffee giant still chose to move to Nashville. Starbucks, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft are all cutting jobs in WA, but Bob blamed it on AI, not his onerous regulations and taxes."
Mike Netter on X - "🚨 Seattle Mayor Giggles and Waves Goodbye as $800 Million & 2,000 Aerospace Jobs choosen to be created in Montana! Vs Seattle A legendary Washington family business — Janicki Industries — that builds parts for Boeing Dreamliners, fighter jets, and NASA spacecraft just took its massive $800 million expansion and 2,000 future jobs out of state. After 33 years of growing in Washington, crushing regulations, skyrocketing taxes, and hostile policies finally made the math impossible. Instead of fighting to keep them, Seattle’s Mayor Katie Wilson literally giggled and said: “If the ones that leave, like bye.” Now those jobs and that investment are heading to Great Falls, Montana — a state that actually welcomes business. How many more companies have to flee before Washington wakes up? This is a warning for every worker and family in the state."
Clown World ™ 🤡 on X - "In 2024 Ilhan Omar’s husband Tim Mynett reported assets worth up to $30 million from his venture capital firm and wine empire. After a congressional investigation was launched into her finances, she filed an amended disclosure claiming it was all an accounting error and the businesses were worth zero. Now her 2025 disclosure shows Mynett earned as little as $200 for the entire year from a wine company called ‘The Devil’s Lie’ that has since gone bankrupt. His venture capital firm Rose Lake Capital still generated up to $1 million in revenue but somehow he personally made $200. The woman who built her career screaming about the wealthy hiding their money just filed the most suspicious financial disclosure in congressional history. The Devil’s Lie indeed."
Meme - thenutritiontea: "I can't believe I'm witnessing people debating whether or not SNAP recipients should be able to purchase rotisserie chickens. Just so we're all clear, this conversation is whether people should have access to food when it should be why are people being exploited by society.
"They need to get jobs and work for it. People just want handouts." Funny that people say this considering many people on SNAP do work and have jobs. But again, they are being exploited because they still are not making enough for food. Even if they don't have jobs, people deserve to eat. Thinking that people don't is a weird take.
We live in such an individualistic society because how on earth do you expect a country to thrive if people are struggling to eat? Food is a necessity for survival and doing everything to take that away is downright disgusting.
Food is a human right. And my personal gripe with SNAP is that it doesn't include hot food when not everyone has access to a kitchen or even a home. Again, food is a human right."
Alli Fitzpatrick: "One time when I was shopping in Costco I paused and really, objectively took a look around at the endless sea of food stacked all the way to the ceiling. Wow! I thought. The abundance is staggering. And this is only one warehouse of how many? It absolutely boggles my mind-it seems absurd-that anyone in this country goes hungry. We have more than enough. Food is indeed a human right."
Left wing logic - if something is a human right the taxpayer must provide it. That's why they declare everything a human right.
Left wingers think that if you have inventory at hand, it means you can afford to give it away for free. This is why they're poor
Let’s stop going into space. There’s nothing to see and no one to talk to | Zoe Williams | The Guardian - "It is absolutely self-evident to me that space exploration is pointless, and the more urgent the crises besetting this planet we live on, the more pointless it becomes."
Thread by @peterrhague on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Zoe Williams is just a deeply, deeply stupid person - whose previous zingers include "democracies don't use nuclear weapons" and "women aren't allowed in mens football because they would win". Yet when she annoys people with her stupidity, she acts like this is a win somehow? Her basic thing is revealed in the second paragraph - she considers her ignorant brainfarts to be self evident truths about the universe, and everybody else just a bit silly for not agreeing already. She is utterly incurious as to the actual reasons for going to space."
Peter Hague on X - "I promise this is the last time I'll annoy myself by reading the "opinions" of the Guardian, but this one is worth disecting:
* The entirety of NASA costs 0.5% of the US federal budget. It doesn't 'distract' meaningfully from anything. Its a rounding error.
* "ecological limits" is code for "we want to use environmentalism as a pretext for socialism"
- Dismissing colonising new worlds as "fantasy" without a shred of argument for why it is (it actually isn't) because they know that when people can move off Earth it completely kneecaps the above "ecological limit" argument and endangers their project to force socialism on everybody.
These people consistently give the impression that they never bother to expose themselves to counterarguments against their nonsensical but stridently asserted positions."
NeilT on X - "They don't, they just block them out and shut them down. They are supreme in their certainty they are right. No need to go further."
When it comes to rubbish spending they love, left wingers dismiss it as a rounding error and so if you complain about it, you're raising a red herring
Opinion | ‘The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?’ - The New York Times - "When does shoplifting become an act of political protest? The Opinion culture editor Nadja Spiegelman is calling this microlooting, and it describes the phenomenon of people stealing small things from big corporations like Whole Foods. The New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino and the political commentator Hasan Piker join Spiegelman for a lively discussion on what’s behind this trend and where it might lead."
Stores closing and leaving poor areas underserved, and prices rising to cover the cost of shoplifting, are proof that capitalism has failed
Left wingers think internal shrinkage means employees stealing too. They can't fathom that lemons could, say, fall off a truck
Left wing logic: blowing up pipelines is good, free street parking is bad (this was both Tolentino)
Stores closing and leaving poor areas underserved are proof that capitalism has failed
Trying to win? : r/ConservativeMemes - "When the libs say “eat the rich”, they’re comparing the USA to the poorest countries in the world, so everyone in the US is rich except for the people who walk across the Rio Grande with only their shirt on their backs."
Wealth Redistribution Surprisingly Popular Among People With No Wealth • Genesius Times
The triumph of capital - "A handful of left-wing economists have made tortured efforts in recent years to redefine asset value appreciation as a form of income. That’s because over the past 10 years, Mark Zuckerberg, among other billionaires, has amassed a staggering amount of wealth relative to the taxes he’s paid. But defining income to include this sort of appreciation means that you can say Zuckerberg pays a low tax rate. The problem, to be slightly boring, is that this is not income. If you compare the United States to the famously high-tax Nordic countries, the major difference is not in the top statutory income tax rates. The top American combined state and local tax rate is generally a little higher than it is in Norway and a little lower than in Denmark and Sweden. New York and California, where a large share of our billionaires live, have unusually high top income tax rates, so the richest people are paying Nordic-level marginal rates. The big difference is that the Nordic top rates kick in at between 110 percent (Sweden) and 180 percent (Norway) of average income versus 880 percent of average income in the United States. Obviously if we lowered the threshold for the top income tax bracket down to the Norwegian level, that would generate a ton of extra revenue — including extra revenue from billionaires — and that could pay for all kinds of things. But nobody in the United States wants to ask the middle class to pay more, so we keep seeing efforts to kind of redefine the billionaire situation to make it seem like they’re paying unusually low tax rates when they actually aren’t... Check out the chart below tracking four major economic indicators over the past 30 years. You’ll see that from 1996 until around 2012, the stock market was much more volatile than median household income or average hourly wages for nonsupervisory workers, but these indicators actually ended up in about the same place. The Case-Shiller house price index diverged from the stock-market trajectory for a few years, but ended up in the same place. But the years since 2012 have looked very different. To be clear, even my chart is a bit too generous to working for a living. Stocks, in addition to appreciating in price over time, pay dividends. And a house isn’t just a financial asset; if you own one you can live in it rather than paying rent to someone else. Or alternatively, you can rent it out and make money. But still, there’s a world of difference between that 1996–2012 trajectory and what we’ve seen in more recent years where housing prices have risen faster than incomes and stock prices have soared astronomically. Imagine someone who inherited $1 million in an S&P 500 index fund at the start of 2012 and never sold the shares or reinvested the dividends. He’d have about $6 million in his portfolio today and would have scored about $40,000 per year in dividend income... it’s good and appropriate for tax policy to encourage this kind of prudence... this is not a historical inevitability. There are long stretches of time when the stock market grew more slowly than the economy. But from 1986–2015 it grew faster. And then for the past 10 years the gap became dramatically larger than at any earlier time in history...this is not a historical inevitability. There are long stretches of time when the stock market grew more slowly than the economy. But from 1986–2015 it grew faster. And then for the past 10 years the gap became dramatically larger than at any earlier time in history."
Hon. Vickie Paladino on X - "The DSA is a terrorist organization pushing for de facto secession from the United States. And they’re lying about why the city is crumbling. It’s not because we have a ‘war economy’ draining money from our schools and transit. It’d because leftists like them have been in charge here for decades and have wasted/stolen billions of our dollars. New York spends an absolutely ungodly amount of money on schools, the MTA, infrastructure, healthcare, housing, and nearly everything else they complain about. Lack of money is NOT the issue. Failed municipal leadership is the issue. A city council filled with unemployable spoiled children and their enablers is the issue. A 30 year old TikTok mayor who’s never held a job is the issue. If we zeroed out the Pentagon budget tomorrow and gave every dime of that money to NYC, it wouldn’t improve this city one iota, because the same morons will be in charge of wasting it all. So please spare us these obvious lies about ‘underfunded’ schools and transit. You want to kneecap the country militarily for purely ideological reasons and you don’t really care whether anything gets better in New York either way."
Meme - *Disappointed black guy* "The working family tax cut eliminates taxes for families making under $75k
Every single house and senate democrat voted against it"
Left wing logic - if you're against taxing people $10 to give them $1 in benefits, you lack empathy, hate working people and are not a true Christian
Meme - Bennett's Phylactery @extradeadjcb: "An obscure academic wrote a book in 2004 about how dual income households are a scam & the vast majority of women simply aren't economically productive enough to justify outsourcing childcare, even in dystopian government warehouses"
"The Two-Income Trap. Why Middle-Class Parents Are (Still) Going Broke. ELIZABETH WARREN and AMELIA WARREN TYAGI"
Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren: "Half of all families live in child care deserts. How did we get here? It's Econ 101: Prices are high because lots of families need care, but there's nowhere near enough child care providers. And there aren’t enough providers, because we’re not paying them enough."
Pubity on X - "The U.S. is investigating Germany for making medication and healthcare a little too affordable for their citizens. They're pressuring Germany to raise prices and invest more in "innovative pharmaceutical research" to keep international drug prices from going down."
nyara on X - "Capitalism be like: “People aren’t going into debt when they’re sick and that makes me mad😡😡”"
Left wing logic - if you ensure no profits from drug development, new drugs will invent themselves out of moral superiority
The Global Burden of Medical Innovation - "U.S. consumers spend roughly three times as much on drugs as their European counterparts, and 90 percent more as a share of income. Calculations using publicly available aggregate data suggest that the United States market accounts for 64 to 78 percent of worldwide pharmaceutical profits. These profits drive drug innovation that ultimately benefits patients around the globe. While American subsidies to innovation provide much-needed philanthropy to poor countries, patients in richer countries outside the United States would benefit longer-term if they financed a greater share of drug discovery. Using a previously published economic-demographic microsimulation, we estimate that if European prices were 20 percent higher, the resulting increased innovation would generate $10 trillion in welfare gains for Americans, and $7.5 trillion for Europeans over the next 50 years. Encouraging other wealthy countries to shoulder more of the burden of drug discovery — including higher prices for innovative treatments — would ultimately benefit patients in the United States and the rest of the world"
Amy Klobuchar on X - "With $300 billion, we could end homelessness, fund cancer research for 40 years, and give every child free pre-K for over 7 years. Instead, Trump is sending it to Iran. This is not America First. Not even close."
Bonchie on X - "How do they not feel embarrassment, constantly claiming they can end all the world's problems with some small fraction of the amount of money they spend every single year?"
Thread by @TristinHopper on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "If my neighbour increases the productivity of their vegetable garden and doubles their tomato crop, this does not subtract from the number of tomatoes I was able to produce in *my* vegetable garden. You are now more economically literate than all of leftist Twitter. "But Tristin, I'm jealous that he has more tomatoes than I do, and I want the tomatoes to be mine." Ah, true. But the original point continues to hold. "But Tristin, what if the neighbour produces 90 billion tomatoes and also they're poison and I have to eat them? Checkmate, loser.""
Lauren Chen on X - ""Poverty causes crime" Jackson, Mississippi has a murder rate 20 times higher than Rwanda's. St. Louis has a murder rate almost 35 times higher than Ghana's. Stop it. No more excuses."
Yogi on X - "Chicago lost the Bears this week. A team that's been in the city since 1921. They didn't lose them to a bigger market or a better deal. The Bears decided they'd rather be a tenant in Indiana than deal with Illinois for one more year. Think about how badly you have to run a place for that to be the smart move. They lost them for two reasons. The people running Illinois would rather villainize a builder than keep one. And they're bad at their jobs. In 2021 the Bears spent $197M on the old Arlington Park racetrack. Before they could break ground, Cook County valued the empty lot at $192M (Bears said $60M). They were salivating at the chance to extort a building that didn't even exist yet. That fight dragged on for years. The Bears were ready to put $2B into the stadium. All they wanted was a promise the county wouldn't reassess them into oblivion, plus $855M for infrastructure everyone uses. Roads, transit, utilities. A $3B project, two thirds of it private money pouring into Illinois. Springfield had since 2021 to get this done. They dragged it to the final night of session, passed it through the Senate at 3:39AM, and the House went home without voting. So now it's all gone. The funniest part? This started because Cook County tried to grab the tax early. They knew a built stadium would pay $53M a year. Now they get under $4M on a vacant lot. No jobs, no buildout, no new anything. Congrats on fighting for scraps and losing the whole prize. Pritzker: they're "an $8.5B valued business" that doesn't need propping up. But be smart for a second. Almost every NFL city throws in public money for a stadium. Not charity. The return is real. Tourism, hotels, restaurants, jobs, game days, property tax on a huge development. The math works. Indiana did the math. While Illinois sat on it for years, Indiana passed a bill in months, put up $1B, and took the team. And the Bears took a worse deal to get there. In Illinois they were going to own their stadium. In Indiana they rent it from the state. A team that wanted to build its own home gave up ownership just to escape Chicago. Nobody won but Indiana. The Bears lost their stadium. Illinois lost the team, the $2B, and $53M a year in taxes. Pritzker after they left: "I wasn't willing to give up billions of dollars of taxpayer money to give it to a billionaire-owned family or team." There it is. "Billionaire-owned." That's how Democrats talk about any business right before they run it out of town. Call them a billionaire, act like you're saving working families, take a victory lap while the tax base drives across the state line. Meanwhile they're running the whole state into the ground. And you already know how this ends. You're living in it. Pensions are $143B in the hole, worst in the country and not close. You pay $6,285 a year in property taxes, double the $2,969 national average, for a city that's $1.15B in the red. The mayor called its finances "the point of no return." When you run things this badly, you sell what's left. They leased the parking meters for 75 years to Morgan Stanley and a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi. Took $1.15B and burned through it in two years. The investors already made it all back, with 58 years left to collect. Sold the Skyway. Sold the downtown garages. Every asset that made money, gone for one check. But a fixed property tax rate for a team that's been here 106 years? That's "propping up billionaires." Companies are leaving. Boeing for Virginia. Caterpillar for Texas. Citadel for Miami. In 2023 alone Illinois lost 56,000 people and $6B in income to other states. The ones who left earned a third more than the ones who moved in. Indiana didn't outbid anyone. AAA credit, 16 years straight. A $676M surplus. Fourth-lowest debt per person in the country. They just weren't a disaster. Illinois could have collected $53M a year. It chose zero. Ignore all the bad management but make sure to stick it to those evil, pesky billionaires."
Russ Greene on X - "Total Boomer Luxury Communism is an existential threat to America. And this rhetoric below contributes to it.Democrats want to take ~$25 trillion more in taxes on from younger workers, just because they think retired millionaire households deserve $100k plus a year. Note the language: "your social security." Seniors, your social security doesn't exist anywhere. Your benefits are paid for by younger people's taxes, today. It's not "your social security" - it's "our payroll taxes."Further, Dems want to jack up spending on Medicare and Medicaid, which means tens of trillions more in additional taxes on younger workers. And we haven't talked about interest payments on the $39 trillion in national debt yet."
End Wokeness on X - "Joy Reid's warning about the far-right: "Their plan? 0 income tax, 0 regulation, earn as much as you want, your family inherits it all!""
Kaguya’s Top Gal on X - "A black person’s worst nightmare is white tax dollars not going into their welfare"
Meme - Robert Sepehr @robertsepehr: "In other words, if you don't want to give 80% of your hard earned income to Blacks and African migrants, instead preferring to not have your wealth redistributed because Blacks are either too lazy, incompetent, or Low IQ to work, save and feed themselves, then you're "far-right"."
Meme - Heather MadhatterMarie added a photo to the album: Words that make me feel some...: "Hoarding of wealth is a form of gluttony"
Killer Whale being interviewed: "Attacking the rich is not envy, it is self defence. The hoarding of wealth is the cause of poverty. The rich aren't just indifferent to poverty: they create it and maintain it."
Left wingers actually think rich people being rich makes poor people poor, and claim their violence is "self-defence"
These are the same people who claim people's existence cannot be political, and that denying any bit of the TRA agenda is literally saying that trans people do not exist and trans genocide
