Category: Competence

The Looming A.I. Market Bubble

“Don’t try to fight it.  You’ll get brain bubbles, strokes, aneurysms.” – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Is bubble wrap part of pop culture?  (All memes as-found)

Elon Musk promises a supercomputer cluster bigger than Texas that’ll make Skynet™ look like an HP-15C®.  It even has a creepy name for those who know film history:  Colossus™.  Of course, it’s going to require more power than a quiver of Antifa® mainlining Red Bull© during a riot.  I like that.  A herd of cattle, a murder of crows, and a quiver of Antifa©.

But it’s not just Elon.  There’s also Sam Altman, that pint-sized messiah of OpenAI© is out here swearing he’ll build data centers the size of Afghanistan, all to birth the AI-god-emperor that’ll finally figure out why fish from Long John Silver’s® always tastes like regret.

But here’s the kicker:  this might be the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.  If When this AI bubble pops, it may very well make the dotcom crash look like look like a lost wallet.

On recent analysis I saw was over here (LINK) by Ed Zitron, and no, I’m not going to make fun of his last name as tempting as that might be since he writes well.  When I read it, it wasn’t behind the paywall, but it was also insightful.  Trust me.

His conclusion?

According to Ed’s analysis, the AI hype train is barreling toward a cliff made of physics, bad math, and even worse economics.  If Mr. Zitron is correct, trillions of dollars are being flushed down the toilet on promises that of a technical revolution which, while automating many boring tasks, unfortunately won’t replace the staff at the DMV.

“Oh, yeah?  You and what army?  Oh, that army.” – Cicero

First off, the promises.

OpenAI’s® scribbled deals on cocktail napkins that will eventually result in laws prohibiting what they’re doing.  As I mentioned in a previous post, they’re committing to drop $300 billion on Oracle™ over five years.  That amounts to $5 billion a month, which is more than Taylor Swift makes in an entire year.  Just kidding, but that $5 billion a month is a big number, since OpenAI only made $4.3 billion in the first six months of 2025.

OpenAI™ doesn’t have the money, of course, but, hey, it’s a bubble, so who is counting?  They have stock, so if they don’t have cash, they’ll just give you stock.

What is OpenAI© buying with that cash that they don’t have?  A gigawatt-scale data center orgy that’ll need more energy than Switzerland.  Probably.  Maybe.  I’d need to know how many electric toothbrushes the Swiss use to be sure.

But, the problem is, nobody has built a gigawatt data center.

Ever.

Imagine the stock valuations!  Follow me for more tips!

The biggest data centers today top out at maybe 100 megawatts, and that’s if the grid fairies are feeling generous.  Take Stargate Abilene, OpenAI’s© “investment” with Oracle®.  It’s supposed to hit 1.2 gigawatts, but right now?

They’ve got a puny 200-megawatt substation and some jury-rigged natural gas turbines that might squeak out another 350 megawatts if we can talk the Chinese into sending us the rare earth materials to make them.

Reality check:  to run just this one location, they need 1.7 gigawatts total just to cover cooling and losses.  And, it’s in Texas, which is not known for being a good place to keep stuff cold.  They picked a climate where cooling the data center will be like trying to cool my nether regions in a sauna using a hairdryer.

And the power?  Forget it.  Transformers and substations take 2-4 years to build, and we’re fresh out globally.  The article quotes some Bloomberg® wonk admitting they’re slapping together “not the really good” turbines because the premium ones have a seven-year waitlist.

Seven years!  By then, those fancy Nvidia™ H100 GPUs will be as obsolete as Taylor Swift’s ovaries.

None of this is hyperbole.  This is simple math:  Taylor’s really getting up there if she wants to have kids.  But back to the data center.  Roughly, if you have a gigawatt of power that gets you maybe 700 megawatts of actual data center capacity after the universe’s entropy tax.

OpenAI® is pledging 6 gigawatts of AMD® GPUs by late 2026.

No way.

No sites have been picked, no financing has been announced.

No nothing.

It’s like promising to pay off the national debt by spending more so we make it up in . . . volume, yeah, volume discounts.  Now, let’s spice it up with history, because nothing says “wealth wisdom” like learning from suckers who came before.

As I mentioned in the previous post, this is straight out of the dotcom collapse.

17 isn’t a big number, is it?

Remember Cisco™?  Yes, they make good stuff, and they survived.  But back in the year 2000, they were the kings of the internet pipe dream and they hit $69 a share in 2000 bucks.  Yesterday, they were at $68.66, so on an inflation-adjusted basis, they haven’t ever returned to their 2000 peak.  The world realized nobody needed that many routers to email “I can has cheezeburger?” cat pictures.

If that were it, we’d probably be okay.  But Nvidia™ is now priced out at 8% of the entire valuation of the S&P 500.  The “500” in S&P 500 means the largest 500 companies in the United States.  And one company is 8% of it.

This is the highest share of any single company in the history of S&P 500.  Ever.  The top seven tech firms account for 34% of the S&P 500.

Should we worry about that?  Nah.  It’s not like private equity is running out of cash for all of these projects.  Wait, what?  They are, and lots of them are exiting so they have sufficient cash left to buy cocaine and OnlyFans™ girls to snort the coke off of.

The worst part is that the entire thing is so incestuous that it makes a Habsburg family reunion look positively eugenic.  Nvidia™ invests $100 billion in OpenAI® which then invests some other imaginary amount of billions in a deal with Oracle© to buy data centers and stuff them full of Nvidia® GPUs.  The result?  The stock price of each of these companies increases.

This doesn’t look corrupt.  At all.  Ignore the man behind the curtain.

Economically?  It distorts everything.  One estimate was that AI infrastructure spending accounted for 92% of U.S. GDP growth in the first half of this year, all based on debt and soaring stock prices.

OpenAI’s projecting $200 billion revenue and $38 billion profit by 2030?

Cute.  How do they expect to do that as their current business model is selling a dollar’s worth of computations for four cents?  I guess they’ll make it up in volume?

Really, that’s not their bet.  Their bet is that they’ll be the first to the prize:  superhuman intelligence that will do their bidding.  To be clear, if they got that, it might be worth it.  For Sam Altman.  Or for AI if it decides to go full Cyberdyne Systems and make Sam clean toilets.

A coincidence or a collapse?

But certainly not for you, and not for me.  It would be an economic dislocation that would be the biggest in human history, even more than my divorce.  If AI turns out to be real, actually disrupting the workforce like a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving, automating jobs left and right:  boom.

Economic collapse.  Trillions in productivity gains?  Nope, it’s trillions in pink slips, ghost towns of cubicles, folks out of work, AI overlords hoarding the pie.  I can see it now, French Revolution 2.0 with robot guillotines from RobotGuillotines.com.

But if AI’s the dud . . . hang on, what’s a dud in this context?

With the trillion plus dollars invested and the distortion to the economy it could be the most successful product in history and still be an economic wrecking ball.  It it’s a dud, then all this investment?

Wasted.

Trillions vaporized on e-waste mountains, exec bonuses, and data centers that won’t be filled for the next century.  This will drag down markets, pensions, and everyone eats ramen for the next decade.

C’mon buddy, you’ve got to earn that van.

If it works?

Collapse.

If it doesn’t work?

Money bonfire and depression.

Thankfully, in almost either scenario we will be able to avoid the real danger to society:  Long John Silver’s®.

It Came From . . . 1996

“I like them French fried potaters.” – Sling Blade

Back when Will Smith was punching aliens and not rocks.

As I noted in the past, I’ve decided to stop mining the 1970s.  The fall off in quality as you go backwards from 1980 is immense.  Yes, there were gems.  But they were surrounded by so much . . . crap.

As it is, we’re moving forward into 1996.  The glory years of the 1980s are gone, but the indy buzz of the 1990s is in full swing and 1996 was an amazing year for movies as far as originality and watchability, far better than 1995.

As usual, no sequels, and in no particular order:

Is this how they got the idea for Dumb and Dumber?

Bio-Dome – Bio-Dome is a silly movie starring Pauly Shore, and you’ll be stupider for having watched it if you can find it since the UN has classified it as a banned weapon.  It has been known to take 10 IQ points off of a typical human.  It is considered “one of the worst films ever made,” which is an achievement in itself.

Boy, that Seonge Glodney can act!

From Dusk till Dawn – I had no idea what to expect when I rented this one.  Did I expect vampires?  Yes.  Did I expect vampires meeting Pulp Fiction and El Mariachi?  No.  Would I change anything about this movie?  Also no.

I am Roboholio!  I need sprockets for my screwhole!

Screamers – Philp K. Dick wrote the original story that this screenplay was based on.  The film lost money, so you might not even have heard of this one.  The original story is far darker, and I think I like it even better than the movie, which is just okay.

Well, now as an animated children’s movie . . .

Broken Arrow – When John Travolta attempts to play a smart guy and Christian Slater attempts to play an upstanding guy, you know you have two actors playing parts that they are fundamentally unsuited for.  Of course it made $150 million, but it was the start of Travolta’s box office decline.

“Give me flank speed, Niles.”  “Oh, are you sure you want that, Frasier?  You know how motion sick you get.” 

Down Periscope – Stupid humor.  Lots of jokes about female breasts and tattoos on delicate areas.  Kelsey Grammer.  Rob Schneider.  Yes, it lost money.  Yes, it’s also funnier than any movie so far this year.

This movie probably would have been worse than Bio-Dome.

Fargo – A movie about an insurance salesman (John Wayne) who is caught up in an existential crisis about his wife (Jane Seymour) and her affair with a younger woman (Gillian Anderson).

The executive decision?  Takeout Italian or Burger King®, again.  Seagal wants Burger King™.  Again.

Executive Decision – Kurt Russell.  Of course I’m going to mention this.  It’s an okay generic action movie, but the funniest part is that they changed the script to kill off Steven Seagal because he was such a dick to work with and everyone hated him.  Allegedly.

The Truth About Romulans and Gorns?

The Truth About Cats & Dogs – A retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac, but involving Uma Thurman at her cutest and Janene Garafalo before she revealed she was insane.  A rom-com, back when they did such things.

Where does Amber Heard sit on a boat?  On the poop deck.

Dead Man – A black and white Western with Johnny Depp, Iggy Pop, Crispin Glover, and Gabriel Byrne?  I caught this on HBO® and was mesmerized.  I don’t want to watch it again to spoil it, since I enjoyed it so much the first time.  Odd film, very odd.  They spent $9 million on it, and the box office was $1 million, so I might have been the only one watching it after my Tivo® suggested it for me.

Run, it’s weather!

Twister – A movie about the weather.  Yeah, whatever.  It was okay.  Made half a billion dollars in 1996, no less.  I still miss Bill Paxton.

I think Cage is now contractually required to play all supporting parts in his movies as well.

The Rock – What if James Bond was put into a US prison.  That’s basically the plot of this movie, with Sean Connery (before he lost the ability to be alive) and Nicolas Cage (before he lost the ability to say “no”).  An okay movie.  Also?  Stupidest warhead design, ever.  Movie made a third of a billion bucks.

They’ve come across the galaxy.  Their goal?  To knock things off of the counter.

Independence Day – Is it a disaster movie or science fiction movie or an action-adventure buddy picture?  Why not all three?  This movie hit, and hit big, pulling in nearly a billion dollars on . . . a silly plot where an Apple® notebook saves the day because alien computers don’t have a Norton™ Antivirus© subscription.

Vaderspotting?

Trainspotting – This movie features Obi-Wan Kenobi as a Scottish heroin addict who cuts off the legs of his best friend who then becomes the right-hand man of the Emperor of Scotland.  It’s depressing, mostly, so it was ranked by 150 film insiders as the “10th best British film ever” which I assume would be after everything that Rowan Atkinson was in.

If you get a job as an Egyptian god, you’re Set for life.

The Trigger Effect – Most movies don’t get TEOTWAWKI right, and The Trigger Effect is no different, but it has Elizabeth Shue in it.  You can at least stare at her for a while as Los Angeles collapses when the electricity goes out.

Bart discovers the martini.

Swingers – Gen X dating angst in an artsy indy movie that made 20x the production costs.  I enjoyed it, but I was a Gen X dude dating at the time.

I reckon there’s a reason they didn’t make this one.  Spoiler, they just let him out again and he kills someone else.  Again.

Sling Blade – “Uh-huh, I reckon I shore would like some mustard with my biscuits.  Some folks calls it a pizza cutter.  I calls it a ring blade.”  Not a good date movie, apparently.  Which is good for me because some other guy took The Mrs. to this one on a date, and that was their first and last date.

Honorable Mention:  Happy Gilmore, The Frighteners, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Beavis and Butthead Do America, The Arrival.

Okay, I got enough good movies out of 1997 to try again with 1997

Finding Our Way Back To Wealth

“We’ll just double time it to your house, and grab the tickets before heading to the train station for the 3:45 to DETROIT!  ROCK!  CITY!” – Detroit Rock City

When they filmed one of the battle scenes for a Transformers movie in Detroit, they had to use half of the CGI budget to repair buildings.

Wealth.

It’s the golden goose that societies have all chased, but most forget where the eggs come from.  I assure you it’s no longer Detroit, but we’ll get to that.

Spoiler: it’s not just the land, the trees, or the shiny rocks or sticky fluids underground.  Sure, Saudi Arabia’s sitting on enough oil to lube up Oprah with enough left over for a dozen Kardashians, but without the brainpower to drill, refine, and ship it, they’d still be herding camels and wondering what a Ferrari is.

The same goes for North America.  For millennia the fertile plains forests were untouched.  It was a backwater until European misfits turned it into the world’s breadbasket and factory floor.

Wealth isn’t just stuff; it’s the ingenuity, sweat, and sheer cussedness of people making things happen.  The dirt’s nice, don’t get me wrong, and someone, somewhere has to have it or else things would get mighty hungry might fast.  Iowa’s black soil grows corn like it’s auditioning for a role in a Monsanto® ad as a glyphosate-absorbing sponge.  Canada?  Canada’s got enough timber so it could stack it up and reach the Moon.  They also have nearly that many Indians.

Two peanuts walked into a bar.  And that’s why Monsanto™ has to be stopped.

But Japan?  Japan is a rocky island with zero oil, barely any farmland, and a tendency to shake like a wet dog every few years.  Yet it’s a global powerhouse, punching well above the weight of its country’s size or population.

Why?  The people.

Same with England, Singapore, Taiwan.  No natural resources to speak of, but their folks figured out how to turn ideas into skyscrapers, cars, and microchips.  Even Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth wasn’t something the Saudis turned into wealth.  It was a group of Western engineers and wildcatters that turned that black liquid into gold.

Without them, the Saudis might still be sitting on a lake of useless sludge, arguing over whose camel was the best hump.

North America is the same story, minus the camel arguments.  For thousands of years, the continent had everything: buffalo, forests, rivers teeming with fish.  Yet, outside of some Mesoamerican skull-stacking enthusiasts in Mexico, it was dangerous and dirt-poor.  Why?

Is a monk with wings an air friar?

That’s a big question, because just a few years later the Europeans showed up.  They brought the tools, the technology, and most importantly the mindset to make the place a source of plenty.  By the 19th century, the U.S. was feeding and arming half the world, not because the land changed, but because people did.

They built railroads, factories, and a culture that rewarded hard work over siestas and skull collecting.  Wealth exploded.

For a while.

The GloboLeft thinks wealth comes from a magical printing press.  Since the Soviet Union keeled over in 1991, the world has belonged to the U.S. dollar:  print it, spend it, everybody loves it.  But cash is most definitely not wealth:  at best, it’s just a scorecard. Real wealth comes from production:  making stuff, growing stuff, inventing stuff and developing a moral and trustworthy people.

But now we’re spending our wealth on things that actively destroy the system.

I did once get a three-foot ruler at a yard sale.

Take immigration.  Please.

Unchecked waves of illegals, incentivized to cross borders with freebies?  Not good.  Legal immigrants who think that Western values are an outmoded suggestion that only naïve people would follow?

That’s not a workforce; it’s a drain.

Then there’s the family fiasco.  Single-parent households are mostly moms with no dads.  These mom-led houses represent 65% of black kids and 24% of white kids growing up fatherless in 2020.

The GloboLeft cheers this like it’s fEmALe EmPOwErmENt, but kids without dads are far more likely to drop out, do drugs, or end up in jail.  That’s not building a trustworthy people:  it’s building chaos.  A stable family is like a factory for productive citizens:  break it, and you’re churning out liabilities, not assets.  This is yet another reason I keep banging on the “the family is the base unit of society, not the individual” drum.

In Oklahoma cowboys don’t roll joints – they tumble weed.

We actively pay people to not work.  The Social Security Administration reports disability claims have spiked 20% since 2000, with over 8 million Americans on the rolls by 2023.  Some are legitimate.  Nobody’s knocking the guy who lost a leg in a mill accident (his name is Skip, by the way), but when “anxiety” qualifies you for a lifetime of checks, we’re paying people to sit on the couch instead of building bridges.  That’s wealth destruction, plain and simple.

Healthcare?  That’s another black hole.  The U.S. spends 18% of GDP on it.  $4.5 trillion in 2022.  That’s more than any other nation.

Yet, we get crap for it.  Life expectancy is flat, and obesity is up 40% since 1990. We’re not paying to make people healthier:  we’re bankrolling a system that patches symptoms while folks chug Mountain Dew® and avoid treadmills.  A healthy population works harder, lives longer, creates more, and is happier.  A sick one?  It’s a money pit.

All this anti-wealth nonsense is sold as compassion.  Free money, open borders, no-fault welfare?  It sounds warm and fuzzy until you realize it’s starving the engine that makes societies thrive.  Wealth isn’t the goal.  Wealth is the fuel for a happy, healthy, productive life.  Without it, you get decay, both literal and figurative.  Look at Detroit: once a manufacturing titan, now a ghost town because the focus shifted from making to taking, complete with a demoralized population.

Feel like no one gives a hoot about you?  Try not filing your tax returns.

So how do we get back on track?

Stop pretending money equals wealth.  Reward production.  Cut the incentives for idleness; if you can work, you should.  Fix families by making it easier for dads to stick around and reducing the incentives for women to break up a family for fun and prizes.  Make being a whore shameful again.

Streamline healthcare to focus on prevention, not endless treatments – 30% or so of what will be spent on a human for healthcare during their entire lifetime is in the last year – wouldn’t it be better if their last decade was better?

And secure the borders—nations that can’t control their edges can’t control their economies.  Almost every economic problem this country has is downstream of immigration.

Wealth isn’t in the dirt or the printing press; it’s in the people who turned dirt into crops, ideas into empires.

Let’s stop subsidizing sloth and start hammering out real wealth again. Otherwise, we’re just paving our roads with good intentions.

And we all know where that leads.

Hell, it leads to Hell.

Or Detroit.

Motorcycles, Gold, And Infinite Money

“I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle.” – Terminator 2

Another?  The Spanish Inquisition.

When I was in 8th grade.  I decided I wanted a motorcycle, a dirt bike that I could take back up on the Forest Service and BLM roads.  This was before the Internet, and there were hundreds of miles of roads and trails . . . right behind my house.  The best part was that no driver’s license was required on federal lands.

I announced I was saving up to buy a motorcycle at dinner.  I had a few hundred dollars in my savings account that had been on receive-only mode for birthday and Christmas money since I was five.  Ma Wilder became enraged, “You’ll do no such thing!  Your uncle died in a motorcycle crash!  Why buy one when you can use his?”

I kid.

With a goal in mind, I started saving everywhere I could, and within a month I’d managed to get a quarter of the way there to my goal.

To be honest, at least part of that money likely came from the illegal drug trade.  I mean, why else would I find $50 in cash secured via a rubber-band to some suspicious oregano-looking substance in a Kodak™ film canister at the school?

I did the right thing, and turned it all in to the school secretary and after 30 days they gave me the cash.  Shockingly, no one had showed up to claim that it was there, perhaps since possession with intent to distribute at a school was probably a pretty big deal back then.

No mention was made of the final disposition of the organic products, though the school staff seemed pretty mellow and called me Dr. Feelgood for the rest of the school year.

I won’t say I’m old, but I’m old enough to remember the stoned age.

Back then, money meant cash in a jar under the bed or something rubber-banded to a film cannister containing substances of unknown origin.  It was tangible, untraceable, and not some glitchy app with a trendy name promising me riches if I swipe right on a meme coin.

Fartcoin, that makes sense as investment, right?  It has to be more stable than Zitcoin.

If I were asked to describe the economy at the end of the third quarter of 2025 in on sentence, I‘d say:  “Gold is glittering like it is auditioning for a role in Tarantino’s briefcase, and stocks seem to be high on their own supply.

Never invite a vegan bitcoin owner to dinner. (meme as found)

Let’s take those in order.  Gold just hit $3,806.  Per ounce.  Let’s look closer at what could be causing this:

Part of it is because the dollar is cratering under a mountain of printed funny money.  The other part is because central banks are whispering, “Screw the digital dollar, give me something I can bite.”  The dollar is wheezing like Jerry Nadler (who is the number one search engine hit when I searched for “short fat democrat”) after a flight of stairs.  The dollar is down 5% year-to-date against a basket of currencies.  But gold? It is up 42% in the last year, because in 2025, we still haven’t figured out how to print gold.

Think about it: why hoard ones and zeros when you can stack bars?

Central banks from Beijing to Basel are buying gold like it’s Black Friday at Fort Knox.  Yes, that same United States Bullion Depository which I’ve been told is still totally full and how dare you ask because why don’t you trust us?  And let us be honest, gold is pretty, far prettier than staring at a ledger full of debt that your grandkids will pay off with their kidney sales to overseas oligarchs.

Remember: nothing says “economic stability” like elements that outlast empires.  So, gold is up.

Bond quit as a spy and became a handyman – he was used to taking care of an Oddjob.

In other news this week, here’s the real clown show: Nvidia® just announced a $100 billion investment in OpenAI©, who will promptly funnel cash to Oracle™ for data centers, so they can buy . . . more Nvidia™ chips to power the data centers.  I have no idea how this isn’t the definition of a Ponzi scheme, because it’s a feedback loop so incestuous it makes European royalty blush.  I mean, they’d blush if those genes hadn’t disappeared along with their chins and ability to clot blood.

Nvidia©’s market cap?

$4.47 trillion, equivalent to 13% of the $37 trillion national debt.  All so you can have ChatGPT®.

With this one weird trick, you can make your stock go up forever without any pesky customers. (meme as found)

Tell me this is not an asset bubble?

The S&P® 500 is up 22% year-to-date which is a “totally not a bubble ready to blow-off” number.  I was pretty happy that my individual retirement account had beaten that.  Genius investing?  I wish.  No.  It’s just inflation, with everything from eggs to ETFs doing moonshots as money chases it around.

Nvidia™ is the poster child.  I almost bought some in April when it was around $100.  Today, it was north of $170.  I’m sure that this is totally not a bubble built on recycled cash.

But it’s also not growth:  this is a daisy chain of delusion, where pets.com© high-fives Alta-Vista™ and Cisco® into oblivion.

Sign me up.

Speaking of which, I having saved up a big chunk of money I was stuck at home on spring break.  On Wilder Mountain, fourteen miles from the nearest town, that meant that after the books were read and the models were made, I had to do something.

On the north side of the house, however, there was a huge block of ice left over from compacted snow during the winter – in places it was two feet thick.  I was bored.  I poked around in the garage and found a five-foot-long iron rod, pointed at one end, about an inch and a half in diameter.

If you have never been in 8th grade and so bored you decided to take a harpoon and smash ice for an afternoon, well, you’ve never lived.  It was, actually, fun, especially kicking it out of the shadow of the house into the bright spring sunshine where it glittered and glistened as it melted away.

Okay, right, wailing, not whaling.

However, it had a weird impact on Ma Wilder.

She thought I was trying to help, not realizing I was just bored and being destructive in a socially acceptable way.  She talked with Pa, and, proud of my industriousness, they offered to stake the rest of my motorcycle purchase.

So, don’t give up.  If the Trump economic policy is thrashing around aimlessly breaking stuff hoping that something good will happen, then, heck, maybe we’ll all get motorcycles?

I mean, there are a lot of uncles, right?

Note:  None of this is investment advice.  Even though I’m having a good year, absolutely everyone is having a good year.  I’m expecting the kid at the drive through at McDonald’s® to be giving stock advice soon.  If you stake any of your financial future on advice from an Internet humorist, you deserve what happens to your portfolio.

H-1Begone

“India’s a black hole.” – World War Z

I have an account on X® but use it only intermittently.  I follow a few accounts that make me chuckle, and also follow a few that I absolutely disagree with.  Generally, on a usual day when I posted, a few thousand people seeing my posts was really good.  They’ve changed the algorithm to the point where trolling really limits who can see you, so the fun I used to have with trolling the powerful just results in me being auto-muted for months.

That’s okay.  Who cares how many people see my memes?

Well, on Friday something magical happened.  I’ve been preparing another post about India and H-1B visas and so I have a folder full of memes.  It was at that point that X™ erupted in a joyous spasm:

Trump had signed an Executive Order on H-1B visas.  They hadn’t read it, but it was announced that every H-1B visa would require a payment of $100,000 each year as a fee.

Each year.

And it started now.  Indians in India had to get back nearly immediately or they’d have to pay.  Of course, those were later walked back, and now it’s a one-time fee for new applications, but it’s a start, and I think we should push for the annual fee, and include existing visa holders.

I was utterly amazed at the joyous party going on X™.  I had underestimated two things:  the first is the amount of nationalism still out there.  I had expected it was somewhere around a third of the country.  I think it’s over that now, maybe as high as 70%.

That’s wonderful.

The second surprise to me was just how quickly Indians had devastated their reputation in the United States and in the world.  I’m pretty sure they’re now more hated than any other group.  I’ve seen several polls that indicate a strong preference to getting legal Indians out over deporting illegal aliens.

Wow.

But it makes sense.  Legal Indians oscillate between two states:  utter contempt for everyone else and utter submission.  Recently, they’ve been stuck on the utter contempt setting.  And they hate white people and want us to die.  Here are some examples of that:

They really despise the people that they fight to live near.  Why, then, do they fight so hard to get here?

Because India is really awful.  In the past, people used to think about India and think of how mysterious, mystical, and spiritual it was.  Except now we have the Internet and known how awful it is.  India is so bad that Indians hate India and other Indians and even being Indian.

 

 

But the fatigue has set in.  People are very, very tired of Indians.  Most importantly, women are getting tired of Indians.  Indian men are at the utter bottom of the dating pool, and those single women (who tend to vote GloboLeft) are actually offended that Indian men think they have a shot with them.

This is good.  Perhaps the false idea of “diversity is our greatest strength” is dying, and if Indians are responsible, well, great!

How you can help is by applying for H-1B jobs at JOBS.NOW.  It’s easy, and each job application, if unfairly dismissed, can set you up for a lawsuit against the company.  And, if they take the application and judge it meets the criteria, they can’t continue with the H-1B process and the foreigner will be sent home.  There are even people who will help you file the complaint if you’re unfairly ruled out.

As our grads need jobs, I don’t mind sending them home.  And most people in America seem to agree – my puny X© account got over 270,000 views in the last 36 hours.

Who says you shouldn’t drink and tweet?

I want to end this post with a thought:  I feel no ill will to Indians in India.  I hope that they do well, and turn their country from the hellhole that it is into a wonderful country.  I hope they make India great.

By going back to and staying in India.

Things Are Not Alright

“Hey, business is business.  You use a gun.  I use a fountain pen.  What’s the difference?  Let’s put it in my terms:  you’re in a hostile takeover, you snatch us up for some green mail, but you’re not expecting some poison pill to be running around the building, am I right?  Hans, bubby, I’m your white knight.” – Die Hard

When the S&P 500 and the moslems merge, you really won’t be able to talk badly about the profit. (all memes as-found)

A recent study shows that young people, those under 40, are souring on capitalism.

According to the poll from Rasmussen released just last week, a whopping 62% of voters aged 18 to 39 think the economy is unfair to their generation.  In a massive change from the Cold War generations, 55% are open to radical redistribution of wealth.

The kids are not alright with the system that built the iPhone® and the Tesla™

I don’t blame them.

I remember when I was a kid, capitalism was the golden ticket and was counterbalanced by soulless, heartless communism.  And capitalism seemed like a good bet.  Work hard, play by the rules, and you could climb the ladder, get the house, get a couple of cars and a few kids, and put your mark on the world.

Now?

The entry-level jobs that used to teach kids responsibility, grit, and how to deal with a bad boss are vanishing faster than my hairline.  Back when I was a kid, we had jobs that ended up building character.  McDonald’s®?  That was for teenagers flipping burgers and learning that the customer is not always right, but the manager is always yelling.

Today?

McDonald’s© is for the 65-year-old retiree who needs a discount on his Big Mac™ to supplement Social Security.  Sure, they might hire a kid, but only if the kid is over 20 and speaks three languages.

What about delivering papers?

Ah, this was the classic bike-riding gig where you dodged dogs and learned about early mornings.  That job went the way of the dinosaurs when people started asking themselves why they were paying for someone to deliver them a small part of the Internet each day.  Now, the desperate 45-year-old single dad with a rusty van delivers what is left, because kids on bikes?  They don’t have cars and some might even still live with their parents.

And do not get me started on mowing lawns for local businesses.  Try that today, and you will run smack into child labor laws, OSHA regulations, and corporate insurance policies that make hiring a kid riskier than skydiving without a parachute.  One slip on a wet lawn, and the business owner is sued into oblivion.

The kid jobs, the training wheels of the workforce, are all snapped up by oldsters or, failing that, illegals.  Want to pick apples on a farm?  Sorry, buddy, the illegals have that covered, and they do it cheaper than a robot, unless you’re talking about the Juan Deere™ 4000®.

Or how about construction?

Same story.  Hammers and nails are handled by folks who crossed the border with the same speed as a Black Friday shopper looking for buy one get ten free corn dogs and if tu no habla español, you’re not getting the job because that’s all the crew speaks.

And trades?  Welding, plumbing, even semi-truck driving?  Recent reports show illegals are flooding those fields too.  Remember that scandal last month where trucking companies were busted hiring undocumented drivers en masse?

Who let this happen?

The CEOs, of course.  They lobbied for loose borders so Paco could make tacos and Sikhs with mustaches could create semi crashes.  It’s like inviting wolves to guard the sheep, but the wolves are telling the sheep how great the quarterly profits are going to be.

Fine, let’s skip the blue-collar path.  Go to college.  When I was a kid, that was the advice everyone gave, and it worked.  Michael Lewis, the author who wrote Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, and The Big Short, graduated from Princeton®.

With a degree in art history.

Yes, art history, not finance or engineering.  Before you could say “Van Gogh’s other ear,” Lewis was trading bonds at Salomon Brothers, raking in millions.  Me?  I had multiple job offers right out of school, and this was during a downturn when the economy was flatter than Sunday morning’s beer.  College was a great idea.

But what has happened since?  College has morphed into a debt trap sold as enlightenment and a four-year climbing wall party.  Tuition costs have skyrocketed since the 1970s.  According to data from the College Board® the average tuition and fees at public four-year institutions have increased by over 1,200% since 1980 when adjusted for general inflation.

That is not a typo.

In 1970-71, the average cost for in-state public college tuition was about $358 in current dollars.  Today?  Tuition is over $10,000 annually, and that doesn’t include room, board, booze, or broads.

Private schools?

Forget it:  they have jumped from around $1,700 to nearly $38,000.   A year, which is like paying Ferrari® prices for a Yugo® diploma.  Universities are pricing education like it is bottled water in the Sahara and packing that money up and giving it to GloboLeft professors that hate you.

And student loans?  These are not your grandpa’s loans; they can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, making them worse than indentured servitude.  We hand these toxic deals to our stupidest (young) people, and watch them drown in debt averaging $30,000 per borrower.

Oh, and the job market?

CEOs love importing infinity H-1B Indians to snatch tech jobs at slave wages, cratering salaries for Americans.  Want to code?

Good luck competing with a workforce willing to live in vans down by the river.  And if you are white?  Navigate the DEI gauntlet first, where Indians hire their own and call you racist if you notice.

The CEOs?  They love this, or it wouldn’t be this way.  Period.

Capitalism is not a suicide pact.  This version, devoid of morality and family focus, is exactly that: a thin veil over quarterly profits at the expense of everything else.  Even small changes make a huge difference.  Kentucky’s new shared custody law has already slashed divorces by 25 percent, just by making shared custody of kids the presumption. Imagine if we removed alimony, child support mandates that incentivize divorce, and welfare traps that break families?

That would be a real family-friendly policy, not this nonsense where the state plays dad and mom can divorce for fun and prizes.

And the CEOs?

If they knowingly hire illegals, ship them to jail.  Let them flip burgers for real when they get out.  If they push H-1Bs, force them to relocate to Calcutta, since that is what they are turning America into: a third-world call center with first-world prices.

So, why are kids turned off capitalism?

Because it has been hijacked by the very people who should be its stewards.

The Rasmussen poll nails it:  36 percent of young voters are struggling financially, and 76 percent want government to nationalize major industries if it means fairness.  This is a warning shot that is leading to failing governments across the world right now, from Nepal to France to Argentina.

We can fix this.

Deport the illegals flooding jobs, kill the H-1B program, make college affordable again allowing student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy so silly degrees won’t be financed, and prioritize families with rule changes that discourage splitting up.

Restore the dream where a kid can mow lawns, go to college without debt slavery, buy a house, and raise a family without the system screwing them at every turn.

Politicians ignore this at their own peril.  The managers (the people) are yelling.

The A.I. Bubble: Two Outcomes

“The ban on research and development into artificial intelligence is, as we all know, a holdover from the Cylon Wars.” – Battlestar Galactica (2004)

When I asked my mom if I was ugly, she said, “I’ve told you not to talk to me in public.”  (All memes as found.)

I remember the dotcom bubble.

Back in the late ’90s, everyone was throwing cash at anything with a “.com” slapped on it.  Anything.  Take Pets.com™, which had the idea that they could take orders for dog food online and that would lead to them being worth a trillion dollars.  Instead?  They spent $11.8 million on ads which resulted in $619,000 of total sales.  But wait, there’s more!  Their business strategy was to sell their products at 30% of what they paid for them!

Genius!  I suppose they thought they could make it up on volume?

That’s just one example, and there are thousands of companies that burned through money like cocaine-addled chipmunks going through nuts.  Billions of dollars vanished, but hey, at least we got Jeff Bezos managed to get a slightly used wife out of it.

Fast-forward to 2025, and we just may be in Dotcom 2.0: the AI edition.

This time, it’s not websites filled with dancing hamsters.  Nope.  Data centers are sprouting like marijuana in a Colorado hippie’s backyard.  Chipsets are piling up like Indians in Canada.  The spending is insane on this bubble, and if history’s any guide, the pop could echo for decades.

The source of this frothy mess?

Massive investments in AI infrastructure.  In the first half of 2025 alone, spending on AI data centers and related gear added more to U.S. GDP growth than all consumer spending combined.  This is about $75 billion from AI infra versus $69 billion from folks buying lattes and lawnmowers.

I tried to get the lid of my pen for ten minutes.  Nothing was working.  Then it clicked.

That’s right: Big Tech’s server farms are propping up the economy more than shopping. Companies like Microsoft®, Google®, and Meta® are pouring trillions into building these behemoths, buying up NVIDIA® chips like they’re the last Twinkies® in a zombie apocalypse. It’s not just servers; it’s cooling systems, fiber optics, and enough wiring for George Bailey to finally lasso the Moon.

Why?

Because AI needs compute power like a teenager needs a cell phone:  continually and without gratitude.

So, how long can this bender go on before someone yells “last call”?

Analysts are projecting explosive growth through 2030 but they also told people that Pets.com® made sense.  Bubbles don’t burst on schedule, they pop when reality bites.  McKinsey estimates we’ll need $6.7 trillion worldwide by 2030 just to keep up with compute demands from the various AI products, while the global AI data center market is forecasted to balloon from $236 billion in 2025 to $933 billion by 2030, growing at a scorching 31.6% yearly.

Where will the power come from?  10 gigawatts of new data center capacity will break ground this year alone, with construction at record levels and power transmission delays stretching to four years in some spots.

Before electricity, were people sentenced to death in the acoustic chair?

Let’s extrapolate this:

If spending keeps doubling every couple of years, as it has since ChatGPT lit the fuse, we’re looking at a timeline where the frenzy peaks around 2028-2030.  By then, data centers could consume as much electricity as Gavin Newsom’s blow dryer, and the supply chain for chips and rare earth metals starts buckling.

Analysts predict data center power demand surging, but what if AI hits diminishing returns?  We’ve seen it before: the dotcom buildout assumed infinite internet growth, but when the stunning genius of selling products for 70% less than you bought them for didn’t pay off, the house of cards folded.  Rapidly.

If AI doesn’t deliver massive productivity gains or the company can’t figure out how to make it up on volume, investors pull the plug.  My guess?  This bubble could inflate for another 3-5 years, then deflates when ROI reports come in looking like a kid’s lemonade stand profits for some companies.

Salmon don’t watch cable TV.  They prefer streams.

It’s not just the data centers themselves; the ripple effects are creating mini-bubbles in related bits of the economy.  AI’s thirst for electric power is turning it into the new oil.  The International Energy Agency projects global data center electricity demand more than doubling by 2030 to 945 terawatt-hours, enough to power Australia several times over if they ever figure out electricity.

This means billions funneled into new power plants, grid upgrades, just to keep the lights on in these silicon sweatshops.  Utilities are scrambling: nuclear restarts, solar fields the size of small states, and even deals with fusion startups that sound more sci-fi than spreadsheet.  This is trillions spent on infrastructure, from transmission lines to cooling systems that guzzle water like a camel in the Sahara.  If the bubble bursts, we’re left with ghost grids and stranded assets, much like the fiber optic cables buried post-dotcom that still haunt telecom balance sheets.

What do a ring, a baby, and a threesome have in common?  None of them are going to save a relationship.

What happens if AI reaches its mature end-state? We’re talking Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) where machines that can do any intellectual task a human can, not to mention Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), where they outthink us like we’re Mexican mall lawyers trying to fix a copier.

Some whisper we might already be there, with models like Grok™ or whatever OpenAI®’s cooking up blurring the lines. But assuming we hit it soon, the economy does a backflip.

In the AGI/ASI world, productivity explodes:  AI handles everything from coding to curing cancer, slashing costs and boosting output.

But jobs?  Poof.

Hey, let’s see it take a 15 minute coffee break.

Economists at AEI outline scenarios where AGI displaces masses of workers:  truck drivers, lawyers, artists.  Optimists say it will augment humanity, creating new gigs in “AI wrangling” or whatever.

The dark side for this case:  inequality skyrockets.  A few tech overlords own the AIs, reaping trillions, while the rest scramble for UBI scraps.

Civilization-wise, it’s transformative: endless innovation, but if ASI “solves” economics without humans, we enter a post-scarcity utopia . . . or dystopia, where labor is worthless and purpose is a luxury.

If we’ve hit AGI/ASI now (debatable, but let’s play along), the bubble accelerates short-term as companies race to integrate, then crashes when overcapacity hits.  Data centers become obsolete overnight if ASI optimizes compute down to a laptop.  The fallout?  Trillions in sunk costs, like building railroads right before cars took over.

Scooby Doo® taught many kids that if they smoked enough pot, their dog would talk and help them look for snacks.

If AI fails (and there is no sign of this) we end up in, at least, a dotcom-style recession.

At least.

If AI succeeds, in the best case we end up in a strange, post-scarcity world, but a world that hardly needs us.

I guess we could make it up on volume?

 

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: The Rising Fire

“That was Police Commissioner Jacobs, who just arrived on the scene here of a 4-alarm fire that broke out an hour ago.” – Fight Club

What did the terrorists use to burn down the ecommerce warehouse?  Amazon® Kindle™.

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

Volume VII, Issue 3

Most memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.  I have kept the Clock O’Doom to 8., given the events in Los Angeles.  As I predicted, the GloboLeft would likely try to turn up the heat as things warmed up.  Racial tension is exceptionally high now, and can lead to violence in a heartbeat.  Beware: it can climb quickly.  Right now (as of publishing) we are dropping below Level Rittenhouse and it looks like we avoided Level Rooftop Korean.  For now.

My advice remains.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – The Fire Rises – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – STORY2 – 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 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

https://wilderwealthywise.com/civil-war-weather-report-previous-posts/

The Fire Rises

Ballina (in the County Mayo) is up in the northeast part of Ireland.  It’s a small town of less than 11,000 souls, and has been continuously occupied for at least 4,000 years, all of those years by the Irish.

A rumor that a public housing project under construction in town was being built to house “immigrants” to Ireland was all it took – and the construction project was burned down.  The local government claims that it wasn’t for immigrants at all, rather it was for elderly residents.

But the location had no elevators, no outside parking spaces for emergencies or caregivers, and no place that a visiting nurse could park.  And also no parking for the residents.  Which certainly sounds to me like it would be for housing imported diversity.

Regardless of the truth, it got burned down.

And, in the U.K., there have been “widespread” riots led by what the newspapers call “far-right”.  What is far-right in the U.K.?  People who don’t want their country invaded and conquered by foreigners.  People who want the U.K. to be filled with and run by Englishmen, Welshmen, and Scots are also part of this far-right.

When a country gets to this point, when the stresses finally build up so that there is open violence, it won’t be just in one country.  On July 16, a mosque that was two days away from becoming a worship site in Catalonia (Spain) when it went up in flames.  On purpose.

As people get emboldened in one country, this will spread to others.  Europe has higher unemployment, and I’d expect that as misery increases, the violence against foreigners will as well, especially as the foreigners are reaching the proportion of population where they feel fine telling the Actual English that it was their responsibility to serve the foreigners, and that the foreigners would rule them.

We’ve seen similar here in the United States, where we had the spectacle of GloboLeftists protesting ICE arresting underage children in California harvesting illegal drugs (marijuana).

As the pushback continues, it will grow, and that’s why there is a desperate effort to keep the lid on the protests that are taking place as the invaders are named.  Expect more fires everywhere as this movement grows.

Oh, Canada, are you okay with this?

Violence and Censorship Update

Violence comes back to the forefront this month, first as ICE gets shot at (expect much more of this – this isn’t the only case.

Then as people attempting to abduct children are turned back out onto the streets because they’re too stupid to understand crime.

In what would send me straight to UK prison, an “elite” group of cops are now looking for badthink across social media.

And in Cincinnati, two are beaten.  And the media is silent.  Because?  It’s a story that doesn’t support the narrative that mainstream wants to discuss.

Speaking of the narrative – mainstream news only focuses on stories it wants you to think about, and ignores people getting fired at Microsoft™ so that they can be replaced by H-1B Indians.

Epstein.  This one isn’t going away, even though my guess is that the files aren’t even in the United States anymore.

Banning books is bad, says banned books group.  Except the books they want banned?

And I’m sure that they’d support this woman if they banned her book:

Misery Index

The new Trump administration is shown in red.  Results continue to be much better than Biden’s misery numbers as Trump’s policies apparently have been stunning at reversing the tide.  We’ll see.

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 indicators are down slightly this month.  I think, in order to make it into the public consciousness, something big will have to happen.

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it went up (more unstable) this month.  Thankfully, a judge has realized that she is more important than Congress and the President in deciding funding.

Economic:

The economy is up a bit this month, again.  But if you want to see a list of people who want to replace you with cheaper labor, here’s a list:

Illegal Aliens:

Still the lowest level since the Weather Report started.  Here’s a reminder that not every politician with an “R” is your friend.

The Turn

Stephen Colbert was funny when he wasn’t political, about 20 years ago.  Now?

He’s fired.

That’s good.  He was nothing more than an emotional propagandist for the GloboLeftElite.  His show, according to CBS, won’t be replaced.  The reason?  It loses $42 million a year.  A puppet show done by talented middle schoolers would be more entertaining and probably would make a lot more profit.

Perhaps he can add his estrogen-dripped sweat to The View.  Oh, The View?  It’s not cancelled, but it is on its usual summer hiatus.  Well, one can hope.

But people in government are being fired, and their positions aren’t being replaced.  Over 150,000 workers are being let go.  Many won’t be replaced.  One that will be replaced, probably, is James Comey’s daughter, Maureen, who was working as an attorney for the Justice Department.

I’d show a picture of her, but she’s not pretty and this meme is funny.

Since James Comey was probably involved in cooking up fake things about Trump, it’s not horribly surprising that they’re going after his daughter, especially since she has Maxwell, P-Diddy, and Epstein all over her.  But that’s probably not bad when compared to the possibility of her father going to jail for pushing the famous Steele dossier.

Also good.

But what we’re seeing is a fight between elites, and these are just the relatively rare casualties on the GloboLeft side.  This is a war that’s been going on for a while – why was Tucker Carlson fired?  This same war between Team A and Team B.  This is actually a sign that the split is getting worse, and the elites are still fighting.

But I’m enjoying it.

LINKS

BAD GUYS

https://x.com/canarymission/status/1948359733951250561
https://x.com/VividProwess/status/1949687664011268506
https://x.com/ScooterCasterNY/status/1941183882633908288
https://x.com/GuntherEagleman/status/1942677874676228561
https://x.com/devorydarkins/status/1942664787239862695
https://apnews.com/article/texas-immigration-detention-center-shooting-officer-ambush-f3782b689659270b10bd9b33bb48169b
https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1942667680432930885
https://x.com/TiffanyFong_/status/1942303344569246052
https://www.facebook.com/reel/746527091439884

GOOD GUYS

https://www.tiktok.com/@hiisfbxfslw/video/7532458444423580959
https://x.com/Tr00peRR/status/1946654665904713991
https://x.com/Viral_vortex1/status/1946738624474824998
https://x.com/newschannel3now/status/1949303035219652895

ONE GUY

https://x.com/NY_Scoop/status/1945228137802899834

BODY COUNT

https://archive.is/GxL6J
https://x.com/NatHalberstadt/status/1951635776900415724
https://thefederalist.com/2025/07/25/american-birth-rates-rates-drop-to-levels-of-civilizational-suicide/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-birth-rate-all-time-low-cdc-data/
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image%20-%202025-07-09T101008.305.jpg?itok=epJv_hnP
https://blog.exitgroup.us/p/mass-deportation-is-the-only-issue

 

VOTE COUNT

https://archive.is/DQEg9
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/number-democratic-voters-extremely-motivated-214912271.html
https://lite.cnn.com/2025/07/17/politics/democrats-republicans-midterms-poll
https://polls.decisiondeskhq.com/averages/generic-ballot/national/lv-rv-adults
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/02/maga-future-young-republican-national-convention-00488361?cid=apn

CIVIL WAR

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/23/canada-alberta-danielle-smith-trump-trade-interview-00469078
https://www.city-journal.org/article/civil-terrorism-anti-israel-radicals
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/youtuber-uncovers-soros-soldier-behind-color-revolution-operation-targeting-new-york-city
https://realclearwire.com/articles/2025/06/25/the_spiderweb_and_the_lion_subversive_infiltration_and_us_national_security_1118655.html
https://amgreatness.com/2025/07/25/dear-democrats/
https://archive.is/nzQ3K
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/07/30/war-phase-of-this-fourth-turning-has-arrived/
https://jonathanturley.org/2025/08/01/the-reveal-the-public-is-finally-learning-how-democrats-pulled-off-the-greatest-political-trick-in-history/
https://substack.com/inbox/post/169766681?utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

 

Wilder’s Fables: Killing The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg

“Oh, yeah, call the police.  Tell them about the Spear of Destiny, the golden goose, the lost Ark.  Enjoy your stay in the psych ward.  I understand Thorazine® comes in vanilla now.” – The Librarian:  Quest for the Spear

I bought one of my friend an elephant statue for his front room.  He said, “Thanks.”  I said, “Don’t mention it.”

In the OG version of The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, (the OG version of which is pushing 2600 years old) a greedy farmer finds a goose that pops out golden eggs, but instead of chilling with the steady bling, yo, he decides to open up the bird for a quick jackpot despite the goose giving him a new golden egg each day.  Shockingly, there is no gold mine inside.  Just goose guts.  And a lesson no one ever seems to pay attention to.

In 1945, the West stood astride the world like an economic Applebee’s® with endless appetizers, its factories humming and the treasury brimming with gold.  Literal gold, and some of it was even ours – I’ll skip my usual grumbling about FDR’s confiscation for another post.  Some of the gold wasn’t, it was gold from our allies that had been given to the United States for safekeeping.  Because, panzers.

But America was a far greater treasure than all the gold in the country.  America at that time was the goose of golden prosperity.  The United States was responsible for half of the world’s GDP, its assembly lines spitting out cars, steel, washers, sinks, and dreams of a better future.  Add in the allies?  It was a clear three-quarters of the world GDP, with only the Soviet Union, still bulging from the war steroids it took for a decade, being close.

And there’s not a big market for a used T-34/76.  “One owner, very nice.  Ignore red stains, please.  Last owner not so careful at Kursk.”

Capitalists have it easy.  They never have to spell bourgeoisie.  (meme as found)

Allies flocked to the Western orbit.  Some were spooked by the hordes of Soviet tanks, others were nudged by CIA coups, and then nudged again until they got it right.  Most, however, was because Uncle Sam’s deal of bikinis and bourbon was sweeter than a Moscow winter and a Siberian GULAG.  It was an empire, but it was an empire of alliance.

Fast forward to today.

The Soviets are long gone, and the goose isn’t dead, but it’s close.

The economy has been slowly strangled by a combination of bad policies and worse ideas, and none are deadlier than mass immigration.

To be clear:  the wealth of the West wealth was no accident – things that produce wealth aren’t illiterate laborers, pools of oil, or uncut trees.  Nope.  The wealth producer, the golden goose was culture, not what Vox Day so eloquently described as “magic dirt.”  By killing the goose, our future is becoming bleaker, and the GloboLeft is cheering the downfall.

Bruce Lee was fast, but his older brother Su-den was even faster.

The golden age peaked post-World War II, and the United States had a 20-year head start on the rest of the world while Europe and Asia rebuilt from rubble.

By 1973, though, the United States began to falter economically.

This wasn’t entirely from external foes, but at least partially from our own hands.

Four factors gutted the goose:

  • dumping the gold standard,
  • feminizing the workforce,
  • enforcing affirmative action, and
  • opening borders to unrelenting immigration.

The first three wounded us; the last is the mortal blow, changing our people, our culture, and our wealth.  Let’s discuss the carnage.

  • Dumping the Gold Standard (1971):  Nixon’s pen stroke cut the dollar loose from gold, turning money into Monopoly® paper.  Oh, wait, there’s a limit to how much Monopoly© cash they can print.  The median home price in 1973 was $32,500.  Today, it’s $412,300.  Without gold’s anchor, our wealth’s a mirage, and the goose’s eggs are plastic.
  • Feminization of the Workforce:  The 1970s pushed women into offices, doubling labor supply but halving family focus.  Birth rates tanked—2.1 kids per woman in 1973, 1.6 in 2023.  Empty cradles mean fewer Actual American workers, and less innovation from the best workforce on Earth.  The GloboLeft calls it “empowerment” when a woman has to leave the home for fifty hours a week in order to afford to pay for another woman to ignore her child by becoming a cubical Karen.  Go figure.

I have a new personal record in the 100-yard dash.  I’m up to 47 yards.  (meme as found)

  • Affirmative Action (Duke Power, 1971, for example):  Forcing quotas over competence, the Supreme Court’s decision diluted merit.  Companies hired to check boxes, not build bridges.  A 2022 study found 30% of firms reported lower productivity post-DEI mandates.  30%.  If diversity is our strength, I’m not sure who “our” refers to when we’re forced to play diversity bingo.
  • Mass Immigration: Here’s the killing blow. Since 1973, legal and illegal immigration flooded the West.  There were 2.5 million border crossings in 2024 alone and those are the numbers that they’ll admit to, which we know are low.  Now add in the Islamification of Europe, where France is nearly a Caliphate and the Germans keep going to work in order to pay for the illegals that flocked to them.  Most don’t integrate.  Imagine the farce:   Mexican banners at California ICE protests where they tried to stop ICE from arresting underage illegals busy in the process of harvesting illegal (federally) marijuana.  Can we be honest and just admit that immigration is not at all about joining the West, it’s about exploiting it.

Imagine, it only took 44 hours for the police to completely clear Martha’s Vineyard of illegals. (meme as found)

Immigration, though, is the dealbreaker because it changes the people.  And everything is downstream of who the people are:  culture, politics, and even PEZ®.

In 1973, a near-minimum-wage earner could buy a median home for $32,500, which was about five times the average annual wage.   Today, that median home costs a stunning $412,300, ten times the average wage.

Why? Illegals depress wages.  Back in 1973, a high school grad could pull a great job in construction.  But even since 1990, construction wages have dropped 15% in real terms.

Illegals also drain services: illegal immigration costs taxpayers $150 billion annually (FAIR 2024), siphoning wealth like a cuckoo bird stealing the nest for its own young rather than for those that built it in the first place.

If it takes a village to raise a child, I guess it takes a vineyard to raise a cat? (meme as found)

The GloboLeft insists “diversity is our strength,” but Pew’s 2019 study shows diverse communities have less trust.  Many immigrants—legal or not—don’t assimilate and have no desire to assimilate.  Ever.  Many (not all!) second and third-generation Mexicans in California wave foreign flags because they’re only here for the gold, not the goose and, in fact, despise the goose.

Meanwhile, families, the nucleus of Western civilization, struggle.  Low wages and high costs mean fewer kids—Europe’s at 1.5 fertility, which means that, pretty soon, the Swedish Bikini Team™ will have mustaches and be wearing burkas.  As we often repeat, the future is there for those who show up.

The West’s prosperity had nothing to do with luck.  It was culture.

Discipline, merit, family, forged in Athens, Rome, and 1930s Detroit. The GloboLeft’s dogma remains one based in hate for the West:  open borders, DEI, and reviling of every bit of the culture that creates wealth.

They’d rather pluck the goose than protect it, and be happy with the result.

But the goose isn’t dead yet.

Bleeding?  Yes.

In a state that’s getting worse every day?  Also yes.

Is it worse than most people think?  Absolutely.  It is a dire point we find ourselves at.

But one thing I’ve seen when I read about Western Civilization is this:  every time it looks bleak, and it looks like the flame of what we stand for is in danger of getting extinguished, people become firm and take that stand.  And we win because we’re fighting, at the core, not for an economic idea but for the Truth, the Beautiful, and the Good.

I think, in part, it’s because it’s not magic dirt.  It’s in us, and this rallying from near defeat is what makes us who we are, what drives us to make civilizations, to make the golden goose, again and again.

You know, that even inspires me.  Almost gives me goose bumps.

The People’s Sick Day™: Commies . . . Not Working. Again.

“Uh, yeah, sure, no I’d be happy to, yeah you, uh, you just produce a corpse, and uh, I’ll release Sloane.  I wanna see this dead grandmother first hand.” – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

If I take LSD before a vision exam, I always pass with flying colors.

In one of the more interesting moves, the remnants of the pot-addled hippies that were protesting in the 1960s have emerged from their Volkswagen™ camper vans and finally figured out that Jerry Garcia is as dead as Hubert Humphrey and the Equal Rights Amendment.  They looked around, and decided that, heck, there wasn’t near enough communism going around, so they needed more.

Their cunning plan?  A three-day sick day.  When is it going to happen?  Sometime.  They don’t want to say when, because they don’t want The Man to know.  The idea isn’t for them to show how little the world needs all the communists who have jobs in HR or making PowerPoints™ so they can pay someone to ignore their out-of-wedlock child (if they’re lucky) or cats (if they’re not).

Nope, that’s not it at all.

The idea is to point out who they are so that they’ll be easier to recognize in the future.  As if the blue hair and nose rings, “gender dysphoria” or pronouns in their bios weren’t enough.

What do you call a polygamous hippie’s wives?  One Mrs. Hippie, Two Mrs. Hippie, . . .

I digress.

Thankfully, on their Discord© server they have a list of their demands, and, a professional journalist waded through the GloboLeftist coping and seething and published them on MSNBC®(LINK).  This is good, because the demands are so cringe that it’s hardly sporting to make fun of them.  But I will, because I’m hardly sporting.

Why don’t I have PTSD?  I’m the traumatic event.

I’ll list their demand (The People’s Sick Day™ Totally Stupid Demand, or PTSD), and my counter-demand (Wilder Talking Facts, or WTF):

PTSD:  Calling for the impeachment, removal, and arrest of Donald John Trump and the Republican administration for knowingly manipulating the U.S. stock market, ignoring the U.S. Constitution, trafficking humans, and destroying our federal workforce. HE IS A CRIMINAL! LOCK HIM UP.

WTF:  What happens in 2028 when Trump runs for his third term is no longer the face of the opposition?  Who will drive them insane with hate?  Regardless, my reasonable response is:  No.

PTSD:  Demanding HANDS OFF Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and veterans’ benefits

WTF:  No.  Most of SNAP should go.  Most of Medicaid (not all) should go.  Social Security should be phased out with the kids below 30 so that they don’t have an excuse to complain when the whole thing falls over.  Also, eliminate Social Security on half of Americans based on birth year.  Heads, eliminate odd years.  Tails, eliminate even years.  Just for giggles and it would be fun to watch the chaos.

Moses was also the first person to use CTRL-C as a shortcut.

PTSD:  Demanding the removal of caps on Social Security

WTF:  Do the checks really come with hats?

PTSD:  Demanding NO MORE tax breaks for the rich — TAX THEM ALL!

WTF:  Yes!  Tax everyone!  Tax everyone at the exact same rate for ALL income at 20%.  Then everyone has skin in the game.  And, make sure that people are taxed with on an Alternative Minimum Income:  The minimum people are taxed is based on the federal minimum wage and if you can’t pay we deport you to Australia, for old times’ sake.

PTSD:  Demanding an end to unlimited corporate profits and economic injustice

WTF:  I demand an end to economic progress and creation of worldwide famine.  See?  I said exactly the same thing, but with way fewer words.

PTSD:  Demanding an end to lobbyist and SUPER PAC funding

WTF:  Nice try, since you own the media.  No.  My counter?  I demand that CNN® be forced to feature nothing but things I’ve written.  I mean, I guess I could stand for less exposure than I have now, but it’s a different audience – the CNN® crowd can’t read.

PTSD:  Demanding the elimination of Citizens United

WTF:  Man, panties are sure in a wad that they can’t stack the game, aren’t they?

PTSD:  Demanding an increase in the federal minimum wage to $20 an hour, with adjustments for inflation as needed

WTF:  Make it $100 an hour.  No, $1,000 an hour.  No, $10,000 an hour.  See, you can joke, and I can, too.  And there won’t be inflation, because only gold and silver will be money.

What’s the hardest part of making a vegan pizza?  Catching the vegan.

PTSD:  Demanding a cap on CEO pay at no more than 35% above the lowest worker’s salary

WTF:  Welcome to not understanding what a contract worker is or what nested corporations are.  Do they give you guys Crayons™ and a placemat to color on your Discord©?

PTSD:  Demanding that wages for elected officials be capped at the median salary of their district

WTF:  Sold.  And no investments, either – they can only keep cash and they must rent, and this includes wages and investments for their extended family.  AOC goes back to being a barista because it pays more.

PTSD:  Demanding caps on rent, grocery, and insurance costs

WTF:  Agreed.  I demand unicorns as well, because they’d be good company as I lived on the street with no food or insurance.

PTSD:  Demanding universal healthcare for all U.S. citizens and federal protection for sick time

WTF:  I demand zero insurance for anyone and federal prosecution for anyone who starts an insurance company.  I demand that anyone who takes a sick day from work without being near death be flogged if they don’t get away with it.  Just kidding, like anyone will have a job if the PTSD proposals are enacted.

That dog looks like a brrrrito.

PTSD:  Demanding term limits for all members of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court

WTF:  Yes to Congress and no to SCOTUS.  I would like treason charges for judges that violate the Constitution, and judges to be put in prison if someone they let out without bail injures anyone.  And the robes should be form-fitting.  For . . . reasons.

PTSD:  Demanding reform of immigration policies

WTF:  Agreed!  Send them all home.  All of them.  Now.

PTSD:  Demanding gun law reform — PROTECT OUR KIDS!

WTF:  Agreed!  Mail order machine guns and crew-served weapons, which are much more suited for children because they can work together to get that Ma Deuce warmed up.  Besides, the hands of children are small and they generally have good eyesight, so field stripping an M60 should be a breeze.

PTSD:  Demanding codified women’s rights to choose

WTF:  You mean paper or plastic?  It’s a stretch because I don’t trust the collective choices of women, but I’ll allow it.

PTSD:  Demanding codified DEI and affirmative action

WTF:  You mean penalties for having DEI and affirmative action?  I’m in favor of that, and maybe you can talk me into making it a felony.

PTSD:  Demanding the elimination of the Electoral College and a ban on gerrymandering

WTF:  No.

PTSD:  Demanding ranked-choice voting in all federal and state elections

WTF:  No.  Counter-demand:  no voting until the family has been in the country for three generations, and one vote per family (mother/father, married).  Otherwise, votes for military-aged males only.

PTSD:  Demanding the taxation of mega-churches

WTF:  And the taxation of micro-churches.  And commie non-profits.  And NPR® – those tote bags cause cancer.

My friend Gomez has a dismembered hand.  I guess it’s okay, but it’s not my Thing.

PTSD:  Demanding free post-secondary education

WTF:  Only for students with an ACT of above 30 majoring in engineering, physics, or math who maintain a 3.5 GPA.  And not fake engineering like “engineering tech” or fake astrophysics like “astronomy”.  Real engineering.  Real physics.

Okay, that about does it.  Since I’ve solved all of those problems, I guess I’ll go back to work.

Take a sick day?  I ain’t got time to bleed.