Pursue Truth on X - "I had a great chat with a friend of mine, a middle-aged gay man who left Seattle after the 2020 riots made the city he called home for thirty years “unlivable.” He’s traditionally voted Democrat but asks me for my opinions sometimes. We were talking about taxes and he shared “I wish they’d tax the rich and spend it on social programs instead of war.” I asked him “what percentage of federal income tax comes from the top 1%?” “I don’t know. Maybe 10%,” he said. I told him it was 40%, and that the 1% paid more than the bottom 90% of taxpayers combined. He was shocked. And we both agreed the tax code should be simple and transparent. And then I asked him what portion of the federal budget is spent on war versus social programs and welfare. “50% for the Pentagon and 10% for welfare programs.” I told him it was basically reversed and that social entitlements and welfare spending was actually more than 60%. Again, he was shocked. The resentment and envy machine that drives the political left’s slogans thrives on people simply not knowing."
Meme - Darren Grimes: "I do actually, yes. No less than those metal and cement constructions surrounding the middle class music festival at which you've placed this sign."
"I DON'T SEE ANY BORDERS. Do You? *globe*"
Meme - Commie: "Why don't you let me loot your store? It's insured!"
Man with tactical helmet: "Why don't you let me shoot your kneecaps? Your health is insured."
How Europe regulated itself into American vassalage - "What was once a concern about cultural hegemony has of late morphed into panic over commercial dependency. With some justification: the commanding heights of the modern European economy have quietly been captured by American firms. Apple and Google power the mobile phones used from Dublin to Dubrovnik. Other Silicon Valley titans have spawned cloud computers storing Europeans’ data, and from which American artificial-intelligence models are being deployed deep inside the continent’s businesses. Visa and MasterCard, two American firms, are often required for Europeans to pay other Europeans. Increasingly the continent’s lights are being kept on by American liquefied gas, replacing an erstwhile reliance on Russian energy. This form of economic vassalage, which comes on top of dependency on security matters, is hardly new. “Why can’t Europe build its own Google?” has long been a predictable lament at Brussels confabs... Here is an uncomfortable truth for hand-wringing policymakers in Paris, Berlin and beyond: Europe’s dependency on America Inc is in no small part Europe’s own fault. Decades of over-regulating the old continent’s economy left businesses there unable to compete with American firms, which went on to trounce European ones even in their own backyards. What Europeans could not build quickly for themselves, due to a thicket of regulations, they often imported just as quickly from abroad. That forcing businesses to jump through endless regulatory hoops would put a burden on Europeans was always understood: meeting ambitious green targets, protecting privacy, preventing bank meltdowns or achieving other necessary goals was always going to carry a cost. But the extent to which it also left Europeans in hock to foreigners—for now mostly America, but also increasingly China—has only belatedly become clear. Tech is where the dependency seems most acute. Europe has few firms at the forefront of AI, space or high-end computing (one notable exception is ASML, a Dutch firm globally vital to chipmaking). Even governments often have little choice but to use the likes of Microsoft or Amazon for cloud services, Palantir to sift through data or SpaceX to launch military satellites. Quixotic attempts to shake off big tech abound, for example by having civil servants ditch Windows for some clunky substitute. Too often the European alternatives are lacking anyway. It turns out that boasting about regulating AI before the public had made their first ChatGPT query—as the European Union did in 2021—is not conducive to home-growing AI champions. Yes, EU rules often applied to American firms, insofar as they wanted to offer their wares in the bloc. But regulation in practice hit European firms harder. The costs of administering complex data-protection rules, say, could easily be absorbed by a Google or OpenAI, with their hordes of compliance staff. Not so their European rivals, which have usually lacked scale (if only because the EU’s fragmented single market made it harder for them to grow beyond their home country). The EU thus generated barriers to entry that often ended up protecting American giants. The sapping of European sovereignty is also evident in finance. European banks requiring dollar funding have long had to enforce Washington’s edicts, for example applying American sanctions. But other dependencies are self-imposed. Several thousand European banks once jointly owned a pan-continental payments system (known as “Visa Europe”; its only American element was the name licensed from the global brand). But well-intended EU regulations that capped the sector’s profits made that business unattractive for the banks, which ultimately sold the business in 2016—to the Americans at Visa. Thus a new dependency was born. Even less whizzy bits of the economy have regulated themselves into subservience to foreigners. In the 1990s the EU imported just half the natural gas it used, thanks in part to domestic production in places like the Netherlands. A tangle of national and EU rules made it ever-harder to drill; many countries have given up. Today 85% of all gas used is imported, over a quarter from America. Other new industrial projects are often unfeasible to launch in Europe. The EU these days frets about access to critical raw minerals, for which it depends mainly on China. Europe has deposits, but getting the environmental and other permits in place to extract them can take up to 20 years, per the EU’s auditors. The annoying thing is that, taken individually, each piece of euro-regulation is laudable. Yes, Europe should aim for “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050. Of course regulating AI is sensible, lest the robots turn on us one day. Firm antitrust rules enforced by the EU have served consumers well, and so on. But taken together the effect has been a tangle of red tape that has left Europe awkwardly exposed"
Clearly, the solution is to get Democrats into the White House and regulate the US economy to hobble it so Europe can compete
WestHarlm on X - "Over 60% of NYers paid zero dollars in City income tax last year. How much less do they need to pay this year before the tax system here is "fair" to them?"
Lydia Moynihan on X - "Mitt Romney got destroyed when he explained 47% of Americans don’t work, contribute and pay into the system. He acknowledged the challenge of winning with a facially responsible message when half the country is getting free stuff they don’t want to give up. That was in 2012."
Fuck You I Quit on X - "The state of Texas themselves have said they need at least $174 billion to help curb a deeping water crisis. Meanwhile, they are giving $1 billion a year in tax breaks to data centers so they can drink up what little clean water they have left."
Left wingers get upset when private companies sell goods and services at low prices because they claim they intend to monopolize the market then jack up prices. Then get upset when governments do the same with taxes
Naturally, left wingers cannot conceive of a counterfactual where the tax breaks weren't offered and the data centres were not built and there was $0 tax revenue. Plus, the tax breaks seem to be mostly sales tax exemptions, but they are dishonestly portrayed as annual
DocumentingLibs on X - "TikTok lefty is out here absolutely torching “capitalists” and “corporate greed” because a bag of Doritos costs $7 and is mostly air. She swears she can afford it but refuses to buy. Might even learn to make her own chips because it’ll be “healthier anyway.” Then she drops the mic: that’s the “free hand of the market” telling companies to fuck off. The irony is thicker than the missing chips in that bag. She’s not owning the system. She’s proving it works perfectly. A consumer making her own value judgment, signaling with her wallet, even flirting with becoming a producer herself. That’s capitalism doing its job—punishing bad pricing and bad product. She’s ridiculing the very mechanism she’s wielding like a pro. Hope that solved it."
mr49ers on X - "Yeah, that's why it's called the free market. You don't have to buy, and maybe if you wouldn't want to keep the cheap labor in the country, you could get better pay."
Vincent Geloso on X - "Soon, very soon, The Great Enrichment is coming. America's most egalitarian growth period (where the poorest 90% saw as much living standards gains as the richest 1% and where the absolute gains were gigantic) was from 1870 to 1940 and especially to 1910."
Left wingers prefer everyone to be poor
Private school pupils banned from conservatoire course - "The Royal Academy of Music has been criticised for launching a “widening participation” programme that disqualifies private school pupils regardless of their other circumstances. Britain’s oldest conservatoire, which was founded in 1822, has opened applications for a fully funded foundation year to prepare “under-represented” musicians aged 18 to 20 for undergraduate study... teachers and parents warned against the assumption that all current and former private school pupils were well off and called for a case-by-case assessment of applications. Philip Britton, chair of the Heads’ Conference, a group of independent schools, said: “There are plenty of less well-off people in independent schools and plenty of privileged people in state schools.” Britton is the headmaster of Bolton School in Greater Manchester which offers bursaries including the full remission of fees to some parents earning less than £20,000 a year... Richard Jones, head of the independent Bryanston School in Dorset, said the “naïve” categorisation was “playing into the prejudice against private schools”. “The reality is each independent school will have a significant number of children on bursaries,” he added."
Existential Comics (find me on bluesky) on X - "The absolute funniest part of capitalist ideology is that they someone managed to convince everyone that "freedom" meant like...the freedom to choose between 63 kinds of shampoo, and not like...the freedom to quit a job you hate without losing your health insurance."
Of course, left wingers in countries with universal coverage, or even single payer, are at least about as miserable about as American left wingers and complain at least about as much
Meme - Emma Fourreau @emma _frr *showing off laptop with Communist stickers and pointing to Eat The Rich Doner Kebab sticker*
Dispropaganda: "-Member of European Parliament
-A Parliament that can't legislate laws
-Gets almost a quarter of a million dollars from European taxpayers for doing nothing
-This income places her among the top 2% of highest-paid people in France
-"eAt ThE rlCh!!!!""
nxthompson on X - "The stats here are kind of remarkable. BART's new fare gates have led to a 1,000-hour decline in clean up time; 41% drop in crime; and $10 million increase in projected revenue."
Zach Klein on X - "The glacially slow realization by every public institution that it is bad to treat our public spaces as waiting rooms for addicts, mentally-distressed, or otherwise anti-social people ... is excruciating."
Proof that public transport should be free
Cynical Publius on X - "Of the many many things that need to be done to reform our government, I believe fixing the issue of public sector unions is #2 (right behind fixing voting integrity). Public sector unions are what give the Leviathan so much of its funding and power.
1. We pay taxes.
2. The taxes pay the salaries of government employees.
3. Union dues are skimmed off those salaries.
4. The union then gives those "donations" to Democrat candidates nationally.
5. Elected Democrats ensure there are more and more government jobs with more and more pay and benefits.
6. Rinse, wash, repeat.
The tyranny that exists in American today is largely due to the existence of public sector unions. We must find a way to outlaw unions in the public sector."
Large donations in politics are only bad if they threaten the left wing agenda
This is why left wingers are so pro-union: they support the left wing power structure
Why a $500 Steak Dinner Only Yields a $25 Profit - WSJ - "A Chicago steakhouse needs to keep costs of ingredients to around 35% of the price that consumers pay. Sides, pastas and desserts tend to be more profitable, with lower ingredient costs. Alcohol also benefits the ledger, with liquor carrying heftier profit margins than beer or wine. But people generally are drinking less when they dine out, Sawyer says. Beef regularly breaks the 35% target. For prime steaks, it is around 50%. That means a steak Sawyer sells for around $100 can now cost $50 to buy wholesale, he says. One error in the kitchen, and $50 ends up in the trash, he says."
Why a $500 Steak Dinner Only Yields a $25 Profit : r/Economics - "This is actually a very interesting article. My friend just inherited a lot of money, and she's a chef, so we've been chatting about using that money in investing in opening her a steakhouse. The economics are extremely rough. We've been investigating a few different strategies, and trying to play around with the numbers to figure out a strategy, and the more we think about it, the more it seems like the best way to approach the problem of running a steakhouse is labor costs. Notice how in this example - $175/500 was labor costs. The best way to make more money in a tough environment is to cut that. I actually have an example story at the bottom of the steakhouse pyramid. You see - A long time ago, she used to work at this place called Chucks. It's this super duper cheap Canadian chain steakhouse, and half their menu is atrocious, but their pricing is really really cheap, check out their menu: Offers - Chuck's Roadhouse Bar and Grill (note: prices are Canadian dollars). So this girl, first job out of school, at 22, was running a whole kitchen for lunch service with 1 other person (like, a minimum wage kitchen helper). How is this possible? Well, the way they did it was to ensure that every single dish, has less than 1 minute of active "cook attention time":
The steaks? Preseasoned and prepacked, 30 seconds of chef time needed (cut out of package and flip 4 times on grill)
All the fried foods are prepacked and goes straight into the fryer
Burger toppings, vegetables, sides, etc are all prechopped
And this is the most insane part (also, never order it) - The pastas are all pre-par cooked with sauce in a bag and she drops it into a sous vide bath to warm up.
Thus, a kitchen with 2 people can pump out 120 - 240 dishes per hour, no prep time needed. Now that she's trying to start a moderately upscale spot, she's back to trying to optimize for labor costs - If your dishes need 5 minutes of active labor, you need 25% more kitchen staff than dishes that need 4 minutes of active labor. So a lot of the challenges become:
Can we outsource it for cheaper? IE: Can the supplier do the prep instead of prep in house?
Can we spread out the work so you don't need more staff during rush hour to reduce staff numbers? IE: Beef Bourguignon is prepped in advance, so during the dinner rush it is just heat, top with garnish, and good to go.
Can we up the margin on the product? IE: work with wine brokers to find undervalued bottles (instead of the "names") to improve bar margins?"
Why a $500 Steak Dinner Only Yields a $25 Profit : r/Economics - "Great write up. I remember many years ago somewhere in the midwest we had a client dinner at a grill your own steak place. Its even better when the customer has to cook. This must be the secret for chinese hot pot places which seem to be popping up everywhere."
"I appreciate it because it kinda pokes holes in the reddit theory of restaurants which is that they all pay their workers too little and charge too much."
"Restaurants famously have shit margins; the ones in this article range from 5% to 10% (and 10% is pretty great.) At 5% profit margin, you may as well invest in VUSXX, collect 3.6% risk-free, get state tax advantages on it which pushes the return higher (effectively 4% in CA if your marginal rare is 10%), and to make up for losing the 1% spread you can get a bunch of sleep and play with your kids, instead of working 14 hours a day and being stressed the whole time. Okay, obviously I am exaggerating, but you get it. At 5% margin how could they possibly be paying too little and charging too much? If they pay a little more and charge a little less, they just close shop. But on the flip side, subjectively speaking the work is pretty hard for shit pay, and the food is really expensive for what you cook at home if you're even somewhat decent. Hmmmmm."
One entire thread got deleted. Must have been poking holes in left wing dogma
Thread by @xwanyex on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "One reason I don’t take progressive “fairness” arguments all that seriously is this way in which they present themselves as nonplussed by the idea that there’s any fairness component at all to taking rich people’s money. People act like fairness is something you can prove with facts and logic, but for most people fairness is a feeling. It’s an emotional state. Chimpanzees have a conception of fairness. They didn’t work it out through facts and logic."
DividendBoomer on X - "The middle class didn’t fall. Expectations exploded. 1 car to 3 1 TV to many TVs 1,200 sq ft home to 2,200+ Air conditioning Never flying to annual vacations Home cooking to restaurant food regularly Costs went up because lifestyles skyrocketed. So why the whining?"
Tocchan on X - "Vacation was kids in the back of station wagon and “are we there yet?” Dinner was mom putting a bunch of ingredients into a crockpot before heading out to work, if mom worked. And definitely leftover’s and bologna sandwich, fries if we are being fancy. Parents didn’t drive kids to 500 sports events. Some families share one car and mom stayed at home. One TV unless you were rich. Life style inflation proponents would call this poverty and living on prison diet."
Proof that capitalism has failed
Paddy on X - "I will never understand why working class people fight tooth and nail to defend billionaires"
Matt Forney on X - "Because I make less than $100,000 a year yet the same laws people like you claim target only "billionaires" somehow require me to give a third of my income to the IRS"
"Empathy" is only good when it pushes the left wing agenda. Not to mention how critical thinking is meant to be subordinate to self-interest
Meme - Alec Stapp @AlecStapp "Government regulation in France: Above a certain size, building new homes requires a licensed architect. Outcome: Distribution of floor area in new units, 2010 *clustering just before a certain size between 140 and 190 square meters*"
Time to lower the threshold to better protect people
Welfare Access and Inactivity Gaps: Revisiting the Racial Divergence in Unemployment Rates - "This paper examines the divergence in unemployment rates between Black and White men in the United States that emerged after 1930. We argue that labor force participation can serve as a proxy for studying unemployment trends among men aged 25 to 54, helping to address limitations in historical data. Using U.S. Census data, we revisit conventional explanations, such as the Great Migration and the Great Depression, and show that these events do not appear to, by themselves, fully account for the growing racial gap in inactivity and unemployment rates. Instead, we present empirical evidence suggesting that welfare incentives, particularly those associated with the New Deal relief programs, may offer an additional perspective on the observed patterns. By encouraging welfare migration, relief programs may have contributed to the long-term racial divergence in unemployment rates."
Kimberly-Clark Ontario warehouse fire starts with alleged suspect saying in video "Should have paid us more" - "A disturbing social media video posted by someone believed to be the Ontario warehouse fire suspect shows a person holding a lighter and igniting pallets of toilet paper in the warehouse, saying, "Should have paid us more," as flames erupted. Highland resident Chamel Abdulkarim was arrested by police on multiple felony arson-related charges for the massive fire that destroyed the 1.2 million square foot building... "All you had to do was pay us enough to live," a person says in the video, walking through the warehouse, igniting pallets, saying, "There goes your inventory."... Montero says the dock loader, later identified by police as Abdulkarim, was nowhere to be found after a head count was taken once employees evacuated. Montero says he's got mixed emotions. "We were kind of concerned for him at first, you know, so I don't know, a lot of anger too, I guess. We lost our jobs -- that, he did that to everyone. He put everyone in that position," Montero said, noting that he was sent the social media video. "I couldn't believe it, yeah. I couldn't believe it."... "I don't know what he had going on personally with the company or whatever it was. I know he wasn't a temp like us," Montero said. "I don't know how much he was getting paid, but I was making good money there. You know I'm a little bummed out. I lost my job.""
Left wingers were cheering this, but when prices rise to cover the losses, they will be raging against "greed". Well, they're right - but not in the way they think
Left wingers keep insisting the workers were underpaid when his colleague said he was "making good money". Clearly, his low pay could not have been due to being a bad worker and having a bad attitude as seen in his actions
Meme - Rozi Rabbit @RoziBun: "surely this number can get higher"
Mistress Dividend @mistre...: "We're up to 6 warehouses set on fire now across the country and I feel like it's being severely underreported."
Meme - heytherebenji: "ACAB includes people who defend property over people"
Time to accuse right wingers of being responsible for political violence
Meme - Adam McKay @GhostPanther: "Every day I have to marvel at what the billionaires and FOX News pulled off. They got working whites to hate the very people that want them to have more pay, clean air, water, free healthcare and the power to fight back against big banks & big corps. It's truly remarkable."
"booksofbrilliance"
ahhhh_beans: ""working whites" comprise 77 percent of all employed people and account for 96 percent of farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers, 92 percent of aircraft pilots and flight engineers, 91 percent of miscellaneous agricultural workers, and 90 percent of construction managers. I'm sure they love having Adam represent them all in a sentence about hating people.On a side note, yeah, no, I don't hate idealistic people. I hate it when idealistic people tell me how I should be living my life, who I should be shaming today, and who I'm supposed to hate."
Clearly left wingers can never be brainwashed
White people aren't as dumb as some other groups and aren't tricked by the promise of "free" stuff because they know the quality might not be what they want and it will not be fiscally sustainable
