Category: Wealth

Things Are Not Alright

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t blame them.

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

Now?

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

Today?

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

What about delivering papers?

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

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

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

Or how about construction?

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

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

Who let this happen?

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

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

With a degree in art history.

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

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

That is not a typo.

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

Private schools?

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

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

Oh, and the job market?

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

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

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

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

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

And the CEOs?

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

So, why are kids turned off capitalism?

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

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

We can fix this.

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

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

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

Cash, Hot Chick Memes, And Gold

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Treasuries?

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

But the blindfold helped, they said.

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

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

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

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

But at least unemployment is low, right?

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

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

So, where’s this economic rollercoaster headed?

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

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

This all points to a reckoning.

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

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

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

Or the lender.

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

It has the most horse power.

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

Living In The Past: The World War II Hangover

“This watch I got here was first purchased by your great-grandfather during the First World War.  It was bought in a little general store in Knoxville, Tennessee.” – Pulp Fiction

Iran is stuck between Iraq and a hard place.

Every group has a story that defines them:  the myth, the memory, the moment that crystallizes who they are and what they value.  For Christians, it’s the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the ultimate sacrifice and triumph of life.  For the Chinese, it’s the Century of Humiliation, a wound that fuels their drive for global dominance.  For Three Stooges® fans, it’s the seismic shift when Shemp replaced Curly, forever splitting the purists from the heretics, and don’t even get me started on the anti-Curly, Joe Besser.

But for too many groups the Second World War is the foundational story, a crucible that forged their modern identities. And for most, it’s a scar that still festers, shaping their worldview in ways that are often more curse than blessing like the time I found a genie but didn’t get a wish because I rubbed him the wrong way.

Let’s start with the United States.

For the United States, WWII cemented the idea that big government is the ultimate and best problem-solver and has our best interests at heart.  The war effort, which would have cost $4.1 trillion in today’s dollars, mobilized industry, science, and bureaucracy like never before, birthing the military-industrial complex that Ike warned us about.  I hear JFK was going to work on that, but they changed his mind.

Biden’s final executive order:  “Purple crayons will now taste like grapes.”

The lesson of the war was simple:  if you throw enough tax dollars and central planning at a problem, you can save the world.  Never mind that the failed New Deal had already disproved this; WWII made it gospel.  Blacks can’t read?  Throw money and central planning at it.  Poor people keep doing the things that made them poor?  Throw money and central planning at it.  Women complaining about . . . whatever?  Throw money and central planning at it.  The result of all this was the United States giving DEI grants for difficult tasks, like breathing.

The war also taught Americans that war is noble when the British say so.  Pearl Harbor was the trigger for the entry of the United States, but Britain’s pleas for aid via Lend-Lease pulled us into Europe’s mess for the second time in a generation.  Post-1945, the U.S. embraced its role as the world’s foremost military power and world policeman, from Korea to Kabul, with a budget to match, spending trillions to give democracy to those that don’t care about it.

Another lingering ghost: the myth of the “Greatest Generation,” implying every war since is just as righteous, no matter the cost in blood or treasure.  This is the same generation that voted in all of Johnson’s Great Society crap, and the generation you can thank for the Hart-Cellar Immigration Act of 1965.  Our victory in World War II blinds us to overreach, ballooning debt, and the erosion of liberty at home as the state grows ever fatter.

My friend’s grandfather killed six Germans on the beach at Normandy.  It’s not as heroic as it sounds:  he did it last week.

Moving across the sea to Bongland, where they have a big tower that goes “Bong” every hour, Britain’s WWII story is one of defiance.  The “stiff upper lip” against Hitler’s bombs during the Blitz, with Churchill’s speeches rallying a nation under siege.  But the war’s cost, $120 billion in debt, 450,000 dead, cities like London and Coventry in jumbled rubble all askew like Yorkshireman’s teeth, broke the back of the Empire.

The foundational lesson twisted: instead of pride in survival, Britain internalized a twisted guilt, spinning off colonies that weren’t quite ready to govern themselves like India and Nigeria faster than you can say “Commonwealth.”

Worse, the “we’re all in this together” myth morphed into a masochistic anti-colonialism, where importing millions of non-British migrants became a moral crusade to atone for empire, starting with the H.M.S. Windrush bringing hundreds of non-British to Great Britain to keep wages down.  The result? A cultural identity crisis, where “Britishness” is now a dirty word, and cities like London are less British than Bombay was in 1850.  The war taught Britain to survive, but it lost its soul.  But, hey, think of all the great food!

Stop spreading the lie that moslem women have to wear the hijabs.  It’s their choice – they can also be stoned to death.

Germany got it the worst, or wurst:  their national policy became self-hatred.  Germany’s WWII story is Hitler and defeat, a double blow that turned national pride into a mortal sin and Hitler into a replacement for Satan.  The war toll of German death and destruction:  5.3 million military deaths, 2 million civilian, cities like Cologne and Dresden reduced to rubble or ash was compounded by the framing of Germany as the sole reason for war.

The foundational lesson?  Germans can’t be trusted with power or tanks or a sense of humor.  Post-war, this bred an anti-nationalism so intense it’s practically policy.  Germany’s “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” (reckoning with the past) demands eternal penance as if this was a racial punishment where current Germans who in no way were responsible for World War II have to take the blame.

Foot fetishes are on the rise in Germany, probably because of the smell of defeat.

The result?  Immigration surged, with 20% of Germany’s population now foreign-born, often seen as a way to dilute the “German” identity that led to 1939.  The war’s shadow stifles dissent:  question migration or EU mandates, and you’re a Nazi and your entire political party might be banned.  This self-hatred paralyzes Germany’s ability to act decisively, even as its economy stagnates and its culture frays.

For Russia and/or the Soviets, World War II was the triumph of the iron fist.  For the Soviets, the Great Patriotic War was proof the Soviet system worked.  Despite 27 million deaths (8.7 million military, 19 million civilian), the Red Army’s push to Berlin showed that the sheer scale of production of hundreds of thousands of crappy tanks and endless conscripted bodies could crush any foe.  Stalin famously removed seat padding from the T-34 after finding the average lifespan of a T-34 in combat was only a few minutes.

The foundational lesson they learned?  Central control, especially when done with brutality, gets results.  Stalin’s paternalism became Putin’s playbook:  the state over individual, quantity over quality.  Post-war, the USSR’s occupation of Eastern Europe and refusal of Marshall Plan aid cemented this mindset.  Even today, Russia’s drones are glorified T-34s—cheap, mass-produced, barely competitive, but there are thousands of them.  The war’s myth of invincibility fuels Moscow’s paranoia and aggression, from Ukraine to cyberwars, while its economy limps along on vodka, oil, duct tape, and nostalgia.

I guess those are all tank tops?

World War II was a cataclysm.  70-85 million dead and borders were changed as if they were drawn by a hyperactive kid with an Etch-a-Sketch™.  For the U.S., it birthed a bloated state and a messianic complex.  For Britain, it turned pride into shame.  Germany traded nationalism for self-loathing.  Russia doubled down on authoritarianism.  And, although we didn’t go into it, World War II is the singular foundational event for modern Jewish people, which is why they treat it with religious reverence and questioning any aspect of their narrative is treated as heresy.

The U.S. got off the lightest:  our homeland unscathed, our economy booming post-war, but we’re chained to the idea that we must police the globe for some reason.  For the others, the scars are deeper, twisting their cultures into knots of guilt, paranoia, or apology.  These foundational stories aren’t just history, they’re shackles.

Maybe it’s time to write new stories, before the old ones drag us all into another war, or the anti-Curly returns?

A Tale Of Two Koreas: Dystopia On The Half-Shell

“From what I hear, which isn’t much, Iran financed it and North Korea supplied the bombs.” – Jericho

North Korea shows off it’s newly developed portable Internet device.  (All memes as-found)

Imagine living in a Korea where:

  • a small group of corrupt elite wield godlike powers over the government and citizens,
  • kids work in factories at the age of less than 10, or, toil in school for up to 18 hours a day to study for a chance to please that same elite who control the entire country,
  • most non-elite live in drab, gray (or is it grey?) apartments with the main view of . . . other apartments,
  • adults work long hours in a job that mainly serves to feed the elite,
  • the fertility rate is 0.78, meaning life is so awful that parents don’t want to bring babies into it, meaning the population will be cut by more half each generation, and
  • the kids listen to K-Pop.

Yeah.  South Korea.

You know, I know people love to call certain places hellholes while praising others as shiny beacons of progress, mainly due to one being capitalist and one being communist.

I get it.  I hate communism, too.

I had a horrible dream last night that Artificial Intelligence controlled our lives, and then, thankfully, the alarm on my Alexa® went off and woke me up and then Alexa® went through my to-do list.

But what if I told you that sometimes the “better” option of capitalism is just a prettier prison?

In South Korea, a tiny cabal of families runs the show like they’re the Sopranos, but with better electronics, worse haircuts, and no fear of the FBI.  These aren’t your average mafia dons; we’re talking about chaebols.  Chaebols are massive conglomerates that have tentacles that extend all the way through all parts of society, like the corporation you work for owning your fridge, car, and your grandma’s pacemaker.

Take the Lee family at Samsung®:  they’re not just peddling phones with spyware straight from the NSA, nope.  In South Korea, they have fingers in everything from shipbuilding to life insurance to health care to construction to hotels in about 80 different companies that comprise about 22% of the South Korean economy.

Hell, if you sneeze in this country, there’s probably a Samsung tissue waiting to catch it.  And when Daddy Lee gets nabbed for bribery and attempted bribery (again), does the empire crumble?

Nope, Lee Junior slides right in.

Is the guy who does security on Samsung™ phones the guardian of the galaxy?

Then there’s the Chung clan over at Hyundai®. These folks don’t just make cars.  Nope.  Hyundai builds cities, runs banks, and probably have a secret lab cloning K-Pop idols, Gangnam-style.

Power gets handed down generation to generation, and if there’s a whiff of scandal?  Poof, it vanishes faster than a North Korean dissident.

Embezzlement?

Tax evasion?

Those are just another boring Tuesday for these overlords.  They operate above the law, pulling strings in government like K-Y® covered puppet masters at a marionette orgy (I’m sorry I thought of that, but now you have to think of that, too).

I don’t know how to stop a killer sex bot, but I do know how to stop a hand puppet:  disarm it.

These huge conglomerates eternal, sucking up wealth while the average South Korean fights over scraps.  Capitalism is great at building stuff, sure, but when it goes full oligarch, it’s like giving all the Monopoly® money to the banker (drunk Aunt Betty) and listening to her tell everyone else to enjoy passing Go© without collecting $200 and then it’s the Thanksgiving from Hell and Uncle L.T. won’t stop talking about golf.

Excuse me.  Some past-life trauma.

I’m not against wealth concentration when it comes because people created actual wealth in society.  I think people should be rewarded for making the lives of others better.  But South Korea?  The top families make money because they control all the pathways of wealth creation and the government.

I’d bet they’re gonna make a move on religion, next.

Bold statement time: capitalism alone doesn’t equal freedom; and in South Korea it is just feudalism (which, I remind you, was also capitalism) with neon-colored LED lights.

And it gets worse.  What really inspired me to write this one was about the kids.  The South Korean economy is a beast that demands blood sacrifices, starting young.  Kids are out there hustling like they’re in a Dickens novel, but instead of cleaning chimneys, it’s cram schools that make American homework look like recess.

I’d make a joke but I want to be seen as mining my own business.

For the grown-ups, it’s worse: 60-80 hour weeks are the norm, turning humans into zombies shuffling through cubicles.  Monotonous?  Try soul-crushing, like being stuck in the Matrix but without the cool kung fu and hot chicks in skin-tight latex.  Adults are coding, welding, or staring at screens till their eyes cross, all for a paycheck that barely covers rent.  And that’s the lucky ones – the effective unemployment rate flirts on a regular basis with 25%.

And speaking of rent—everyone’s jammed into these towering commie-blocks, gray slabs of despair that make Brutalist architecture look inspiring.  Check it out on Google™ Maps© Streetview®.  It’s like The Sims® but with new Depression Mode enabled: tiny apartments where families stack like cordwood, dreaming of escape but too exhausted to move.

The place where it gets really grim is that they’re working themselves to death.  South Korean birthrates are in the toilet, flushing away the future one non-existent kid at a time.

It takes 2.1 kids per woman to keep a population stable.  In South Korea, it’s 0.78 kids per woman.  In about 100 years, that might mean that instead of 55 million serfs potential employees Samsung® might only have a just a few over 7.5 million left.

This isn’t sustainable; it’s societal suicide by spreadsheet.

You know what jokes about low birthrates aren’t?  Childish.

Everyone thinks it South Korea is all Squid Games and high-speed internet, but peel back the veneer, and it’s a dystopia where families (well, not all families) get ground to dust.  Sure, they’ve got flashy tech, but at what cost?

Their souls, apparently.

Now, let’s cross that fortified border to the hermit kingdom of North Korea, where the dystopia’s got a different flavor but the same aftertaste of oppression. Point by point, because why not?

  • Corrupt Clique in Charge: Instead of chaebol families, it’s the Kim dynasty. Power passes from Kim to Kim like a Habsburg chin.  Voting?  You don’t vote on a living god.  The elite live like it’s a South Korean oligarchy, but make theirs communist, so, uniforms and marching and Soviet-tech.  So, tie.
  • Economic Shackles on Steroids: Child labor? Oh yeah, but it’s “patriotic duty” with Nork kids harvesting crops or building monuments to Stalin instead of studying like their southern counterparts.  The system is a joke, with rations so meager you’d think calories were capitalist spies.  Families toil in state farms or factories, nukes, missiles, and spare MiG parts while the Kim family imports Twix® and Coors™.  The South doesn’t have death camps, but I’m not sure if that’s good or bad at this point, so, tie.

This definitely hurt the North’s score.

  • Soul-Sucking Slog: Just like being at the Democratic National Convention, life in North Korea is a parade of propaganda and forced smiles, living in actual commie-blocks that crumble like the regime’s promises.  Monotonous work?  Try endless marches and indoctrination sessions.  It’s like 1984 but with worse food even than English food.  I’ll give this to the South, since they come here from time to time, and I’ve never had a North Korean visit.

What is this, a school for ants?

  • Birthrates Below Replacement: Around 1.9 kids per woman, much, much better than the South, so eventually there will be more Norks than replaceable Samsung® assets.  Besides, who wants to raise a family when Junior might rat you out for humming the Brady Bunch theme?  This one goes solidly to North Korea.
  • K-Pop Equivalent? Nope, just state anthems praising the Dear Leader.  I’ve got to give this to North Korea.

If black people move there, will they make K-Rap?

Point total?  To the North.

Okay, if I had to pick, I certainly wouldn’t pick the North, but let’s be honest, the South is awful as well.  I’ve been trying to make this point again and again:  capitalism is an economic system, and it’s only a useful economic system if it generates wealth and supports families.  When capitalism captures the systems of government the people begin to look like property, exactly like people look to communists.  In Korea, people are either cogs or convicts.

The Founders didn’t mention capitalism or socialism, they just turned people loose with guns and a few rules and let them figure it out.  In the West today, business wants to import foreigners to become better cogs, and the GloboLeft wants to import hordes of foreigners who are used to their government treating them like convicts.

Though on the bright side, my Samsung™ phone has lasted for years . . .

The A.I. Bubble: Two Outcomes

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

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

I remember the dotcom bubble.

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

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

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

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

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

The source of this frothy mess?

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s extrapolate this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But jobs?  Poof.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At least.

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

I guess we could make it up on volume?

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fast forward to today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Four factors gutted the goose:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the goose isn’t dead yet.

Bleeding?  Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

Caste Over Competence: Globalism Is Economic Suicide

“India’s a black hole.” – World War Z

How many Indians does it take to change a lightbulb?  Sixteen.  Fourteen to argue about whose responsibility it is, one to explain that lightbulbs are better in India and invented by Indians, and one to call the power plant to tell it to reboot because it must be a software issue. (all memes “as-found”)

Picture a world where kids in Bangladesh sew soccer balls for pennies (whatever a penny was), and some goatherder in Albania is working at a factory cranking out VCRs.  VCRs, like it’s 1985 and I’m renting Back to the Future from Blockbuster®.  I kid.  Albania doesn’t even have electricity yet.

But that’s the flavor of globalism’s siren song that leads economies to doom:  anything can be made anywhere, as long as the price is dirt cheap.  I’ve heard the refrain, even in the comments here:  “If you complain about competing against Albaniaks and Bangladeshites, well, you’re a commie that doesn’t believe in capitalism.”

If the goal of capitalism was to serve itself, well, then yes.  It’s a battle of all against all, and whoever can outbreed the next country to lower the cost of (spins wheel) designer purses should make them.

I mean, it sounds great for your wallet, right?

Wrong.  This is a strategy for hollowing out the West’s economy, stripping our skills, and handing our jobs to foreigners who don’t play by our rules at all, transforming our country into Albania on the Atlantic.  Globalism is not just bad economics, it’s a betrayal of the West.  And politicians love it.

But The Simpsons killed off Apu . . . maybe he wanted a raise?

Isn’t it strange that no matter how many times we vote “No, we don’t want any more aliens, illegal or not” that they nod their heads and bring them in?  Is it any stranger that no matter how many times we vote, “No, we don’t want our factories shipped to places that don’t use vowels,” that our factories are shipped to places that haven’t yet invented vowels?

It’s a betrayal of the West

Let’s break it down.  Globalism turns labor into a commodity, like trading baseball cards, except the cards are my job, my skills, and my family’s (and country’s) future.  It’s a race to the lowest cost.  Why pay an American $30 an hour when a kid in Swaziland (Swaziland still exists, right?) works for a handful or USAID® rice a day?

Why build a factory in Ohio when Ceylon’s got sweatshops begging for your blueprints?  The GloboLeft (and, let’s be fair, the RINOs, too) cheer this as “progress,” but it’s a death spiral.  Here’s how it plays out, step by step, until the West’s economy is a husk.

Thankfully all the Indians in Canada are very good with hand-held electronics.  Tractor-trailers?  Not so much.

The Stages of Economic Suicide

  • Design machines, build machines that make stuff, and make stuff: This is the golden age—think 1950s America.  We designed cars, built the factories to make cars, and made cars.  America flourished.  Families thrived.  Grandpa’s lunchpail as he went to work the railroad that shipped those cars meant something.  Skills stayed home, and so did the wealth.
  • Design and make machines that make stuff: By the 80s, we’re still designing and building the machines, but the stuff’s starting to come from Japan and Taiwan as they focus on quality and crack the United States market.  We’re losing the “make stuff” part, but hey, at least we’ve got Wall Street.
  • Design machines to sell to people who make stuff:  Now we’re just selling blueprints. China’s got the factories to make iPhones® we’ve got the patents for the iPhones©.  The know-how’s slipping—designing isn’t building.  People don’t learn to weld by drawing a weld on paper.
  • Buy stuff made by other people from machines you designed: Welcome to the 2000s. Now we’re just selling blueprints. China’s got the factories to make iPhones® we’ve got the patents for the iPhones©.  The know-how is now slipping—designing isn’t building.  People don’t learn to weld by drawing a weld on paper.  Our skills erode.  No one in Ohio knows how to make a microchip anymore.  The muscle memory of manufacturing?  Gone.  Microchips?  They struggle with Pringles™.
  • Buy stuff made and designed by other people: The endgame. Now we become a country of consumers now, buying Chinese drones.  All that’s left are knowledge jobs (coding, engineering), service jobs (baristas, Uber), and jobs that can’t be exported (plumbers, cops, construction). But wait—why not outsource the knowledge jobs too?

This is where globalism’s knife cuts deepest.  The West’s economy is hollowed out, with a Starbucks® in the lobby of the Citibank™ that’s in a bigger Starbucks®.  Oh, and Amazon warehouses.

Manufacturing’s gone, and with it, the skills that built manufacturing in the first place.  And then?  The GloboLeftElite says:  “Hey, let’s import foreigners for the knowledge jobs too!” Enter the H-1B visa, and the West’s last stronghold starts to crumble.  To be clear, the Donald and the Musk both love those H-1B visas, too.

Here’s the dirty truth: foreigners don’t like us.  They don’t think like us.  They don’t value the same things we do.  In some cases the only thing we have in common is that we both consume oxygen.

Take India.  Please.

I bet the driver felt enriched by the diversity.

India is the poster child for H-1B tech workers.  Their culture rewards “cleverness”.  So does ours, but the definition is very different.  To an Indian, “cleverness” is:  lying, cheating, and deception.

To be clear, these are all fair game under their religious and cultural framework.  Don’t take my word for it:  a 2019 report estimated 30% of tech resumes from India include fake degrees or inflated credentials.  India ranks 93 out of 180 on Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Index.  Nepotism and bribery are practically Olympic® sports for India, which is good because despite being a nation of 1.4 billion people, their only Olympic© was a bronze in Yahtzee™.

But hey, don’t take my word for it.

Then there’s the caste system.  It’s not just history from some movie filled with short, weak brown people who can’t quite speak English and fight with women over the five-pound barbells.  No.  The caste system is alive, even in Silicon Valley.  Indian managers on H-1B visas often hire their own:  same caste, same village, same cousin.  I think the CEO of Microsoft™ is the uncle of half the company.

Merit?

Nope, it’s about loyalty to the clan.  A 2021 study found 90% of Indian-led tech firms in the U.S. had Indian-majority staff, despite only 20% of H-1B visas going to Indians.  Nepotism is their game, and it locks Americans out of jobs in their own country.

I bet they think that’s what they call clever, but it’s escaped scrutiny because it is what the GloboLeft calls this “diversity”.

Globalism’s promise is cheap stuff, which sounds nice until you’re unemployed because an Indian manager hired his brother-in-law over you.  The West’s economy was built on trust and competence, not the caste and the scam.  Outsourcing knowledge jobs to cultures that don’t share our values is like handing your house keys to a guy who thinks picking locks is a personality trait.

Why let this happen? Because the GloboLeft and their Chamber of Commerce Republican buddies love it.  Cheap labor means cheap goods means more profit this quarter and damn the country.

But it’s clear:  we can’t build wealth by outsourcing our future to foreigners who don’t like us and think our rules are stupid and weak.  To be clear:  the elites don’t care—they’re too busy cashing checks to care and hoping that TEMU® will sell a quality yacht soon.

This isn’t just economics; it is the destiny of a people.

The West thrived because we valued competence.  Again, economic systems aren’t the goal.  The goal is the well being of the people in a country.  I mean, even the Albanians could read this post and agree.

I mean, they’d read it if they had electricity.

Illegal Aliens Versus Actual Americans: The Stakes Of The $33T Parasite Party

“And on the unjust enrichment charge, Richard will agree to pay Hooli for the phone charger.” – Silicon Valley

Where do Orcs go to school?  Uruk-Hai.  (meme as found)

Enrichment.  I mean, who doesn’t feel that when they think about illegal alien invaders, since they’re like Orcs crashing a Hobbit© potluck?  On thinking about them, I came up with what I thought was a very interesting idea.  What if illegal aliens were the key to . . . a painless recession that helped all the Actual Americans?  I mean, by leaving.

Let’s look at the results of kicking illegals out or not having them show up in the first place:

  • Lowered home prices. Up to 40 million illegals living in the United States, millions of whom showed up in the last few years puts pressure on home prices.  Sure, some illegals are helping to build homes, but they’re consuming more than they create.  If the invaders left that lowers demand for the existing home stock.  Sure, some markets might  continue to be unaffordable, but I don’t want to live there.  The result?  Young Actual Americans would be more able to afford homes.
  • Crime would go down. Yes, I’ve heard the argument that illegals commit fewer crimes than Actual Americans, but any crime they commit is one that won’t happen if they’re not here.  Since we already have all the recipes, you can still go and get a burrito.  We’ll keep the burritos, you take the banditos.
  • Wages increase. Since the early 1970s, the share of wages for the average worker when compared to corporate profits has plummeted.  Why?  We offshored manufacturing because someone asked, “Hey, wouldn’t it be a good idea if we imported everything and allowed foreigners decades to figure out how to optimize manufacturing?”  But beyond that, we imported hordes of illegal and legal aliens for the jobs that remained because someone asked, “Hey, wouldn’t it be a good idea to import tons of people who can’t complain about hours or conditions?”
  • Prices for (some) goods and services may go down. Why?  Fewer people competing for those goods and services.  If profits are high and demand decreases, prices fall.  Profits are at an all time high.  You do the math.
  • Pressure for more infrastructure decreases. 40 million more people means millions of miles or roads, sewers, water lines, curbs, and schools.  It’s 10% infrastructure for the rest of us . . . for free!

Easiest way to tell if a high school student is on drugs:  ask him what a gram is.  See!  The metric system is useful for something.

  • Schools have more resources. Speaking of schools, not only does the teacher/pupil ratio get better, but fewer services are required since illegal aliens need enhanced services due to language and “special needs” issues.
  • Government growth is dropped. Illegals LOVE government doing things for them and always clamor for more.  And they get more.  GloboLeftElite politicians also LOVE giving illegals benefits that Actual Americans don’t qualify for.  Without illegals, this slows government growth.
  • Lower fraud. SNAP (federal Supplemental Nutrition giveaways) wouldn’t be used to pack the fridges of half of the food trucks in Los Angeles.  More food would be available for purchase, and prices would go . . . down.
  • Lower health care costs. Illegals use the emergency room as their go-to medical facility, clogging it up for colds that an Actual American would go to a doctor for, and paying nothing.  Well, they pay nothing.  You and I foot the bill for them because they have zero health insurance (except for government handouts), so why not go to the emergency room for a Tylenol®?
  • Higher costs for strawberries and lettuce. A few labor-intensive farm products will increase in price.  Be honest, though:  if strawberries doubled in cost you wouldn’t care.  Especially not if your taxes and inflation overall went down.
  • Farm profits would go down.   This would hurt farmers.  But it would hurt big corporate farmers the most.  Maybe they’d have to pay a market wage without illegals pressuring it down.
  • Lower remittances going abroad. Over $70 billion in wealth is shipped out to foreign countries in remittances.  This could be kept at home with Actual Americans using it to buy something they liked instead.  Like PEZ®.

Finally, I saved the crown jewel for last:

Higher economic growth.

Well, that might be a lie.  Economic growth would actually decrease for the first year or so.  That’s the textbook definition for a recession:  growth decreasing for two business quarters.  And, I’m okay with that, because growth can be good or bad.

Said differently:  all growth is not good, and all contractions aren’t bad.

I built a model of Mt. Everest.  My friend asked, “Is it to scale?”  I had to break his heart when I told him it was just to look at.

What happens if the recession is caused by removing illegals?  Let’s look at the numbers:

Since the vast majority of illegals are Hispanic, it just so happens that we have a good guess at the lifetime impact on the economy of a Hispanic person.  It came in the form of a meme, but it’s footnoted.  So, science.  I guess.

Drumroll:  in the early 2010s, someone did an estimate of the net lifetime contribution of a Latino.  The answer was:  -$588,000.  Again, that’s over their lifetime.  I imagine that illegals cost far, far more than the average Hispanic American.  The average third-gen Hispanic American who was born into an English-speaking household from his legal birth and whose name was “Troy” rather than “Esteban” almost certainly is much more productive.

I mean, Troy probably took Spanish in high school and got a “C”.

I wonder what Tay© would say about this?  Or Grok™ as of today? (meme as found)

But those are old numbers.  Let’s update that $588,000 net cost to 2025 numbers.

Wow.  It’s up to over $810,000 now for a lifetime cost.  Assuming a lifespan of 50 years in the United States (illegals, remember) to suck up our resources, over that 50-year span, 40,000,000 illegals would suck up nearly $33 trillion.

If the definition of a parasite is an organism that pulls the life energy from another, then that fits the bill to describe this as economic parasitism.

I think there could be fewer illegals than 40 million, but it’s nearly certain their lifetime costs are higher than the $810,000 estimate, perhaps even double the costs of an Actual American Hispanic.  So, let’s use those numbers.  I think they’re conservative.

He’s lucky it wasn’t the Hawaiian Muslim food truck:  Aloha Snack Bar. (meme as found)

Rough calculations shows that every million deported or averted would save Actual Americans $32 billion per year.  Deport them all?  A net savings for a family of four of $8,000.  Each and every year for their entire lives.

You and your family are contributing about $2,000 EACH just for the luxury of having illegals in the United States, not counting house prices, health care costs, depressed wages, and a dozen other non-economic ways I could think of that illegals are making things worse for Actual Americans.

$2,000.  Minimum.  Each and every year.  Could you use that for something?  Like PEZ™?

Yes, illegals cause economic growth, because they cause economic activity.  But all economic “growth” isn’t good, especially when that “growth” takes away from the wealth and prosperity of Actual Americans.  If economic activity was all we needed, we could peg the gauge by just having Los Angeles illegal riots every night.

Imagine how rich we’d all get off of tearing it all down and rebuilding it every week!

Again, you could quibble with the numbers, and I’ll agree that a meme isn’t a peer-reviewed paper.  But, what university in 2025 would support a professor pointing out that a significant portion of the population is making the country poorer just by breathing?

Thankfully, this isn’t a peer reviewed paper, since those are often created by an entirely different type of parasite, but I digress.

Could it be that we’re enriching ourselves to death?  What I’ve written about here talks only about the financial ways in which illegals are screwing all the Actual Americans.  Aliens, both illegal and legal, also put on intense cultural pressure.  Remember, diversity is our weakness, and multicultural empires Balkanize in horrific ways based on that weakness.  It’s like having a United Nations cage match, but in your backyard.  More on that in a future post.

The Riddler™ is fine, but I like the Pun-isher© better. (meme as found)

So, a recession brought about by illegals aliens going home is one I’ll happily look forward too.  And their home countries should be glad to get them – I mean, won’t they feel enriched?  Besides, I think it’s obvious that I’d never be nice to a parasite at one of my parties – I’m not a good host.

34 Signposts On The Way To Civil War . . .

“Who else is on the list?” – The Godfather

Terrorists really help with self-esteem issues.  They keep telling their new recruits, “You’re the bomb.”

The devolution of the United States was predicted by Thomas Chittum in his book Civil War Two, The Coming Breakup of America.  Although you can find it for free online, I strongly encourage you to purchase it from Amazon®, since Mr. Chittum does get the money from this and has been using it to get families out of South Africa.

Towards the back of the book, Mr. Chittum provides the Civil War II Checklist, a list of 36 items “in no particular order” that he sees as measurements along the way to Civil War 2.0.  He wrote the book originally in 1997, and updated it in 2007, so we’ll be marking close to two decades of time between his last update and this quick analysis.

Item 1:  Every time you see a blank for your ethnic group on a form, think Civil War II.

Recent Supreme Court rulings as well as President Trump’s removal of DEI at the federal level have taken us back from the peak, but I believe many federal DEI organizations are still there, just under different names.  Regardless, it’s a part of our culture now.  Check.

Santa never pays for parking – it’s always on the house.

Item 2:  If illegal aliens are allowed to vote, even in local elections, it will be another unmistakable signal that American citizenship, and therefore America itself, is finished.

California, Maryland, and Vermont allow this.  Check.

Item 3:  The abolition of the right to bear arms.

This is one area where we’ve made great strides since Mr. Chittum wrote his book.  Gun rights are at the best condition that they’ve been during my entire lifetime.  This is the power of a group keeping after it year after year.

Item 4:  Watch for racially split juries.

We are here.  Multiple cases of black criminals walking free despite clear proof of guilt of them killing white people exist.  Check.

Item 5:  Watch for the military to assume police duties.

I have to give this a “not yet” since the National Guard and Marines were in an unarmed force protection role in Los Angeles.

Item 6:  Watch for the establishment of an elite military force outside the chain of command of the regular military to serve as an internal counterinsurgency force.

Not seen, unless I missed this or the Ghostbusters™ count.

I hear the Ghostbusters™ didn’t wear unusual socks, just a pair of normal socks.

Item 7:  Watch for Washington D.C. to increasingly resemble the capital of some banana republic under siege by revolutionaries and mobs.

I’m going to give this a check as the periodic riot fences go up.  Check.

Item 8:  Resegregation: Watch for Africans and other minorities demanding, and often getting, separate facilities for themselves, another clear sign that they’re continuing to reject co-option.

Absolutely.  From graduation ceremonies to student unions to “safe spaces” this is common even though they still claim a Constitutional right to be around white people.  Check.

Item 9:  Watch for further replacement of individual rights by group rights, group rights based on ethnic group.

This had been well underway, and is likely only slightly impeded by the Trump administration.  Check.

Item 10:  Watch for non-governmental organizations acquiring military power.

Outside of Blackwater™ or whatever Erik Prince is up to, I don’t see this as significant.

Item 11:  Watch for real political power to continue to shift from our elected officials to the courts, and thus away from the American people.

Check.  Check.  Check.  The courts in the United States are fundamentally a liberal institution, and are acting as a one-way rachet – the GloboLeft can do anything, but TradRight can’t change it a bit.  Check.

A hamburger walked into a bar buy they wouldn’t give him a beer.  They don’t serve food.

Item 12:  Watch for more instances of real political power flowing from American institutions to international bodies, thus again flowing away from American citizens. 

There has been some of this, especially with the drive to worship Climate Change, and the drive has been to create these not as treaties, but as international “agreements” that don’t require ratification.  Check.

Item 13:  Watch for minorities and radical whites to continue to seize control of American institutions.

Check. 

Item 14:  Watch for secessionist movements and other movements seeking autonomy on American soil.

I’ve seen several of these show up on the TradRight, very few on the GloboLeft because they cannot accept the idea of people opting out of their delusions.  Besides, the biggest sign of an impending divorce is Mom and Dad talking about it.  Check.

Item 15:  Watch for race-based political parties, a sure sign of racial polarization.

Trump won 42% of the Hispanic vote, so not quite there yet.  Only 16% of blacks voted for Trump, and if that was the only group we’d call it.  Verdict:  not yet.

Item 16:  Watch for the emergence of “no-go” areas for the police in our cities, areas abandoned by the police and left to the control of street gangs.

There are plenty of these in the United States, and even more in the summer during riot season.  Check.

Item 17:  Watch for a so-called slave tax refund or some similar vehicle that will automatically subsidize all blacks for life.

This has not happened.

The Vatican doesn’t take them though, it’s a PayPal™ state.

Item 18:  Watch for court orders and other schemes mandating more voting districts in which blacks are intentionally a majority.

This has 100% happened in Alabama.  Check.

Item 19:  Watch other multiethnic empires for ethnic violence, a general loss of democracy, increasing poverty, waves of refugees, and their actual breakup in ethnic warfare.  South Africa, Russia, Turkey, the Balkan countries, Brazil, all of black Africa, Mexico, Guatemala, India, Pakistan and Peru are all multiethnic empires to some extent.

Mixed bag, but I’ll give it a check as the waves of refugees and poverty are evident in many of these.  Check.

Item 20:  Watch for the spread of walled suburbs, euphemistically labeled as gated communities.

This continues.  Check.

Item 21:  Watch for more mind control hoaxes by the establishment media.

This references the fake and contrived news.  Absolutely this is happening.  Check.

What does Willy call an economic depression?  An everlasting jobstopper.

Item 22:  Watch for an increasing percentage of minorities in our military, the use of foreigners in our military, the use of UN troops on our soil, or even the establishment of an American Foreign Legion.

This is partially true, but UN will likely never happen.  I’m still giving it a check.  Check.

Item 23:  Watch for more out of court settlements in cases of alleged racial discrimination. 

I think most of these are out of court or are administratively done at this point.  Check.

Item 24:  Watch for more restrictions on freedom of speech by the government and the establishment media.

This has happened, especially on the Internet.  If not for Musk’s purchase of Twitter™ this would have been complete, reducing actual free speech to a vanishingly small number of sites.  Check.

Item 25:  Watch for police to increasingly abandon their traditional uniforms for ones that resemble military and secret police uniforms in their dark color or camouflage, military helmets, opaque face shields, and absence of name tags.

Barney and Sheriff Taylor are gone.  Check.

When the military becomes the police, citizens become the enemy.

Item 26:  Watch for clandestine groups of white officers to form within our federal, state  and local police – groups similar to the Resistors in the Green Berets.

I have no idea.  Clandestine, right?

Item 27:  Watch for an arm of the federal government charged with promoting racist affirmative action, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to acquire agents that carry guns and have the power to make arrests. 

Nope.

Item 28:  Watch for the collapse of the US dollar as the world’s premier currency.

In progress, but still the world’s main cash, so not yet.

Item 29:  Watch for growing geographic segregation and its increasing mention in the establishment press.

I’ve seen dozens of articles about just this happening and that Idaho is full and that California plates on a car are like a kick-me sign on the back of the class idiot.  Check.

Item 30:  Watch for signs that the global military equation and American dominance in it are being challenged.

Not yet.  We’ll see.

I wonder if they’ll wear plaid?

Item 31:  Watch for the breakup of Canada. If Canada does break up along ethnic and linguistic lines, it will bode ill for its neighbor which is an even worse multiethnic and multilingual mishmash. 

I’m calling this one a “never will” as Canada has self-immolated with unending waves of third-world immigrants destroying the place.  Item Removed.

Item 32:  Watch for an increased flow of Americans immigrating to Canada.

It’s up, not by much, and why would you move to Mumbai on the Arctic Ocean?  Item Removed.

Item 33:  Watch for political and legal organizations formed along ethnic lines that will parallel, and ultimately displace their official rivals.  For instance, watch for organizations with names like The Association of Hispanic States, or the Black Mayors Conference.

There are plenty of these.  Check.

Item 34:  Watch for more help wanted ads stating that job applicants must be bilingual.

Check.

Item 35:  Watch for indications that the UN is assuming the role of a world government, and that the US is losing even more of its national sovereignty to the UN.

No.  The UN is weaker now than at any time in history.  We have, however, lost a lot to international treaty organizations and corporations.

Item 36:  Watch for a certain picture. We’ve all seen this picture countless times before, a picture from Beirut, Budapest, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Yugoslavia, Somalia – a burnt-out tank, perhaps the charred corpse of a crewman protruding through a hatch, and jubilant rebels posing atop the tank waving assault rifles and a flag. Someday we shall see this picture in our newspapers yet again, and this time taken on American soil. The tank, the dead crewman, and rebels will all be Americans, all will be American except the flag, which will be a Mexican, Aztlan, New Africa, or Confederate flag. When we see this picture, it will be too late. Civil War II will be upon us. But there’s another picture we’ll see first, again one we’ve all seen before from some unfortunate land. But this time it will be taken right here in the US of A – a picture of a dirty, ragged child foraging for food in a garbage dump.

I’ll leave number 36 up to you.  Here’s my nominee photo.

Summarizing that, my count is that there are twenty or twenty-one landmarks complete out of the total thirty-four landmarks on the way to Civil War 2.0.  I think that in no way do all thirty-four have to be checked for war to be here – it’s just a barometer.

What’s your score?

The Three Horsemen and One Bikini of the Apocalypse

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

I love this joke like there’s no tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wonder if he and his siblings were born apart?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Though the research for tonight was fun.

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

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

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

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

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