Wealth – Page 6 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Finding Our Way Back To Wealth

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

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

Wealth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why? The people.

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

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

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

Is a monk with wings an air friar?

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

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

For a while.

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

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

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

Take immigration. Please.

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

That’s not a workforce; it’s a drain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So how do we get back on track?

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

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

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

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

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

And we all know where that leads.

Hell, it leads to Hell.

Or Detroit.

Motorcycles, Gold, And Infinite Money

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

Another? The Spanish Inquisition.

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

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

I kid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nvidia©’s market cap?

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

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

Tell me this is not an asset bubble?

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

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

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

Sign me up.

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

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

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

Okay, right, wailing, not whaling.

However, it had a weird impact on Ma Wilder.

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

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

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

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

H-1Begone

“India’s a black hole.” – World War Z

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

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

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

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

Each year.

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

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

That’s wonderful.

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

Wow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who says you shouldn’t drink and tweet?

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

By going back to and staying in India.

Things Are Not Alright

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t blame them.

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

Now?

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

Today?

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

What about delivering papers?

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

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

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

Or how about construction?

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

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

Who let this happen?

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

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

With a degree in art history.

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

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

That is not a typo.

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

Private schools?

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

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

Oh, and the job market?

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

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

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

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

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

And the CEOs?

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

So, why are kids turned off capitalism?

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

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

We can fix this.

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

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

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

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.