Bad Smells – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Zoomers And Pools Of Cash

“The pools of blood that have collected, you’ve got to soak that up. Now, Jimmie, we need to raid your linen closet.” – Pulp Fiction

How do you drown a programmer? Put up a sign that says, “no swimming”.

If I were to come up with a metaphor for today’s situation, well, it might be this . . .

While I was half asleep this morning I visualized in that gauzy dreamy sort of way, dark pools, sitting quietly behind a large earthen structure. At first, the surfaces of the pools were smooth and reflective like glass as they slowly filled.

It was calm, and serene. For now. But the level was coming up.

What was the defining moment of my generation in our youth? Probably the fall of the Berlin Wall. I can still remember the news stories piling up day by day as the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations slowly turned away from communism and then someone said the Berlin Wall didn’t match the Iron Curtains, so, it had to go. What a time to be alive! Heck, women were still winning women’s swim meets!

If I were born a bit earlier, it would probably would have been the Iranian Hostage Crisis, or Carter’s Stagflation, both of which led to Reagan’s election and eventual conversion to MechaReagan®, who fought Godzilla® and Mothra™. But that’s another story.

Anyway, think about those defining moments, the defining events of Gen Z are still out there, and I wonder what that would be. In the case of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was a story that, at the time, was filled with hope. Here was the collapse of a political system bent on the forceful subjugation of humanity. What’s not to celebrate?

What was the favorite song of East Germans before the Berlin Wall came down? “Under Prussia”

In the end, though, what was lost in that moment was restraint. Just like Gingrich restrained the worst (political!) impulses of Bill Clinton (“What, I can’t spend what I want to spend because of the way the bond market might react?”), the Soviet Union constrained the worst impulses of the people in power in Washington. That restraint really ended with Clinton who had to fight to save his political career after lying under oath about dallying with the help.

But after Clinton, after 9-11?

Bill Clinton will be remembered for the economy. Oh, and that one other thing . . . .

All restraint fell. Oh, sure, we needed to go and find Osama Bin Laden, but did we need to invade Iraq? In hindsight, almost certainly not. Did we need to stay in Afghanistan for 20 years? Again, almost certainly not. And these adventures cost trillions of dollars, all of which we didn’t have. But that’s okay. Cash isn’t for earning. It’s for spending. Like AOC said when asked where the money would come from for one of her socialist programs: “You just pay for it!”

She was, and is, serious about this, since her understanding of cause and effect is limited to her goldfish-like memory.

But those dark pools of my dreams, they were filling. And while they filled, they began to destabilize everyone tied to the United States. In Egypt, for instance, I think they eat nothing but rice, sawdust, and the occasional house pet, which is fairly inexpensive. So, a small change in the price of rice or a decrease in the availability of sawdust causes people, real people, to go hungry.

Does Biden look like he needs more fiber in his diet to you?

As Snickers® told us, “You’re not you when you’re hungry” and hungry people are the ones that overthrow Middle Eastern despots. But that’s okay. You just pay for it.

What does the Left think about all the illegal aliens that are teeming over the border in relentless streams? You just pay for them. And you have to. Even when we’re not stacking them like cordwood in Chicago or displacing vets to house them in New York or trying to teach them to ski in Colorado, there is one horrible fact about illegal aliens:

They cost more than they create. We can’t get a volume discount if we import them by the millions. No, they just cost billions more. The net annual value of an illegal to the economy is, at minimum, -$10,000 per year. NEGATIVE $10,000, and that’s after the work they provide.

I used to worry about the collapse of the United States because of the destruction of our nation’s values and economy by illegals, but that was too scary. Now I just worry about celebrities. (meme as found)

Where does the cash come from? If you’re AOC, “You just pay for them.”

And all that “you just pay for it” is what’s filling those dark pools of my dreams.

If all that cash would just sit, quietly, in those dark pools, there really isn’t a problem. If we pay Raytheon™ for a $4 million dollar Patriot® missile to destroy $20,000 Iranian drones, as long as Raytheon© just leaves that money in their bank account, filling up the pool.

But, oops, you have to pay people to make the missile. If it’s only the Chinese who keep the money in a bank account somewhere and never use it, that’s fine, too, because that’s just another dark pool of money.

When the Fed™ started out bailing out every bank, that’s really what happened. The banks kept the cash in deposit, and salted it away in their dark pools.

I think it’s the dark pools of cash that will ultimately be the defining moment for Gen Z. Well, not the dark pools themselves, but, rather, the mess they make when the levee breaks. We’re seeing the problem starting now, and Gen Z is aware – many of them have lived their teen years seeing nothing but inflation as the pools break loose.

I’m getting tired of Gen Z, always walking around like they can afford to rent the place.

The pools are up high, and have a great deal of potential energy. The destruction the flow will create as the cash spreads down through the economy has been bad, but it will be legendary. When the American Continental was issued it was backed by the same thing the dollar is today: nothing. The phrase “not worth a Continental” was no doubt on the minds of the framers of the Constitution as they wrote that no State shall make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment in debts.”

But that’s quaint thought, right?

(meme as found)

Weimar Germany followed the AOC “just pay for it” formula, and German bankers eventually (after some, um, events) became the most cautious in Europe about inflation.

So, after my dream of last night, I think we have a big dam problem.

It worked so well last time, right?

Give War A Chance

“War is brewing.” – The Lord of the Rings

Pa Wilder survived mustard gas and pepper spray. He was a seasoned veteran.

War. What is it good for?

Absolutely nothin’.

I have a different answer:

Saving hundreds of millions of lives.

Whaaaaat?

Yeah, war, it turns out, is an amazing catalyst for providing lots of life saving technology that has saved far more people than it has killed. I need to jump in here with this because everyone has their sphincters clenched because it appears we’re on the edge of the Third World War. Maybe that won’t be so bad.

Hang on, this will all make sense in a moment.

I’m a trained professional. Or I would be if I were trained. And if I were getting paid for this.

Give a thief a gun and he’ll rob a bank. Give a thief a bank and he’ll rob everyone.

But I made a pretty bold statement, and I have the receipts to back it up. First let’s start with what I’m counting. I’m not counting as “war” when governments kill their own citizens. In the 20^th century alone (no Fox® required) governments killed an estimated 262 million of their own citizens.

Yeah, that’s an ugly number, and it’s certainly the largest man-made source of involuntary death. This is also the biggest argument EVER that the Second Amendment is the very best life-saving technology ever conceived by mortal man.

Ever.

War is a different kettle of fish, and it depends on the counting. One source says the total number of combat deaths since 1800 is around 35 million. Sure, that’s a lot, and I’d love to have them all over for a nice dinner, but it’s small compared to those killed by their own government. A broader definition of “war” would put it at 131 million in the twentieth century, but I’d guess that also includes a big overlap of citizens killed by their own government.

I hear that Stalin collected political jokes. When asked how many he had, “Four GULAGs worth.”

Tomato, tomah-to. Let’s split the difference and say it’s probably 80 million in the twentieth century, or roughly as many people as Joe Biden has allowed to come streaming over the border in the last three years.

But how, John Wilder, you amazing stud, you said you had receipts on how war brought about benefits that exceeded the costs?

War provides an acceleration of humanity, it provides the necessary push and investment into things that help troops do unexpected things on the battlefield. Like living. That leads us to penicillin. It was spurred into development (it had been discovered earlier) in World War II. Would antibiotics have been lost in a research paper without World War II? Don’t know – but World War II allowed them to be tested on Allied soldiers.

While we’re on medical, what about smallpox? Oh, sure, it doesn’t sound bad, but I’ve been told it is far worse than bigpox. What spurred that innovation? War. The Revolutionary War, in fact.

Well, there’s a joke coming back from 2012. I guess humor ended then.

I know I try to avoid drinking water since mankind developed beer and wine, but water chlorination has saved lots of people who aren’t drinking booze. Who developed the process to make chlorine gas cheaply so he could gas a bunch of French? A German guy in World War One.

There are more, but there are hundreds of millions of lives saved in just those three developments.

What else did war provide?

Nuclear power – sure, just like OJ’s obituary, someone will say . . . “Oh, and there’s that one other thing” but nuclear power has produced clean power over the globe with, well, a few exceptions.
Jet engines – without World War Two, would Steve Miller have ever had someone to take him home?
Radar – I’ve never used it, but I’ve heard that it’s pretty good at keeping planes from hitting each other.
The Internet – how else would we get pictures of cats?
GPS – it can guide bombs, or it can take us to a liquor store in an unfamiliar town. Guess which is used more often?

I found a $20 outside of a liquor store. I decided to do what Jesus would do, so I turned it into wine.

Satellites – without World War Two, would we have these? Probably not. And satellites have made weather prediction a pretty trivial thing. Doesn’t mean the prediction will be any good, but, you know, we can do it faster.
Computers – created to calculate firing tables for artillery and to decode German stuff. Again, now we use for pictures of cats. And porn.
Medical imaging, including x-rays and ultrasound – all started with military tech.
Medical prosthetics – this is grimmer, but the more things got shot off, the better the tech.
Telecommunications technology, including wireless networks – the very first time I used WIFI in a house, the host noted that it was based on tech used in Gulf War I. WIFI? Yeah, thank a war.
Aircraft technology – when you make tens of thousands of aircraft that are used to the maximum extent of their capability, you learn what makes them fall out of the sky. Which is useful.
Rocket technology – no bucks, no Buck Rodgers. From Werner von Braun to Elon Musk, I’m raising my glass to the foreigners who get us into space. Oh, von Braun’s first rockets weren’t aimed at the Moon.
Sonar – I don’t fish, so, I guess this is okay. Meh tier.
Chemical engineering – this is a really important one – in making all the gases to kill people in World War One and in all the bits and pieces required to make tires without rubber and how to make ammonia to kill yet more people in World War One, our modern world wouldn’t exist.
Trauma care – how is it that 35 people are shot in an average Chicago weekend and only eight die? Trauma care. This stuff was built on lots of combat experience, and thankfully keeps lots of innocent people breathing.
Cryptography – the entire field of cryptography is due to war. It’s the backbone of current connections and internet transactions, but started when people wanted to figure out where the Germans were going to be next week.

But when the Vikings used dots and dashes to communicate, it was Norse code.

I’m no longer scared of war. Sure, it sucks if you or your friends got exploded, but the numbers don’t lie: war has killed probably between 35 million (low) and 131 million (way high) in the twentieth century. The advancements from war have probably saved (one estimate I read) five billion people.

War seems to have saved more people than it has killed. By a huge margin.

So, in the immortal words of P.J. O’Rourke (peace be upon him): “Give war a chance.”

Maybe, but maybe we’re on the eve of creation?

How Transfer Payments Might Doom Us All

“Okay. Let’s just chew our way out of here.” – Big Trouble in Little China

The Andy Griffith show would have been a lot different if her name had been Aunt Tifa.

I like thinking about the economy and what we have in front of us, and I guess I’m not alone.

Recently I stumbled across a column in Zero Hedge® that originated from Mike Shedlock at his place (link below). Shedlock has been writing about economics for years, and was pretty far out in front of the Great Recession. When Shedlock starts to tease at the threads of the economy, he just might have something interesting to say.

How Much Do Food Stamps, Social Security, and Medicare Support the Economy?

Anyway, the column that caught my eye tied back inflation to the amount of money that the government spends that it doesn’t get anything for, or transfer payments – pulling from one source (taxes or printing) to give to another person or group. The examples of this are everywhere. Shedlock mentions:

food stamps,
Taylor Swift,
Social Security,
Late night television hosts,
Medicare,
PEZ® theft,
Medicaid,
Kamala’s vodka supply,
child tax credits, and
other “welfare” payments.

Okay, I’ll admit I might have added a few things to Mike’s list.

It’s been three months since I joined the gym and I’ve had zero progress. Tomorrow I’ll go in person to see what the problem is.

During the Great COVID Crisis, first Trump and then Biden threw money at the economy, and the amount of income that people got from the government in transfer payments DOUBLED as a percentage of income. That’s staggering. This isn’t an absolute number, but as a percentage, which actually makes it worse. Not to mention all the companies that got paid for not doing business, not selling beer, and not making good movies. Disney®, I’m looking at you.

Here’s an odd sentence: Missing Person Remains Found.

Part of the trouble with the economy has been masked, for years. That trouble is Social Security. In 2018, Social Security started paying out more in benefits than it received in taxes. This was supposed to be just fine because all of the payments from past years that were put into a “trust fund”.

Well, Congress didn’t just pile all of those tax dollars it was taking in under the mattress or in a Mason® jar buried back near the old outhouse behind the Fed®. Nope. Congress did what politicians always do with every available dollar: they spent it to buy nice things (things that lobbyists wanted) immediately when they got the cash in their appetizer-covered little fingers. Oh, and they borrowed more, too. The only thing the “trust fund” did was mask the true size of the deficit.

What if your trust fund has a negative balance?

It’s like that with most things the government does, but there is a limit to how much of the economy you can just make up before reality eventually catches up with you. Ask Enron™.

Regardless, things are going to get much, much worse. All of those illegals that are streaming across the border as fast as we can pay (yes, the United States is actually paying cash to them on the road) them to get here? Once they get here, they’re being paid thousands of dollars a year plus free chow and lodging and medical care. All of that cash is just printed at this point, and spent on something that adds no net productivity to the economy.

Well, he is called Bad Luck Brian for a reason. He also invested his life savings with Bernie Madoff.

And, where, exactly are these millions of people going to live? They’re staying 30 to a house, and buying up properties that used to go to Bobby and Becky when they got married, but now can’t afford them due to the massive competition and rising interest rates.

The Boomers? They’re retiring in droves right now, and Social Security and Medicare spending will only increase as they retire. This will, of course, come from spending rather than the non-existent trust fund.

None of the above counts how much more we’ll send to Ukraine or Taiwan or Israel or Haiti.

All of these transfer payments *plus* the increased interest on the debt that we took out to buy the things the lobbyists wanted in 1994 will result in stopping Congress from spending.

Ha! See! I made it through that with a straight face. Man, I should have used that line on April Fools’ Day. Of course Congress isn’t going to stop spending. They’re not even going to slow down. There are still appetizers to be eaten, and lobbyists to be massaged.

One lobbyist even lobbied to save the penny. He called himself a change agent.

And again, Congress got away with this quite well when the United States was the Sole Global Superpower™. Now? China is pushing us economically, and from a military standpoint, it’s looking pretty iffy: no one wants to sign up to fight Russia for Ukraine, or China for Taiwan. Additionally, unless the war(s) go nuclear, I question how prepared we are to fight a near-peer foe in 2024.

Like I said, I like thinking about the future of the economy. I always have enjoyed horror movies.

Maybe It’s . . . Evil?

“But I just changed my lifetime tune about thirty minutes ago, ‘cause I know that whatever is out there tryin’ to get in is pure Evil straight from Hell. And if there is a Hell, and those sons of bitches are from it, then there has go to be a heaven, Jacob, there’s gotta be.” – From Dusk ‘til Dawn

My friend gets offended when I tell her fat jokes. I told her, “Lighten up.” (Most memes are “as-found”)

I’ve been having a bit of question in my mind about what we’re seeing going on in the world today. I’ve written quite a bit about the physical trends in the world today, with energy being the number one roadblock I see into the physical future since the complexity of the world’s economy is based on cheap energy for manufacture, transport, and use of goods in our “modern” society. That might explain why people on unicycles are always so energetic compared to me on my regular bicycle. I’m two tired.

The second big challenge I see is the virtual world. By virtual, I include not only cyber-dependence, A.I., but also cash. Our current economic system uses an entirely made-up set of markers called “dollars” to buy and sell things. What’s a dollar? Once upon a time, it was some fraction of an ounce of gold. Now, a dollar is worth whatever someone will give you for it. As Biden has adopted the Binge Bucks Better strategy to try to get votes (I mean, besides the ones they print up) the deficit has reached a record.

Hmm, if Brandon is so awesome, why is no one wearing a “Build Back Better” hat?

All this spending? There’s no end in sight. So, this is a world that is having its own set of challenges in both the physical and virtual realm.

The third and (in my opinion) most important one is the spiritual realm.

Let me digress a bit – I think it will make sense in the end, but I haven’t written the end yet, so it could just end up with all of the coherence of Kamala Harris talking about quantum mechanics. Nah, nothing could be that bad.

I was half asleep recently (hypnogogic, to be technical). I often get a “clearing of the mind” when in that state, when issues that have been perplexing me sort themselves out. It’s like my mind is running a program in the background, but when I’m half asleep, all the pieces come together.

What was this puzzle?

Let’s talk about the pieces, first:

No one, literally even the GloboLeftists in the Deep Blue cities wants the massive hordes of illegals streaming across the borders. No one. It’s so bad that Biden is even attempting to blame the Republicans for not letting him close the border.

Yeah, pull the other one, Joe, and a bell will ring.

Biden 2024! 20 years for Joe, 24 for Hunter.

This is destroying the country. Quickly. Why are housing prices going up? Because we’re not building new houses because no one can afford them but yet we’ve brought in OVER 12 MILLION ILLEGALS in just three years. If Putin could have gotten that many Russians into the Ukraine, he could have taken it without a shot.

Hmmm.

I ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon® today. I’ll let you know.

Ever wonder if Tyson® was a company designed to import illegal aliens so they could make cheap food so people would have heart problems requiring heroic intervention to keep the medical system going?

The second datapoint is the weird fixation of the GloboLeft on literally every freak sexuality that could possibly exist. Sexually aroused by toasters? Yeah, I know that naughty bagel-sized girl is a tease, but toaster fixation is . . . deranged. The current poster child for adding deranged sexuality to avoidance of reality is the transexual movement.

The public has, at every opportunity, rejected this. Yet, Joseph Robinette Biden decided to issue a proclamation that Easter should be known as Transexual Visibility Day. To be clear, most of the time that transexuals are visible is because they’ve snapped and tried to kill a dozen people or were engaged in really awful things with children or were parading their female penis inside a woman’s dressing room. I have seen zero positive things in the news about trans people. Ever. Each time it’s some new horror story that would have led all of our ancestors look for kindling so they could have a burning at the stake.

Yet, we have a presidential proclamation on the single holiest day of Christianity promoting this abomination.

This is the Cartoon Network®. Trust them with the minds of your kid?

I could keep going. In general, there appears to be a concerted effort put forth to break down and eliminate the impact of Christianity as the basic underlying moral virtue of the West in general, including the United States.

The fall of Christianity in the United States (and the West) will have several big, negative impacts. The concepts that there is centrality of the family, the idea that life has an ultimate purpose, and the belief that all humans can be one in Christ have shaped the world. Christianity has been the central, governing moral vision at the heart of the West.

As Christianity declines, there is a risk of losing the moral foundation it provided. The decline Christianity in society accompanied by various societal issues, including divorce, cohabitation, drug abuse, abortion, homosexuality, sexually transmitted diseases, mental illness, and suicide. People are born to be religious because it gives them stability and direction.

Yet, there has been a concerted war on Christianity for years, even though it makes society observably better, and observably more stable.

San Francisco is so woke, that even the homeless vaccinate themselves!

If I were an oligarch, all of these changes would be negative for me. I’d be an oligarch over a less stable society, that produced less wealth for me to leach off of, and, in every measurable way, including the amount of power I could have, I would be worse off.

There is the first answer: because they’re just sick inside, and want to watch it all burn. Someone like George Soros may very well be like that – if you look into his eyes it’s not like you’re looking at something healthy and good. Maybe he just wants to burn it all down because he can. Because his heart is filled with hate.

That’s a simple answer. It might even be right.

This is a math teacher, so you can tell she’s plotting something.

The other answer is more profound: the GloboLeftistElite might just be . . . Evil. Capital E. It’s a solution that the modern mind wants to find an alternative to. It wants to look to cultural factors, or mental illness, or poor parenting.

Oddly, the idea that these people really are Evil is perhaps (to me) more comforting. Just like William Peter Blatty felt about his book, The Exorcist, that it was a profoundly Christian book, and uplifting, since the end showed that it wasn’t Evil that won, it was God.

Watch this, and tell me that Evil isn’t at work.

We face amazing challenges in the near future – physical, virtual, and spiritual. I’d prepare for all three.

But that’s just me.

Next up? Kamala Harris explains the General Theory of Relativity using a banana and two meatballs as props.

Winning Starts With Belief That Winning Is Possible

“Win the crowd.” – Gladiator

If your wife just sits around in bed all day, not moving a muscle, congratulations! You’ve got yourself an atrophy wife!

I was sitting on my desk when my boss’s boss came up.

“John, we have something we’d like you to lead. It’s got the attention of the top people in the company, including the CEO. We need it done in 90 days. We’ve used about 15 of them. You have the full commitment of the company.”

Yikes! What could I say?

“I’ll do it.”

Looking back, I think they thought it was an impossible task. I would also have to leave my current job, with absolutely no promise of a future position after 90 days. It was amazingly risky, but it was also presented as, well, not a choice.

If I lost, well, they could fire me, say they tried, and then buy themselves time to meet the commitment. It would look not perfect for them, but it would give them breathing room. I know company politics, and I knew what that meant.

I had to win.

Never challenge Death to a pillow fight unless you’re prepared for the Reaper cushions.

In order to win, I had to have a plan. I had to put together the resources to make it happen. I asked for some very specific, very high performing people. I was told, “no”. (At least one reader knows this story very, very well.)

The first step was that I had to believe that I could win.

I look around at the country that we have today, and I see a similar circumstance: the forces that are arrayed against the TradRIght are numerous.

Seriously: they own

most federal bureaucracies,
most government employees,
the military leadership,
academia,
media,
Hollywood, and
the people who count the votes.

But even with all of that, they scared.

Hillary proves it takes a village to climb a staircase.

No, strike that, they are terrified. They are terrified we are going to win, and the GloboLeftistElite will lose because they know us. They have seen that the TradRight can do when it is unified and has a common goal. When working together, we can tame continents, build a miniature star to end a war, and put people on the damn Moon in a tin can with three gallons of fuel left without having our heartbeats go above 100 and then defeat International Communism 2.0 (I count the French as 1.0).

We are the TradRight. We did all of that when we are unified.

I think that, in the end, they expect to lose. That’s why they throw everything they have, every silly law, every silly accusation against Donald Trump because they mistakenly think that if they break him, if they make him poor, they break us.

Make no mistake, Donald Trump is not our leader. Donald Trump is a very smart man who saw the motion of the people and jumped out in front. Did he want to Build The Wall before that line got applause in a rally? Maybe.

Don’t worry, I hear that protests are only illegal on January 6.

I know that Ann Coulter is still miffed that The Donald didn’t Build The Wall and was far too chummy with the Democrats, but anyone who makes them as crazy as President Trump did accomplish quite a lot: he made the GloboLeftElite and the RINO conspirators show their true faces.

But I remember in a rally where he bragged about the Vaxx®. The crowd let out a wave of disapproval, and he got off the Vaxx™ train that minute. Trump may not lead us, but he does stand for us. He finds what we want and jumps out in front.

No, breaking Donald Trump won’t break us.

But, let’s face it, the DOJ is even afraid of the Clintons.

Back to Wilder’s 90 days:

I immediately got a plan together. I used the resources I was given. I set expectations with my leadership on what we could accomplish in the remaining 90 days: I defined victory, a real victory.

My definition was approved.

I fought the political games necessary to get various leaders I had to convince on board – instead of shooting at us, they covered my flank so they could take credit if we won, while still being able to blame me if we lost.

We won. I got a 25% raise and the biggest bonus I’d ever gotten in my life up to that point. I could even mathematically prove that my methods and intervention at crucial points in the project had saved the company about $3 million.

Ta-Da!

To be clear: if I had thought that I was going to lose, I would have lost. Was it hard? Certainly. I could have lost, and about day 53 it was Not Looking Good. But my team and I turned the ship and won.

We won. Because we thought we could win.

This story, though, isn’t about me. It’s about all of us. If we think we’re going to win, we will win. If we refuse to be demoralized, we won’t be demoralized. The ability to win even at the cultural level is there, primarily because we believe in the True, Beautiful, and Good.

Anyone else find it odd that the Flintstones® celebrated Christmas?

The GloboLeftElite? They despise the True, Beautiful, and Good because it shows the empty places they have in their souls – they believe in no Truth, they believe they are ugly, and they openly despise the Good because it sets standards they cannot meet.

The physical and moral levels are a cakewalk.

That, my friends, is why our victory, though it may be difficult, is inevitable. And it’s also why they want to fill us with despair.

Onward!

Economic Systems, Not Religions

“The Pagans celebrated the solstice by cutting down holly and ivy and dragging it into their homes along with a giant yule log that they’d set fire to. It sounds rubbish, but with no app store to speak of, killing trees and plants was as good as entertainment got. Even at Christmas.” – Cunk on Earth

Or, as every person forced to live in communism called him at Christmas: “Hungry Santa”.

One of the things that I have done many times over the years is note that communism (Leftism) is a religion. It’s why the joke about “Real Communism has never been tried” is funny – the people who say that actually believe it. Beyond that, they actually believe, deeply, in communism.

It’s their faith.

Just like Christians believe in Christ returning to do stuff and then give us paradise, commies really believe that when Real Communism is finally implemented, the world will be safe for losers like them.

Communism depends on the rank and file believing that they’re not the problem, everyone else is. If everyone realized what a great talent they are, well, that stupid high school quarterback would be happy to clomp back into the mines and fields and factories humming the tune the loser wrote. The loser believes that centralized processes are better: if it works for me, it should work for everyone.

Apparently, the Soviets did one thing right: they made the best bread in history. Why, people would wait in line for days just for a single piece.

So what if a few million peasants starved? That’s a small price to pay for the coming workers’ utopia. There can be no compromise in our vision of the exact same prosperity for everyone, since our vision is perfection!

Yup, that’s communism in a nutshell. It has no real empirical evidence that it could ever work, yet it gets trotted out by the losers again and again. The problem isn’t with the plan, it’s that:

The people sabotaged it!
Foreign countries sabotaged it!
The time wasn’t right!
We ran out of people to kill!
I swear, the dog ate the economy!

The result is always the same, a priestly class who aims to reeducate (convert) everyone to the religion of materialism. The end result of this – unless it’s stopped by a Stalin – is the endless Leftist Purity Spiral where there is no Leftism so far Left that it can’t be exaggerated further Left, and anyone to the right of this Left position is a heretic. As I mentioned, this was happening in the Soviet Union until Stalin just shot all the people on the far Left to stabilize the nonsense.

I was going to tell an awful bowling joke, but I’ll spare you.

One side note: I was watching the comedy Silicon Valley several years ago, and one of the characters said he followed the “left-hand path” which is a loser way of saying, “Satanist”. Just noting, Leftist, left-hand path . . . I’ll leave that there for you to draw your own conclusions.

Regardless, a lot if not all, of the problems we face in society today is due to Communism or it’s kid brother, Socialism attempting to put a central control on everything we do and think to conform to their current Narrative.

But I’d like to take a step back, since often libertarians (or Libertarians) make the same error: they equate magical powers to the market.

I remember my parents telling me, “I’ll give you something to cry about” when I was a kid. I expected a spanking, but instead they ruined the housing market.

And, yes, I’ll agree. The free market is so much better than the planned markets put together by commissars in Central People’s Warehouse No. 49, and has historically provided an abundance of “stuff”. Milton Friedman famously said, “In capitalism, goods wait for people; in socialism, people wait for good.”

It’s true. It’s also true that, just as communism is a poor religion, so is capitalism. Capitalism isn’t a religion, it isn’t a force, it has no morality, it’s a mechanism for distributing points.

Capitalism doesn’t care what it creates, as long as the points are properly distributed.

Probably the most free-market period in the history of the United States was during the frontier. Don’t want money, well, you could move out west, fend mostly for yourself, farm, and not worry (too much) about needing money. If you wanted money, you could get it by mining, trapping, killing buffalo or making railroads. Nobody stopped you doing almost anything if you were far enough out in front of civilization. But after towns sprang up?

When I was leaving home today, I had the feeling I’d forgotten something. Then I remembered. The Alamo.

Your friends and neighbors had a vote. Capitalism and free markets were constrained by morality, specifically Christianity. Was there booze? Drugs? Prostitution? Porn? Yes, those things were with us and have been with us.

But society was more cohesive at that time, and would shun the immoral, if they didn’t deal with them in extrajudicial ways. Laws weren’t required to constrain capitalism, the morality of the people constrained capitalism – actual religion took the place of economic religion.

Real capitalism isn’t a religion, and it won’t solve problems. And, yes real capitalism has been tried and is very successful when practiced by a more-or-less moral people, though the version that we have here in 2024 isn’t real capitalism. Examples?

Regulations
Taxation
Labor Laws
Federal Reserve Interest Rates
Federal Reserve Cash Printing
Welfare/Transfer Payments
Government Spending (Education, infrastructure, defense)
Unchecked Immigration

The last one is favored by many Libertarians. They note that in a market free of all of the other bullet points, well, just let anyone in. My response is that most people in the world don’t really want to be free people living in freedom: Most people in the world would just rather have free stuff.

Boeing®, putting the “final” in final approach.

That means creeping centralization and an amoral government bent on taking from one group to give to another, and the same material god that is worshipped by communists everywhere. But no one can say that the far Left is in a hurry – they keep Stalin.

A Modest Proposal Concerning Haiti

“Don’t worry. It’s good luck. In Haiti.” – Caddyshack

Two cannibals were eating Amy Schumer. One asked the other, “Does anything taste funny to you?” The other cannibal answered: “No.”

Haiti is in trouble. Again. This is not a repeat from (spins wheel) . . . nearly every year in Haiti’s history. If you look back, more Haitian leaders have been killed and eaten (hopefully in that order) than there are grains of sand in a beach.

Okay. That may be an exaggeration, since I made up the statistic. But it’s clear that Haiti is awful. The best part of Haiti is not even close to being as good as the worst part of the United States. I believe it was Michael Yon who described Haitians as “Cannibals Without Borders” which is a phrase I really hate for the sole reason that I didn’t come up with that one on my own.

Dangit.

Look how they’ve kept their plate clean.

Haitians have a history that would make Pol Pot jealous. From the beginning, it was born in blood and slavery, and then managed, somehow, to get worse. I want to make a stand, right here and now, and say that the number of Haitians that should be let into the country is zero.

To be clear, I don’t want most anyone allowed in anymore, but I decided to pick on Haiti because it’s the latest foreign hellhole that will soon be sending in droves of awful people trying to escape the very problems that they created by moving to Nebraska or some place so they can bring the wonders of Voodoo (yes, they still do that) and cannibalism (yes, they still do that) and rape (yes, it’s the national sport) to the Cornhusker state.

As I said, this isn’t entirely a Haitian thing, though they’ve managed the impossible: they make communist Cuba communist Venezuela, and all of the Mad Max® movies look like paradise in comparison to Tuesday in Haiti.

This is what roadside assistance looks like in Haiti.

No, the biggest reason I don’t want Haitians to come to the United States is because I really feel empathy for the Haitians and wouldn’t want to expose them to the horrors of our country. First, it’s a philosophical question: The GloboLeftElite tells me that all cultures are equal. So, if all cultures are equal, I think that depriving Haiti of their best and brightest is selfish. They should stay home and keep their totally equal culture going.

I mean, why shouldn’t they give cannibalism a chance?

Point Two: I’ve been reliably informed that the culture of the United States is filled with systemic racism. Why would we want to bring more People of Color into a situation where they would face that? Why would they want to come here? I realize that Point One says that all cultures are equal, but it’s been pointed out that the culture of the United States is bad, so we cannot in good conscience let anyone else in.

Ever. We’re that bad. We need to keep everyone else from living here.

Why does the expression on Jerry Nadler’s face always say, “Oh, my, that wasn’t a fart.”?

Point Three: I’ve been reliably informed that the United States, while having no culture of its own, steals the culture of various people across the world. Imagine the horror! White teenagers are making tacos, TACOS!, at the local Taco Bell® thus stealing the sacred food that only Hispanics can make and despite the GloboLeftElite© being in favor of diversity.

An aside: I came up with a climate-friendly way to stop the illegal alien problem while fighting Climate Change™ by turning all the illegal aliens into food to stop them from entering the most carbon dioxide creating economy on the planet and killing us all. Sadly, this would be (I am reliably informed by the GloboLeftistElite) cultural appropriation from Haitians. Perhaps we should ship all of the illegal aliens to Haiti to allow them to be consumed, thus feeding Haitians and slowing Global Warming®?

Point Four: The Haitians might feel bad because there are still statues left standing of amazing Americans and Europeans that have achieved things that Haitians didn’t, like killing but not eating lots of Japanese or going to the Moon and not killing or eating anyone up there. We really want to spare their feelings.

How dare the Japanese deny Haitian culture!

Point Five: The vast majority of Black Studies programs in the United States wouldn’t be good for Haitians because they do not, in fact, deal much with black people, but rather with how evil white people (and now those sneaky Asians) have been bad to black people. Since the vast majority of Haitian History (since 1800 or so) has been more-or-less white people free, these college courses would just confuse them.

Point Six: Many Haitians actively say that they hate white people. Good Heavens! The United States is literally filled with white people! I think we should take them (and every other illegal alien that hates white people) and help them by sending them to a country without white people, like Wakanda or the upper part of the Amazon drainage basin.

Point Seven: The United States is one of the most slave-free countries in the world today. In all of the countries of North and South America, Haiti is number two in terms of per capita modern slavery. Why would we want to impose our anti-slavery cultural imperialism on the absolutely equal (according to the GloboLeftElite) slavery practices of Haitians?

In summary, we need to keep Haitians out of the United States because we don’t want to expose them to the toxic United States culture (which also does not exist) which would infect their totally-not-awful-and-not-at-all-a-hellhole-culture-which-is-totally-equivalent-to-the-United-States-except-it’s-better-because-the-Haitians-aren’t-imperialist-colonizers.

Could be worse. Could be raining.

In summary, Haiti is only in trouble because we have tried to help it in the past. We could help by keeping the Haitians in there by sinking their boats and not sending them food except for airdropping them the illegal aliens who are currently suffering oppression and racism by being in the United States.

See? Hard problems have simple Wilder solutions.

27 Thoughts for Friday

“I thought so. You remember our business partner Marsellus Wallace, don’t you Brett?” – Pulp Fiction

I got a CAPTCHA that asked me to select pictures of tractors and farm equipment. That’s really not my field.

I’ve trotted out lists of thoughts from time to time. The lists change based on (hopefully) me getting more wisdom over time. Anyway, here’s this year’s list:

Be on time. Seriously, it’s simple. People notice, and people care. It’s a basic principle of respect for someone not to waste their time waiting for me.
Never be a little late to work or a little early to leave. Especially on a regular basis. Being late an hour once every quarter is much better than being late a minute each day for sixty work days. An hour looks like something happened. A minute looks like I don’t care.
Little changes at the start make big difference in the result. I’ve seen many people start their careers and become experts at the subject of their first assignment. Many of them made a lot of money by knowing a whole lot about a little.

Who knew Cathy was Haitian?

Choosing not to decide is a choice. I love reminding people that “doing nothing” is always an option. But it is a choice. And it has just as many consequences as “doing something”.
For me, opportunities always showed up when I needed them, even if I didn’t understand it at the time. Thankfully in my case the opportunities weren’t subtle.
After college, in a high achieving profession, it becomes rarer and rarer to be the smartest guy in the room, and someone in the room is often an expert at something in which I’m a novice. True humility allows a good leader to understand the capabilities they need, and not have to be “right” all the time.
The biggest fights are over the smallest things. It seems that no one ever snaps over the house being on fire on the day the insurance payment was late – it’s that the trash wasn’t taken out on time and we have to hang on to it for another week.

What does Soylent Green® taste like? It varies from person to person.

People understand $10,000 more than they understand $10,000,000. The difference between $10,000 and $11,000 means more to most people than the difference between $10 million and $10 billion. Most people can’t understand more than seven magnitudes of anything.
Outcome is less important than process. When working on life, I try to not care about what the outcome will be. I go in, make the best choices I can, and do the best work that I can. If it works, it works, if it doesn’t, I try to adjust to be better next time.
Outcome is still important. Dead is dead, so sometimes the outcome is final.
The last outcome is always final. How many refunds?
No refunds.

My chute didn’t open once when I was skydiving. I didn’t panic. I figured I had the rest of my life to figure it out.

Nothing breeds success like success, and nothing breeds failure like failure. I’ve been on streaks where I literally could not lose. I’ve been on streaks where I couldn’t win.
Corollary to 13: I’m never as bad or as good as my failures or successes. The streaks where I couldn’t win set me up with the habits I needed to win.
Beating myself up is a loser’s game.
Most people don’t think about me very much and will have a hard time remembering my name after five years. As much as I like to think I’m the center of my story (and I am) I’m only a minor player in the stories of most other people.
Corollary to 16: Except where I’m their personal villain. Then I live on forever and will definitely have someone who will want to be at my funeral, if nothing more than to make sure I’m dead.

What was the name of that Mexican villain in the Bible? Poncho Pilate?

Protect the relationships with the people that genuinely do care about me in a positive way so maybe the sad people at my funeral will outnumber the happy ones.
Listen to people, really listen. They tell me amazing things if I just listen. One time I was interviewing a guy and he mentioned committing a felony at a previous job. Yeah, I kept a straight face. No, he didn’t get the job.
If someone says I’m wrong, I need to have the humility to embrace that and see if they’re right. Especially when my first impulse is to try to defend myself. Even if I’m not wrong, I at least understand why they thought I was wrong.
When I’m wrong, admit it and apologize. It’s amazing how admitting error makes other think I’m more trustworthy. And apologies? Why not apologize, have some sort of problem with that?

Okay, he didn’t say that. But he’s the first person I thought of.

Being good at several things is enough for success, if they’re the right several things. Being an expert at useless things might be fun, but mostly nothin’ times nothin’ is, hmmm, carry the nothin’ . . . nothin’.
If I spend my life waiting for the next thing, I’ll spend my entire life waiting and not living. The journey is the point, and rushing through it just gets me to my grave faster.
Past behaviors are almost always the key to predicting future behaviors. Leopards, spots, etc. When I listen to a person’s story, I realize that often they’re also telling me their future.
Success is based on the last thing I did, not the next. People pay to keep me around because they think I might be able to do it again.

Orphans are often very successful at business – someone told them “Go big or go home” so they didn’t have much choice.

Could I have done better? Could I have done worse? Yes. I did how I did. Success is based on how I change what I’m going to do to be better.
Power and money are not the same thing. Just ask the rich guys after Robespierre or Lenin took over.

Okay, that’s 3³ thoughts for Friday. See you on Monday!

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: It’s All Planned

“Did everything go as planned?” – Pulp Fiction

I had some chips at midnight on Saturday. It was a snackrifice.

Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Open War.

Volume V, Issue 10

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

I’m keeping the clock at two minutes to midnight, probably will roll back next month.

In this issue: Front Matter – All Of This Is Planned – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Border In Five Memes – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 810 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

All Of This Is Planned

When I look at the road we’re on to Civil War 2.0, it has not gone unnoticed that the enemy creating this isn’t outside the United States. As much as the GloboLeft likes to call out Russia, others see things perhaps a little more clearly.

Nayib Bukele is the president of El Salvador. What has he done for them? He’s broken the back of organized crime, by this one crazy tactic: arresting criminals and putting them in jail and getting gender ideology “contrary to nature, contrary to God” out of El Salvador’s schools. He has a 90% approval rating from El Salvadorans, so of course the GloboLeft hates him.

What is the response of the GloboLeft? Isn’t it obvious? First is the rotting the minds of youth. The map above should be clear enough – it’s a symptom of a plan coming together.

Although this is from Canada, it’s very, very clear that the agenda is simple: they want the kids. It has long been the GloboLeft’s desire to use propaganda to get children at their most vulnerable and split them from their parents.

Things like this idea are created to humiliate people. None of that can make a “more green” planet since the energy used in the process more than offsets any “benefits”. No, this is humiliation and dehumanization.

Canada, again, has show the goal. They want to stop making any new roads outside of cities. Live in a rural area? No roads for you. And, last I checked, Canada has a lot more rural availability than most nations outside of Russia.

Now they’re even giving TED® talks about how literally any sort of degeneracy is a sacrament.

And the lawfare is continual. The New York Soros GloboLeft Attorney General, Letitia James, is on a a tear. Donald Trump is just the most prominent of her use of the law to destroy people. Another target besides the new one listed above? VDARE. VDARE is a fairly prominent anti-immigration website that Ms. James has hit with amazingly broad subpoenas and is costing them tens of thousands of dollars – even though they aren’t in New York. You can read more about that here (LINK).

She’s also gone against the NRA, suing them. The important question: why would anyone want to do business in New York?

So, Nayib Bukele is right. It’s all being taken apart from the inside.

Violence and Censorship Update

Several readers have reported to me (via email) that they were unsubscribed or that their subscriptions are filtered out as spam. FYI. Might it be random? Sure. It might.

I’ll (mostly) let the memes speak for themselves. Foreign stories are included as they often foreshadow attempts in the United States.

I guess this one involves both censorship and violence?

This one is especially fun: Canada has a bill that punishes hate crimes, which can be reported anonymously, and that do not require evidence with huge fines and up to life imprisonment.

Crabs reading? Forbidden knowledge.

People reading? That’s racist!

Looks like the plan is working.

I thought they loved science?

If only they could be sent home to Make Eritrea Great Again.

Yeah, that’s the history of the top Google® executive in charge of A.I.

Looks like the New York Times censors . . . food.

Biden’s Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again. Why? The GloboLeft are economic geniuses, right?

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time. They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings. As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence is flat. Winter is in, and riots aren’t as fun in galoshes.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is slightly down.

Economic:

Economic numbers did a slight dive. I wonder if this is the new American Dream?

Illegal Aliens:

Highest January. Ever.

Also, other people are noticing:

The Border, In Five Memes

LINKS

As usual, links this month are courtesy of Ricky. Thanks so much, Ricky!!

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762833481682264080

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762297111381455043

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762568451581681721

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762225168645059071

https://twitter.com/i/status/1610431809334149120

https://twitter.com/i/status/1763481437372567971

https://twitter.com/i/status/1761129463218139238

https://twitter.com/i/status/17636130393229273

https://twitter.com/i/status/1760862306005590149

Good Guys

https://youtube.com/shorts/tQGuha2gpQw?si=kjoLNVF2y0qd7wdE

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1759109053630800211

https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-worker-fired-shoplifters-retail-theft-fight-problems-2024-2

https://www.wtoc.com/2023/07/24/woman-gets-job-back-lowes-after-being-attacked-while-trying-stop-shoplifting/

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article285835356.html

One Guy

https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/2024/02/28/louisiana-expands-gun-rights-for-self-defense-against-criminals-with-concealed-carry-bill/72765215007/

https://www.wowt.com/2024/02/09/nebraska-legislators-consider-bill-alter-self-defense-laws/

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/beltway-confidential/2894180/arizonas-commonsense-self-defense-bill/

https://www.oxygen.com/kill-or-be-killed/crime-news/how-to-watch-kill-or-be-killed-an-oxygen-true-crime-series

Body Count

https://twitter.com/MakisMD/status/1754830517986566210

https://thehighwire.com/editorial/why-are-young-adults-having-more-heart-attacks-the-level-of-denial-is-stunning/

https://newsone.com/playlist/black-men-boys-who-were-killed-by-police/item/5

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2024-02-13_11-38-28.png

https://www.prri.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/PRRI-Jan-2024-Gen-Z-Draft.pdf

https://twitter.com/noble_x_x_/status/1758149565251784710

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-68244963

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-81749d7c-d0a0-48d0-bb11-eaab6f1e6556

Vote Count

https://twitter.com/eyeslasho/status/1757461240421449806

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1759305508584882680

https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nevada/nevada-identifies-voter-history-errors-on-website-fixes-underway-3003358/

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/11/data-specialist-presses-georgia-look-voters-cast-ballots-wrong-jurisdictions/

https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/08/exclusive-see-the-grave-markers-of-long-dead-residents-listed-on-michigans-voter-rolls/

https://www.justfactsdaily.com/elon-musk-is-right-and-the-ny-times-is-wrong-about-illegal-voting-by-non-citizens

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-2023-review

https://heartland.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Feb-24-2020-Election-Analysis-vWeb_Final.pdf

Civil War

https://uproxx.com/movies/civil-war-alex-garland-details-february-2024-update/

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/02/could-united-states-be-headed-national-divorce

https://www.themirror.com/news/politics/cpac-donald-trump-voters-warn-355149

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/texas-is-spoiling-for-a-civil-war/

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/kristi-noem-war-texas-border-standoff-1234960568/

https://www.wired.com/story/russia-disinformation-campaign-civil-war-texas-border/

https://realclearwire.com/articles/2024/01/27/the_geopolitics_of_world_war_iii_1007840.html

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/comes-thermidor/

Kardashians And The Cult Of Growth

“A future of economic growth, freedom, and happiness.” – Robocop

I had a hen who wanted to study economics. She was something of a mathemachicken.

“The economy grew at an annualized rate of 4.9% in the third quarter of 2023.”

And my response: so what?

There is a Cult of Growth in the world. In the United States, at least, that growth was literally in the DNA of the young country – there was lots of space and it was only filled with some pesky Indians who didn’t have a lot of resistance to smallpox or lead, some buffalo, no zoning, and lots of empty land to build Blockbuster Video® stores.

So, off my ancestors went. The idea was simple – fill the country from sea to sea with farms and businesses, eventually mines and mills and railroads and factories and highways. No one really planned it, and there weren’t economists reporting on unemployment figures to Rutherford B. Hayes.

What does the “B” stand for? Babebandit.

The growth that the United States experienced was amazing, and it was real. People built those farms and businesses and mines and railroads and factories and highways. That sort of growth allowed the creation of amazing wealth and prosperity because it was enduring and built upon itself. In those decades of growth, the United States experienced not diminishing returns but increasing returns as the steel mills fed the oil boom which fed the creation of the automotive industry and interstates.

Add in a few thousand nuclear weapons, and this growth of actual productivity and wealth production allowed the country to achieve tremendous national prosperity during a time of relative safety. Some would maintain that this prosperity peaked in 1973, but when you look at the relative availability of exceedingly cheap “stuff” – it was probably later than that. Perhaps a good case could be made for the 1980s when Blockbuster Videos™ roamed the land like a great majestic beast, spewing properly rewound videotapes and Raisinets® to all.

Regardless of when that exact date is, it is likely past.

Your momma is so old she rewinds Netflix® videos before logging off.

What was once achievable on a single income now requires (in many cases) two incomes. People of the past always thought that new labor-saving devices would accrue benefits to the worker, and we’d see a two- or three-day work week. Instead, we see people working more hours for less (relative) pay.

Why is that? I mean, the economy grew, right?

Yes, it did. But the way the economy grew, fueled by illegal aliens contributed to lower wages. The argument could be made that that the economic activity, the growth from these added workers helped everyone. Well, no. Illegals are certainly a net negative when everything is accounted for – welfare, roads, schools, medical care, voting GloboLeft, and Kardashian body hair.

I think she’s got so much plastic in her that if she swims it’s technically littering.

And the “growth” that we saw in many cases was the productive bit of the economy being hollowed out and shipped off overseas. Why? Because regulation increased in the United States (it never goes down) and it was easier to start and run a factory in Malasia than it is in Maine. And if iMegaCorp® can ship the factory over and increase corporate profits by 2%, they’ll do it.

Why? They’re owned by the people who make bad growth.

What’s bad growth? Well, the financial sector. It should be set up not as a casino or a place where the businesses make money selling money.

Growth is not always good. And it’s not always desirable. Let’s take an example: if I decided I wanted to gain a pound of weight next week, the healthy way to do it would be to put on a pound of muscle through exercise. But the easy way to put on a pound would be to pound some beers and milk shakes.

I believe her pronouns are HerShey.

The United States could do the same – we could increase the size of the economy by producing more and better cars or computers or flat panel displays, or bulldozers. Or, we could increase the size of the economy by ChaseCitiFargo™ charging extra fees on overdrafts and GoldmanBlackRock© buying a company, loading it up with debt that it can’t pay, and then selling it piecemeal for a 15% profit.

One of these makes a more productive society. The other is the equivalent of two people selling a house back and forth for 10% more each time and talking about all the wealth that they created.

So, not all growth is good, and not all increased profit is increased wealth. One economy can make stuff, the other just makes magical made-up profits. I’ve made the argument for some time that China’s economy is fine. It is. They know how to make stuff, so they are fundamentally more stable than the United States because the growth in China wasn’t in financial shenanigans, it was in productive stuff.

Did you know it’s illegal to water your plants in China? It causes the microphones to rust.

Does China have all sorts of debt? Yes, yes they do. Have they produced a lot of suspect crap in the past, especially for internal consumption? Yes, yes they have, and probably still do. Doesn’t matter.

Their economy isn’t based on “growth” that occurs only on paper, and only due to paper even though people smoke in China to get fresh air.

They don’t worship the Cult of Growth.

Do I want to live there? Nope.

Again, there’s good news – this system can’t last, so it won’t.

The ride, however may be bumpy . . . as we get to rebuild it – on healthy growth this time.