Category: Wealth

The Funniest Post You’ll Ever Read About Bank Failures And Yachts

“A major one.” – Fight Club

What did Kim call his yacht? His dictator ship.

Last March, Silicon Valley Bank® failed. In a big way. Because the people who deposited money in the bank own things like yachts and senators, well, they escaped with hardly a haircut. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation® (FDIC™) normally ensures deposits for $250,000 per account holder. In this case, they decided, nah, what the heck, we’ll make sure that Roku® and Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry don’t lose a dime.

Ironically, today the Internal Revenue Service sued the FDIC© for $1.45 billion in back taxes they say that Silicon Valley Bank™ owed when the FDIC© took it over. Sure, it sounds like on part of the government is suing another part of the government for play money made up by the (non-federal) Fed™ but the FDIC™ is supposedly independent and gets its money from the member banks.

Which are members of the Fed™. Which prints the cash.

If this sounds as incestuous as a Hapsburg family stump, well, it is. And of course I’m going to go with a fresh meme about the Hapsburgs, because that’s what all of the cool kids are doing today.

A Hapsburg walks into a bar, the bartender says, “Why the long face?” The prince says, “Generations of inbreeding.”

The root cause of the Silicon Valley Bank™ failure is that they lent money for long periods at low interest rates. When interest rates go up, those loans aren’t worth a lot, at least to the bank. Right now, my mortgage has a lower interest rate than I’m getting in checking.

Silicon Valley Bank™ looked at all the crappy loans they had, and did the math, and found out that they were worth less than zero. Even worse, their bigger depositors heard (because depositors who own senators seem to get advance notice) and started to pull their money out.

Since those folks had friends, they told them. Soon enough, everyone wanted one thing – they wanted their money out of Silicon Valley Bank™. Rational people realized that if this was a problem at Silicon Valley Bank©, it was a problem everywhere.

Silicone and silicon – electrical engineers know the difference – no one trusts them around silicone.

In a thought that gives central bankers and senators cold sweats (after the previous night’s booze wears off) is the idea that people lose faith in the banking system. Oddly, this wouldn’t be a problem if we used money made out of gold and silver, but since ours is just as much a fantasy as thinking that diversity enriches us all.

So, there’s a problem that’s impacting literally every bank. Some big ones have failed, but thankfully Duchess Markle still has her cash so she can get enough publicity to hide from commoners like me. What’s the solution?

First, pay off everyone so no one is scared and Oprah doesn’t have to fly commercial with mere mortals. Second, flood the system with money. If a bank needs cash? Wheelbarrows of it?

Give it to them.

Thankfully Congress took a break from sending your tax dollars to Ukraine to bail out Oprah.

Last year, banks were paying 0.10% or so for crappy checking accounts. This summer, rates started shooting up, so I snuggled into some CDs that paid a lot more than my mortgage cost. Then, last month, I got a call from my bank where I set up the CDs.

“Mr. Wilder? You have money in other banks, right? If you deposit (a few thousand) dollars from accounts outside of your accounts with us into savings, I can give you a 4.5% rate on checking and savings.”

What????

If there’s one thing I know about banking, is that bankers are not generous except to themselves, senators, and Oprah.

I check with him, drove to the nearest branch of Major Bank™ in Mt. Pilot, and tossed a few thousand in. Could I take it out later?

Sure!

I am informed this is funny because horses often live in stables, so this would be a violation of California’s work safety laws.

I started wondering about this, but soon enough came up with the answer: when I make a deposit in the bank, I’m making a loan to the bank. And if they’re offering me nearly 5% for just parking cash at their place, that means . . .

I’m their best alternative for a loan. Me. John Wilder. Enough so they paid a dude to call me and ask.

Yup, it’s just that simple. And they called me to ask me to make a loan, and offered to pay me over four times what I was making on my cash to make that loan. Reading a bit further, it turns out the way that the Fed™ shoved money down the collective throats of the banks was through the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP).

BTFP loaned money to the banks, and the banks deposited the money at the Fed© to make a profit on the difference.

Yes, the Fed© created the BTFP, loaned the money to the banks who then deposited the money . . . at the Fed™. I’m not making this up. As of March 11, 2024, the Fed© will no longer be making more BTFP loans at those sweetheart rates. All new loans would be made at the same rate the bank gets paid by the Fed©. The gravy train, or at least this gravy train, is over.

That’s what the Fed© said in January, 2024.

When did I get the phone call wanting to borrow a few bucks from Major Bank?

January, 2024.

Since when do I believe in coincidences? And it was weird, it wasn’t a lot of money that I needed to deposit, but I think they were looking to get bigger players than tiny John Wilder.

But at least they’re not insufferable idiots . . . oh, too soon.

And that’s the rub. If banks are looking to borrow cash from me, how bad are their balance sheets?

Dang, I’m worried! Will Prince Harry have enough money to travel the world for 45-minute meetings with his father? Will Oprah be able to afford more caviar?

And, maybe I should take up loan sharking. Maybe I can buy my own yacht, bigger than Prince Harry’s and I’ll sail past him, and look down on him, and try to give Harry that condescending look that appears to be his Resting Prince Face.

And I’ll write a rock song about it.

I’ll call it Smirk on the Water.

What Signs Would We See If The Economy Was Going To Be Okay?

“Martha’s polishing the brass on the Titanic.” – Fight Club

When I met The Mrs. I said, “Titanic.”  She said that was a terrible icebreaker.

I worry that sometimes I talk too much about the downsides of workings of the economy and was asked, “What does it look like when things start to look better?  What does it look like if it’s all going to be fine?”  I know this might seem like rearranging the deck chairs to keep the Titanic from sinking, but, hey, let’s go with it?

These are great questions.  Not as good as, “Would you like another beer?” but still very good.

These are also questions that could be political in nature (I might write more about that for Monday) but in this case I’m going to focus on the economy as much as I can, though it’s certain that political will slip in here and there – it can’t be avoided because we’ve got Joe all over the economy.

What will make things “fine” and how will we know when we get there?

If someone steals your booze, does that mean they’ve lifted your spirits?

First:  Stop the infinite debt spending.

Several years ago I wrote about Modern Monetary Theory.  In a nutshell, Modern Monetary Theory says that if you have a bill, pay it.  If you don’t have the money, make it.  The theory goes that there aren’t a set number of points in a game of football, so why should there be a set number of dollars in the economy.  So, if you have a bill, pay for it.

This is an awesome theory only for a person that has the I.Q. of a Kamala/AOC lovechild.  The worst thing about it is that it actually worked in the short term, which is the worst when it comes to an economic policy, because it gives lots of time for Bad Things to pile up.

What made it work is because the United States can pawn the piles and piles of dollars off to the world since everyone takes them because we have nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers and everyone knows what happened to Saddam and Qaddafi when they decided they’d start taking gold instead.

I asked a friend if he wanted to hear about the Russian victory parade.  He said, “No tanks.”

Eventually either the desire or ability to soak up the dollars goes away.  When that happens, even for a short time, the inflation inherent in the system feeds back.

Can this go on forever?  No.  Should we, you know, maybe consider stopping it before we totally wreck the economy?  If we do that, there will be a hangover and a tough political bill to be paid.

Will we?  Yes.  As Ben Stein’s dad said, “If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.”  That will be a very, very bad day if it’s not one of our choosing.

Also?  Fiat economies have a worse track record than Fiat™ cars for reliability.

Second:  Stop the Wealth Pump®.

I really enjoyed Peter Turchin’s book, End Times.  In it, he convinced me (he also has data to support this) that one of the biggest failures of my lifetime is the priming of what he calls the Wealth Pump™.  The really short version of this is that policies that would support concentration of capital in the billionaire class are enacted (for example:  open borders) while policies that benefit the average worker (for example:  strictly controlled borders) are ignored.

I dropped a piece of ice in the kitchen.  I was upset, but then it melted.  I guess it’s water under the fridge.

Turchin’s models have shown that the Wealth Pump™ everywhere and always leads to tremendous social turmoil.  Even without the economic misery for the common man that the Wealth Pump© implies, the turmoil from the hordes of teeming illegals will create turmoil that will last lifetimes.  But stopping the Wealth Pump™ is imperative.

Will Bezos and Soros owned Senators suddenly ignore the billionaire class they serve?  At this point, not voluntarily.  The bacon-wrapped shrimp and cool stock tips are pretty powerful to keep them in line.

Third:  De-financialize the economy by putting out the FIRE.

Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate is called the FIRE sector of the economy.  In theory, FIRE exists to serve the actual productive sectors of the economy that make actual things that people need like potatoes, beer, steak, PEZ™, shoes, rifles, books, and toilet plungers.

That’s the way it should work.

Instead, it’s a gambling economy filled with people who try to manipulate and tweak and profit without producing anything.  The big oil squeeze of 2008?  Rumor was that was a big investment bank trying to make a bet profitable on a short against a particular company.  The investment bank didn’t produce anything useful except for profits.  By manipulation.

I think FIRE might be more dangerous than fire.

Again, ask the Nancy Pelosi why her stock portfolio is so profitable, and ask why first term Senators do so well in the stock market.  Or don’t.  But it’s FIRE that’s the primary machine in the Wealth Pump™ and these create increasingly horrific schemes.

Examples?  Everything is a subscription because it increases revenue and profits.  Now it’s moving into video games:  design a game once, sell a subscription to it so that people can’t play it again for free, but instead have to pay a monthly fee.  It’s already moving that way for software.

And look into who is buying all the housing.  It’s on FIRE.

Fourth:  Rational housing valuations.

People need a place to live, and a pod won’t cut it, but houses are now big investments.  Why?  Because they need more profits to feed the Wealth Pump®.  Housing prices returning to something a guy with a high school degree working a manufacturing job can afford is crucial, since that’s where families come from.  Is it possible in San Jose?  No.  It’s possible in Modern Mayberry, but that’s because BlackRock© hasn’t started buying here.

Fifth:  Space for humans and A.I.

I know that some are skeptical, but A.I. is already making hundreds of thousands of jobs obsolete.  Running a backhoe?  No.  Writing articles?  Yes.  Things that are easy for humans, are hard for A.I.  Things that are hard for humans (and thus draw a higher salary), are often easy for A.I.

Are expert-level programmers still required?  Absolutely.  But not as many, since an expert-level programmer acting in tandem with A.I. will have a tenfold increase in productivity.

Who loses?  The “not as good” programmers who are now not required.

This has happened before in all sorts of industries.  DJs on the radio began voice tracking decades ago.  The average DJ makes minimum wage (average, some are highly compensated, most are not) but still the radio stations paid $20,000 to eliminate them because making the product cheaper is what they know.

ChatKGB:  it asks the questions.

Automation increases profits, but it doesn’t lead to some sort of techno-utopia where we have three hour work days.  People just lose their jobs.  As profits have gone up, pay has gone down (relative to inflation) and work hours have gone up for salaried folks.

A.I. hasn’t hit in a big way, yet.  It will.  Making space for people is unlikely, but necessary.

That’s a summary of how we can tell if we’re going to pull out from the looming economic catastrophe, what it looks like if things are going to get better.  I’ve started sketching out a few political things to show that things are going to be okay, and (like I wrote above) will likely show up on Monday.

So, like the Titanic, it looks like we might have a change in destination.  But we’re making good time!

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Two Minutes To Midnight

“Two minutes, tops.  But it’s a tough two minutes.” – Reservoir Dogs

Finland has no border problems – no one can cross the Finnish line.

  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 V, Issue 9

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

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

In this issue:  Front Matter – Governing War Structures – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Kabuki Border Theater? – Links

Front Matter

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

Governing War Structures

In the aftermath of the Virgina Second Amendment rally a few years ago I had a realization about path to Civil War 2.0:  organization will be very, very fast.  I think I even wrote those words in the Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, but I’m too lazy to look it up.  Regardless, I’m going with a full “I told you so” about this one.

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

First:  Texas wasn’t ordered by the Supreme Court to do anything.  The Supreme Court’s decision was removing an injunction against the more or less worthless Customs and Border Protection (CBP) being able to remove razor wire that Texas put up, so the ruling doesn’t require Texas to do anything.

Second:  If CBP is as bad at customs as they are at immigration, I’d expect that you could export nuclear bombs to Bulgaria.

Aside from that, the amazing thing was about how quickly a coalition of the Several States backed Texas.  I was doing a podcast with The Mrs. and Mark and even as we were talking, more and more governors were saying that they stood with Texas in real time – state after state.

This was a big deal.

If at first you don’t secede, try, try again.

And it happened very, very quickly.  This is the trigger to number 9 on the Civil War 2.0 countdown list, and it happened in less than 24 hours.  The list is incomplete, since I’m certain more of the Several States would side with Texas if things went sideways, and places like Colorado and Illinois would mostly secede, leaving small islands of blue in seas of red.  Kentucky?  Yeah, they’d be in as well because of their pioneering spirit.  In Kentucky, when your car breaks down?  You build a house next to it.

Now there’s a slogan I can get behind.

The oppositional structure for Civil War 2.0 developed out of thin air on a single evening in January.  There’s more to the story down below, but the lines developed amazingly quickly.  I thought the real issue would be the Second Amendment, but illegal immigration managed to do what no other issue that the TradRight had could do:  make everyone notice.  The unending flood of illegal aliens (an absolute record this month, ever, as shown in the Civil War Index graph below) has been the catalyst.

Note to the FedGov folks, if you enforced the actual Constitution and kicked out the illegals, you could probably stop Texas from straying.

I do expect that (for reasons as noted in our second story) that the tension from this may fade, but the governing structures are in place, which places us firmly at two minutes until midnight.

Yes, we are very close, but Biden backed down because he realizes that on the FAFO graph, he’s pretty close to the FO section.

Does this make him scared enough to pee his pants?  Depends.

The federal government has to push so hard because it feels that its power is becoming more tenuous.  Yes, this tension may fade and after two more months I’ll back down the clock of doom, but this is an amazingly large step.

There have been others.

Missouri would be in trouble except for:

Violence and Censorship Update

I’ll (mostly) let the memes speak for themselves.

As God is my witness, I never knew convicts could fly.

And people say there isn’t a perfect woman.

Looks like Canada is behind enemy lines now.

If I X’d® this, I’d be in jail now.  So why isn’t Soros?  Oh, yeah, he’s a billionaire who hates America.

Think he wants to put up the Statue of Oppression?

What’s a sensitive event?  Whatever Google® says it is.

I wonder if Australia realizes this will just make all the edgy kids get swastika tats?

Canada, are you doing okay?  Looks like you haven’t figured out the whole “laws” thing.

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again, but only slightly.  Does it matter after the damage has been done?

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

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

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is slightly down.

Economic:

Economic numbers did a slight dive.  I wonder if it’s because they caught this guy?

Illegal Aliens:

The most, ever, in the history of the country.  For all time.

Kabuki Border Theater?

PIERRE

The Texas border confrontation has been in the news bigly.  Is it real?  Follow this (LINK) from a Texan (courtesy Aesop) who says that just a mile from the confrontation spot that the border is wide open.  Wide open, but perhaps slightly inconvenient.

Does this matter?

Yes, it matters.

Absolutely.  The border simply does not exist in 2024.  Anyone can walk across at any time, any place, and be rewarded with cash, prizes, airfare to anyplace in the nation, and free room and board.  It’s in New York.  It’s in Boston.  It’s everywhere.

What’s a radical Leftist’s favorite font?  Sans sheriff.

The GloboElite get cheap labor.  The GloboLeftists s get free votes and power.  Oddly, they even share that.

Remember to call a doctor if your election vote counting lasts more than four hours.

But, hey, I hear that they’re close to an illegal immigration vote in Congress!

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1751673864524894408

https://twitter.com/i/status/1744577621319667964

https://twitter.com/i/status/1747837919312687268

https://twitter.com/i/status/1744180313876574264

https://twitter.com/tecas2000/status/1752757658161926364

https://twitter.com/TheWatcherDaily/status/1727684087245132251

https://twitter.com/tecas2000/status/1754194250638508470

https://twitter.com/i/status/1753461857124323462

https://twitter.com/i/status/1752897020560379985

https://twitter.com/i/status/1740256698781360200

https://twitter.com/i/status/1741324539265532308

https://twitter.com/i/status/1741890761845608774

https://twitter.com/i/status/1741106761984057418

https://twitter.com/ShootInUSA/status/1747178759730671934

 

Good Guys

https://news.yahoo.com/shootout-jewelry-store-oaklands-fruitvale-030731425.html

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1748054072215703703

 

One Guy

https://wcyb.com/news/local/kyle-rittenhouse-event-at-etsu-moving-to-larger-venue-because-of-high-demand-for-tickets

https://www.wjhl.com/news/local/controversy-at-etsu-over-kyle-rittenhouse-as-guest-speaker/

https://www.timesnews.net/opinion/columns/bob-arrington-kyle-rittenhouse-etsu-and-free-speech/article_8dc3908e-c06b-11ee-819d-7f6c131835ee.html#google_vignette

https://www.newsweek.com/kyle-rittenhouse-republican-gun-control-ar15-1866056

 

Body Count

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/soldiers-killed-jordan-names/

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/01/10/army-sees-sharp-decline-white-recruits.html

https://dailycaller.com/2024/01/24/us-military-stretched-too-thin-to-deal-with-threats-report-says/

https://www.heritage.org/military

https://www.yahoo.com/news/no-longer-top-level-fighting-070000553.html

https://twitter.com/EthicalSkeptic/status/1747835202985185509

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/blood-clots-embalmers-report-mid-2021-covid-vaccines/

https://studyfinds.org/childless-millennials-parents/

https://www.prri.org/research/generation-zs-views-on-generational-change-and-the-challenges-and-opportunities-ahead-a-political-and-cultural-glimpse-into-americas-future/

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1750650452105179630

 

Vote Count 

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1691812817798566281

https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fjustthenews.com%2Fpolitics-policy%2Felections%2Fdhs-agency-warned-about-integrity-mail-voting-2020-election-while

https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fthefederalist.com%2F2024%2F01%2F16%2Flawsuit-uncovers-how-raffensperger-tried-to-memory-hole-the-election-law-trumps-georgia-call-was-about%2F

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/government-suppressed-censored-concerns-over-mail-in-voting-in-2020-report-5573274?utm_source=epochHG&utm_campaign=CFP&src_src=epochHG&src_cmp=CFP

https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ajc.com%2Fpolitics%2Fwitness-shows-how-to-tamper-with-georgia-elections-in-security-trial%2FWUVKCYNV3ZGOVNB6X6TDX2GEFQ%2F

https://www.axios.com/2023/11/13/trump-loyalists-2024-presidential-election

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2024/01/25/afl-lawsuit-cisa-withheld-critical-election-administration-information-to-further-its-own-agenda

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/01/26/exclusive-defeat-maga-meet-the-radical-left-network-that-hijacked-democrats-in-effort-to-stop-trump-at-all-costs/

https://indivisible.org/groups

 

Civil War

https://tomluongo.me/2024/01/25/soft-secession-insurrection-or-the-real-return-of-federalism-in-texas/

https://donaldjeffries.substack.com/p/greg-abbott-and-the-invasion-of-the

https://ijr.com/gen-flynn-constitution-literally-allows-texas-engage-war-southern-border/

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/clay-higgins-calls-on-texas-to-ignore-supreme-court-ruling-because-biden-is-staging-a-civil-war/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12954689/Texas-independence-vote-court-ballot.html

https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Them-vs-Us_CTUP-Rasmussen-Study-FINAL.pdf

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/sites/default/files/2023-12/dec-2023-cgvs-defending-democracy.pdf

https://starkrealities.substack.com/p/americans-are-fighting-for-control

https://news.yahoo.com/endless-civil-war-americas-160-013209995.html

https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Famgreatness.com%2F2024%2F01%2F08%2Fa-culture-in-collapse%2F

https://indi.ca/why-civil-war-is-too-good-for-america/

https://off-guardian.org/2024/01/31/discuss-is-world-war-3-really-on-the-horizon/

A Tale Of Two Economies?

“Strange women lying in ponds, distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.  Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.” – Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I guess, for her, these are dark times.

I saw a graph last week from the New York Times®.  The graph showed the views of the economy based on political party – people of the GloboLeft thought that the economy during Trump’s years in office wasn’t great and got worse every year until it fell off the COVID cliff.  Their view of the economy changed as soon as Mumbly Joe got into office.  Things were aLL bEtTeR NoW!  Oh, sure, not as good as they were when Obama was in office, but better than the average of the Trump years.

When looking at the Trump supporter numbers, it was the exact opposite, the economy had gotten better during Trump’s time in the chair, until the COVID cliff, but bounced back but had dropped off of that same COVID cliff.

When Biden got into office, if not a little earlier, the economy cratered for people on the TradRight, and has been in the gutter since then.

The takeaway from the Times™ is:  “Republicans react much more strongly to a president from the opposite party than Democrats do. That disproportionately affects the national mood during this Democratic administration.”

Probably the most important part of this graph is the why axis.

I’ll admit there is certainly bound to be component of that, but by any reasonable stretch of the imagination, the economy was much better under Trump than under Brandon.  I think the analysis by the Times© is myopic and doo-doo headed (that’s a technical term).

The Times© is missing the point that Biden voters are not at all the same as Trump voters.  Biden voters (the actual living ones), by far, make more use of public assistance than Trump voters.  Any move or perception of a move that the gravy train of cash and prizes for just breathing and eating Hot Pockets™ is going away is going to cause unease.

Since they are the consumers of things that illegals create more than Trump voters, any tightening of the border lowers the number of people to be Squatamalan nannies or gardeners and makes the “raise the minimum wage” crowd have to pay more.

The horror!

You might not think it’s a lie that there is worse than Biden.  The Canadians know it’s True-deau.

Lastly, a Trump administration will slow the growth of federal and state local jobs, as the gravy train is slowed, and as the regulations that spawn new regulatory jobs are strangled.

But what bout the Trump voters, are they delusional?

No, they own small businesses, and when profits are up, they’re happy.  And they don’t have bright green hair.  They’re homeowners instead of renters, so when interest rates are low, they can afford more house.  They don’t live in the urban hellholes so gasoline prices are much more important to them than they would be to the average Biden voter who lives in the core urban Bluetopia of some place like Detroit or Atlanta or Baltimore.

Things were better in the burbs, and better for families, and better for people who had to get up in the morning to make the doughnuts and keep civilization moving.  Oh, and the shutdown of the illegal pipeline raised their wages – lower labor availability raises wages.

Give a man a pizza and he will eat for a day.  Teach a man to make a pizza and he will work for minimum wage.

Who doesn’t like increasing wages?  The GloboLeftElite, that’s who.  They don’t like higher wages because higher wages mean decreased profit.  It’s odd that they end up having more money that they could ever spend, so it’s not the cash.  Again, it’s the concentrated power that money brings.

And concentrated power is equivalent to the ability to reward.  Or punish.

So, no, New York Times, Republicans are actually hurt by the economy.  And it’s likely on purpose.

And, since actual intact nuclear families are overwhelmingly for Trump, this leads to the next problem – if the conditions are bad for a family, imagine the problems that causes for the most important segment of our population:

Young men who want nothing more than a traditional, Norman Rockwell marriage with a wife, a car, 2 or 3 kids, and a home that they own.  That’s the desire.

The Hapsburgs had faces only a cousin could love.

The reality is that this dream is slipping away.  I think kids are losing ground every year.  Houses are more expensive, cars are more expensive to own and insure, and marriage costs more.  The situation is horrible compared to the early 1970s, when a manufacturing job could support a Norman Rockwell family.  Pay has stayed down due to the massive influx of cheap immigrant labor, whether that immigrant labor is here or in Vietnam.

Free trade means that we can be miserable on a race to the bottom for labor costs.  And mom and pop stores, as inefficient as they may have been, mainly kept the profits of their stores in town.  As the Walmartization™ of the rural economy continues, the guy who used to own the butcher store is now the guy at the meat counter, and the real butcher is hundreds of miles away in a meatpacking house, and is probably an illegal alien.

What was once a great middle-class life is now replaced as the GloboLeftElite search for yet more power.

The kicker is that the big key to a young man having a family, women, are more elusive every year having been propagandized into a dozen or more years of increasingly desperate and meaningless sex followed by desperation to find a “worthy” man as they enter their 30s and decide they want a kid.

Is that meme thot provoking?

So, guys check out.  They’ve got weed, booze, and video games.  When there aren’t women worth having, there won’t be men working to make themselves worthwhile.  Why are there no good young men?  There aren’t any good women worth chasing.

This leads to unrest in young men, and a misery in the population of people that are the real spark plugs of an economy, destruction of the middle class?

As usual, the New York Times® misses the big picture – the misery is real.  And they don’t care.

Why Do They Want You To Eat The Bugs And Not Garden? Profit And Control.

“I thought the garden was the right place for her.” – Alien:  Covenant

We could get rid of all of the carbon in the atmosphere by making the oceans carbonated.  This would work, because right now, the Earth is flat. (memes mostly as found)

Last week I wrote about the ridiculous idea that electric cars (absent a big technical breakthrough) are the solution to anything other than a rich person trying to smugly signal their virtue like a really, really expensive Bernie Sanders campaign sign.  Continuing on the “carbon is bad” mantra of the GloboLeftElite®, the next obvious thing to deal with?

Food.

For some time, the mantra from GloboLeftElite© is that it’s time for you to stop eating the food you’re eaten your entire life, and eat bugs.  Why eat steak when you could eat crickets and worms instead?  Oh, and have you heard about all of the huge environmental problems that Big Agriculture™ causes?  Why, there are huge tractors guzzling diesel fuel as they lumber about the farms!  And farmers just love to burn vast ponds of diesel into great geysers of black smoke because they’re so rich and hate the environment.

Farmers I like, but I’ll not get up to defend the current average diet in America – there’s too much corn syrup and too many gallons of seed oils and it apparently makes Amber Heard poop the bed.  All American food isn’t bad, but some of the current commercial implementations are.  But there’s an alternative for lots of people.

Gardens.

Gardens are one reason a lot more folks didn’t starve back during the Great Depression – people were able to make a lot of their own food (a lot, not all of it) mostly for free.  Yup, stick a seed in the ground, fertilize it, water it, keep the weeds and bugs out of the garden, and you get food.  During both World Wars kitchen gardens helped people deal with food scarcity.

I mean, that’s the theory.  GloboLeftElite™ would prefer you just eat the bugs.  A recent article in The Telegraph notes that “the carbon footprint of homegrown food is five times greater than those grown conventionally.”

I thought this meme was a joke.  Nope.  Real. 

Yes, you read that correctly.  Gardens, in this case urban gardens, are the next thing that has to go.  Why?  Well, it’s not the growing of the food that creates the carbon, you see, it’s all the infrastructure.

They count sheds (which, if made of wood, would sequester carbon, but, hey) and sidewalks and things like raised beds, which apparently are single use, since lower carbon can be achieved by “using urban agriculture sites for many years.”

Who knew you could plant crops the next year, too?  And who knew that growing things that eat CO2 without using CO2, lead to more CO2?

I’m not kidding.

Yes, they (in this case, idiots with degrees at the University of Michigan) count the sidewalk that is probably already there to get to this ridiculous answer.  There were a few foods they were okay with:  tomatoes and asparagus, because those used greenhouses to grow and air freight to move them to supermarkets.

I heard OSHA started making porn.  They’re experts in NSFW content.

Again, silly answer, but what do you expect from the people who brought you this sad little garden in the CHAZ during the “George had too much fentanyl and died” riots of 2020.  Yes, the people at CHAZ were serious.

This is why GloboLeftElites™ want to ban gardens – revenge!

But the GloboLeftElite© wants you to lower your carbon footprint.  Oddly, the dinner menu at the World Economic Forum didn’t include a diet of corn syrup, slugs, and microplastics.  And none of them arrived by bus.

The propaganda from GloboLeftElite™ has, however, been excellent.  People have been brainwashed into believing that vats of gooey insect parts are where healthy food comes from, and tasty cows are the force of pure evil in the world.  Soylent Green™ is now no longer dystopian – the rank-and-file GloboLeft® (notice we’re missing the “Elite” part) think that Impossible Meat™ is better.

History has shown the GloboLeftElite® is never, ever right.  In fact, I’ll go one better:

  • If we don’t do the things that the GloboLeftElite® want us to do, they claim it will destroy us through a magical demon called carbon that has been higher than it is today for most of Earth’s history (after life, that is).
  • The truth is that we do the things that the GloboLeftElite© want us to do, it will certainly destroy us.

I know that there’s been a long-time war against meat, at least since the 1960s.  Vegetarians, are almost always Lefties, but it’s okay, because they’re weak.  Why do they not want us to have meat?  Because it makes us strong?

I think vegetarians always lose because they’re too weak for leg day.

The biggest problem for GloboLeftElite© is that food from your garden gives them no profits and gives them no control over you.  We have the technology to turn bugs into a tasty protein source:  it’s called a chicken egg.  But they want you to eat the bugs, because if they humiliate you enough to eat the bugs, they know that they can make you do anything.  Anything.

Want proof?  Why, when COVIDmania® was ongoing did Michigan ban stores selling anything but essentials, and those essentials didn’t include seeds for food?  Why did a group of Amish get raided and arrested for selling food?  Control.  And GloboLeftElite™ loves that.

Yes, that’s what they think.

Controlling the food as a route to controlling the people has been a strategy employed since the days of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt.  It’s very easy to control a person if they starve when they misbehave based on social credit scores.

Remember that the real source of carbon they want to stop is you, and that if they were serious, they’d ban big yachts and private jets and look outside of the Western world for sources of carbon to cut.  No, it’s you, and it’s personal.  They want you to eat bugs to help the climate.  What did they eat at the Climate Conference in Dubai back in November?

“Traditionally Cooked Smoked Briskets, Smoked Ribs and our Smoked Wagyu Burgers. Our Style of Cooking gives unique taste and technique in Authentic Gourmet Foods.” Think I’m kidding?  Here’s the LINK.

Yes, they could cut back.

But they won’t.  GloboLeftElite© would never fly commercial.  That’s for bug-eating peasants.

Hey, do you have a license for that garden?

Electric Vehicles: The Big Con

“You mean, drive in hybrids, but not act like we’re better than everyone else because of it?” – South Park

If you buy an EV from Dodge®, you also get a Dodge Charger™. (Memes mostly as found)

Based on the evidence I’ve seen so far in news stories, I’ve come to a conclusion about electric vehicles (EVs).  It’s this:  If you keep your EV parked in the garage at all times and never, ever drive in the winter, it works perfectly.

And, no, I don’t have one – I don’t need to have one to view the evidence that’s piling up.  I would believe that even the manufacturers would tell you that it’s pretty hard to charge an EV when it’s zero outside, unless you warm up the battery first.

They also have lower winter range for two reasons:  they have to electrically heat up the interior, which directly robs range, and in cold weather the battery cannot discharge as deeply – the rate of chemical reaction that the battery requires slows in cold conditions.

I wonder if all those people waiting to charge their cars are listening to AC/DC?

The range of most electric vehicles is incompatible with a Real American Road Trip.  Modern Mayberry has one big advantage over most places – it’s 100 miles from anywhere.  The downside for that on an electric car is obvious – a round trip to Mt. Pilot is simply not possible during the winter, unless I find and use a charging station.  The one in Mt. Pilot (there is only one) is not exactly in the best part of town, and it’s dozens of miles out of the way on any trip – a 100 mile trip now has another half an hour of driving added, plus the time required for charging.

Or, I could just bring a gasoline powered generator . . .

You can tell it’s not an Apple® car – it has Windows®.

Yes, I suppose that it’s true that an EV could replace most of my car usage.  Most days I drive less than 40 miles.  But in order for the EV to work, I’d have to own a second car just for the (not at all rare) trips where I have to go over 100 miles from home.  The range of an EV is simply incompatible with the size of the United States.

I suppose that would make sense if owning an EV provided cheaper transportation.

It doesn’t.  Insurance is much more expensive for an EV than an internal combustion engine car of the same value because they’re much more expensive to work on, even when they don’t catch fire.  Hertz™ Rent-A-Car© found this out – they’re now ditching the majority of the EVs that they bought.  Too expensive to run, too expensive to fix, too expensive to insure.

What happens when a Tesla® hits someone at a given frequency?  It Hertz®.

A dirty secret that’s causing the value of EVs to drop on the secondhand market is that the batteries will die.  If you use an EV a lot, the batteries will cycle and die.  If you don’t use it, the batteries will age and die.  If I had twenty-year old vehicle (and I do) I know that the hoses will break, I’ll eventually need to replace the clutch pad and brake pads.  Stuff will eventually need to be replaced.

But every time Pugsley turns the key, it cranks over and he drives it to school.  If it depended on twenty-year-old batteries?

Not thinking it would be a pretty sight if he had to depend on batteries old enough to vote.  On a zero degree day.

If a crackhead stole the copper lead, would he be guilty of mis-conduct?

The biggest drawback to EV adoption is battery tech.  It sucks.  But let’s pretend that we could store five times the energy in a typical EV battery pack – move from a 200 mile range to 1000 miles.  That would be awesome!  Let’s forget that’s nearly an order of magnitude increase in capacity for a second.

Now, instead of 200 miles worth of electricity stored in a battery that you’re sitting on, it’s 1000 miles worth of electricity – five times the density.  Did I mention that when an EV battery fails, it fails spectacularly?  Like in a crash?

Yeah, my car has a lot of stored energy in the gas tank, but we’ve figured out how to (mostly) keep it from blowing up all the time after over 100 years of experience, and most car explosions are in movies where the hero tosses a cigar to blow up the villain.  Of course, he does this and doesn’t look back, because it’s way cooler that way.

My dog exploded – he was half Irish setter, and half meth lab.

I’ve come to the conclusion that EVs are nothing more than a niche car for people who live in nice climates that never get really cold and are rich enough to have a car for each day of the week.

The gamechanger, for EVs is, of course, battery technology.  Triple the energy storage and halve the charging time at a lower cost with more safety?  Excellent.  Atomic powered batteries that are crash resistant that only need charging every fifty years?  Winner.

But I won’t hold my breath waiting for that.  There don’t appear to be any breakthroughs on the horizon that will make this work. And if there were, there are other problems.

Where does all that electricity come from?  Right now, the Texas grid is shedding load.  And California, who can’t seem to generate electricity without creating wildfires would need to consume at least 50% more electricity to electrify all their transport.  Since California has gone from NIMBY (not in my backyard) to BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything) it’s obvious that electric capacity would have to be built in Arizona or Nevada or in the orbiting Unicorn Fart Farm.

How do you get Canada to support their electric grid?  Say it’s transgender.

No.  California won’t be going electric anytime soon.  Sensible places like Alberta and Switzerland discourage or prohibit EV charging in cold winter months, and they aren’t governed by Grabbin Nuisance.

It’s weird when a society makes detailed maps about how it’s going to destroy itself.  Well, at least people will soon be able to walk like an Egyptian.

The irony is this:  if the Left was really serious about reducing greenhouse gases by using less gasoline, the answer is really simple.  35 to 45 mile per gallon cars were made in the early 1980s, and had sufficient power to be useful on the highway.

What happened?  Additional environmental controls that addressed problems than 90% of the country doesn’t have.  Nitrogen oxides?  Bad in places that have smog.  Out in the rest of the Midwest?  Zero issues.  Yet, every car is designed based on the problems of Los Angeles.  In Fairbanks, they had a pretty simple emissions test, and wouldn’t let you drive a car in winter (when Fairbanks has smog) if it didn’t pass.

That’s too simple.  Let’s make every car suitable for L.A.

Then there are the CAFE standards – the Corporate Average Fuel Economy imposed on the automakers.  But CAFE excludes trucks and SUVs, so now everyone makes trucks and SUVs.  What about the mighty Toyota® Hilux, the car voted most likely to be driven by a Middle Eastern Faction?  Can’t sell it here, because of California and CAFE – small trucks have to meet silly standards.

We could save millions of gallons of gasoline tomorrow if we allowed sensible cars to be sold.

But no.  That would lower the cost of a reasonable car with great fuel economy to about $15,000, and nobody wants that.  I mean, Big Auto and Big Environment are in bed and agree, so who cares about the people?

Who cares?  Toyota, apparently.

I think EVs combined with silly-expensive cars is a meme trap for the mass demobilization of the American people.  And why not?  They can go to 15 minute cities, as the World Economic Forum keeps preaching.  And since almost half the world’s electric cars are being produced in China, is this a plan to offshore what remains of automobile manufacturing in America?  I imagine a rhyme of the phrase utterd by Barack Obama, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” which will become “If you like your car, you can keep your car.”

If it was a good deal, and EVs were the solution, we’d see technological and price advances and not have to depend on silly government handouts to make them a reasonable purchase.  EVs will stick around longer than they should, but, just like Joe Biden, they will never be the solution, no matter how the Left tries to force it.

But, hey, I hear that EVs work great in the garage!

The Wilder Cure For Illegal Aliens

“Prime Minister Tojo, Senator Edwards, my fellow Americans and our millions of illegal aliens.  It seems like only yesterday l was strafing your homes.  Here l am today, begging you not to make such good cars.” – Hot Shots!  Part Deux

What’s the difference between an illegal alien and E.T.?  E.T. learned English and went home.

I remember in high school thinking about the Roman Empire.  I chuckled to myself that the United States (clearly an empire even then) might fail but wouldn’t face the same challenges as the Roman Empire.  Where, I wondered, would the barbarians even come from?

James O’Keefe is a national treasure.  He’s amazing at pushing buttons on the Left to get them to react.  His latest piece of journalism is below.  WTWT.  In this, Mr. O’Keefe begins to pull the curtain back on a huge infection and begins to make public things that were thought to be “fringe” conspiracies.  Again.

In this particular case, Mr. O’Keefe went down to Arizona and followed illegal aliens (they’re not immigrants, they’re invaders) as they are housed at a shut-down school.  The school, Ann Ott Elementary School, 1211 E. Apache St, Phoenix, is surrounded by chain link.  From the looks of Mr. O’Keefe’s video, hundreds of illegal invaders are bussed every hour.

Where?

To the airport, so that the illegals can be forcibly injected into our society.

From the Google® Streetview™ capture in December, 2020, you can see the secrecy is already in place.  Fabric covers the gates so passersby (you and I!) can’t see in to see what’s going on.

2020.  This facility was in place during Trump’s administration. 

If I leased a building to help people do illegal things, how long before I was in jail?

The rot is very, very deep.

Who is a part of this corruption and ongoing subversion of our country and its laws?

The International Rescue Committee©.  Yeah, a shadowy NGO formerly linked with the CIA and headed by a member of England’s elite, and, oddly, has mostly been headed second generation immigrants throughout its existence in the United States.  For many decades, the IRC™ was mostly fixated on people of Eastern European extraction.  And that’s from their Wikipedia™ entry and their own page.

Why I don’t trust the second generation.

The IRC® gets (according to O’Keefe’s latest numbers) over $1.4 billion a year.  That’s enough to provide $600 to every illegal caught and released in the United States in the last year.  O’Keefe even found the receipts:

Wow, sooner or later that will start to add up! (from O’Keefe’s video)

This money, mainly, came from you.  Places like the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services pour hundreds of millions of freshly printed dollars into IRC© so they can do exactly what they’re doing.  None of this is a mistake.

The IRC™ is just one group.  There are others.

Follow the money.

But the funding isn’t just a secretive organization being run in the background by foreigners – nope.  The American Red Cross™ had a project manager there, too, and the place was filthy with Red Cross™ blankets.  The American Red Cross® normally does a lot of stuff with blood, which is the main income.  Over the years, it has also trotted to Congress to request funds to pay for disaster aid after events like Katrina.

Fair enough.

Silly to put your name on something proving you’re involved in human trafficking.

Want to bet that every bit of their aid in helping illegals break the law and transporting them across the country to transform us into a country that doesn’t resemble in the slightest the country we were born into?  I’ve not done the research, but I’m betting the Red Cross© is neck deep in this, too.

Both of these organizations are working as fast as they can to inject as many illegal invaders into the United States as quickly as possible to the tune of tens of millions.  AOC even said in her “big brain way” that the problem with undocumented illegal aliens is that they’re undocumented.  It’s the same sort of 12 year old girl logic that led her to previously respond to a question on how the United States could pay for a neverending stream of socialist benefits:  “You just pay for it.”

Real genius.

What AOC imagines when she things about illegal aliens.  How did Elvis® get in there?

Why are there housing shortages?  Illegals.  Why are we printing billions and billions of dollars so that these people can live free while you and I work and scrimp to get along?  And while we’re peppered first with advice to not have children, and then propaganda that we need hordes of illiterate people who don’t speak our language so that we can survive economically.

Because people like AOC and Black Rock® (Larry Fink is on the IRC© advisor list) like uneducated, often illiterate and criminal illegal aliens better than they like you and me.  They like them better than they like homegrown Leftists, too, since the illegals are a group of compliant second-tier serfs that feed their businesses with cheap labor and, soon enough, will vote reliably for the Democratic Leftist Global Elite candidates.  To top it off, these invaders are a net economic negative, costing far more than they produce in revenue.

Trying to import low-skilled, low-education labor to improve the economy is like trying to lose weight on an ice cream and beer diet.  But, hey, it helps people like Larry Fink buy your house and make you homeless, plus they get the fun of watching you get evicted.

Okay, this isn’t what Larry looks like, but I think they caught his smile watching you suffer.

From today on, I will do the best in my power to boycott every company and charity that I can that supports this invasion.  The Red Cross®?  I’m done bleeding for them, even though I’ve given plenty of gallons of red stuff over time.  As we find more of the groups that are doing that, well, I’m done with them, too.  And if there’s a business that employs illegal aliens?  Nope.  Not doing business with them.

Oh, Red Cross®, you don’t deserve to be immortalized in a PEZ® dispenser.

I’ve written before that the solutions to nearly every problem are simple, we just have to get to the point that we are prepared to do them.  They have to go home to their countries.  Again, self-deportation is preferable, and can be accomplished with sensible regulations in about a month.  Under the Wilder Plan© the main limitation on getting them out will be transport capacity, because, I assure you, they’ll want to leave, having no jobs, no benefits, no housing, the inability to buy at any store, and the threat of losing their children to orphanages if they don’t leave will provide quite a bit of incentive.

We’ll even offer free Pfizer™ vaxx on the way out, if they want it.

Hey, at least at that point they’ll really be refugees, rather than refugees that GO HOME FOR CHRISTMAS AND THEN FLY BACK HERE.

The result of the “everyone is an American” policy is a wrecked economy, political instability, and destruction of a country that formerly was one of the greatest the world had ever seen.  Even people in Leftist strongholds are now aware of this problem, so I expect they’ll start to try to stash them in places like Modern Mayberry.

The barbarians are now here.

The solution is simple.  While we’re at it?  Arrest and jail every single person involved in this pipeline of misery for treason.  After a fair trial.  Then deport them to the country of their choice with the illegal aliens they so love.

We do this, or we Balkanize.

And I’ve heard the advice, “Never go full Balkans.”

The Jenga Economy

“Out of these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history.  One step closer to economic equilibrium.” – Fight Club

What do you call a man in debt?  Owen.

After 9-11, sales of the Jenga® game really dropped.

I’m not sure why, but in 2002 people had to play Jenga® the old-fashioned way – by stacking dishes in the sink.

But the game of Jenga™ is a pretty good analogy for our economy right now.  Jenga© is based on taking one piece from the lower part of the structure and putting it on top.  As the game progresses, everyone can see that the structure becomes weaker and more unstable.  The game always (at our house) ends the same way:  the tower, which now seems ridiculously tall, sways a little bit, becomes unbalanced, and topples.

The pieces then go everywhere, and we leave them on the floor for the herds of stray free-range toddlers in our neighborhood to eat.  We’re givers that way.

The economy (to me) looks exactly like a game of Jenga™, seemingly impossibly stretched out and tall.

Pro-tip on how to pick-up women:  lift with your legs, not your back.

Examples?

Well, let’s talk about when we turned money into cash.  The dollar used to be bound to actual, physical commodities – gold and silver.  I guess you could call it an either-ore situation.  Gold was always the preferred, but people who wanted looser money (i.e., inflation) fought to get silver in there, too.  In fact, silver was actually part of the money supply, making up a portion of many coins up until the 1960s when one Jenga© block was pulled and set on top.

Nixon pulled another when he ended the ability of foreign nations to bring piles of dollars and walk away with piles of gold.  He made the tower even shakier as he threw gold out, entirely as a standard.  The good news was that Americans could once again own gold.  The bad news was that dollars were no longer money – they were cash – not backed by anything.

And could be printed at will.  Another Jenga™ piece on top.  The tower becomes a bit wobblier.  And wobblier still as Nixon and Ford and Carter start printing.  I mainly blame Nixon, since he got the ball going, and it took the hand of Reagan reaching out to steady the tower, though that created the very deep 1982 recession.

What was Bob the Builder© called during a recession?  Bob.

Reagan, though, added his bit as well.  Sure, it made sense to try to spend the Russians into the ground – after the 1982 recession the economy came roaring back as The Wealth Pump started in earnest and the stock market soared.  But during this time, the market cheered as jobs left the United States.  In many cases, the jobs were subsidized by the country taking them.  They wanted to build up the industrial expertise so that they could make world-class products and were willing to pay for their economy and workers to learn how to do it.

Remember George H. W. Bush’s advisors saying they didn’t care if the economy made computer chips or potato chips?

Pepperidge Farms© remembers™.

Because it does matter.  Potato chips or computer chips don’t matter if you’re a banker making a loan, but if you’re trying to create the greatest value with the economy?  It sure as hell does matter.

One step closer to living in the Prime® Pod™.

On the government side, fiscal responsibility seemed to come back for a bit with Bill Clinton.  Now, don’t thank Bill – it was entirely based on Newt Gingrich stopping all the nonsense for a few years that primed the pump of the economy.  While Hillary is an ideologue, Bill was always in it for the hot chicks.  Sure, there were shenanigans, but the Jenga™ players were mostly playing it safe during that time period.

But when the recession hit in 2000?  George W. Bush really wanted to open the floodgates, so he started stacking as high and as fast as he could.  War helped him move a few Jenga™ pieces, and low interest rates in his “everyone who breathes should own a McMansion” policy fueled an amazing set of bubbles that ended up including housing, natural gas, crude oil, and what was left of my hair.

The path out of the Great Recession was a simple one.  Print more money.  People aren’t buying United States Bonds?  Heck, the Fed® can buy them now.  We can also pay Wall Street to launder all the bad debt and make sure that irresponsible bank vaults get filled to the top with cash.

Is it just me, or does Janet Yellin look exactly like Benny Hill?

Because, why not?

Obama took some Jenga™ pieces from the very bottom and put them up top because he wanted to get health care into the system.

Trump didn’t add too many blocks to the top of the board, at first.  Trump was mainly because he was focused on deals – immigration, trade, covfefe.  But he couldn’t make a deal with COVID.  His instincts were bad and his solution was just to stack more blocks up top by printing money and cramming it down people’s throats as fast as he could.

Biden doubled down on that strategy:  importing illegals by the truckload to paper over the economy that no longer serves its citizens, spending billions to “reduce inflation” and now nobody wants to buy the bonds.  Thankfully, the banks are scrambling to create weird new structures so they can pretend that the loan that they made at 4% isn’t costing them when they’re giving 5.5% on CDs.

Anyone else feel comforted that the banks have a really complicated strategy to avoid reality?

The tower is now, really, really tall.  And really, really shaky.

And these things never end slowly – they end either with mass social unrest, a big war, or both when the tower finally collapses.  And others have just given up.

When 4Chan is smarter than the Fed®.

For clarity’s sake, Hasbro™ (the owner of the Jenga® trademark) had nothing to do with this post.  I’m sure they’d rather people look at Jenga® and think about the 9-11 than have them look at Jenga® and think about our economy.

The Wealth Pump In America – Two Examples

“We wounded this place, it’s our duty to close her wounds, it’s the least we can do to show our gratitude for all the wealth she’s given us.” – Treasure of the Sierra Madres

Time is wealth – I found out that a fresher kidney costs more than one that’s a week old.  Also, never try to donate more than three at a time – they ask a lot of questions.

I read this week that the UN Climate summit (LINK) is offering food that included smoke wagyu burgers, Philly cheesesteaks, and BBQ at the summit.  This same summit is expected to tell people that they can’t have meat anymore because, you know, climate.  It’s almost like there’s a double standard . . .

The nice thing about spending the time reading books like Turchin’s End Times is that it gives a new filter to view the events that we’re seeing around us.  This filter, or model, is useful because it allows the events of the world to be reviewed in relation to the model.

Peter Turchin’s End Times: There Be Dragons Here

Turchin actually presented two major models:  Elite Overproduction, and The Wealth Pump.  While both are important to a civilization beginning to dissolve, the one I’d like to focus on today is The Wealth Pump.  Part of the wonderful part of a model, is that it can predict what’s going to happen, and explain the otherwise unexplainable.

Never get married on Mt. Everest – it’s all downhill from there.

Let’s take a look at the first strategy:  feminism.  This came on board starting as far back as the 1800s.  Why?  It was good business.  More women making financial decisions meant more customers.  To this day, that’s the case – women make more purchasing decisions than men.

Mission accomplished.

The next idea was to mobilize women into the workforce.  It took two world wars where women went from making babies to making welds on Liberty Ships to test the theory.  In the 1950s, though, those darn women went back to homes, and were making babies in the biggest baby making event the world ever saw.

That wasn’t good for business, and, thus feminism.

Chuck Norris had COVID.  For breakfast.

Feminism has had a long, horrible past.  In modern-ish times, the biggest example was the Spanish Civil War.  The first things the commies did was make abortion legal and to abolish marriage.  Oh, sure, they killed a lot of priests and nuns, but the focus was on splitting apart the family.

Why?

So women could be more productive in the economy.  This is the weird place where The Wealth Pump and commies are in complete agreement:  women shouldn’t be at home making babies, women should be at work making PowerPoints® and tractors in Glorious Tractor Collective Number 171.  Women aren’t loving members of a family, who have the job of creating compassion in their families while the men instill duty and honor.

Nope.  There are decades of propaganda convincing women that being a mother just wasn’t enough – it was beneath them.  The latchkey generation (mine) was based on the thought that Moms should do whatever and find themselves because . . . reasons.  Although my parents didn’t divorce, millions of other families were ripped apart by that abomination.

When stoners divorce, do they get joint custody?

Yes.  Divorce is bad.  Sometimes it is justified, and that requires fault.  But no-fault divorce made it a game show based around fun and prizes for women – they still initiate 80-90% of divorces.  Combined with the government welfare for women using a uterus as a clown car, this creates a society of children who have no real family.  Also?  They have no real sense of duty or honor.

But, hey, we have tons of women who are making wonderful PowerPoints® on how to exclude white guys from jobs without looking like they’re excluding white guys from jobs.  And those women weren’t making babies.  Certainly, The Wealth Pump requires cheap labor, so that brings us to:

Immigration.

The hordes of immigrants that have been coming to this country, both legal and illegal have been in unprecedented numbers.  The American public overwhelmingly is done with this level of immigration – they don’t want it.  Why was Trump’s three-word slogan – “Build the wall” so effective?

Because people want a damn wall.  In many places, they look around at their country and see it doesn’t resemble at all the country they were born in, and they’re tired of it.

The wall might work.  China built one, and they have nearly zero illegal immigrants.

Yet, it continues.  The Democrats crave it like a junkie craves whatever junkies crave after heroin.  I think they crave drooling, which would explain why they like Joe Biden.

The Republicans have and continue to be the “sure, but not so much” party since, well, forever.  Reagan signed in the first big amnesty in the 1980s.  Why?  Because the wealthy folks demanded it.

Why?

Because all the women were making PowerPoints® doing whatever it was that women did in business in the 1980s, The Wealth Pump demanded this:  cheap labor.  Women had been cheap labor, since they could run typewriters while the men did the real stuff.  But when women wanted to move up the corporate ladder and computers allowed people other than women born with the typing-gene to type, The Wealth Pump demanded that we have cheaper labor.

Thus?

Rather than pay a slightly higher wage to people picking strawberries, it was way easier to have illegal people pick lettuce and tomatoes and strawberries.  They couldn’t complain, or they’d get booted out of the country.  Rather than pay actual Americans to pick (or invent picking machines) it’s much easier to have a labor class in this country with no ties to this country and work for less.

Gardening is complicated – someone suggested I try manure on my strawberries, but, ugh, I’m sticking with whipped cream.

Except these Wealth Pump-encouraged people also get free health care for their children, free schooling for their children, and career paths that receive priority over the people born here.  When you add it all up, these actually end up sucking much more money out of the system than they provide in economic benefits to the country.  This analysis doesn’t even come close to adding in the societal costs in lower trust and increased crime.

Here we have the ultimate irony of The Wealth Pump – it creates more wealth for the operators, while it sucks the money out of the entire country.

But, hey, Bezos has a new tramp with lips so inflated that he could use her to transport Amazon™ packages if he inflated them with helium and a yacht that can land his helicopter.  And eat all the beef he wants, even though it’s time for you to get in the pod and eat the bugs.

I mean, it’s your duty to those that benefit from The Wealth Pump.

Peter Turchin’s End Times: There Be Dragons Here

“The end time has come, not in flame, but in mist!” – The Mist

I once had shoes that had Velcro® closures.  I mean, why knot?

(Complete review in one post)

I recently completed the book End Times by Peter Turchin.  I have recently done a review of How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F. Walter (not that Barbara Walter, some other commie bimbo), and by comparison Ms. Walter’s book is a badly drawn crayon sketch of Donald Trump by a mildly developmentally disabled child who was born of the copulation of two stoned Leftists and raised on a diet of Trotsky and lead paint chips.

Her book was bad.  Turchin, who I imagine is also Left-leaning, was (mainly) able to keep his political opinions out of the book, and produce something useful and as even-handed as he could make it, what with having to go to fancy university parties with the Leftist intelligentsia who are globalist and communist at the same time, because, reasons.

Going back in time, Turchin predicted in the early ‘teens (2010, I believe) that the decade beyond 2020 was going to be rough.  This was based on an actual computational model, where he took various social factors, smashed them into a computer, and cranked out a slip of paper that said, “Beyond Here, There Be Dragons.”  To be fair, his model seems to have some predictive capacity, though I have yet to find a place to tinker with it, but I’ll bet Ricky can track it down if anyone can.  A .pdf that has a flavor of the model is here (LINK).

The XXX Files are a completely different subject.

His description of the model starts with one of the things that leads to collapse:  Elite Overproduction.  In this context, you pretty much know who the elite are.  Donald Trump is one, and so are the Clintons, and the Obamas, and thousands of other wealthy, socially connected people who have political power.  Per Turchin, only 9 presidents of the United States weren’t 1%ers, and before 1850, all of the presidents were elite and wealthy types and probably had exceptional hats, since they didn’t have other cool things to buy back then.

Turchin breaks down political power into four types:

  • Coercion – Do it or else. Leftists love this.  Think AntiFa® or .
  • Wealth – Let’s face it, rich dudes rarely do jail time, and where exactly is Epstein’s client list and why can’t you see it?
  • Bureaucracy – You own the organization that provide services or do stuff – think the IRS or the DMV.
  • Ideology – This includes CNN® and Harvard™.

Where do psychics shop?  The Seers® catalog.

In Turchin’s view, there are specialists at each level of political power.  The big problem for people is when these folks are present in too large of a quantity and get bored and have to do something else.  In 2016, we had a billionaire (Trump) running against someone worth in excess of $120 million (Hilldabeast).  In no way was this usual, but later, billionaire Michael Bloomberg jumped into the race.  Why?  Bored, I guess.  Most billionaires let other people do their fighting for them – like George Soros or Emperor Palpatine.  But I repeat myself.

The key problem is that there are more elite people who want power than there are available chairs.  That’s always the case to a certain extent, but with tens of thousands of Harvard© and Stanford™ and Dartmouth® grads fighting for elite positions in every facet of the coercion, wealth, bureaucratic, or ideological elite, well, this starts to drive instability, per Turchin.  Per me, there seem to be a lot of people who have no connection whatsoever with anyone but themselves and their elite cocoon of friends with the same ideas and no-fat decaf pumpkin-spice lattes.

Turchin later goes on to talk about how the British killing off tons of French nobility during battles around 1400 to 1450 actually helped France to have a much more stable political period because there everybody had stuff to do other than try to overthrow the king or kill their brother or eat snails and smoke cigarettes while wearing berets and carrying baguettes of bread everywhere.

I once saw a baguette in a cage.  I guess it was bread in captivity.

Yes, in the coming years at least half of the elite will either die or cease to be elite and have to drive Yugos® or Ford Escorts™ while working at JCPenney’s©.

There just aren’t enough chairs in the inner circle to go around.

So, we’ve got too many elites, which is one of Turchin’s factors that lead to societal breakdown.  What else leads to problems?  Turchin calls the next one, “Popular Immiseration” – bluntly, when life sucks for the common person.  Another term for this is Bidenomics.  Economic power of workers is disappearing, wages are going backwards when it comes to purchasing power, and jobs are more uncertain and awful.

To be fair to Biden, this was the trend even before he was selected, and was really the feeling that ushered in Trump.  Trump was and is a reaction to the crapfest that the economy has turned into, and is more or less predictable.  In 1956 Trump would have been a joke candidate, in 2000 Trump was a joke candidate, but by 2016 Trump was taken seriously because, to a large proportion of Americans, life is slowly becoming more miserable, daily.  The needed someone, anyone, to listen to them and stop the nonsense that the Left (and, to be fair, the Chamber of Commerce Right) is shoving down their throats.  Mittens Romney was just the same as the Left in his goals, he just used a different phrase to get there.

The last thing the American people wanted was ¡Jeb!  To give an example from another period in American history that was in crisis, Abraham Lincoln was another joke candidate that fell into a period where he could be elected.

I guess Mary Todd Lincoln said to Abe that day, “Would it kill you to take me to a play once in a while?”

Turchin discusses Lincoln’s election not in terms of slavery, but in terms of economic misery combined with lots of rich dudes.  Turchin adds in that the failing financial health of a country adds to this, lowering the legitimacy of the state.

These factors, Turchin notes, in every case that they’ve covered, always reach a breaking point within 200 years or so.  This is in line with Strauss and Howe The Fourth Turning and the theories of the unfortunately named Sir John Glubb.

End of Empires, PEZ, and Decadence

It’s here that the Turchin takes a bit of time to discuss the nature of the American Empire, circa 2023.  American power, he notes, isn’t based on religion.  It likewise isn’t based on a militaristic history – although we’ve elected generals as president, the power of the American Empire is and always has been commerce.  We sent trade ships in the 1800s across the world.  Genghis Khan didn’t create his empire with trade, he created it with the sword and the horse and by having sex with half of the women in Asia.  While the English used liberal amounts of gunpowder creating their empire, “I say, old chap, what are those Boer people doing sitting on our gold and diamonds?”, they were a commerce-based empire as well.

Me?  I was upset when I got a pack of sticky playing cards for Christmas – I found them difficult to deal with.

I’d agree with Turchin – American power has been economic and, like the British before us, created an economic empire.  The wealth from that economic empire thus created the ability for us to have really cool tanks and planes and aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons.  No bucks?  No Buck Rodgers.

Since it has been economics that created the empire, it’s economics that fuels it today:  America is built on economics, and the biggest controllers of that are . . . rich people.  As much as I’m in favor of capitalism (which is a lot) I can see that a system where the rich people get to make the rules is gonna suck for everyone else.

Turchin calls this the “Wealth Pump” – it’s the idea that the rules are set up not for the common citizen, but for the really rich dudes.  Whare are some of the components of this Wealth Pump?

  • Keeping a surplus of workers so that wages are lower. Unrestricted illegal (and legal) immigration?  It’s perfect to keep wages down.
  • What happens when we are need other workers than the illegals?  Let’s cut all trade barriers so that a programmer in the United States has to compete with a programmer in Bangladesh.  There won’t be any consequences from that, right?
  • Larger companies that have greater pull – Steve Jobs said, before he died, obviously, that he couldn’t make Apple® again – there were too many barriers in place. Many don’t realize that large number of “consumer” or “environmental” regulations are actually welcomed by large businesses – they’re a barrier to entry and competition.

This is what the Wealth Pump looks like.

That the impact of the Wealth Pump is misery is a given.  While (once upon a time) I was a libertarian, I’ve since moved on from that, as they’ve moved farther in support of this wealth pump.  Freedom doesn’t come with mere economic freedom, and it doesn’t come from only from freedom from government coercion.  Does it, in the end, matter if it is a group of elites in government or a group of elites at Google™ is the one censoring you to preserve the wealth pump?

Why is it so hard to start a relationship with a Social Justice Warrior?  They have such high double standards.

As noted above, per Turchin, the pool of people attempting to be elite has increased – ludicrously.  As I’ve mentioned before, it used to be that only 15% of people tried to go to college.  That’s probably the right number.  Now?  According to Turchin’s figures, over 65% of kids are trying to grasp that gold ring.

Again, the normal distribution matters, and that means at least 15% of people going to college have an IQ of less than 100.  This explains all of those Grievance Studies degrees, and Leftists pretending that education is a substitute for intellect while working behind the makeup counter at the department store.

Every time you smoke a cigarette, it takes seven minutes off your student loans.

Now, the number of doctorate degrees have tripled since 1970 (again, a Turchin number) and there’s no real sign that this is stopping, even though it’s clear that this is producing only frustrated people who have useless degrees.  Even useful degrees in STEM fields are, at this point, being overproduced in the United States compared to the number of available jobs.  Yet, the companies keep wanting the bring in foreigners on H1-B visas to take jobs that could be filled by actual Americans.

But the Americans would want a higher wage, and there would be less competition.  This would lower Google’s® profits.  This is, again, Turchin’s Wealth Pump in action.  Google© wants H1-B workers because they’re virtual slaves that they can bring in that would be happy to live four to a pod because it’s better than the monsoon-drenched mud hut in India that is consistently destroyed by volcanoes or communists or bird flu or whatever they have in India.

During COVID, gatherings of more than 260 million were banned in India.

As I talked about a post back, ideology was one of the pillars of a stable society.

Stability: On A Scale Of Zero To Drunken Uncle, How Bad Is The United States?

Turchin pegs the 1950’s as the time of greatest ideological stability in the United States.  People felt that (again, following Turchin’s list, which is similar to previous content here, so I don’t disagree much, though I add commentary to his list from p. 100):

  • Family was a man and a woman and kids. As I’ve discussed before, this is the atom of civilization, and has been since forever – other arrangements (polyandry, polygamy) tend to be unstable in large societies.  Men want a mate.  However, in 2023, the push is on to have “anything goes” as the basis for society.  Out of wedlock babies?  A scandal.
  • Men were men, women were women and men had men jobs and women had women jobs.   Now we can’t even define what a woman is.
  • Natural bodies are better. Tats were for sailors and .mil folks, and weird piercings were borderline trashy and foreign.
  • Belonging to a religion was normal, divorce and being an atheist meant you weren’t going to be elected unless . . . no, no unless. Atheists were simply not trusted in positions of public power.

But look what progress has brought us!  (Meme as found)

Turchin then talks about some of the things that kept the Wealth Pump in check – labor unions, minimum wages, progressive taxation, welfare, low immigration.  I’d disagree on the impact and general consensus on, say, welfare, but in general.  Many of those, however, coupled with a healthy export-focused economy with targeted tariffs created a situation where the middle class flourished and grew at the expense of the Elite.  The Left and the Right were more or less together on the goal.  It was Ike who warned us about the Wealth Pump, though Eisenhower described it this way:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”  He was a Republican wanting to make sure that the military remained sane, and that the most invulnerable weapon system wasn’t one where parts were made in every congressional district.

Now?  Turchin notes, “The ideological center today resembles a country road in Texas, almost deserted save for the yellow stripe and dead armadillos.”

I wonder if they deserved to get hit by a car, if they’re karmadillos?

From the book:  “In order for stability to return, elite overproduction somehow needs to be taken care of – historically and typically by eliminating the surplus elites through massacre, imprisonment, emigration, or forced or voluntary downward social mobility.”  Whoa!  That’s radical, and I’m glad that Turchin is saying the quiet part out loud:  something wicked this way comes.  We all feel the tension, that’s why he sold thousands of copies of his book.

We know it’s coming.  And why.

It’s the Wealth Pump.  It’s not new, and it’s been the goal for a long, long time.  Turchin quotes a 1901 edition of The Bankers’ Magazine:

“When business men (sic) were single units, each working out his own success regardless of others in desperate competition, the men who controlled the political organization were supreme . . . .  But as the business of the country has learned the secret of combination, it is gradually subverting the power of the politician and rendering him subservient to its purposes . . . .  Every form of business is capable of similar consolidation, and if other industries imitate the example of that concerned with iron and steel, it is easy to see that eventually the government of a country where the productive forces are all mustered and drilled under the control of a few leaders, must become the mere tool of these forces.”

This is the goal, not a meme.

Again, wow.  I’ve said before I have a strong distrust of big government, and the groups that really benefit from regulations are big businesses since those regulations form a barrier to entry to smaller groups.  Who runs Bartertown?  Big businesses do – who do you think hires the regulators after they “retire” from the government?  If history is a guide, businesses are attempting to run government for their benefit – hence, the Wealth Pump.

Don’t believe me?  You’re soaking in it.  A longer quote from Turchin, (p. 129):

“The political scientist Martin Gilens . . . gathered a large data set – nearly 2000 policy issues between 1981 and 2002.  Each case matched a proposed policy change to a nation opinion survey asking a favor/oppose question about the initiative . . . .

“Statistical analysis . . . showed that the preferences of the poor had no effect on policy changes . . . . What is surprising is that there was no – zilch, nada – effect of the average voter.  The main effect on the direction of change was due to the policy preferences of the affluent.  There was also an additional effect of interest groups, the most influential ones being business-oriented lobbies.  Once you include in the statistical model the preferences of the top 10 percent and the interest groups, the effect of the commoners is statistically indistinguishable from zero.”

Yup.  They’re not listening.  They don’t care that the majority has always wanted to deport and deport promptly the unending stream of illegals invading our country.  That’s not good for business, so the Left has (oddly?) picked this up as a Social Justice Warrior© mantra:  “no human is illegal” meaning that they’re working to make actual workers, especially black workers, poorer.

SJW™?  It’s just another term for the intellectual elite in the pocket of big business.  Who would have thought that the SJW© would be on the same side as the military-industrial complex?

Stonetoss©, that’s who.  (All Stonetoss™ comics are used with permission.)

Why do Social Justice Warriors hate dentists?  They make teeth straight and white.

A guy on a tractor just drove by yelling about the end of everything.  I think it was Farmer Geddon.

I think that Turchin has proven that, at least in some circumstances, he can show when trouble is coming.   Again, I’d like to see his database and understand in greater detail how it works, but if you look at:

  • Every elite scrambling for position,
  • Every mechanism possible being found to extract another dollar from a consooooomer so that the Wealth Pump can be fed, and
  • the current graph of the interest payments that the United States will have to pay sooner rather than later, it’s clear:

There Be Dragons Here.

How the crisis unfolds, however, is dependent upon the structure of society itself, according to Turchin.  “ . . . we cannot understand social breakdown without a deep analysis of the power structures within societies.”  Turchin even notes this about Barbara Walter:  “This is where the analysis by Barbara Walter in How Civil Wars Start often becomes woefully inadequate, and sometimes outright naïve.”  He skipped the part where she eats lead paint chips with her avocado toast, but, hey.

Give Turchin his props:  he’s calling out mass immigration and stupid academics.  I think he might be especially fun to hang with after a few beers.

This is what A.I. thinks Turchin and I having a beer would look like.  Guess I’ll have to dig my mortarboard out.

But back to power structures.  Big Government is scary enough, but when Apple® or Google™ is holding the leash, it becomes even scarier.  I like capitalism, but what we have here is called by Turchin “Plutocracy” but I like the more common (in our circles) name of Kleptocracy.  That’s what it is, really.

Societal power is now, really, in lockstep with the Kleptocracy.  It has created this weird amalgamation of Leftist/Communist/Corporatist power.  At this point, Turchin attempts to analyze the power structures of the United States to guess at what the future might bring, noting that his work is, “nowhere near advanced enough to achieve such a feat of modeling.”

Honesty.

I love it.

I’m going to take an aside here based on comments I’ve had so far in this series of posts.  It isn’t communist or socialist to question the rules put in place by the Kleptocrats to pump more money to them.  We haven’t had true laissez-faire capitalist system in this country since the 1880s, at least.  Huge corporations are not laissez-faire – they’re government creations, and to be against them isn’t to be against capitalism.

I do think that we have the idea because a system has worked in the past that it just needs tweaks.  That is simply not the case – our system has brought us to where we are today.  Simple actions like having end-by dates on corporations, turning senators back to state-appointed positions, abolishing all Federal income tax and getting the primary funds for the central government from tariffs . . . radical ideas.  But we have to stop the wealth pump, and true libertarians should be all over this because domination over liberty from a corporation is no different than domination over liberty by a government.

End of digression.  Back to the book.

Why did the libertarian cross the road?  “Am I being detained?”

The most common outcome, Turchin notes, is that lots of elites (and wannabes) simply realize they can’t be elite anymore.  Obviously, this will be uncomfortable for many, many professors who now have to work 40 hours at Starbucks™ instead of handing out worthless anthropology and ancient Japanese literature degrees.

This doesn’t happen gradually.  It happens when the University closes.  As we’ve discussed before (link below on Seneca’s Cliff), things are built only slowly, but collapse in an instant.  The extreme case, which is now very, very much on the table is that the elite positions (and some of the wannabes) are eliminated as a result of Civil War 2.0.

The Economy – At Seneca’s Cliff?

 

Who will lead that war?  Probably someone on the fringe of the current Elite who is angry.  Why from the Elite?  They have connections and power that allow them to put together a credible alternative power structure fairly quickly.  Examples from our history?

George Washington was as rich and famous as Elon back in the day, and it wasn’t a bunch of poor dudes that ran either the Union or the Confederacy.

Of course, an alternative is to shut down the Wealth Pump.  I mean, it will be shut down one way or another, but if it’s done before things are in a ditch, it might be better, though I’m fairly certain the first wheel went into that ditch back before 1990.  Turchin notes that he thinks if we shut the Wealth Pump down now, well, that turns Elites into radicals in big numbers and will result in an even bloodier war.

Astrophysicists started a radical protest group:  Black Matter Lives.

From his study, the growth of violence and instability isn’t linear – it builds on itself like an epidemic – Turchin calls this the “virus of radicalism”.  Turchin notes that:  “As long as the power of revolutionary groups is less than the power of the state’s coercive apparatus, the overall level of violence can be suppressed to a low level.”

They want to stop the signal.  But there’s one lesson that even the Soviets learned:  you can’t stop the signal.

Why do the Elite so desperately want your guns?  It gives the average American citizen a real veto over intolerable actions by the government.  This is why the Left and Levis™ jeans want to take your modern sporting rifle:  it makes you a more compliant consoooomer.  And if they get the 2nd Amendment, the 1st won’t be far behind, because ideas like these are dangerous.

This explains all the effort in censoring places like this one.  The ideas here are dangerous, and oh, so sexy.

Turchin’s “everything as-is” scenario shows “an outbreak of serious violence during the 2020s and, if nothing is done to shut down the (Wealth P)ump, a repeat every fifty to sixty years.”  Civil wars are what turn radicals into moderates – von Clausewitz wrote about this centuries ago.  Wars are won when the will of the people to fight is erased.  Places like this one keep spirits high, and attack those whose goal is the destruction of our freedom and way of life.

I honestly hope Joe Biden gets better.  And recovers from his dementia, too.

Who else have they attacked?

Turchin, writing before Tucker Carlson was fired, said, “Carlson is interesting because he is the most outspoken antiestablishment critic operating within the corporate media.  Whereas media such as CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and The Washington Post are losing credibility, among the general population . . . Carlson is growing ever more popular.”

Now that, my friends, explains it all, and Turchin’s comments show the real reason Carlson was silenced, and Turchin notes (as I have opined in some places) that Tucker is the real nucleus of the Right.

Trump’s real sins had nothing to do with January 6, it had to do with him not starting wars and actually trying to stop immigration, which the Wealth Pump requires.

What does Turchin say that history tells us (p. 223-4)?

  • In 2/3 of cases, most of the Elite stopped being elite.
  • In 1/6 of cases, the Elite was “targeted for extermination.”
  • “The probability of ruler assassination was 40%.”
  • 75% of cases “ended in revolutions or civil wars or both.”
  • In 1/5 of cases, “the civil war dragged on for a century or longer.”
  • 60% of cases led to “the death of the state.”

Grim.  Really, really grim.

We are at the brink of a civil war.  I’ve been saying that for years now.  One branch of my family moved to the United States from Germany in 1890 because they saw a massive European war coming.  They left 25 years too soon.

Seeing what’s coming isn’t hard.  I can tell you the future in some instances.  If I walk out in front of a speeding bus, I’m going to die.  It’s not clairvoyance, it’s happening to us, right here and now.  Just as my family saw the European war that would be known as World War I coming, I am certain that we are on the steps to Civil War 2.0.

It took a lot to get this picture out of the A.I. – I can get the A.I. to draw everyone from Seinfeld, but it draws the line at Morgan Freeman.

I also cannot stress enough that Civil War 2.0 isn’t my wish, this is the data and there is, at this point, nothing anyone can do to stop it.  I believe the road ahead will be more terrible in some locations than many can even imagine.

Here be dragons.

I do still believe that on the other side, the torch of Liberty will still be burning brightly in a new world where what is True, Beautiful, and Good will be recognized as such.  Why?  Because in the end, Liberty wins, despite all of those who would try to steal it away – it burns in the hearts of all who I would call men and is loved deeply by all of those who I would call women.

Which does not include Barbara F. Walter and her fat, lead paint chip eating face.

It’s a rare book where I put it down, look at the conclusions, and say, “Damn, I wish I had written that book.”

Turchin brings it home.

If you like reading non-fiction and are a regular at Wilder Wealthy and Wise, I recommend you read this one, even though Turchin sucks at adding memes to his work.