Drew Pavlou ๐ฆ๐บ๐บ๐ธ๐บ๐ฆ๐น๐ผ on X - "It’s actually amazing and disgusting how psy-opped Australians have become about America. I’m going to have to write a massive thing about my trip like Australian Tocqueville. What I’ve concluded is that our media and political class have peddled the myth that every single American is dying on the street of poverty and social collapse solely in order to hide the fact that our own living standards are collapsing. Their middle class is literally our upper class guys. The top tax rate in Australia of 47% kicks in at the equivalent of 130,000 USD. MEANWHILE YOU CAN EARN 225,000 USD MANAGING A FUCKING BUCCEES CAR WASH HERE. THAT IS 325,000 AUD FOR A JOB THAT DOES NOT REQUIRE A COLLEGE DEGREE. FUCKING NUCLEAR ENGINEERS IN THE UK START ON 20,000 POUNDS!!! (26 K USD, 38K AUD). THE TOP TAX RATE IN TEXAS IS 37% AND STARTS AT $768,700 USD AS A MARRIED COUPLE. THAT IS THE EQUIVALENT OF A MILLION DOLLAR SALARY IN AUSTRALIA. WE ARE TALKING A DIFFERENCE OF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS EACH YEAR IN YOUR OWN BACK POCKET. My friend moved here for work. On his salary in Australia he would have to pay an extra $15,000 AUD in tax each year. That is literally how much it costs to raise a kid according to latest official estimates. So he’s now planning on having children with his Australian wife. He can finally afford to start a family. His place is bigger than mine in Australia. He rents it for the equivalent of $600 AUD a week whereas my rent is $900 AUD and I need to have room mates to afford it. We’re the same age and I think we earn roughly the same income. But lives in his own massive place with his wife and they are now planning kids. Meanwhile I live with room mates in a small rental. We are so abysmally cucked in Australia. They are living so much better in America. The difference really only comes when comparing how the bottom 10% live in each society. Of course if I was disabled or something I would definitely prefer the social support net in Australia. In America you can completely drop off the cliff into pure social collapse if you’re in the bottom 5-10% in a way that I don’t think exists in Australian society. Thats how you get the phenomenon of Skid Row and fentanyl zombies in Democrat cities like LA and San Francisco (which I saw last week - it was fucked). But the overwhelming majority of Americans live better than Australians. If you are middle class here it’s the equivalent of being upper class in Australia. The manager of a BUCCEES car wash would be a top 1% earner in Australia. That’s how much money, wealth and abundance exists in America. I wish Australians could see it so we could shock ourselves out of our own self imposed decline. It’s completely self imposed but due to Tall Poppy Syndrome we refuse to see it."
Handre on X - "Rome fed 200,000 families free grain by 46 BC, and it called this generosity. Julius Caesar inherited a dole of 320,000 recipients and trimmed it, not out of principle but because the treasury was bleeding. This was the annona, the grain distribution that started as emergency relief under the Gracchi in 123 BC and hardened into a permanent entitlement. Once free grain became a right, no politician could touch it and keep his head. You already know how this works, because you watch the same play run today. A subsidy arrives as mercy. It stays as an expectation. Then it becomes the thing men vote for instead of working for. The Roman citizen once farmed his own land, served in his own legion, and expected nothing from the state but courts and roads. By the time Trajan was staging 123 days of games in AD 107, slaughtering 11,000 animals and pairing 10,000 gladiators for the crowd, that citizen had become a spectator. He no longer fought Rome's wars: hired auxiliaries and Germanic mercenaries did. He no longer fed himself: Egypt and North Africa did, shipped in on the public account. He no longer chose his rulers in any meaningful sense: he cheered them in the Colosseum and collected his ration. The free grain and the free games purchased compliance, not compassion. A man dependent on the state for his dinner and his entertainment does not organize resistance to that state, and every emperor from Augustus onward understood the arithmetic. Panem et circenses was a bribe paid in exchange for civic surrender, and the mob accepted the terms gladly. Here is the mechanism the welfare enthusiast never grasps. Virtue is not a feeling. It is a practice, and practices atrophy when the incentive to perform them disappears. Take away a man's need to provide, defend, and decide, and you domesticate him rather than liberate him. Rome spent four centuries proving it, then handed the ruins to Odoacer in AD 476 without much of a fight, because the men who might have fought had long since learned to wait for the grain ship instead."
Asmongold Updates on X - "Asmongold reveals the real reason people hate capitalism "Do you know why people hate capitalism? Because capitalism is the acknowledgement that you are a failure of your own design. The reason why you don't have what you want is because you're not smart enough, you haven't put in enough work, or you haven't come up with a good enough idea to earn that thing." "Capitalism is accountability. Socialism, communism, this is group consensus accountability. And nobody ever really gets held accountable for doing something right or wrong ever. And that's it.""
Thomas Sowell Daily on X - "Thomas Sowell debunks the myth that the rich get rich by exploiting the poor: “If it’s true that the rich are rich because they’re keeping the poor poor, then in a country with lots of billionaires you should correspondingly have great amounts of poor people. But if you compare the actual data, there are more billionaires in the United States than Africa and the Middle East put together; and yet the standard of living of the poor in the United States is higher than that of people in Africa and the Middle East.”"
Echoes of War on X - "FDR is the most overrated president in American history and it is not close. People treat him like a saint. The reality is he inherited a recession and turned it into the longest depression in the history of the developed world. Every other major economy on earth recovered faster than the United States did under FDR. Sit with that. We had the most resources, the most industry, the most capacity, and we recovered slower than countries that got bombed. Unemployment was still 19% in 1938. Six years into the New Deal. Six years of "bold experimentation" and one in five Americans still could not find work. Why? Because his policies were economically illiterate. The NIRA cartelized entire industries and made it illegal to lower prices during a deflationary collapse. He paid farmers to slaughter livestock and plow under crops while people stood in bread lines. He launched a war on business so aggressive that investment dried up because nobody knew what insane rule was coming next. Even his own Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, admitted in 1939 that they had spent enormous sums and "it does not work" and that unemployment was as high as when they started. Then in 1937 his policies triggered a second brutal crash so embarrassing the textbooks gave it its own polite little nickname, the "Roosevelt Recession," so they would not have to attach his name to the failure in the obvious way. A UCLA study in 2004 concluded the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression by roughly seven years. Seven years of extra suffering sold to you as heroism. So what actually saved the economy? Not the alphabet agencies. Not the fireside chats. A world war. Twelve million men shipped overseas and the entire planet's industrial competition reduced to rubble. That is the "recovery." That is the legacy. Strip away Pearl Harbor and FDR is a guy who took a bad recession and stretched it into a decade of misery with bad economics and a cult of personality. He is not ranked on results. He is ranked on the luck of being in the chair when Hitler invaded Poland. Greatest marketing job in the history of the presidency. Nothing more."
Meme - "HOW TO KINDLY EXPLAIN TO SOMEONE THAT PICKET LINES AREN'T MEANT TO BE CROSSED *baseball bat breaking someone's knee*"
"So after a hundred years, unions are still mafia-style extortion rackets. Duly noted that you celebrate this. Alive (though maybe not for much longer if some Teamster shows up at my door)."
"sounds like what a manager would say when his crew is on strike"
"well if the crew had work ethics and some form of intelligence they too could be managers."
"intelligence and manager don't belong in the same sentence. The words you're looking for are brown noser skills"
As usual left wingers promote violence and think money falls from the sky and rich people steal it and if they didn't, poor people would be rich
Dr Ellie Murray, ScD on X - "Some of y’all forget the reason we have food safety regulations is because companies used to do things like adding chalk to spoiled milk so it looked normal. Regulations don’t exist because governments enjoy them. They exist because pure unadulterated capitalism would kill us."
Comment (elsewhere): "Isn't JFK Jr trying to regulate tf out of our food industry to include making them remove dyes, chemicals, and other harmful toxins?"
All regulations are good. So we should have 10x the regulations!
Usual left wing straw man. Only the craziest libertarians want no regulation at all
Rock Chartrand on X - "If there were no trillionaires, politicians would target billionaires. If there were no billionaires, they'd target millionaires. If there were no millionaires, they'd target anyone with a paid off house and a retirement account. The level of outrage scales to whatever wealth exists. That's how you know the issue isn't the number. The issue is that someone has more than someone else. The villain is chosen first. The threshold is chosen later."
Yun-Ta Tsai on X - "One of the most misunderstood facts is that the US was founded with abundance, whereas it was in fact built from scratch. At the time of founding, Britain was the greatest nation governing the Seven Seas, while China was at its height with total land dominance in the East under the Qianlong Emperor. The usable land of the US at founding was much smaller than that of either nation. The 13 colonies spanned 430K square miles, while Britain governed 2.5M square miles and China owned 5M square miles of territory. The trade and economic volume of the 13 colonies was minuscule, consisting mostly of raw materials that barely registered on the charts. Combined, the 13 colonies produced $4B GDP, while Britain made $350B and China $2.5T in today’s dollars. In other words, the 13 colonies were less than 0.2% of the world economy and much smaller than that of many African nations today. The wealth of the US was not inherited but earned through survival and competition against stronger nations. Most people who came here brought nothing but empty hands yet built an empire from the ground. This is something that people who inherit great resources from parents and ancestors cannot understand—like most nations in Europe and Asia, where wealth was dominated by inheritance, not earned. They mistakenly believe what we have now is a privilege. The trees we enjoy today were planted and nourished with sweat and blood by previous generations so that we could cut the wood for warmth. Be a tree planter, not a wood chopper. Plant your tree today. ๐ฑ"
The Regressive Effects of Child-Care Regulations - "high cost can have a large negative effect on the poor and can fuel political demands for increased government intervention and spending on child care. Empirical research indicates that parents (poorer single mothers especially) are particularly sensitive to child-care prices when making decisions about entering the labor market. Evidence from a range of studies suggests mothers from poorer families and those with low levels of educational attainment are least likely to be working... child-care prices are driven up by existing variable state-level regulations and policies introduced to achieve other objectives. Input regulations designed to improve the “quality” of care, including requirements on the qualification levels of staff and/or the ratio of staff per child, appear to have a significant effect on child care prices. These regulations tend to be justified on “market failure” grounds. Some observers claim there are asymmetric information problems in the sector; parents ostensibly have difficulty ascertaining whether child-care providers are high-quality providers. Others claim there are positive externalities—broader social benefits—arising from “high-quality” child care in children’s early years, and those benefits are overlooked when child care is left to private transactions. These failures are said to justify ensuring providers meet minimum standards. But these theoretical arguments of market failures have always been shaky. After all, direct parental care is an alternative to outside child care, yet there is no political movement for direct regulation of parents. And regulations can raise child-care prices, thereby reducing the spillover benefits from child care. It is not entirely clear how meaningful the concept of “quality” in child care is, even if it can be divorced from what consumers—in most cases, parents—want for their children... Suppose a regulation increases the staff–child ratio or requires child-care workers to achieve higher qualification levels. The former could theoretically increase quality by increasing staff interactions with individual children, and the latter by increasing caregiver training. Yet at the same time, raising the staff–child ratio may restrict the wages of caregivers by restricting the revenue potential of each caregiver. The lower wages, in turn, may result in lower-quality caregivers. Child-care providers may also respond to higher government certification requirements on caregivers by lowering their standards for support workers or facilities. As a result, the overall effect on quality of both regulations is ambiguous... A burgeoning empirical literature attempts to shed light on these issues. One finding that appears robust across studies is that stringent staff-to-child ratios increase child-care prices substantially with little beneficial effect on observed quality... the poor suffer disproportionately. Thomas and Gorry show that a small but measurable number of mothers stop working altogether as a result of these regulations. One would imagine that these are likely to be relatively low-income people on the margins of the labor market... tightening the staff–child ratio by one child reduces the number of child-care centers in the average market by 9.2–10.8% without increasing employment levels at other centers. This reduction in supply occurs wholly in relatively low-income areas and leads to lots of substitution to home day care. Increased stringency in the regulation actually increases child-care centers in high-income areas, probably because of the “quality assurance” effect, meaning the overall effect is highly regressive. As with housing, child care is an example of a sector where government regulations restrict the supply of the service, to the financial detriment of the poor... The UK offers a cautionary tale of how government involvement begets government control over this sector. Intervention advocates appealed to the positive externalities of higher female employment and greater child achievement, but the resulting policies have left consumers facing high out-of-pocket costs and taxpayers facing higher subsidy payments, including government funding of “free” care for children ages 2–4. Commentators now cite the higher cost as justification for ever-greater government subsidy of child care. The expanded UK government funding and intervention appear to have yielded little advancement on the stated policy goals. Research indicates that universal government-funded care for 3‑year-olds raised employment levels by only 12,000 workers, at a cost of £65,000 (about $88,000) per new job (many of which were part-time). Though there did appear to be a small gain in educational attainment at age 5, that effect weakened by age 7 and completely disappeared by age 11, meaning the policies had no long-lasting benefit. These meager results have not given policymakers pause; rather, many claim that “more needs to be done.” These days, the high cost of child care itself is seen as indicative of a market failure, even though that cost is partly the result of regulations and state crowd-out designed to achieve other objectives... there is a philosophical argument that judging child-care “quality” should be left to the parents, especially given the fact that they, themselves, are not required to obtain formal qualifications in child education in order to care for their children."
Dr Jordan B Peterson on X - "To the Americans: I've travelled all over the world. I've familiarized myself with many places, and met many people. And I'm a Canadian, although I’m privileged to reside once again in the States. And here's something I've noticed, and it’s a key element of America's continuing greatness: You bloody Americans value success, and you believe in its existence. This is something that doesn't really happen anywhere else in the world. Even in other free democracies—the United Kingdom; Finland, Sweden, and Norway; Australia, New Zealand and Canada; Germany, France, and the Netherlands (great countries all)—a counterproductive cynicism too often reigns. Success is equated with exploitation. Ambition is looked upon with contempt. This happens sometimes in the United States too—particularly among the miserable progressives, who confuse their resentment, ingratitude and unearned skepticism with wisdom. But in your great country, by and large, striving is admired and success celebrated. This means that more people strive and succeed in the US than anywhere else. And it's increasingly obvious. You remain stunningly more innovative and productive than any people anywhere else on the planet. And so I say, as all should who are fortunate enough to live in the western world, let alone America: Thank God for the United States. Thank God for the wisdom of its founders. Thank God for its faith in the free market and in the natural rights of man. Happy birthday, you damn Yankees and Southerners. Long may your admirable country dominate the world. Long may your freedom and hope provide an example to those suffering everywhere at the hands of their malevolent states. May your two and a half centuries of unparallelled success be just the beginning. Your country is the light of the world, and the city on the hill. Thank God for the USA. Happy 250th. Dr. Jordan B. Peterson"
Rob Henderson on X - "It’s criminal the CEO makes 400X what the average worker makes but it’s perfectly fine that Taylor Swift makes 100000X more than the people who clean the arena after her concerts. A just society is one that rewards the exceptional qualities of the musician but not the executive."
Konstantin Kisin on X - "This is because the anti-capitalist left is not actually against people being crazy rich. They're against certain types of people being crazy rich. Artists and athletes make sense to them because they've played music and sports and because their success can be explained by "luck" and "talent". Messi's wealth is not offensive to them because they understand Messi is much better at football than they are. But when it comes to business, the anti-capitalist leftist has no framework for understanding why Jeff Bezos might be super rich since 99% of them have never ever created a product, business or service that was of value to other people. They've never taken entrepreneurial risk. They've never employed people and felt the burden of responsibility that comes with that. They've never pick up a business and given it a play in the way they've picked up a ball or a guitar. They *literally* don't understand wealth creation. They think there is a fixed amount of money and the only thing a business does is split it unfairly. It's why they rage at Elon and other successful business leaders. Because they genuinely don't understand why they're wealthy. Also, and this is just as important, athletes and artists are disproportionately young, attractive, "diverse", left wing etc. Business leaders are "evil" middle aged white men whose success offends the average anti-capitalist leftist because they don't understand a) what it is they do and b) that Elon Musk has the same talent advantage on them as Messi does, it's just harder to measure."
(2) M.A. Rothman | Facebook - "๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐ “๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐” — ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐
๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐
John Stossel asked a simple question: do you want America to be like Sweden? The Left keeps saying yes. A Swedish-born economist says you have no idea what you’re asking for. Fifteen years ago, America and Europe grew neck and neck. Then Europe stalled. Today America is ๐๐% ๐ซ๐ข๐๐ก๐๐ซ — even though the EU has 100 million more people. The gap is now so wide that the poorest American state out-earns Spain, Italy, France, and Britain per person (Eurostat, Euronews 2026). Stossel’s verdict on the continent the Left idolizes: “๐๐ถ๐ณ๐ฐ๐ฑ๐ฆ’๐ด ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ค๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฆ ๐ฌ๐ช๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ข ๐ธ๐ช๐ฏ๐ฆ ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ค๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ด๐ฆ ๐ฎ๐ถ๐ด๐ฆ๐ถ๐ฎ.” Tourist money keeps it running. The growth is gone. Economist Sven Larson — who grew up in Sweden and wrote a book titled ๐๐ฏ๐ฅ๐ถ๐ด๐ต๐ณ๐ช๐ข๐ญ ๐๐ฐ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ๐ต๐บ: ๐ ๐ฆ๐ด๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฅ๐ข๐บ ๐๐ธ๐ฆ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ฏ, ๐๐ฐ๐ฅ๐ข๐บ ๐๐ถ๐ณ๐ฐ๐ฑ๐ฆ, ๐๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ณ๐ณ๐ฐ๐ธ ๐๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ช๐ค๐ข — explains how they got there. Start with taxes. The activists chant “๐ธ๐ฆ ๐ธ๐ช๐ญ๐ญ ๐ต๐ข๐น ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ณ๐ช๐ค๐ฉ.” Larson’s answer: “๐๐ถ๐ต ๐ธ๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐ฅ๐ฐ ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ฅ๐ฐ ๐ธ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ณ๐ถ๐ฏ ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ต ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ณ๐ช๐ค๐ฉ? ๐๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ต๐ข๐น ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ข๐ญ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ด๐ต ๐ณ๐ช๐ค๐ฉ, ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ณ๐ถ๐ฏ ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ต ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ฎ.” The average Swedish worker already pays more in tax than you do. Then there’s the “free” health care. “๐ ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐จ๐ฆ๐ต ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ณ๐ช๐จ๐ฉ๐ต ๐ต๐ฐ ๐ง๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฆ ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ข๐ญ๐ต๐ฉ ๐ค๐ข๐ณ๐ฆ, ๐ฃ๐ถ๐ต ๐ธ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ณ ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ข๐ค๐ต๐ถ๐ข๐ญ๐ญ๐บ ๐จ๐ฆ๐ต ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ข๐ญ๐ต๐ฉ ๐ค๐ข๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ฐ๐ณ ๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ต ๐ช๐ด ๐ข ๐ฅ๐ช๐ง๐ง๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ต ๐ด๐ต๐ฐ๐ณ๐บ,” Larson says. “๐ ๐ฉ๐ข๐ท๐ฆ ๐ง๐ณ๐ช๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ฅ๐ด ๐ธ๐ฉ๐ฐ ๐ฉ๐ข๐ท๐ฆ ๐ฅ∗๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ช๐ฏ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐๐ธ๐ฆ๐ฅ๐ช๐ด๐ฉ ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ข๐ญ๐ต๐ฉ ๐ค๐ข๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ด๐บ๐ด๐ต๐ฆ๐ฎ ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ค๐ข๐ถ๐ด๐ฆ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ๐บ ๐ค๐ฐ๐ถ๐ญ๐ฅ๐ฏ’๐ต ๐จ๐ฆ๐ต ๐ต๐ณ๐ฆ๐ข๐ต๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ต ๐ช๐ฏ ๐ต๐ช๐ฎ๐ฆ.” European rules make it nearly impossible to fire anyone. “๐๐ฉ๐บ ๐ธ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ญ๐ฅ ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ฉ๐ช๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ข๐ฏ๐บ๐ฃ๐ฐ๐ฅ๐บ ๐ธ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ข๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ฆ๐ด๐ด๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ต๐ช๐ข๐ญ๐ญ๐บ ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ด๐ฑ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ด๐ช๐ฃ๐ญ๐ฆ ๐ง๐ฐ๐ณ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ฎ ๐ง๐ฐ๐ณ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ด๐ต ๐ฐ๐ง ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ณ ๐ญ๐ช๐ง๐ฆ?” So they stop hiring. About ๐๐% ๐จ๐ ๐๐ ๐ฌ๐ฉ๐๐ง๐๐ข๐ง๐ now goes to welfare. Unions act like a mafia — shutting off power, stopping garbage collection, blocking the banks. When non-union Tesla moved in, postal workers refused to deliver the license plates for its new cars. The reward for all that “compassion”? Europe now has ๐ณ๐๐ซ๐จ ๐จ๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ฐ๐จ๐ซ๐ฅ๐’๐ฌ ๐๐ข๐ ๐ ๐๐ฌ๐ญ ๐๐จ๐ฆ๐ฉ๐๐ง๐ข๐๐ฌ — you have to scroll into the 20s to find one. The EU has stacked up 395,000 pages of regulation, including an entire AI Act, while America builds the future. So why won’t Europe’s leaders reverse it? Larson gives the honest answer: “๐ ๐ญ๐ฐ๐ต ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ฑ๐ฐ๐ญ๐ช๐ต๐ช๐ค๐ช๐ข๐ฏ๐ด, ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ๐บ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ณ๐ช๐ท๐ฆ ๐ฐ๐ฏ ๐ฉ๐ข๐ท๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ข ๐ฑ๐ฐ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ญ๐ข๐ต๐ช๐ฐ๐ฏ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐ช๐ด ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ฑ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ฅ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ต ๐ฐ๐ฏ ๐จ๐ฐ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฏ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ต ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ค๐ข๐ถ๐ด๐ฆ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ๐บ ๐ท๐ฐ๐ต๐ฆ ๐ง๐ฐ๐ณ ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ฏ.” That isn’t a bug. That’s the ๐๐ง๐ญ๐ข๐ซ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ข๐ง๐๐ฌ๐ฌ ๐ฆ๐จ๐๐๐ฅ. ๐๐ฎ๐ซ๐จ๐ฉ๐ ๐ข๐ฌ๐ง’๐ญ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐ซ๐๐๐ฆ. ๐๐ญ’๐ฌ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ฐ๐๐ซ๐ง๐ข๐ง๐ ."
The Rational Animal ๐ค on X - "I understand the point, and it's worth taking seriously. Yes, you must work to live. But look at why that's true, because the reason changes everything. The need to produce isn't imposed by employers or capitalism. It's imposed by nature. A man alone on an island must fish, build, and grow or he dies. That's not a threat from another person. It's the basic condition of being alive. Food, shelter, and clothing don't exist until someone makes them. So when you say work is "forced" by the threat of starvation, that threat comes from reality itself, not from the man offering you a job. He didn't create your need to eat. He's offering you a way to meet it, a trade, his wealth for your effort. That's not coercion. Coercion is a gun. An offer you can refuse, even a hard one, is the opposite of force. And here's the part the resentment hides. The employer isn't your enemy in this. He's the one who built the thing that lets you meet nature's demand without fishing alone on a rock. The men who produce the most, the ones who create the factories, the tools, the jobs, are the greatest benefactors of all, because they multiply what every worker can earn far beyond what he could alone. That's why the moral debt runs the other way. We don't owe our lives to the takers. We owe an enormous debt to the producers, whose ability raises the standard of living of everyone beneath them. The man who gives you a way to live has done you good, not harm."
M.A. Rothman | Facebook - "๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐: ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ — ๐๐๐ ๐๐% ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐
๐๐ฆ ๐ฉ๐ข๐ท๐ฆ ๐ฃ๐ข๐ด๐ช๐ค๐ข๐ญ๐ญ๐บ ๐ค๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ฒ๐ถ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ฑ๐ฐ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ๐ต๐บ ๐ช๐ฏ ๐๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ช๐ค๐ข. ๐๐ต’๐ด ๐ข๐ด๐ต๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ช๐ด๐ฉ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐ธ๐ฆ’๐ท๐ฆ ๐ฅ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ฆ ๐ช๐ต. George Mason economist Don Boudreaux told John Stossel the left’s poverty crisis is a statistical illusion. The Census Bureau says 11% of Americans live in poverty — but it refuses to count the help they actually receive: food stamps, housing subsidies, Medicaid, free school meals. Count those, and ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ซ๐๐๐ฅ ๐ซ๐๐ญ๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฌ ๐ญ๐จ ๐.๐%. The typical household in the bottom fifth now has the same amenities a middle-class family had 50 years ago. And the billionaires the new socialists want to tax into oblivion? Research shows the great entrepreneurs ๐ค๐๐๐ฉ ๐จ๐ง๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ญ ๐% ๐จ๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ฏ๐๐ฅ๐ฎ๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐๐ฒ ๐๐ซ๐๐๐ญ๐ — the other 98% flows to the rest of us as lower prices, better products, and higher wages. Bezos, Gates, and Google ๐ฆ๐๐๐ ๐ฎ๐ฌ ๐ซ๐ข๐๐ก๐๐ซ, ๐๐ง๐ ๐ฐ๐ ๐ฉ๐๐ข๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐๐ฆ ๐ฏ๐จ๐ฅ๐ฎ๐ง๐ญ๐๐ซ๐ข๐ฅ๐ฒ. The zero-sum lie — that their billions mean everyone else has less — is ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ฌ๐๐ฆ๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐ฅ๐๐๐ฒ ๐๐ซ๐ข๐ฏ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐๐๐ฆ๐๐๐ง๐ข ๐๐ง๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐๐๐ญ๐ญ๐ฅ๐ ๐ฌ๐จ๐๐ข๐๐ฅ๐ข๐ฌ๐ญ๐ฌ. And socialism’s real record is the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Venezuela. ๐๐ก๐ ๐ฅ๐๐๐ญ’๐ฌ ๐ฐ๐ก๐จ๐ฅ๐ ๐๐๐จ๐ง๐จ๐ฆ๐ข๐ ๐ฉ๐ข๐ญ๐๐ก ๐ซ๐๐ฌ๐ญ๐ฌ ๐จ๐ง ๐ฆ๐ฒ๐ญ๐ก๐ฌ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐๐ญ๐ ๐๐๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐จ๐ฒ๐ฌ."
Austin Campbell on X - "I am watching the left propose increasingly bad (rent freeze, minimum wage hikes, huge tax increases) proposals that will wreck the economy. This is driven by anger from young voters, who are priced out of housing, can't get jobs, and feel like the system is rigged against them. And you know what? They are right. It is. What I'm not seeing is any politician, Democrat or Republican, courageous enough to point out the real issue: Boomers voted themselves huge future benefits but did not fund them, so now we are running huge deficits to pay for them while talking about raising taxes on people who weren't even born yet when those things were decided to pay the olds. The reality is this: young people in the US, to save yourselves, you're going to have to tear down the programs for the Boomers, rationalize immigration laws to ensure you get first look at American jobs and companies have the incentive to put them here, force housing to be built, and massively cut federal (and in many cases, state) spending and the size of the government. Any politician who is not willing to tell you the truth about this is fucking you. Trump? Fucking you. Mamdani? Also fucking you. If you can't figure this out, things will get worse from here."
