Sexy Economics – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Housing Mess of 2026: At Least We Have Ramen

“They’re only noodles, Micheal.” – The Lost Boys

I entered a contest and won a lifetime supply of ramen. I took the $20 instead.

Let’s start with the sliver of good news, because in this market it’s rare enough to mention: Many illegals have left the country. Not enough, mind you, but enough to show just how fake this economy is. The result is real. Rents are down where illegals live.

At least a little. I found a great place to rent, fully furnished, but then the clerk told me it was a liquor store.

Sigh.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development to straight-up say illegals drove up to two-thirds of rental demand growth in recent years, so when .gov admits the problem, you know it’s really worse. After years of unrestricted immigration flooding the rental market, the brakes got tapped. Studies show that renter household growth cooled once immigration restrictions hit.

Average rent that hovering around $2,000 a month are finally showing some give instead of the nonstop 36% climb we saw the last five years. This is, at least a small win for the working guy who just wants to keep the roof over his head while he eats ramen and smokes recreational weed.

Now the bad news.

And there’s plenty of bad news.

Housing is now unaffordable to Gen Z, and it is far worse as a percentage of their income than for any previous generation. 67% of Gen Z adults say they’re struggling to cover housing costs. That’s higher than Millennials (53%), Gen X (54%), or Boomers (36%).

When I grounded my Gen Z kids, their punishment was to go out and socialize. (meme as-found)

Homeownership for Gen Z sits at just 27.1% in 2025 data rolling into this year, which is a tiny bump from the year before, but miles behind where previous generations stood at the same age. Zoomers need to earn over $112,000 a year to afford the median house.

The problem? Median household income lags by about $25,000. Nearly two million young households simply vanished from the market in 2025 because the math doesn’t work. Housing is chewing up 40-50% of take-home pay. That’s not a stepping stone to a family and 2.6 kids. That’s a millstone.

Let’s delve deeper into the problem.

First, housing areas are limited, and the mass blight of urban hellscapes led to the creation and flowering of suburbia, where people could move and raise a family in relative safety. Let’s be honest, a huge part of suburbia was economic segregation from . . . economic factors. Suburbs? You have to have a certain income level to live there.

When I think about the meaning of life, I think about three factors: 2, 3, and 7. (cartoon as-found)

Good schools. Low crime. Space to breathe. No economic factors.

That flight from the cities created the demand, but supply never kept up. Zoning, NIMBYs, and decades of stupid policy turned safe family neighborhoods into a scarce luxury good. Housing prices have risen much more than inflation. While wages wobbled along like me on a Saturday night, home values sprinted like me out of the office on Friday afternoon. Suburbia went from attainable dream to gated fortress most young people can only stare at through the fence.

Second, interest rates are up. That’s the sort of thing that happens when the cash printer is on high and the oil pump is on low. Higher interest rates lead to higher home costs for the same price house, as interest eats up more and more of the (now higher) payment.

Mortgage rates eased to around 6.2% by the end of 2025, but that’s still double the pandemic-era giveaway lows. A $400,000 house that felt doable at 3% now demands a monthly payment that feels like indentured servitude. Equity builds slower. Gen Z runs the numbers on their phones and decide roommates, ramen, and the low-rizz life beat the alternative.

Third, houses are treated like an economic appreciation machine whose values never go down. This has led to many borrowers taking out loans near the peak value of their houses, and that peak value locks them in. If they sell at a loss, they lose actual money, so they can’t sell for less than they owe.

We’re actually at an all-time high for the Google® search term “can’t sell my house.” Google Trends just hit record levels in February 2026: higher than 2008, higher than the COVID frenzy. Sellers are frozen. Buyers can’t bridge the gap. The shut down like a date with a Kardashian when you tell them you’re broke. Houses stopped being homes and turned into leveraged bets on eternal growth.

Markets don’t do eternal.

“There are no mistakes, just happy little accidents.” Bob was a horrible nuclear physicist.

Fourth, banks don’t want foreclosures to hit the market. Why? It makes the rest of the loans in their portfolio worth less, so they’re incentivized to sit on houses rather than sell them and realize the loss on the books. Foreclosure filings jumped 14% in 2025 to 367,460 properties, but that’s still historically low and banks are dragging their feet with modifications and delays. How much of the current private credit crisis is due to just this? My guess is: plenty. Those balance sheets are stuffed with crappy paper because it was different this time.

Fifth, those nice suburban houses with a thirty minute to sixty-minute commute are now even more expensive because the fuel to drive to where the jobs are at is much higher thanks to Gulf War IV. Or is it Gulf War VI? I forget. That suburban split-level two towns over suddenly costs a fortune just to reach. The effective price of the dream just went up again.

The result of this mess is that Gen Z gets further behind. The kids that should be having kids aren’t. There are several factors to this, especially female hypergamy where every female (thinks she) is above average, but every male is below her standards. But the sheer difficulty in having a home in which to raise kids is massive is also killing family formation. No stability, no backyard, no “let’s start a family” talk that ends in anything but spreadsheets that fill with negative numbers.

Is a 4 with a 6-pack a perfect 10?

Birth rates keep dropping. In one generation, we went from the GloboLeftElite telling us to stop having kids because “the planet can’t handle more!” to the GloboLeftElite telling us we need to import kids because we need workers.

They break the system, then demand more system to patch the system they created. Young couples look at the numbers and decide “maybe later.” Or never. Unless they’re from (spins wheel) Somalia. In that case, it’s free fun and prizes while you bring in an alien people with an alien religion.

The good news?

This type of mess always sorts itself out. The cure for high prices is default and deflation. If the market is too far cooked, well, look out below. The United States doesn’t have magic dirt to turn Somalis into Americans, and houses aren’t magic wealth machines. When enough locked-in owners and over-leveraged banks finally crack, inventory floods, prices reset, and affordability returns.

It won’t be pretty. Foreclosures will spike. Portfolios will bleed. Credit markets may lock up. The Google® searches for “can’t sell my house” will turn into actual sales at prices that make sense again.

I used to have a really funny polio joke, but no one gets it anymore.

A housing crisis wouldn’t be big for the country, would it?

Nah. Just trillions in pretend wealth gone, generational transfers halted, and the kind of reset that makes 2008 look like practice.

Prepare accordingly. The reset is coming.

I’m glad I like ramen.

Bubbles Within Bubbles Within Bubbles

“I had it all, even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections.” – Fight Club

I wonder if Sean Connery is in 00 Heaven?

As we approach the end of 2025, the U.S. economy resembles a science-fair volcano built on baking soda, hype, construction paper, speculation, bubblegum, vinegar, and greed. I’ve written about this before, and, well, it’s so big it keeps dragging me back in.

The rot is birthed by several mothers: cheap cash, the need to put it somewhere, and a new technology whose benefits are (at this point) opaque at best. Let’s put down that you already know “money printer goes brrrrrrrr” so we’ll go back to A.I.

Again.

At the center of this precarious structure is what everyone who isn’t high on their own supply knows is an A.I. bubble. Large numbers of people (including me) recognized the housing bubble for what it was, but it kept on going because momentum is one hell of a master.

Another case of car-pole-tunnel syndrome.

A.I. has inflated stock prices, diverted resources like a drunk wine aunt at Lululemon®, and now has spawned secondary bubbles in hardware and infrastructure.

I’ve touched on this in previous posts, noting how projected AI:

growth outpaces any reasonably available power supplies, present and near future,
revenue projections fall short of the grandiose promises, and
the full realization of AI’s (theoretical) potential could unleash economic distortions on a scale we’ve rarely seen in human history.

But bubbles don’t exist in isolation. Bubbles multiply, feeding off each other until the inevitable pop unwinds it all. When the Great Housing Bubble burst, for example, sales of sulfuric acid went to zero for months. How are they related? Turns out the Great Housing Bubble was fed off the same credit structure that paid for basic chemicals.

And for all this time I thought it was because sulfuric acid was just like anything Chuck Schumer says: baseless and corrosive.

One time in chemistry they asked me to write 1,000 words on acid. I couldn’t finish it because my pen turned into a giraffe and the paper melted.

Today, we’re seeing this play out in real time, with AI-driven demand ripping into consumer electronics and beyond, all while broader market indicators flash warning signs of decline.

The AI stock bubble has birthed an investment bubble in virtually all computer hardware. Demand for specialized components has skyrocketed, pulling supply away from consumer markets and inflating prices across the board.

RAM prices surged 172% year-over-year, with some guessing they’ll double in 2026,
SSD prices per TB are climbing with AI and cloud providers tightening supply chains.
Motherboards shortages are emerging as manufacturers prioritize AI server builds over consumer PCs, with one producer having sold out for 2026 already.

This shift isn’t just raising costs for gamers and everyday users; it’s distorting global supply chains, creating a feedback loop where AI hype justifies more investment, which in turn inflates hardware bubbles.

The statistics say cows kill more people than sharks, but I’m surprised that cows are killing any sharks.

What happens when the tide rolls out? With the underlying economy already showing recessionary cracks, the fallout will almost certainly be severe.

Let’s start with the AI bubble itself: valuations in the sector have soared, with companies like Nvidia™ and others commanding trillions in market cap based largely on future promises rather than current realities. The S&P 500’s concentration in a handful of AI-related stocks reached 30% by late 2025, the highest in decades. Nvidia© (for example) doubled in price from April.

Doubled.

Skepticism is now mounting.

All this is unfolding against a backdrop of broader economic weakness that A.I. papered over.

Oil prices are declining despite ongoing disruptions from wars in Ukraine and tensions with Iran. Price levels are back into COVID 2021 levels. This drop persists amid supply risks: Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries and U.S. sanctions on Venezuelan tankers should theoretically support prices, yet oversupply fears dominate.

My dad once asked me, “Son, if you have a hot blonde rubbing oil on a hot brunette, what do you get?” I answered, “I don’t know, Pop.” “Your camera, son, your camera.” (as found)

If peace breaks out in Ukraine, bringing Russian oil fully back online, prices could plummet 30%-50% as sanctions lift and exports surge. Add in a resolution with Iran, and the glut could be historic—you might as well use oil for bubble baths. The IEA already forecasts surpluses building into 2026.

This is a signal of weakening industrial activity worldwide, not resilience.

Domestic indicators paint a similar picture. Unemployment among native-born Americans ticked up to 4.7% in July 2025 from 4.5% a year prior, with the overall rate holding at 4.6% in November.

Wages? They’re stagnant at best.

The K-shaped economy persists: high-wage earners see modest gains, but lower-income workers face stagnation, widening inequality.

So, what portends when the A.I. Bubble bursts?

History offers grim lessons: the Dotcom crash wiped out trillions and triggered a recession and the economic response to that caused he Great Recession. An A.I. pop could be worse, given its entanglement with hardware and infrastructure. It doesn’t help that it is spawned, in part, by the loose-money policies of the post-COVID world. If I’m making an SAT question, Dotcom is to The Great Recession as COVID is to ___________.

The A.I. Bubble
A giant PEZ® dispenser filled with plutonium pellets
Greta Thunberg
The Black Studies Department at Harvard®

He then arrested me for assault with sandpaper. He didn’t accept the excuse that I’d only roughed the guy up a bit.

Consequences of it popping?

Investment in data centers and chips dry up, leading to layoffs of all those H-1Bs in San Fran and cratering the tech manufacturing here and in many nations around the world.
Deflation hits: hardware prices would crash as overcapacity floods the market, but not before bankrupting suppliers who bet big on eternal demand.
Dogs and cats, living together.
With the economy already teetering: slow job growth, wage pressures, and oil signaling demand weakness, the rest are downstream consequences.
Consumer spending, which has propped up GDP, falters as confidence erodes and debt defaults rise.
Income inequality worsens because banks and Wall Street firms cannot be allowed to fail.

If this capital misallocation is as bad as some of the graphs I’ve seen, this will be the singular economic event of the lifetime of anyone alive. There is a reason that I picked 2032 as the central pivot point of when Civil War 2.0 would show up and it was the underlying financial mismanagement of the United States. A.I.? It’s not the gasoline in the room, it’s the spark.

It would have been something.

I made this and even though I replaced it with a more fitting meme up above, I figured you’d want to see it.

In the end, bubbles always burst because they’re built out of illusions and fed by poor allocations of capital. The A.I. frenzy has masked underlying frailties that would have led to a very major recession during Biden’s term, but the bubble continued to get bigger.

As oil slides, jobs stall, and hardware hype peaks, the reckoning looms. And that science-fair volcano? I hope I don’t drop it on my foot.

I’ll Krakatoa.

The usual. Not investment advice, do your own research, etc., etc.. I’m not a priest or an exorcist though I played one on TV. If you read this and make meaningful decisions based on it you need to take a step back and reconsider your life.

The Economy: Is It All Fake?

“This is my costume. I’m a homicidal maniac. They look just like everybody else.” – The Addams Family (1991)

The upside of burkas is that if you divorce and remarry, you can keep the same photo on your desk.

October is supposed to be the weird month in the markets. Why? Harvest. Halloween sugar highs and fake vampires going “trunk or treat” because “trick or treat” is just too much walking for parents, who can’t let the kids out by themselves because . . . 2025. Me, I remember lining up at the neighbor’s house to get decent-sized Snickers®.

Maybe it’s just that less daylight makes people crazy.

Who can say?

But this year, the market is throwing a tantrum that makes a toddler with a baby bottle full of Red Bull® look chill. The Dow© was down 800 points yesterday (my yesterday, not yours). The NASDAQ™ is nursing a Nvidia®-sized hangover, and Bitcoin?

If you give a Bitcoin to an exotic dancer, is it a Striptocurrency?

It’s a Bitcoin bear market, baby. Bitcoin crumbed from $127k highs to $88k like it just discovered gravity after a night of tequila and strippers. I’ve never quite understood the allure of Bitcoin, though many people have made tons of profit with it, and I think that Fartcoin (yes, this is real) proves my point.

I think the big thing that’s different is Trump. Trump is absolutely going to choose a Fed® chairman that will lower rates like a frat bro bringing out the backup keg at midnight. Why? Because Trump wants lower rates, so he’s auditioning like it’s The Apprentice: Interest Rate Edition.

But here’s the punchline: Lower rates for an economy dealing with continual high inflation and fiat currency disease? It’s like lighting a cigar with a jet engine. Sure, it gets the job done, but if you stand too close, you’ll end up medium well.

What do you do if you find Michael J. Fox in your hot tub? Add laundry.

Big banks love lower interest rates. It allows them to cover the losses they stood while whistling like nothing was going on, the same losses that took down Silicon Valley Bank. Businesses usually like low interest rate because it makes stuff easier to buy, yet there has to be something worth buying, some revenue stream to capture.

The result? Bankers win. Again. At a certain point people begin to feel like Wile E. Coyote.

But the financial shenanigans aren’t limited to the United States. Stimulus, that economic equivalent of jumper cables is showing up around the world. Japan’s GDP shrank, so they thought they’d toss out $110 billion to convince the Japanese to, what, buy more manga and sushi on top of Japan’s current sky-high debt?

China will not be left out. They’ve decided to sell a bunch of bonds and deficit spend because it’s worked out so well for us. That’s $1.4 trillion to add to the dragon’s fire.

And the United States? Our “annual stimulus” is the $1.8 trillion federal deficit for FY2025, down a smidge from last year’s binge but still ballooning debt to $36T like a bad hair day on steroids.

You know what chicks love? Sweeping generalizations.

Where does all this money go?

Apple®. Apple© is swimming in cash, with $200B stuck in the seat cushions, while small companies pay rent with expired McDonald’s™ Filet o’ Fish® coupons. And Nvidia®, which is the other stimulus program of the United States.

And low interest rates tend to drive stock prices up. Yet, the valuations are already high, and most of the economic growth of the country over the last year (if not all) has been buying Nvidia® chips and building places to house Nvidia™ chips and building power to allow the Nvidia© chips to depreciate into e-waste so they can be replaced by . . . more Nvidia® chips.

It’s sort of like we decided to dedicate the entire economy to create an Ouroboros meme. Or, let A.I. make an Ouroboros meme.

As found. 90% of why I wrote this post is because I wanted to use this meme.

And even though the market is going down right now, it seems like it’s going to go back up. Why?

I guess so we can do more stimulus and create more data centers. So, the interest rates can go lower and . . . we can do more stimulus?

Don’t know. I just know that Warren Buffet retired with Berkshire Hathaway sitting with a pile of $381 billion in cash. Buffett normally tried to buy stocks that were undervalued and let them run. To be fair, I’d be hard put to find a place to invest $381 billion in cash where I thought it would make money since I can’t seem to do that with the little horde of cash that I personally have.

This, from a guy who had to work until he was 95.

Regardless, despite Halloween being over, the whole thing seems . . . fake and artificial. It’s like “trunk or treat” is today’s stock market, a big fake line.

To me, it feels like a gigantic faux queue.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any stocks mentioned in this post, or at least I don’t think I don’t think I do nor do I intend to buy any by Friday. However, I may have a Snicker’s® bar on Friday, so, don’t front-run that trade since I didn’t buy any Snicker’s™ futures. If you think taking financial advice from an Internet humorist is a good idea, you should consider getting psychological advice from Hannibal Lechter.

Cash, Hot Chick Memes, And Gold

“Good night, sweet maiden of the golden ale.” – The Fellowship of the Ring

She got pulled over, and the cop asked, “Whose car is this, where are you going, and what do you do?” Her answer: “Mine.”

The economy is currently a carnival funhouse rollercoaster: interest rates are climbing like a squirrel on espresso, the Federal Reserve® is promising cuts, and the U.S. Treasury is issuing bonds 30-year bonds that are paying a higher interest rate than they have since the 2008 crash.

Meanwhile, central banks around the world are ditching those same Treasuries and buying gold, and the kids? They can’t get jobs.

I think we might want to buckle up, because this carnival rollercoaster might be bumpy.

The U.S. 30-year Treasury yield hit 5% today, a level not seen since the 2008. You’d think with the Fed™ signaling rate cuts, yields would chill out and drop like the mood of the Prime Minister when he’s confronted with all those pesky English and Scots he hasn’t replaced yet.

Nope. Interest rates are spiking like a 35-year-old guy who identifies as a middle school girl volleyball player.

What’s gray, has spikes, and runs around a field? Barbed wire.

Why?

The Treasury is flooding the market with bonds to finance a national debt that has ballooned to $37.3 trillion. The Treasury issues the bonds, and buyers (think mutual funds, foreign central banks, and the Fed® itself) are supposed to snap them up. The problem is, supply of these bonds is growing faster than a vegan’s tears at a butcher shop.

When nobody wants bonds because there are so many of them, they’ve got to sweeten the deal with higher yields or make the Fed© buy them. People don’t trust the future value of the paper, so they require a higher interest rate to take it. That’s basic supply and demand. But here’s the kicker: the Fed’s® still printing money like it’s auditioning for the “irresponsible German bank” part in a Weimar Republic reboot.

The U.S. money supply (M2) is growing at about 5% a year, pumping roughly $1 trillion into the system annually. With bonds looking as appealing as a moldy sandwich, where’s the money going?

My maid doesn’t get tired, she gets sweepy.

Two places: gold and stuff. Real stuff, like oil, copper, or steak.

Central banks aren’t idiots, despite what their hairstyles suggest. They’re dumping Treasuries and hoarding gold like it’s the last Twinkie® in a zombie apocalypse. Gold prices are up 2% the day after Labor Day (for you foreigners, Labor Day is the one day in the year that women are legally allowed to give birth in the United States).

Why? Gold remains a hedge against chaos, and with geopolitics shakier than a Jenga© tower on 9/11, it’s no surprise. Central banks from China to Switzerland are stocking up, signaling they trust shiny metal more than Uncle Sam’s never-ending stream of Everlasting Gobstopper© IOUs.

Then there’s oil. Prices are climbing reflexively, at a time when oil prices (and gasoline prices) normally go down a bit due to the end of northern hemisphere summer driving season. When cash is flooding the system and bonds are a hard pass, investors pivot to tangible assets. Gold doesn’t default. Oil keeps the trucks moving.

Treasuries?

They’re only as good as the government’s promise not to go crazy and fill piñatas with them. With deficits soaring, that promise is starting to sound like a drunk uncle swearing he’ll “pay me back next week”.

But the blindfold helped, they said.

Rising rates are usually bad news for stocks. Why? Companies live on debt. That cheap borrowing fuels expansion, stock buybacks, and those swanky CEO jets. When rates climb, borrowing costs spike, squeezing margins like a python on a parrot. Every S&P 500 company has a line of credit, because if they’re not in debt, some Wall Street shark will swoop in, use the company’s own assets as collateral, and buy it out faster than you can say “beveraged luyout.” Higher rates mean higher hurdles for profits, and markets hate hurdles more than a couch potato hates a 5K.

Yet, the market’s been elastic, bending without breaking because most of those dollars printed end up in the hands of the companies that make up the S&P 500. The S&P 500 is near all-time highs, shrugging off tariff tantrums and rate spikes like it’s no big deal.

But markets are funny: they stretch until they snap. This time, I’m sure it’s different. (Cue the Seinfeld laugh track.) The last time everyone thought markets were invincible, we got 2008. Don’t bet on “different” when history has proven to have a mean right hook.

One pirate I know got his hook at the second-hand store.

But at least unemployment is low, right?

Sure, if you’re a boomer with a corner office. The headline rate is 4.2%, but for 16- to 24-year-olds, it’s over 10%. That’s not “low”; that’s a generation stuck flipping burgers since 60% of new college grads aren’t employed. The “quits” rate—how often people ditch their jobs—is at a five-year low, meaning kids aren’t leaving because they know there’s nothing else out there.

A soft labor market plus rising rates? That’s a recipe for stagflation, not growth. No wonder Gen Z’s more interested in crypto scams and video games than climbing the corporate ladder.

So, where’s this economic rollercoaster headed?

The Fed© is in a bind. They’re being pushed to cut rates to juice the economy, but inflation is still hovering near 3%, and it’s flexing upwards.

Keep printing money, and inflation could roar back like a drunken ex with a cell phone at 2am. Raise rates too fast, and you choke the economy, spiking unemployment and tanking stocks. Meanwhile, the Treasury is issuing bonds like they’re piñata stuffing, but buyers are scarce. Foreign central banks own $8.7 trillion in Treasuries, but they’re pivoting to gold because it’s the only central bank holding that’s appreciating.

This all points to a reckoning.

Printed greenbacks are flooding in, but it’s not going to bonds—it’s chasing gold, oil, and maybe that Bitcoin your nephew won’t shut up about while not yet fleeing from the S&P 500, who will end up getting the cash anyway.

Superman® does have a cousin without superpowers. Poor Norm-El.

Markets might keep bending, but history says they will eventually break. It could be a slow bleed, like the stagflation of the 70s, or a sharp crash, like 2008. Either way, the government is spending like a toddler with a sugar high and a credit card, and the bill will eventually be paid by the borrower.

Or the lender.

I worry that we might be seeing an economic rollercoaster, but that’s still better than the most powerful carnival ride: the merry-go-round.

It has the most horse power.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. You would be foolish to trust me for financial advice, since I have taken my own advice many times and based on the results I consider myself a sketchy source on my best day, so you should talk to someone who knows more about it than an Internet humorist, even though I’m currently sober. Currently. As far as you know.

The Lighter Side Of Dating, Mating, And Civilizational Collapse

“My job is to see that big, strong men like you get on these buses without getting lost.” – Stripes

The other day I spent the afternoon playing chess with senior citizens in the park. Took me a while to find 32 of them.

Even thirty years ago, finding a spouse was as easy as grabbing a beer at a kegger. You met. Maybe at school, maybe at church, maybe at work, maybe some friends introduced you. Hell, maybe at the kegger. It was a straightforward and reliable process, and it was also often sweaty and fun.

Even before my time, though, it was even easier. Take it back to the 1800s, and men brought home the bacon, women kept the hearth warm, and together they built a life, maybe a farm, maybe a picket fence. Often, people would meet and spend their whole lives in the same location.

The process wasn’t perfect, but it worked for thousands of years.

Fast-forward to 2025, and the mating market is a dumpster fire. A constant source of conversation is the baby bust, describing how women aren’t reproducing enough children to keep society going.

Part of the reason for that is that cultural shifts and technological disruptions have turned love from carnal creativity in the backseat of a Camaro™ to the swipe of a finger on the smooth glass of a screen protector. The result? A generation of lonely hearts, spinsters, and guys who’ve decided sweatpants and beer are a better deal than chasing women who don’t even see them as people.

Pro tip: never yell “shotgun” when you’re boarding an airplane. Apparently, TSA doesn’t appreciate that.

Culture and tech crashed the human mating economy, and why it’s tearing the family, the atom of society, to shreds.

For thousands of years, societies kept a lid on female promiscuity, not because of some patriarchal conspiracy (okay maybe it was, we’re still meeting Thursday night, right guys?), but because it worked.

People who tear down traditions often don’t realize exactly what they’re destroying until it’s gone, and then it’s too late because the fragile fabric that it was supporting has collapsed. It’s sort of like playing Jenga™ with retarded monkeys on crack, but I won’t speak any more about how I know that.

Tradition knew what science later confirmed: high rates of female promiscuity correlate with lower marriage rates and higher divorce rates. Skanky women are horrible for society. A 2020 study from the Institute for Family Studies found that women with more sexual partners before marriage are less likely to stay married. They graph waivers after the big increase in marrying a woman who has had more than one sex partner to a big drop at around four sex partners (for some reason). If you can’t get a virgin, four seems to be the lucky number. But if you’re the 167^th guy to tap into that action?

My math number was afraid of negative numbers. He’d stop at nothing to avoid them.

The chances of you being “the one” are nearly zero, yet in 2025 she still wants a ring worth six months of blood, sweat and tears and a house and she brings . . . you being number 167.

Back when shame was a thing, women faced social pressure to be selective, and men had a reason to step up for a low-mileage woman. Now? Shame is as outdated as a Marvel™ movie. Women are free to “explore” and “find themselves” and “live their best life” all while banging a neverending stream of potential Prince Charmings.

Then there’s money.

Historically, men were the breadwinners, or at least the leaders in the grind in the family business or farm, with Ma raising the kids and churning the butter while Pa tamed the back 40. Women relied on men for financial stability, and men relied on women to keep the home and raise the children.

Enter the modern workforce: women now make up nearly half of U.S. workers and 90% of the human resources department everywhere. That leads to the dilemma of the Stunning and Brave woman: she wants a man who makes more than her, yet demands equal pay. A 2023 Pew Research study found 55% of women prefer a partner with higher income (and 45% of women are liars). That’s fine, but men’s wages have stagnated since the 1970s while women’s have risen. The math doesn’t add up.

Feminism is a broad issue. (meme as found)

Worse, the government has stepped in as Husband 2.0.

Welfare programs, from food stamps to housing subsidies, act like a sugar daddy for single women, especially mothers. In 2022, over 40% of single-mother households received some form of public assistance. Why marry a man when Uncle Sugar’s got your back and they can still bang all the men they want and don’t have to listen to any man?

Women on welfare aren’t wives anymore; they’re concubines of the state, trading solemn vows for EBT and government cheese. The family, once the bedrock of civilization, is now a casualty of games and prizes fueled by promiscuity and feminism. But I repeat myself.

Not to brag, but my wedding reception was so beautiful that even the cake was in tiers.

And that’s not even factoring in divorce-rape where unhaaaaapppy or bored women can hit the eject button and blow up the marriage with no real consequences except getting to keep the house, kids, cash and getting a free ticket to ride on the Chad carousel.

That’s bad enough. It’s actually worse than Madonna’s herpes.

If culture cracked the mating market, technology crushed it like a python on a peanut. Enter Tinder®, Bumble®, and the swipe-right revolution. Women, all women, are hypergamous. They want the very best mate they can find. Society used to keep them in check through societal pressure. Oh, and soon enough they would have run out of random men to pleasure. Now the apps give them a digital buffet of Chads, Brads, and Thads.

Is anyone named Thaddeus nowadays? I digress.

A 2021 study showed women on dating apps rate 80% of men as “below average” in attractiveness, while men rate women more realistically on a bell curve. The result? A 5 or 6 woman swipes right on a 10. Call him Prince Charming the Senator’s son, complete with abs and a hedge fund, who might bang her once but won’t stick around for breakfast or be seen in public with her, let alone hang a ring on her.

I hear he’s from the bad side of his Italian hometown – he came from the spaghetto.

She walks away thinking, “He was the one, I could get him to marry me,” and now every guy who doesn’t match up to Prince Charming is . . . settling. Yes. Settling, even though Prince Charming doesn’t remember her and only picked her up because it was a Tuesday, and was just taking his father’s deathbed advice: “go ugly, early” and picked her up just for amusement.

Spinsterhood beckons, with a side of cat and wine memes.

Men aren’t entirely innocent bystanders here, either.

Faced with an endless parade of women chasing the top 10% of guys, many men have thrown in the towel. Why grind for a better job, hit the gym, or learn to dress like you didn’t just roll out of a laundry basket?

The odds aren’t good. (as found)

A 2024 survey found 30% of men aged 18-29 have given up on dating entirely, opting for porn, video games, or “monk mode.” They’re not wrong to notice the game is rigged against traditional one-for-one sorting. Now, Chad gets his choice, and, if they’re lucky, the might get the attention of a slagged-out woman who is still pining for Chad – a widow for a man that was only in her life for a night.

This isn’t just about lonely Friday nights. This is about the death of the family. Men want decent looks, monogamy, and a partner who’s kind—basic stuff. “She can’t read but she’s faithful and hasn’t had sex with Baltimore” has become a passing grade for many.

And if you want to argue about Monopoly®, you have to wait until Thanksgiving like everyone else.

Women want the whole package: money, status, looks, protection, and a guy who’s basically a football start with a corner office.

Wait. Tom Brady didn’t work out for his wife. Neil Armstrong’s wife became unhaaaapppy. What chance does the average guy have?

Marriage rates are at historic lows, being down 60% since 1960. Divorce rates hover around 40%. Kids grow up in fractured homes or none at all, with single-parent households now at 30% nationwide and rising. The family, the core unit, the atom that glues society together, is being eroded by individualism on steroids.

I could write a book about this topic, but you get the idea.

So how do we dig out of this mess?

Start with culture. Bring back shame. The scarlet-letter kind. Encourage women to value loyalty over chasing Chad, and men to step up instead of checking out. That starts with incentives, because I don’t think anyone has any shame left.

I got fired from the library today. Apparently, putting books on feminism in the “dystopian fantasy” section was frowned on.

Let’s rethink current incentives. Have a kid and no husband? Tough luck. No child support, no state support. Same thing with divorce. No fun and prizes for that, and if you’re at-fault, you lose the kids. Sure, tax breaks for married couples or policies that don’t make Uncle Sugar a better bet than a husband are nice, but we don’t need a nudge, we need a nuke.

Will the norm come back? It has to. Two more generations of this, and civilization will cease to exist. Perhaps G. Michael Hopf (LINK) got the old quote wrong and it should go more like this:

Bad times create strong men,
Strong men create good times,
Good times make women skanky,
Skanky women create bad times.

Don’t worry, nothing’s depending on this. I mean, nothing other than the fate of civilization.

The Emperor’s Old Lies: Breaking The Programming With Bikini Pic

“How will the emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?” – Star Wars

I remember a few years ago when the school called me and said my son had been telling lies. “Tell him he’s pretty good, because all of my kids have graduated.”

The Emperor’s New Clothes is an 1837 very short fable written by Hans Christian Anderson, and I’ll give a quick reminder of what the story is about, since if you’re like me, third grade was a long time ago, even if I had to repeat it three times.

In a kingdom obsessed with dressing like a Kardashian on crack, Emperor Vain McFancypants struts around changing his outfit ever hour. Yet, he’s craving the ultimate outfit.

Enter two shady tailors who decide that there is money to be made here. They tell the emperor that they can make the ultimate outfit for him, something that would make Madonna blush. Not only that, but the clothes are so finely woven that they’d be invisible to dumb people.

They “weave” invisible fabric, and the emperor, too proud to admit he sees nothing, agrees that it looks great. His court, a bunch of yes-men terrified of looking as dumb as a host on The View, rave about the nonexistent outfit. The tailors mime stitching, cutting, and fitting, while the emperor is basically walking around in his royal skivvies.

Deciding that everyone deserves to see this new outfit, the Emperor decides to have a parade so people can see how cool his new threads are. Come parade day, he struts through town, buck-naked but confident, flexing for the crowd. Townsfolk, brainwashed by hype and not wanting to look stupid, cheer like it’s the return of Elvis.

How do the seven dwarves welcome Snow White? “Heigh Ho.”

But then, a kid, immune to nonsense, yells, “Why is the emperor walking around naked? It’s not a good look, dad.” The crowd gasps, realizing they’ve been simping for a streaker. The emperor, red-faced but committed, keeps posing, and pretending because he doesn’t see a way out.

Imagine attending a company training session filled with bobbleheads from HR. One of them opens up with “diversity is our strength.”

A lone man raises his hand and says, “Actually, studies show diverse communities have less trust.”

Silence.

Then gasps. Someone faints. The HR bobblehead sputters, “That’s not in the script!”

Welcome to the Emperor’s New Lies. Here, objective truth is banned, and the narrative is supported at all costs, since without believing that the weavers of the narrative are infallible, everyone will see that the GloboLeft is more naked than Charity over at stage three.

Boy, the GloboLeft has really lost the plot – it’s now more offensive to talk about getting into Sydney Sweeney’s genes than about getting into her jeans.

What is their great effort? The GloboLeft and GloboLeftElite have spent decades weaving lies about race, diversity, and culture and even denying that the Truth, Beauty, and Good exist. Thankfully, Truth, Beauty, and Good can’t be stopped no matter how many HR manuals they throw at it.

The GloboLeft’s playbook is straight from Hans Christian Andersen. They’ve ruled objective reality off-limits. The game is simple:

deny the truth,
deflect the evidence,
obscure the problem,
then 404 their brains when cornered and forced to confront that The Narrative is a lie.

Let’s talk about something simple and non-controversial: black-on-white violence.

FBI’s 2023 crime stats don’t lie: blacks, 13% of the U.S. population, commit 54% of murders. Black-on-white violent crime is 15 times higher than white-on-black, per DOJ’s 2019 data.

Step one: GloboLeft denies it. “Crime’s colorblind!” they scream, ignoring the numbers.
Step two: when you shove the stats in their face, they say, “Data doesn’t show a problem.”
Step three: when you pin them down, they wave hands— “It’s systemic racism! We need to solve the root cause!” Never mind we’ve spent $33 trillion since LBJ’s Great Society, with black poverty rates barely budging (12.3% in 1965, 11.6% in 2023).
Step four: they 404—mental shutdown, change the subject, ban the badthinker from the Internet because they think every pit bull is the same as a poodle.

Every pistol looks like it’s Austrian to me. My doctor said I have Glock-oma.

But, this isn’t just about race. It’s the GloboLeft script for every inconvenient truth:

“Diversity is our strength”: Pew’s 2019 study says diverse communities have lower social cohesion and trust. Homogeneous societies like Japan score higher on happiness. Yet the GloboLeft pushes open borders, forced classroom integration, and ensuring that everyone has the right to be near white people, ignoring the chaos.

“White people are racist”: A 2021 YouGov poll found Western countries (U.S., UK) are the least racist globally—Asians and Africans score higher on bias. But, the GloboLeft calls anyone who notices a bigot.

“Whites are the majority”: Whites are barely 8% of the global population, yet built modern science, literature, industry, programming and, yes, PEZ©. The GloboLeft ignores this, painting whites as oppressors.

I’m writing a book about Nordic cultures, but I don’t know if I’ll make it to the Finnish.

“Women have no disadvantage in sports”: Transgender men dominate women’s sports whenever they compete against real women. “Lia” Thomas won the NCAA swimming title in 2022, despite swimming that would be mediocre for a male. Biology is real, but the GloboLeft calls it transphobic.

“No biological intelligence differences exist”: Decades of IQ studies (e.g., Herrnstein & Murray, 1994) show consistent group differences, shaped by 70,000 years of differential adaptation in every climate on the planet. And, the GloboLeft would say that the only thing that was exactly the same across humans everywhere is the brain.

“Whites aren’t native to the U.S.”: A Muslim born in London to Pakistani parents claims “native British” status, but whites born in America aren’t? The GloboLeft says only brown people get homelands.

Where’s the capital of Zimbabwe? In a Swiss bank account.

“All cultures are equal”: If so, why do millions flee India, Mexico, and Nigeria for the West? Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Index ranks them 93, 126, 145 out of 180. I guess the West’s not perfect, but it’s also not Lagos.

The GloboLeft’s narrative isn’t about truth—it’s about control. They need you to buy the Emperor’s invisible clothes to keep power. Admitting black crime stats, diversity’s costs, or biological realities risks their house of cards. So they lie, deflect, and allow their brains to lock up, hoping you’ll shut up.

Why?

Because the West is built on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. From Athens’ logic to Edison’s bulb, we thrived by facing reality. The GloboLeft has a different dogma where there is no objective reality. This crumbles under scrutiny. They’ve spent $33 trillion on “root causes” since 1965, yet crime is up, trust is down, and borders are sieves. Their narrative is a scam, like selling a VCR in 2025 and calling it cutting-edge.

A 2024 Rasmussen poll found 68% of Americans reject “diversity is strength”: they now see the Emperor’s old lies for what they are. Gen Z’s waking up, especially the boys, sharing memes that cut through The Narrative. Every stat, every study, every viral post chips away at their narrative.

The West’s waking up, and it’s not asking permission. And it’s not pretending to see clothes that aren’t there.

Greedflation And Burgers And Girls Drinking Beer

“And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald’s®.” – Pulp Fiction

Interesting fact: women in Arabic cities like Paris don’t need car insurance. They’re already covered.

Greedflation.

It’s an ugly word for several reasons. The first reason it’s ugly is because I generally support the free market as the best tool for setting prices. You see that at gasoline stations regularly – no station that charges a quarter more for a gallon of gasoline will be able to sell much gasoline. The price for a commodity like gasoline, in a relatively free market, sets itself.

That’s nice, because the very price mechanism that sets the price also allows the gasoline to flow to the consumers that value it the most, which according to my research are groups of post-nuclear war barbarians who hang out in Australia.

I hear they’re filming the sequel on location in Los Angeles.

Some people don’t get this. I recall having extended conversations when I was in my twenties with an elderly gentleman about gasoline prices. He was upset because after some price shock, the gasoline prices all jumped $0.50 the next day.

“They didn’t pay that much for the gasoline!”

Well, no, they didn’t. But because the supply was thought to be limited, the gasoline was worth more. Besides, the merchant was going to have to refill that storage tank at a higher price, and nobody was going to buy his high-priced gas if he charged more than the market when the price invariably went down.

“Besides,” I asked, “If you had an ounce of gold that you bought for $50, would you sell it for that, or would you want the (then) current price of $500 an ounce?”

Of course he said he’d want the $500. But he still couldn’t understand why gas prices went up.

And I only got to take him on one walk.

I wanted to establish that, because I’m going to tear into the larger corporations for lying about prices. That’s greedflation.

An example of this would be McDonald’s®. I’ll pick on them because, like illegal aliens, they’re everywhere and more numerous than they should be at this stage in the economy. McDonald’s™ built its reputation on food that was fast, tasty, and inexpensive – a place a dad could take the kids for a quick treat on the way back from the zoo on a Saturday afternoon.

At least in Modern Mayberry, McDonald’s© has ceased to be fast, and inexpensive. McDonald’s® prices are so high that a “meal deal” costs the better part of the price of a pound of ribeye. To me, that’s not a deal, or at least not a good one.

The stripper said she was stripping in order to feed her kids, so why did she get mad when I tipped her in Cinnamon Toast Crunch™ coupons?

And these prices have pushed people away – McDonald’s™ insinuated that these price hikes were due mainly to inflation and blamed the franchise owners for the ultimate pricing.

The result?

McDonald’s® ended up with declining burger sales, but with record profits. In fact, between 2014 and 2024, their prices doubled. Most of the increase was before the pandemic and inflation. Everyone’s doing it, right? No, mainly McDonald’s® was McLovin’™ it.

The average increase in prices for other fast-food restaurants during that same time period was more in the 55%-ish percent, and more or less in a straight line. They were raising their prices much faster than inflation, but McDonald’s™ was leading the pack.

The result: A lot of “inflation” is just corporations adjusting prices to the point of maximizing their profits. Sell fewer burgers and yet make more money?

Why not! Especially if we can insinuate that it’s really all beyond our control. Perfect!

I actually don’t mind that they’re increasing prices to increase profits. I get that. I mean, if they could sell just one burger and make sixteen billion dollars in profit, they’d be all in. Oh, wait, Lockheed-Martin™ is already doing that with jet fighters.

Don’t worry if the F-35 gets rained on. That only costs about $50 million to fix.

What I mind is the insinuation this is due to outside forces instead of a planned extraction of the greatest amount of profit that can be generated per sale. It’s a lie.

One of the components of the monthly “Misery Index” that I put together is tied to inflation. Inflation destroys the value of currency, and makes people feel, day by day, shabbier and poorer. However, to blame outside forces for your increased prices instead of saying, “Hey, we think this burger is worth it,” is execrable.

The Wilder household has responded by purchasing prepared foods outside of the house only rarely. Once a week – at most. Instead, we’re cooking at home. It’s likely healthier, and I can get exactly the right amount of chocolate sauce on my bacon cheeseburger.

I think many Americans have reacted the same way. And for us, it’s made us less miserable, rather than more miserable, plus the food is better.

The problem, though, is that when big business reaches a size that it can extract all the wealth it wants on a whim and keep posting record profits year after year. That’s not competition, that’s a Wealth Pump as defined by Peter Turchin, and it is a prime factor in the creation of misery and the road to Civil War.

The initial example that I gave of gas stations all competing to get my dollar is the way the markets work best. There are a number of different sellers all trying to get me to come to their station, though they haven’t figured out that if they had hot girls in bikinis they could probably double their business.

And they don’t look like they speak Arabic.

And no, McDonald’s™ rarely forces people to eat there, so there still is competition from substitutes, like a ribeye. I have the choice of whether or not to go to McDonald’s™. Please, Golden Arches, raise your prices to your heart’s content!

Just don’t lie about it, and just don’t expect consumers to hang around, though it seems to be working for you right now. And McDonald’s™ innovates, since I heard that they had a failed beef version of their McRib©.

Who says they don’t learn from their McSteaks®?

The Three Horsemen and One Bikini of the Apocalypse

“Apocalypse cow? Apocalypse wow!” – The Tick (2001)

I love this joke like there’s no tomorrow.

I. Job Replacement.
The Multicultural West.
The Fiat Financial House of Cards.
Sydney Sweeny’s bikini.

Each of these, if dealt with on its own, presents a danger as great as being between Gavin Newsom and a camera. But it is likely something we could work through as a country peacefully. Heck, maybe even two of the three, though that’s difficult, and history has the receipts:

For example, when the United States was a nation, we worked through the Great Depression. The Great Depression was likely brought about at the fundamental level from the transformation of the nation from an agrarian society driven by horsepower to a manufacturing colossus driven by iron, steam, and electricity. Sort of if A.I. were cars and assembly line production, but covered in tasty Radium®.

If a radioactive spider makes Spiderman®, would a radioactive dog create Doberman®?

Of course there was a finance side of the Great Depression. It was egged on by a stock market mania, margin credit, and the optimism brought about by new technology. Stocks never go down, right? That creates a bumpy road for a bit. But, as we were a singular people, we got through it.

I mean, the single bloodiest war in human history counted as a bit of a bumpy road, right?

We also dealt with multi-cultural forces in America in our history.

First, the founders only allowed in Western Europeans,
Second by fighting, defeating, and corralling Indians (some of them are still sore about this),
And, finally, by blocking out many non-Western Europeans with the Immigration Act of 1924 since we already had the recipes for all their good food.

1924 was when we as a nation realized that we were getting too much “diversity” too quickly and saw that certain groups of foreigners couldn’t or wouldn’t assimilate and never be Americans. We dealt with that in a calm manner and got picky and sorted diversity like a bouncer at a cartel nightclub. We maintained (for a time) the basic ethnic makeup of the United States – we didn’t throw them out, but we made sure we’d outnumber them.

I wonder if he and his siblings were born apart?

We dealt with fiat currency in the wake of the Revolutionary War victory when the phrase “isn’t worth a Continental” referred to the money printing excesses that led to the Constitutional Convention and the Constitutional clause of “No state shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make any thing but cold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.” The nation survived, though it did end up changing our form of government entirely.

Lincoln floated fake cash during the Civil War to pay for it, and that could arguably be said to have started “The Long Depression” – a hangover period from 1873-1896 as we vomited out all of that fiat money. The Long Depression was also exacerbated by the transition of the American manufacturing from craftsmen to big factories.

The establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank™ followed by Nixon ignoring the clear intent of that clause in 1971 led to the crack-up we see today. Money, gold and silver, has been replaced by cash which is too expensive to print – we can just use ones and zeroes.

I’ve written about all of these three separately, and for the most part, we as a nation were able to make it through, but it’s important that we realize that we’re dealing with all three of these leading to a crisis right now when we are observably no longer a nation.

The ICE agent in Los Angeles needs National Guard and Marine protection for their anxiety, I heard on the news. Something about his panic attacks.

The first is A.I. It has already been a steamroller that has eliminated tens of thousands of jobs. I would expect that soon enough it will be hundreds of thousands. Recently, I called up my bank to do some banking. The transaction wasn’t unique, it probably happens thousands of times a day. The person I was talking to, “Mitch” had a perfect Midwestern accent. What tipped me off was that “Mitch” didn’t connect the reason for the error to the resolution. “Mitch” transferred me to “Anna” because he wasn’t authorized to grant a request.

“Anna” had, of course, the thickest Indian accent – the kind that is so poorly pronounced that it is nearly unintelligible if fast. Her actual name was probably something like Ananneedanothasylabble-Ganish-Prajeeta. At that moment that the smart Midwestern dude transfers the call to a barely verbal woman in Ramamamadingpoopabad, I realized that Mitch was an A.I.

As an anon mentioned on my last post on A.I., “Think about all of the Indian scammers out there today . . . Now think about what happens if AI wipes out most of the call center and coding jobs causing most of India’s 1.3 billion people to be out of work. It’s going to get ugly.” He had a point. A.I. is going to make it too expensive to pay Indians pennies a day just to steal money from old ladies. This is India’s worst nightmare.

I always wondered how you got down from an elephant, then Pa Wilder told me that you get down from a goose.

This scenario requires no Artificial Superintelligence. This requires only the application of existing capabilities. Said differently: ChatGPT 4.0® already has an I.Q. greater than three-quarters of the Subcontinent.

This has implications, but match it with the house of cards that is the world financial system. That thing was already strained tighter than Syndey Sweeney’s bikini holding in the all the printed money flooding in from the United States and the world. A country like India, unable to feed all the Indians, will collapse. No jobs. No prospects of jobs.

Though the research for tonight was fun.

But it will be, perhaps, worst in the West. On top of the economic dislocation of the A.I. Revolution, on top of the piles of fake money, we are not even a people.

The latest riots in L.A. have proven that out. Most of the “immigrants” that have come to “enrich” us have actually come to replace us. That’s their goal. You can watch on the news the Pakistanis fighting the Indians over which of them has the best claim to London. You can watch young men of military age strutting in Los Angeles with the flags of foreign countries like a U.N. parade, but somehow worse. You can read posts on X® or even Reddit©: they are not here to assimilate – they are here to conquer and take over.

This adds the final layer of instability required to ensure that the United States and the whole of the West is facing the direst crisis since the threats to Europe that were ended at the Battle of Tours in 732, or the Battle of Vienna in 1683.

This level of crisis is graver than any the West has faced in over 340 years, if not greater. Whatever comes out of this will be different.

Thankfully, we still have all the tasty Radium™ you can eat!

Watch The Economy Stagflate, Complete With Unrelated Bikini Picture

“We, the people, suffered. We still suffer from unemployment, inflation, crime and corruption.” – Taxi Driver

When I buy groceries for prepping, The Mrs. says I have stock home syndrome.

Back in the bad (economically) old days of the 1970s, a word came into existence that described the economic policy of the Carter Administration: Stagflation.

Now, if this would have been about massive helium-filled deer antlers, it would have been great. Surreal, but great. But it wasn’t. Instead, it was surreal but bad –the economy was stagnant, but the price of everything kept going up. It was like going to the dentist because of a toothache and finding out that instead of anesthetic you just got pepper spray in your eyes to take your mind off the dental surgery.

But back to surreal. The impacts of stagflation were likewise as surreal as the giraffe clock currently melting in my light socket. Here’s an example: I remember when I was first married to The Mrs., we would go and visit her parents and spend the weekend in her old bedroom. In one part of the closet was a dust-covered box filled with toys from when The Mrs. was a very young The Miss.

Is a prog rock band that plays Spanish guitar on your front lawn called Pink Flamenco?

One toy in particular stood out – it was a cheap plastic injection-molded car. It still had the grocery store price sticker on it – and it was something like $8.99.

Whoa! Back in the late 1990s, $8.99 would have bought something like a dozen similar cheap plastic injection-molded cars. Inflation had been out of control in the late 1970s when The Mrs. had been given that toy.

Everything sucked economically – crappy quality at inflated prices.

Two major factors led to that situation – Nixon pulling the United States off the gold standard was the most critical one. If we had to prove-up our spending with gold, well, we’d have to have some sort of discipline or we wouldn’t have any gold.

Discipline sounds like it’s boring, and the 1970s was made for disco parties, drugs, and infidelity, so why have discipline with our money? That’s just not cool, man. Besides, who needs rules when you have bitchin’ bell bottoms?

I guess weightlifters in the 1970s wore barbell bottoms.

The other situation is that the United States had reached a (then) peak in oil production, and was now dependent upon oil supplies from foreign nations (they were nations instead of countries back then – now, not so much). Since one group of foreigners (Arabs) didn’t like another group of foreigners (Israelis) the group that had all the oil (Arabs) decided to stop selling so much oil.

Oil is a big deal, because the price of oil is hidden almost everywhere in our economy. It’s required for planes to move bikini models, for trucks to move PEZ™, and in some places heats homes. So, increasing the price of oil was just like tossing a big tax on everything, so moms everywhere went to work to bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and then wear crappy perfume and nylon pantsuits.

I think I just gave the origin story of Hamburger Helper™, but I digress.

Not everyone makes great meatloaf, but two out of three ain’t bad.

What does this mean to today’s problem? Are we in the same place?

Partially.

We’ve been partying, mostly, since the 1970s, and have gotten away with it through various shenanigans. As Ayn Rand said, “You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.” I’ll just shrug and Ayn was talking about her polyamorous relationships, but I can’t be sure.

Regardless, 2025 is a big year for dealing with consequences. Our current national debt is something like $33 trillion. I know, it’s like Whoopi Goldberg’s butt, it’s so big it’s meaningless. But we have to refinance $9 trillion of that $33 trillion plus another $3 trillion that we’re spending that we don’t have, this year.

I mean, who is going to buy all that debt?

Don’t know. Probably not China. Or Canada. Or Mexico.

Let’s think about where that debt is now. The Federal Reserve® already owns about $5 trillion, and it’s not like they have a choice, so they’re probably in for several trillion. But the biggest holder of the national debt is . . . the government. It owes itself $7 trillion dollars.

The rocks are still worth more.

Yes, you read that right. Big chunks of that are Social Security “trust fund” that’s stuck in Al Gore’s “lock box”. I mean, seriously, what do people not understand about a lock box? But it also includes things like DOD retirement, and civil service retirement (which is over a trillion dollars). And you know we’re spending down that Social Security trust fund right now, so that just means more debt that someone else will have to buy.

A trillion here, a trillion there, and soon enough we’re talking about real money.

The way debt bonds are sold is that people bid on ‘em at an auction. What are people bidding? The interest rate. So if there’s a huge supply and lower demand, what goes up?

The interest rate.

Since we’re not paying the bills out of cash, but out of borrowed money, that means the interest paid will just go onto the debt as it’s paid, which means that even more bonds will need to be sold. That means that there will be more supply and . . . higher interest rates.

It’s a vicious circle, but one that works as long as the economy keeps growing.

But the economy likely didn’t grow last quarter, so we’re (at least right now) stagnant.

Oddly, the tariffs and deportations seem to have broken something and right now we have the lowest inflation in the last four years. I don’t think that will last. Higher interest rates will bleed into businesses, and money for expansion or even day-to-day operational expenses.

How odd that people whine and complain when you make them go live in a country they made, surrounded by people who speak the same language that they do.

These higher interest rates will also make trillions of bank assets (my mortgage, for instance) worth less. My mortgage is at an interest rate lower than I can get with a deposit a savings account. I assure you my bank is aware of that and loves it when I toss them my monthly check. This is what led to the Silicon Valley Bank® implosion – it had too many dollars tied up in low interest loans and securities, and then rates went up.

Thankfully, the Fed® made the decision that the banks can ignore the fact that their assets are worth less, or else all of them would have self-extinguished. And you wonder why gold is selling at $3,300 an ounce?

Why do I predict the high likelihood of Civil War 2.0 by 2032? Because by then, if you do the math, you’ll see that just interest on the debt will be at least half of the total tax hauled in, but I think it will be worse, because the numbers always are worse.

The solution to this won’t be a business-as-usual solution, and there will be extreme economic dislocations. There is no evidence of anyone wanting to increase our economy at the China-like rates we’d need to outrun this mess, and no appetite to cut the cost of government. At some point the consequences of ignoring reality will become so manifest that they aren’t something we can ignore.

And it runs on beetle juice.

Well, the good news is that we probably won’t see $8.99 injection molded plastic toy cars. The bad news is that they’re already selling the one in the picture above for $10.00.

Is The Bottom 20% Killing America?

“Attention students, m’kay. There will be a presentation by the special education department in the gymnasium Friday during lunch and recess, m’kay.” – South Park

If they make a show about the Biden Administration, will it be titled “House of Tards”?

In what will probably be one of the more controversial posts I put up, I figured it’s time to discuss the boat anchor on Western Civilization: the bottom 20%. It’s in response to seeing the X® up above, because it got me thinking of just how right the author is.

Let’s look at high schools, for instance. When I was in high school, there was a room for the special ed kids (we called them speds) so impacted by genetic or environmental trauma that they were effectively never going to do much in society. Think Down’s syndrome. We didn’t have a lot of interaction with those kids, because they were so far down the rabbit hole of human cognition that they were operating, on their best day, at the level of a four- to eight-year-old.

The second set of low achievers were tossed into the school’s “alternative” program. This, as far as I could see, consisted of coming to school and smoking cigarettes outside the alternative building. I recall my AP Chemistry teacher glancing out the window and remarking to the eight students in class, “Oh, look, the alternative kids are out playing advanced volleyball.”

I recall this really cracking me up.

How does the Spanish Dr. Who greet people? Buenos TARDIS.

When I was in high school, this wasn’t nearly as prevalent as it is today. To be a sped was a social stigma. Not that we treated them poorly – far from it. But the cheerleaders weren’t going to date the dude who was 4’2” and communicated in a series of grunts and hoots.

Today, there are roughly 7.5 million kids with learning disabilities so profound that they are required by federal law to have an Individual Education Plan, so, per one article that’s 15% of kids in schools (school being between the ages of 5 and 18 for most kids). Most of these IEPs are not for gifted kids, rather they’re for people who can demonstrate disabilities.

I hear Michael J. Fox and his kids set up a parking lot just for disabled people. Park n’ Sons.

Parents, especially low-income urban parents, love having their children on IEPs. Why? Having an IEP does quite a few things:

Bulletproofs the child from being flunked. It can be done, but it requires more paperwork than would be required to launch the Boeing® Starliner™ again.
Bulletproofs the child (mostly) from being suspended for behavior. Until they curb-stomp a teacher for taking away their Nintendo Switch® and are charged with a felony. But, hey, the parents say, “He’s a good boy, he was on an IEP.”
Depending on the IEP, the current trend is to require that they be placed in classrooms with “normal” children, becoming a boat anchor on the rest of the class, dragging down progress. Think about having a class with Whoopi Goldberg in it. But she’s violent. It would be like that.
Depending on income, an IEP may make the family eligible for up to an extra $943 a month – tax free. We give parents incentives to have children that have the impulse control of Diddy at an Epstein party.
Depending on the IEP, the school district may need to provide what counts as essentially free day care until the age of 22, thus providing an environment where free-range 22-year-olds can stalk kids as young as 13. Thankfully, I think most of the 22-year-olds are out killing people rather than stalking 13-year-olds.
Using Pennsylvania as a guide, having a student with an IEP costs between $5,000 and $77,000 more per year than having a “normal” kid.
Children with IEPs are often given more time for things like tests, and are excused from things like deadlines. This one ropes in the parents of low-performing children of GloboLeftist parents who want Rachel to get into Harvard®.

Yeah, you can see just this one program from just one federal law (the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, with the horrible acronym IDEA) has spawned trillions of dollars in direct spending, but has also destroyed the educational experiences for those left in the normie-tier classrooms.

If you win a pumpkin carving contest, is it a hollow victory?

In my experience, after I was out of the general education part of high school (think P.E. and Earth Science) I was in very few classes with any Special Ed kids – it’s not like they were going to sign up for Physics or Advanced Algebra. I guess in 2024, Rachel might try to do that and her parents would berate the teacher with all of Rachel’s special needs, “Oh, did she not get a Hostess® Cupcake™ and an extra two hours to take the test? She must have had a low blood sugar and been under stress that’s why she got 40% on the test, you monster!”

But in the classes I did share with special ed kids (P.E.), they were horribly disruptive. In one case, one of the students – Down’s syndrome – managed to lock himself in an unused gym locker. These lockers were big enough to hold a 4’2” kid if they hunkered down, since they were designed to hold football gear. I’ll spare you the details, but I’m sure that coach went home that night going, “They don’t pay me enough to do this job.”

What would happen if we didn’t spend these misplaced compassion dollars into society? First, the parents would have to foot the bill.

Tough, right?

Well, that’s life.

I’m oddly proud of that one.

Second, classrooms could eliminate students who wouldn’t or couldn’t behave. Having a child lacking that much in control indicates that structured education won’t help them at all unless it’s enforced with an electric cattle prod. That horrible law, IDEA, just turns school into a holding pen for unsocialized brutes.

Eliminating those disruptive “students” would allow the rest of the students to learn. And, perhaps, just a few of those disruptive students with poor self-control with appropriate and judicious use of cattle prods might just learn some self-control.

Again, the parents could and should be held responsible, and if the kid is booted from school, lift child labor laws and allow them to work 40 hours. Oh, and unless the child is profoundly (Down’s syndrome or worse) disabled? No SSI benefits. Did I say parents? Yeah, let’s be real. 90% of these kids don’t have parents, just a parent.

This one misguided GloboLeftist program, IDEA, has probably cost the United States between $1.5 trillion (low end) to $3.3 trillion (median) over the last 20 years. The result?

What’s the difference between a Taliban outpost and a Pakistani wedding? I don’t know, man, I just fly the drone.

Our schools are in shambles, and our test scores are dropping, and the environment makes The Road Warrior look like a conversation between reasonable people. All of this is for the lowest 20%. Imagine how bad it would be if we had spent double that.

Certainly, there are kids that can do wonders with a little bit of additional help. Dyslexia, for instance, is very treatable. I mean, what would happen if famous dyslexics Whoopi Goldberg or Alyssa Milano could actually read? They might not be the grifters that they are today.

But we can probably do that for less than $4,000 a year per kid.

This is only one example where the lowest 20% sets the rules for everyone.

Who are the people doing the crimes on the subways? I assure you, these are the crimes of the lowest 20%. Why do we not have clean and affordable public transportation? The lowest 20%.
Who are consuming the most public services? Yup, the same, and the perverse nature of our welfare system provides incentives for these people to have lots of children, which they often do via a revolving carousel of gene donors, who are also of the lowest 20%.
Who are doing the vast majority of murders? Eliminate the lowest 20% of the population from the statistics, and the United States would be the very safest nation on the planet.
The kid who shot up Parkland High School? I’ll bet a No Prize that he had an IEP, and was of the lowest 20%.

The solution is glaringly simple.

We have to stop coddling and funding the lowest 20%. Period. Social Darwinism only works if those who are exhibiting negative qualities face negative consequences. People respond to incentives, and if your incentive is to produce a never-ending stream of children that get rewarded for having no impulse control, well, you’ll get what we see in the cities.

Did Darwin tell his children that they were adapted?

The good news is the same as I have been preaching forever: bad times will winnow out this most artificial construction. A society cannot long produce a feral fraction that creates a low-trust society.

This particular boat anchor won’t cause society to fail, but the anchor will surely be surprised when it is cut loose.