Data Centers Aren't Raising Your Power Bill. Bad Policies Are.

It's brilliant. Left wingers get to blame data centres for the pricey power that climate change hysteria delivers, and kill two birds with one stone.

Data Centers Aren't Raising Your Power Bill. Bad Policies Are.
Large, steady customers can make electricity cheaper—as long as regulators let supply keep pace.

As data centers have sprung up across the country to power the AI boom, many Americans have begun to worry about what they will do to electricity bills. A recent Harvard poll found that two-thirds of Americans believe that building a new data center nearby would raise local electricity prices. The worry is already fueling a backlash: lawmakers in more than 30 states have introduced over 300 data-center bills this year, including outright construction moratoriums, many prompted by concerns over electricity prices.

The concern is understandable: the industry’s rapid growth has coincided with a sharp increase in residential electricity prices in many parts of the country. Data centers are notoriously power hungry, consuming nearly 5 percent of all U.S. electricity in 2024. More demand typically means higher prices.

But a series of new studies suggests that AI’s energy demands need not raise household electricity bills—in fact, so far, they haven’t. If anything, data centers have placed modest downward pressure on retail rates. Large new loads often lower rates for everyone by spreading the electrical grid’s enormous fixed costs across a broader customer base. As data centers continue to expand, the real question is whether regulators will allow enough new generation and grid investment to meet rising demand while ensuring that data centers—not existing ratepayers—pay for the infrastructure their growth requires.

“Have Data Centers Raised Your Electric Bill?” That’s the question a new working paper by Asa Watten and Geoffrey Blanford of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and John Bistline of Watershed asks. Their answer, surprisingly, is no: data centers pushed residential rates modestly down between 2015 and 2024. After accounting for the possibility that developers simply chose states where electricity was already likely to remain cheap, the authors estimate that doubling a state’s data-center capacity caused residential rates to fall about 3.5 percent. The average American lived in a state where data-center capacity grew 160 percent between 2019 and 2024, leaving rates roughly 6 percent lower than they otherwise would have been.

A June paper from Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy surveys the literature and finds that recent price increases were driven not by demand from new users such as data centers but by a host of other factors. These include grid hardening and expansion, disaster recovery, volatile fuel prices, and regulatory mandates. States with greater load growth generally saw smaller price increases, or even price declines. A recent analysis from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory reached similar conclusions.

That appears to be true even in the largest data-center markets. The consultancy E3 examined Virginia, which hosts more data centers than anywhere else in the country, and found no evidence that the industry shifted costs onto households. A separate analysis of hyperscale data centers in California, Oregon, Virginia, and Mississippi found either no effect on retail rates or the potential to generate “surplus value.” A typical 100-megawatt data center, they estimate, can produce about $3.4 million a year more in revenue than it costs to serve. That surplus puts downward pressure on rates for other customers.

How can more demand lead to lower prices? Retail electricity does not function like an ordinary competitive market. Utilities are regulated monopolies whose rates are set to recover average costs. Most of those costs are fixed. Poles, wires, substations, and power plants must be paid for regardless of how much electricity customers use. When a large customer like a data center plugs in, those costs are spread across more kilowatt-hours, reducing the average cost of supplying each one.

Data centers are unusually large and steady customers. That allows a utility to sell more power through infrastructure it has already built, meaning it collects more revenue while lowering the average cost per kilowatt-hour. This is how the American grid worked for most of the twentieth century, when demand grew year after year while real electricity prices fell.

It’s also why utilities often court large industrial customers. Pacific Gas and Electric, for example, estimates that every gigawatt of new data-center load in its territory could cut household bills 1 to 2 percent by making fuller use of a grid that currently operates at about 45 percent utilization.

So if data centers haven’t been raising residential bills, what has? Prices haven’t increased everywhere. According to Berkeley Lab data, inflation-adjusted residential retail electricity prices fell in 23 states from 2019 to 2025, including in North Dakota, Nebraska, and New Mexico, which experienced some of the fastest electricity-demand growth. 

The largest price increases were concentrated on the West Coast and in the Northeast, where state policies have made electricity more expensive to produce and deliver. Renewable mandates require utilities to procure growing shares of wind and solar. Net-metering programs shift grid costs from rooftop-solar owners onto other customers. And carbon-pricing programs add further costs to fossil-fuel generation. Together, these policies have added substantially to rates in many of the states where electricity prices have risen sharply.

Other policies compound the increases. In California, wildfire-related expenses now account for a substantial share of utility costs—a burden that reflects the state’s longstanding failure to manage vegetation and reduce extreme fire risks. And in New England, high prices are in part the result of policy decisions not to expand the region’s natural-gas pipeline capacity, which leaves its utilities paying a premium for the fuel they depend on.

The sharpest increases are found in states that have pursued the country’s most aggressive climate policies, not those with the most data centers. California, with some of the nation’s fastest-rising electricity rates, has seen relatively modest data-center growth. Virginia, where data centers consume more than a fifth of the state’s electricity, has experienced price increases near the national average.

Still, that hasn’t stopped some politicians from fearmongering. New York lawmakers last month passed a first-in-the-nation moratorium on large data-center construction, blaming the facilities for rising rates—in a state where the climate law accounts for 5 to 10 percent of customers’ monthly bills and where regulators have blocked new gas plants since 2021. Senator Elizabeth Warren claimed last month that electricity bills near large data centers “have gone up by as much as 267 percent” over five years. (PolitiFact looked into it: the figure refers to wholesale prices in a few locations, not what anyone actually pays at home.)

The EPRI researchers are careful to note that, while data centers thus far haven’t driven price increases, supply constraints could reverse the effect in the years ahead. The past decade’s data-center growth occurred while the grid still had slack; the coming AI buildout will require new grid capacity at a time when key equipment like transformers and gas turbines face multiyear lead times and backlogs. If regulators prevent supply from responding to the new demand, prices will rise—but that’s an argument for making it easier to build, not for banning the data centers who want to pay for it.

It is also an argument for policies that make large loads carry their own weight. This is already happening. At least 38 special tariffs for large customers have been adopted since 2018. This month, Oregon became one of the first states to put data centers in their own rate class, approving a 29.7 percent rate increase for Portland General Electric’s largest users to cover the costs their demand creates. Residential rates there will now fall 1.3 percent.

Data centers do not inherently cause higher electricity prices. The evidence so far suggests they have lowered, not raised, household bills. Whether the AI buildout benefits or burdens ratepayers will depend on whether regulators allow electricity supply to grow with demand—and ensure that data centers, rather than existing customers, pay for the new infrastructure they require.

 

 

 

 

Links - 23rd July 2026 (1 - Left Wing Economics)

Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 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. 🌱"

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 - "𝐄𝐔𝐑𝐎𝐏𝐄 𝐈𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐀 “𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐄 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐄𝐒𝐄 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐄𝐔𝐌” — 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐄𝐅𝐓 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐒 𝐔𝐒 𝐓𝐎 𝐂𝐎𝐏𝐘 𝐈𝐓
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 𝟓𝟎% 𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫 — 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: “𝘌𝘶𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘦’𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘦𝘴𝘦 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘶𝘮.” Tourist money keeps it running. The growth is gone. Economist Sven Larson — who grew up in Sweden and wrote a book titled 𝘐𝘯𝘥𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘗𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘺: 𝘠𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘚𝘸𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘯, 𝘛𝘰𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘌𝘶𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘦, 𝘛𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘸 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢 — explains how they got there. Start with taxes. The activists chant “𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘢𝘹 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘩.” Larson’s answer: “𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘳𝘶𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘩? 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘢𝘹 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘩, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘳𝘶𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮.” The average Swedish worker already pays more in tax than you do. Then there’s the “free” health care. “𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘩 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘩 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘳 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺,” Larson says. “𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘥∗𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘸𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘩 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘯’𝘵 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦.” European rules make it nearly impossible to fire anyone. “𝘞𝘩𝘺 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘪𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦?” So they stop hiring. About 𝟒𝟎% 𝐨𝐟 𝐄𝐔 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 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 𝐳𝐞𝐫𝐨 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝’𝐬 𝐛𝐢𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐬 — 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: “𝘈 𝘭𝘰𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘱𝘰𝘱𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘯 𝘨𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘷𝘰𝘵𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯.” That isn’t a bug. That’s the 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥. 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐢𝐬𝐧’𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦. 𝐈𝐭’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠."

The Rational Animal 🤔 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 - "𝐄𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐋: 𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐀 𝐇𝐀𝐒 𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐏𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐓𝐘 — 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝟏𝟏% 𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐄 𝐈𝐒 𝐀 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐋 𝐋𝐈𝐄
𝘞𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘣𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘱𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢. 𝘐𝘵’𝘴 𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘦’𝘷𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘪𝘵. 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 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝟐.𝟓%. 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 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝟐% 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 — the other 98% flows to the rest of us as lower prices, better products, and higher wages. Bezos, Gates, and Google 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐮𝐬 𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐥𝐲. The zero-sum lie — that their billions mean everyone else has less — is 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐲 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐚𝐦𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐢 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬. And socialism’s real record is the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Venezuela. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐟𝐭’𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐜 𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐲𝐬."

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."

Links - 21st July 2026 (2 - Left Wing Economics)

Dan Neidle on X - "Thomas Piketty and a large team have just proposed a worldwide tax & economic revolution:
⦿ Cap rich-nation growth near zero
⦿ Cut work hours in half
⦿ Cut material consumption by 1/3
⦿ 10% of GDP going into a global fund
⦿ Tax wealth to essentially end it
It's potty."
Left wingers hate economic growth. If people's lives are getting better, they won't be interested in Revolution

Thomas Piketty's diabolical plan to impoverish every country on Earth | National Post - "Celebrity economist Thomas Piketty won fame with a claim that, in market economies, capital accumulates in the hands of the already wealthy, leading to increased inequality. The message found a receptive audience among people eager to believe economic success isn’t earned. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney cited Piketty in his own 2021 book-length argument that economic activity should be managed by people like Carney.  And now Piketty is back seeking new fans with a scheme for top-down central planning of the world’s economy. He is the co-director of the new Global Justice Report from the World Inequality Lab. Introducing the project, Piketty posted on X, “The world today is characterized by large-scale inequalities. And a climate crisis is looming over us. We urgently need a new vision for global progress in the 21st Century. One that grounds human development and equality in planetary habitability.”  Piketty shoehorns an impressive number of buzz phrases into a few lines. He includes concerns about equality and inequality, climate change and progress that should send thrills through college campuses. But Piketty has a talent for tapping into the moment. In this case, at a time when Freedom House’s annual report finds that “Global freedom declined for the 20th consecutive year in 2025,” the economist and his colleagues propose authoritarian policies for shaping the entire planet to their liking.  In his post, Piketty asks, “What would it take to achieve high prosperity and equality while remaining within planetary boundaries?” He answers that “energy transition” (meaning moving away from power sources that produce carbon) is necessary, as well as “labour hour reductions, growth caps in rich countries, less material consumption, and changes in food habits.”  The report itself asserts, “The compression of global inequality is not only compatible with deep decarbonization; it is a necessary condition for shared prosperity on a finite planet.”  To fight climate change and battle inequality, Piketty and company want “full income convergence across countries by 2100.” This requires, in part, limiting growth to “around 0-0.5% in today’s richest regions (North America/Oceania, Europe).” They argue that near-zero growth in rich countries “does not mean that their living standards stagnate” because people will benefit from flattened incomes.  “Accounting for the value of additional leisure time and the avoided costs of climate damage relative to high-growth and high-warming scenarios, even today’s richest countries will enjoy a substantial rise in comprehensive well-being indicators,” they conclude.  In other words, people will learn to like what Piketty and company think they should like.  Restricting economic growth in developed countries would require an enormous amount of government intervention, but the report isn’t shy about calling for just that. It proposes limiting the power of individual shareholders in companies with more than 100 employees. “In the event such a system were in place, it is unclear whether this should still be described as ‘private property,’ ” they concede. “Our own preference would be to move as far as possible towards worker-managed organizations and participatory governance, within a broader process of decommodifying the economy.” We’ll also be forced to produce and eat much less meat.  Not that people would have much money for beef or corporate shares. The authors insist that a “global wealth tax on top wealth holders is crucial for kickstarting the sustainable growth path envisaged by the Global Justice Platform.” The wealth tax would apply to all assets, including housing. It would be set so high that top earners would find that “the only way to pay the tax will be to sell assets” which will inevitably reduce their wealth year by year. It would also, incidentally, discourage investment and innovation, but that’s compatible with the authors’ desire to discourage economic growth in developed countries.  The wealth tax would be in addition to a global income tax operating “alongside national tax systems.” For top earners, “the effective tax rate is stable at 90%.” Not many people might be left at higher rates, though, if the report’s proposals for salary scales and other tools for “income convergence” are implemented.  Piketty and company concede that their plan is likely to be met with “significant political resistance.” They hope to address this with cultural changes in “the value we place on sufficiency, free time and planetary habitability themselves, and the end of ‘classless ecology.’ ”  If this sounds unlikely to convince free and prosperous people that they should hobble their lives to promote the Global Justice Platform, the authors consider that likelihood, too. The report contemplates some countries — specifically the U.S. and China — refusing to co-operate. They suggest imposing “adequate sanctions to non-participants, in proportion to the damages they impose on participating countries.” The recommended sanctions are substantial enough to constitute economic warfare.  The Global Justice Report’s proposed centralization of world political and economic power with penalties for those who opt out are so draconian that they require significant justification. So, it’s worth pointing out that the “climate crisis” the plan seeks to avert assumes “expected temperature rise of 4.8 C to 4.9 C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.” But climate scientists recently ditched that scenario as implausible and now expect much less dire outcomes.  Piketty’s proposals make the unchallenged assumption that income inequality is inherently bad. But Hoover Institution economist David R. Henderson argues that “Most of what is framed as a problem of inequality is better conceived as either a problem of poverty or a problem of unjustly acquired wealth.” Capping economic growth, he adds, hurts lower-income people more than it harms the wealthy.  Worse, in the American Institute for Economic Research journal, Phil Magness and Vincent Geloso wrote that Piketty’s work on income inequality contained “multiple accounting errors, data discrepancies, and even historical mistakes in how they dealt with changes to the tax code.”  Concluding a review of Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, economist Deirdre McCloskey wrote: “His social theme is a narrow ethic of envy. His politics assumes that governments can do anything they propose to do. And his economics is flawed from start to finish.”  Thomas Piketty and his colleagues want to change the world to suit their preferences. It’s unlikely that many of us would enjoy the transformation, and there’s no reason to let them make the attempt."
The left wing agenda always involves bigger and more powerful government, because they want more power and control. But if you oppose this, you support "fascism"

Richard Hanania on X - "Piketty, Stiglitz, and many other left-wing economists are literal degrowthers. They want you to be poorer. This used to be an extreme exaggeration about the left. "They want you to be poor." It's never been true. Stalin, Marx, Lenin, Mao, FDR, whoever you wanted to call the left, no matter how misguided they were, they traditionally wanted people to be wealthier.   Even if they're not advocating mass killing, there's something uniquely evil about this, because the ultimate goal is to make people worse off."

Slazac 🇪🇺🇺🇦🇹🇼🌐 on X - "Nothing will make you lose faith in leftism more than arguing about rent control They simply refuse to learn about the consequences of the policies they support, they can’t conceive second order effects"
Chris 🇺🇲💦🍑 on X - "I don't intend this as a slight to my lefty friends, but it obviously is: more than any other ideology, they have an incuriousness about what the economy is or how it functions. Which is rich considering Marx's magnum opus was a book on economics!"
Richard Hanania on X - "This is all of economic leftism! Nearly all their preferred policies create second order effects that are bad. Rent control is just one of the most obvious examples. But the whole thing is rotten."

Common Sense Extremists on X - "Person 1: works 90 hour week running an international company that employs millions
Person 2: works 25 hour week putting fries in a cup
Leftist: it’s a moral crime that these two don’t earn the same"

Disabled workers paid just pennies an hour – and it's legal - "One of the nation's best-known charities is paying disabled workers as little as 22 cents an hour, thanks to a 75-year-old legal loophole that critics say needs to be closed.Goodwill Industries, a multibillion-dollar company whose executives make six-figure salaries, is among the nonprofit groups permitted to pay thousands of disabled workers far less than minimum wage"
Ironic. Left wingers love non-profits and hate "slave labour" (i.e. voluntary prison labour)

Meme - "2 Thessalonians 3:10 and the 1936 Soviet Constitution both agree. So if Saint Paul and Vladimir Lenin agree, and the same principle built America maybe it's a universally good idea. We should try it in the United States.
ARTICLE 12 In the U.S.S.R. work is the obligation and a matter of honour of every able-bodied citizen, in accordance with the principle: ''He who does not work, neither shall he eat.'' In the the principle of socialism is realised: ''From each according to his ability, to each according to the work performed."'"
Time to condemn Christians who don't want unlimited welfare for people who don't want to work as not true Christians who have no idea what Christianity is about

Matthew Yglesias on X - "A Nordic-style tax structure would tax the rich much more heavily than the United States but also define “the rich” much more broadly."
Chris Pope on X - "Denmark actually raises slightly *less* in revenue from the rich than the United States, but substantially *more* from those with low incomes. See "The American Way of Welfare", p117-18:"

Gavin Newsom on X - "It's time for a national billionaires tax and a new social contract.  10% of Americans own two-thirds of the wealth. Wages have stagnated. The cost of living has skyrocketed.   The system is fundamentally broken.  The federal tax code, a corporate code, and an inheritance code were written for a different set of Americans.   It’s time for an economic reset.  http://substack.com/@gavinnewsom"
Peachy Keenan on X - ""an inheritance code"  Look out - Gavin is planning to abolish the step-up in basis inheritance rule that allows you to inherit a parent's house without being forced to sell and give him all your money.  All that boomer housing equity is about to be clawed out from under you by these communist dipshits"

Robert Sterling on X - "Three things:
1. “It’s time for an economic reset” is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever heard an American politician say. If you don’t get what those words portend, you don’t understand 20th century history.
2. Among Democrats, Newsom is considered a moderate, not a progressive. His endorsement of a wealth tax makes it an official part of the Democratic Party platform for moderates and progressives alike; the policy is now table stakes for any Democrat seeking office at any level and in any region. We are no longer going to be able to escape this by simply claiming it’s the fringe left advocating for it.
 3. Notice that Newsom calls it a “billionaires tax” but references the wealth of the top 10%. If you think a tax such as this would be limited to billionaires, you are delusional (remember that the income tax originally applied to less than 1% of earners). Billionaires have an entire industry of wealth managers, lawyers, and tax advisors helping them shelter assets. When this “billionaires tax” fails to collect even a small percentage of what Democrats promise it will, they will quickly expand it to apply to anyone with even $5M of assets (which is a top 2% net worth). Ordinary people far below the level of the ultra-wealthy—main street small business owners, mom-and-pop real estate investors, farmers, anyone with a decent-size nest egg in their IRA or 401k account—will quickly feel the pain as well.
Pay attention. This is serious, it’s not going away, and it’s going to come for all of us, billionaire or not."

The Fall of the House of Obama - "the Democratic Party’s mindset and actions reflect a troubling reliance on government overreach, radical social policies, and financial manipulation, which have eroded its legitimacy in the United States, the world’s freest nation. The party’s decline is no accident; it is the inevitable result of dismantling the bloated infrastructure that has propped it up for decades. The defunding of questionable agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the reduction of bureaucratic excess, the elimination of ideologically driven programs like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and the exposure of mainstream media as a propaganda tool have stripped away the party’s veneer of public support. I believe these developments reveal a party that has thrived not on genuine popular backing but on a carefully orchestrated system of coercion, financial largesse, and ideological control. I contend that the Democrats have imposed radical social policies through coercive tactics, forcing Americans to comply with agendas that lack broad appeal. These policies, often cloaked in the language of progress or inclusivity, are, in my opinion, disconnected from the needs and values of most citizens. Rather than persuading the public through open debate, the party has relied on institutional power - government agencies, corporate allies, and media narratives - to enforce compliance and silence opposition. This approach, to me, betrays a lack of confidence in the merit of their ideas and a preference for control over consensus. Financially, I see the Democratic Party as a beneficiary of a self-serving system that misuses taxpayer money. The party has, in my view, treated public funds like a personal piggy bank, doling out grants and “forgivable” loans to loyal groups - activist organizations, NGOs, and allied industries - with reckless abandon. I believe much of this money circles back to the party through opaque channels, enriching its leaders while burdening ordinary Americans. Similarly, the party’s lavish spending on foreign aid and international programs strikes me as a scheme to buy influence abroad, with benefits quietly funneled back to Democratic elites. This financial entanglement suggests to me that the party operates not as a servant of the people but as a parasitic entity dependent on public resources.  In my opinion, the Democratic Party is defined by its symbiotic relationship with an overgrown government. It is a party, as I see it, “by the government, of the government, and for the government,” sustained by billions in taxpayer dollars over more than half a century. Its ideology thrives only within this artificial ecosystem, propped up by bureaucrats, activists, and media allies. When government spending is cut or programs are eliminated, the party’s infrastructure crumbles, exposing its lack of organic support. I believe the American people have been unwittingly funding this system for too long, and their growing awareness is driving a reckoning. The Democratic Party’s decline, in my view, is the natural consequence of its dependence on a government it has manipulated to serve its own ends, and its wounds are self-inflicted when that government is finally restrained. The American people have been funding the Democrat party for over half a century.  When you cut government, the Democrat party bleeds.  They are one and the same."

New York Post on X - "Meet the billionaire power couple advocating 'communism for landlords' and a global welfare state - from their $30M Hamptons McMansion"
Hon. Vickie Paladino on X - "These are the billionaires who are actually oppressing us. The ones who sit in their mansions and write checks to communist NGOs and the DSA, who then use that money to destroy our public safety and quality of life. This is the real enemy of the people."
So, since left wingers claim to hate billionaires and that they shouldn't exist...

Matthew Yglesias on X - "There’s been an interesting trajectory since Bernie’s 2015 era pitch that “democratic socialism” meant “policy like Denmark” to the current situation where left policy proposals look nothing like actual Danish tax policy."
Clearly, there is no left wing party in the US

dan on X - "The concept of private land is actually insane if you consider it for even a moment"
RAW EGG NATIONALIST on X - "I still laugh from time to time about a seminar I attended at Cambridge where anthropologists and moral philosophers were talking about morality in cross-cultural perspective and the subject of private property came up. After various know-it-alls suggested there was no deep basis for private property ("cultural construction"), an ethologist piped up, "Have you ever tried to take a banana from a gorilla?" and there was just dead silence for about a minute and then everyone pretended nothing had happened and just continued as they had been."
RJ Frazer on X - "The usual response from lefties is to start splitting hairs about "private property" and "personal property". No-one has yet explained to me why the leftist's new iPhone is personal property which he is allowed to keep but my house is "private property" which must be confiscated."

Reverend Jordan Wells on X - "🚨 DC Just Voted for Socialism — And It’s Spreading Fast 🚨  Janeese Lewis George — an avowed socialist and proud Democratic Socialists of America member — just cruised to a commanding lead in Washington D.C.’s Democratic primary. She’s now all but guaranteed to become the next mayor of the nation’s capital.  This isn’t some outlier. Socialists already run the mayor’s offices in New York, Chicago, and Seattle. They’re on the verge of taking Los Angeles and Washington D.C. too. The Democratic Party has officially become the party of socialism. America, are we really okay with this? #Socialism #DCPrimary #DemocraticSocialists #WakeUpAmerica #BigCitiesFail #Election2026 #RadicalLeft #AmericaFirst #StopTheSocialistTakeover"

Alice Smith on X - "The socialist view of economics is based on a mixture of DuckTales and Monopoly."

The Aristocrats of Redistribution - "For me, the contradiction of the wealthy progressive is one of the strangest and most revealing phenomena in modern politics. It is a movement increasingly populated by people who denounce wealth while enjoying it, condemn privilege while benefiting from it, and romanticize collectivism while carefully insulating themselves from its consequences. The rich progressive is no longer an outlier on the modern Left. In many ways, he has become its defining symbol.  Examples are constant. Millionaires publicly demanding “higher taxes on the rich” while employing armies of accountants to ensure they surrender no more than absolutely necessary. Celebrities preaching climate austerity while crossing oceans on private jets to attend conferences about reducing carbon footprints. Affluent activists proclaiming solidarity with “the oppressed” while living in neighborhoods protected from the very social disorder their policies encourage. Increasingly, the children of privilege — people raised with wealth, access, influence, and safety — attach themselves to radical redistributive causes they themselves never seem willing to experience personally. The paradox is impossible to ignore. If capitalism is fundamentally exploitative, if wealth itself is evidence of injustice, and if privilege is inherently immoral, then why do so many wealthy progressives continue to enjoy every benefit of the system they condemn? Why do they advocate redistribution while rarely redistributing their own wealth voluntarily? Why do they champion collectivism while maintaining lifestyles that would be impossible under the systems they romanticize?  The answer is that most of them do not actually believe collectivism will ever apply to them... Every supposedly egalitarian revolution eventually creates a hierarchy because human nature refuses to disappear simply because slogans demand it. Yet modern wealthy progressives behave as though they would somehow remain among the protected class inside the utopia they advocate.  Figures like Hasan Piker and Zohran Mamdani illustrate the phenomenon well. Both emerged from environments of significant privilege and access — neither from the industrial labor background that traditional Marxist rhetoric glorifies. Both found their audiences inside affluent activist culture, where ideological performance carries more social value than tangible productive achievement. That distinction matters because modern progressive activism increasingly resembles social theater more than material struggle. It functions as a moral performance through which affluent people demonstrate virtue and ideological purity. The cause itself often becomes secondary to the identity the cause provides.  That is why so few ever meaningfully divest themselves of their own wealth. They advocate redistribution in theory while maintaining every practical protection capitalism affords them in reality. They denounce “late-stage capitalism” from luxury apartments, monetize anti-capitalist rhetoric on corporate-owned platforms, and build profitable careers criticizing the very system responsible for their influence. This is not hypocrisy in the ordinary sense. It is structural hypocrisy — the contradiction built directly into the worldview itself. The middle class often recognizes this instinctively. Middle-class people live closest to practical reality: they build businesses, pay mortgages, balance budgets, and absorb the direct consequences of economic decisions. They cannot afford to live entirely inside ideology because practical life punishes fantasy quickly. The lower class, meanwhile, can understandably become susceptible to collectivist promises because economic insecurity breeds desperation. That has always been the emotional engine behind collectivist politics. The wealthy progressive occupies an entirely different psychological category. While he rarely exhibits empathy, he is often driven by a mixture of guilt, boredom, narcissism, and existential emptiness. Material comfort alone rarely provides meaning. For affluent progressives raised without genuine hardship, radical politics becomes a substitute for earned purpose. Revolutionary rhetoric offers emotional intensity without requiring actual revolutionary sacrifice and it eventually becomes a form of aristocratic cosplay. That helps explain why so many affluent activists appear simultaneously angry and insulated. They rebel against systems from which they enormously benefit, but only within carefully controlled boundaries that never truly threaten their own status. They rarely advocate universal sacrifice. Instead, they advocate managed sacrifice imposed upon an abstract class of “others.” Higher taxes for “the rich” never seem to involve liquidating Hollywood fortunes, surrendering inherited wealth, or voluntarily abandoning luxury lifestyles. The sacrifices remain theoretical until they become personal. That is the central truth behind the paradox of the rich progressive. They do not believe the revolution applies equally to everyone... History suggests otherwise.  Collectivist revolutions rarely spare the privileged allies who helped legitimize them. Useful idealists are often among the first casualties once power consolidates, because ideological movements eventually devour anyone insufficiently pure or no longer useful. Yet modern wealthy progressives largely ignore that lesson because their politics are less historical than emotional. What many of them seek is not equality at all. What they seek is moral absolution and social status disguised as compassion.  The contradiction persists because progressivism, for many affluent advocates, is not a movement or a survival strategy, it is just a luxury belief."
The cope is the "we should improve society somewhat" meme

Maarten Boudry on X - "Remember when leftists still embraced material abundance and unlimited growth? I wonder what happened in the intervening years.   "Only two generations ago, intelligent people in the West actually believed Nikita Khrushchev’s “we will bury you” boast—that the communist working class would overawe the free-market world economically by outproducing the West.""

Meme - Michael A. Arouet: "France has higher public spending as % of GDP than the Soviet Union, and now they seriously demand new taxes at the EU level to finance their absurd public spending? Germans were just told that they need to work much longer before retiring, why should the French retire so early?"
"France is not a real country
PUBLIC SPENDING AS % OF GDP (2024). A Comparative Analysis
Vietnam 20.0%
China 33.0%
USA 37.6%
EU (excl. France) 47.7%
USSR (1990) 50.6%
France 57.2%"
Left wingers won't be satisfied till it gets to 100%, then they will go hunting for kulaks sabotaging the Revolution, because first they came for the billionaires...

Links - 18th July 2026 (1 - Left Wing Economics)

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

The Cost of Crime

Clearly, brown and black people suffer because of racism, not crime, which is exacerbated by the left's pro crime policies: 

The Cost of Crime

For as long as I can remember, even before “affordability” became a prominent theme in American public discourse, politicians and pundits have tracked the prices of homes, gasoline, milk, eggs, and other supermarket staples. Affordability, or the lack of it, has long been the explicit goal or chief complaint of policymakers debating housing, public finance, and economic regulation. In these debates, each side wants to show that its proposals will make constituents’ lives better—that is, more affordable. The focus typically falls on issues like housing supply, tax rates, and social-welfare spending.

Zohran Mamdani’s rise to the New York City mayoralty is a prime example. His campaign relentlessly emphasized affordability. From freezing rents and providing fare-free buses to building more public housing and launching nonprofit, government-run grocery stores, most Mamdani messages centered on lowering costs.

At the same time, Mamdani staked out troubling positions on public-safety issues—abolishing the NYPD’s gang database, refusing to hire more officers, and imposing a moratorium on clearing homeless encampments. Many predict that, if implemented, these initiatives will erode public safety and order. To the extent that proves correct, Mamdani’s public-safety agenda would also undercut his stated commitment to affordability.

Often missing from the affordability debate is an appreciation of how public safety and order shape economic well-being. Policymakers seldom draw the connection, yet affordability and safety are tightly intertwined. When leaders fail on public safety, their constituents’ economic prospects decline with it.

Controlling crime and disorder is often treated as a good unto itself, and rightly so. Crime affects a host of other areas: real-estate values, economic mobility, private investment, and, of course, the direct social costs of victimization. Failure to control it undermines the bottom lines of those living in the neighborhoods most affected. This point matters even more because many misguided criminal-justice reforms are justified in part on fiscal grounds. Incarceration is expensive, reformers say, so we should do less of it for taxpayers’ sake. But loosening the social controls exerted by police departments and prisons carries its own price: rising crime imposes massive economic costs.

Many Americans tend to view a crime’s costs as falling primarily on the victim. Few consider its broader effects on society. That’s a crucial error.

Think of a crime as a stone tossed into a lake. It breaks the surface at a single point, but the ripples extend far beyond. Some crimes are mere pebbles in this analogy; others land like cinder blocks, sending larger waves that radiate much farther. Once one understands this, it becomes clearer why Tom has an interest in preventing Dick from murdering Harry, even if Harry is a complete stranger to Tom. The negative effects associated with Harry’s murder extend to Tom, whether or not he realizes it. The societal impact of a single act of violent victimization may seem small; but in the aggregate, and over time, even those who are never personally victimized will find themselves paying a toll.

Though it’s not easy to capture all of crime’s ripple effects, a robust social-science literature offers well-informed estimates of the social costs of at least some offenses—and the figures are alarming. In a 2010 study published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, an international scholarly journal, scholars from the University of Miami and University of Colorado–Denver provided updated, crime-specific estimates of the social costs associated with offenses ranging from murder to theft. The authors note that “more than 23 million criminal offenses were committed in 2007, resulting in approximately $15 billion in economic losses to the victims and $179 billion in government expenditures [all in 2008 dollars] on police protection, judicial and legal activities, and corrections.” In today’s dollars, that totals roughly $290 billion—more than the U.S. Department of Education spent in 2024. To contextualize those numbers further, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated the total annual price tag of major weather and climate disasters (those exceeding $1 billion) between 2020 and 2024 at just under $150 billion.

In deriving their estimates, the authors of the 2010 study broke the social costs of crime into four categories:

Victim costs (property losses, medical bills, and lost earnings)

Criminal-justice system costs (policing, adjudication, and corrections)

Crime career costs (the lost productivity associated with the offender’s choice to offend rather than engage in legal work)

Intangible costs (indirect damages to victims like “pain and suffering, decreased quality of life, and psychological distress”)

They then provided estimates for 13 offense categories. For example, the direct or tangible costs of a single murder exceeded $1.2 million. The total cost of a murder to society—once intangible and crime career harms are included—came in just under $9 million. Murder, for obvious reasons, is an outlier. But other crimes are far from cheap and happen more often: the social cost of a rape exceeds $240,000; an aggravated assault, just over $107,000; and a robbery, just over $42,000.

And crime and disorder can impose other serious harms, especially in the most dangerous areas of American cities. An empirical literature on the relationship between crime and educational performance, for example, suggests that a lack of safety can meaningfully undermine academic success. In Urban Studies, a group of scholars found that repeated exposure to criminal violence on their blocks negatively affected New York City students’ standardized-test performance. Similar findings emerged in Chicago, where scholars linked students’ poorer performance on academic assessments to their exposure to a homicide within a week of the assessment.

A study published in 2018 showed how the “Beltway Sniper” attacks in 2002 “significantly reduced school-level proficiency rates in schools within five miles of an attack.” Yet another analysis of the link between gun violence and standardized test performance in Syracuse, New York, between 2009 and 2015 found that “[s]tate standardized test scores for ELA [English language arts] and math were found to be 50% lower in the elementary schools located within higher concentration gunshot areas, than in elementary schools in lower gunshot areas” and that “[h]igher levels of gun violence within school catchment areas were significantly associated with higher rates of ELA and math failure.” A 2019 study in The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences documented: “Middle school students exposed to neighborhood violent crime before the ELA exam who attend schools perceived to be less safe or to have a weak sense of community score 0.06 and 0.03 standard deviations lower, respectively.”

Educational performance is a key predictor of, and perhaps even a prerequisite for, economic mobility—another outcome shaped by criminal violence. One oft-cited study found that “a one standard deviation decline in violent crime as experienced during late adolescence increases the expected income rank in adulthood by at least 2 points.” The study also found that “a one standard deviation decline in the murder rate increases the expected income rank by roughly 1.5 points.” This makes intuitive sense: If your adolescence is dominated by worries about personal safety, how much can you focus on meeting the requirements for economic success?

Though many American cities have seen crime declines recently, crime levels in those cities’ most troubled neighborhoods remain far above what can be considered tolerable. In a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Brown University’s Brandon del Pozo and coauthors found that, in some American neighborhoods, the risk of violent death for young men exceeded that faced by frontline U.S. combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even in high-crime neighborhoods that fall below that benchmark, homicide rates are many times higher than the national average.

In neighborhoods with the biggest crime problems, staying safe requires real work and brain power. No wonder, then, that the available evidence seems to suggest that neighborhood violence is also associated with poorer mental health, including clinically significant anxiety and depression. That was the prevailing finding of a 2021 literature review appearing in Social Science & Medicine.

Crime can also have concrete effects on the asset that often accounts for most of the average American family’s wealth: their home. The homeownership rate in the U.S. was just under 66 percent in 2022. According to Pew Research, “Half of U.S. homeowners derived more than 45 percent of their wealth from home equity alone.” That share is even higher for black and Hispanic homeowners, for whom home values constitute between 63 percent and 66 percent of total wealth. I note this disparity because black and Hispanic Americans disproportionately bear the brunt of the nation’s violent-crime problem. In testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 2023, I laid out the relevant facts on that disparity.

Consider an illustrative excerpt: “In New York City, . . . a minimum of 95 percent of all shooting victims and 85 percent of all homicide victims have been black or Hispanic every year going back to 2008, despite those groups making up just 52 percent of the city’s population. . . . Relative to their share of the population, these groups are also consistently statistically overrepresented among victims of rape, robbery, and felonious assault.” Meanwhile, “in Chicago, where 57.9 percent of the population is black or Hispanic, those groups constituted 95 percent of homicide victims in 2019, 96 percent in 2020, 96 percent in 2021, and 95 percent in 2022. . . . Relative to their share of the city’s population, those groups are also consistently statistically overrepresented among victims of robbery, aggravated assault, criminal sexual assault, aggravated battery, and violent crime, generally.”

This should matter more to progressive policymakers, who largely attribute the racial wealth gap to disparities in homeownership. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition, for example, notes: “For most families, their home is the primary way they store and build wealth. The Black–White homeownership gap is therefore the primary driver of the Black–White racial wealth divide. . . . In fact, between 2013 and 2022, more than 90 percent of the wealth gains for Black Americans came from homeownership.” One would expect, then, that self-styled progressives would calibrate their public-safety policies to protect the home values of the very people whose interests they claim to represent.

Numerous studies have empirically linked crime and home values. A 2019 analysis based in Sweden found: “By moving a house 1 km further away from a crime hot spot, its value increases by more than SEK 30,000 (about EUR 2,797).” A 2012 study based on data from the United Kingdom found that “each additional case of anti-social behavior lowers house prices in the same street by approximately 1 percent and each additional case of violent crime by 2 percent.” In 2013, the Inter-American Development Bank analyzed how residential property values in Brazil were affected by perceptions about public safety, estimating that “increasing the sense of security in the home by one standard deviation would increase average home values by R$1,513 (US$757), or about US$13.6 billion, if applied to all 18.0 million households in the study area.” Note that some of these effects were driven by perceptions of safety—extensive evidence, informed by Broken Windows theory, shows that perception is influenced not only by crime but also by visible signs of disorder.

And it works the other way, too: declining crime boosts home values. A 2012 paper from the Center for American Progress studying eight U.S. cities found that “a 10 percent reduction in homicides would substantially expand revenues from property taxes in all eight cities.”

The effect isn’t confined to residential property values. In the Journal of Regional Science, a collaboration between the NYU Furman Center, UCLA’s Ziman Center, and the Federal Reserve found suggestive evidence that crime depresses commercial property values and that the negative impact was strongest “in neighborhoods with lower incomes and higher shares of minority residents.”

Many community advocates are understandably quick to call for more investment in underserved neighborhoods struggling with high crime. Yet we rarely hear them urging local leaders to crack down on that crime. Recent years have offered plenty of examples of how failure to control disorder makes investment less attractive—including the widely reported closures of pharmacies and big-box stores that were fighting high levels of retail theft. A 2022 Journal of Urban Economics study found that higher crime rates reduced consumers’ willingness to visit establishments in affected neighborhoods, particularly at night. Evidence suggests that crime not only keeps away customers from outside the community but also erodes the resident customer base. In an influential 1999 analysis published in The Review of Economics and Statistics, Julie Cullen and Steven Levitt found substantial crime-related population declines driven by out-migration.

Affordability isn’t self-creating—it’s a by-product of good policy. Delivering it requires more than subsidies for things that have grown more expensive. Nor is “affordable” synonymous with “good.” Letting crime and disorder spiral out of control might drive down home values, for example, but few would count that as a triumph of affordability. The goal should be to make good things more affordable, and that means creating conditions in which residents can acquire the skills and assets needed to sustain a higher quality of life. Safety and public order are prerequisites for that progress. Policymakers who promise “affordability” should remember a lesson most of us learned as kids: safety first.