Because socialism is expensive

 Scarborough: How Did We Spend Trillions On Defense—And We're Running Out Of Munitions After A One-Month War?

The wealth inequality of today's K-shaped economy goes back to the Reagan Revolution

Wealth inequality and the ‘K-shaped’ economy are more striking than ever, data shows

 

They take vacations and buy luxury goods. You struggle to pay for food, shelter, and transportation.

 

K is not OK.

 

... A key measure of wealth concentration called the Gini coefficient sits at 60-year highs, according to a report from U.S. Bank published earlier this month. ... The net worth of America’s top 1% hit a record share of nearly 32% in the third quarter of 2025, the Federal Reserve reported. By comparison, the bottom 50% cumulatively held 2.5% of overall net wealth.

 

The portion of U.S. GDP heading to workers in the form of compensation tumbled to its lowest level in its more than 75-year history, per data tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means the average nonfarm business worker is seeing an increasingly small slice of an economy that has largely boomed over the last 15 years. ...

 

Total relative “outlays” — a broad measure of spending and nonmortgage payments — by U.S. consumers in the top 20% hit multidecade highs last year, a data analysis conducted by Moody’s Analytics found. The other 80% tumbled to new lows, the data shows. ...

 

While the “K-shape” term became popularized as an explanation for the uneven economic recovery seen during the pandemic, economists say the origins of this breakaway can be traced back decades earlier.

This type of diverging economy stems from the economic reorganization seen during the Reagan administration, according to Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at tax firm RSM. About two decades later, the structural break that created the K-shaped economy, as it’s now understood, was more clearly observed in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of the late 2000s, he said.

That was in part due to the loss of wealth tied to the historic housing market crash, Brusuelas said. On top of that, he said the jump in joblessness limited earnings potential for those without steady employment in their prime working years.

The Great Recession “created the conditions for the winner-take-all economy that emerged in its aftermath,” said Brusuelas, who first heard the K-shape term around 2008. “If you live, work and inhabit certain portions of the economy, you might as well live on the dark side of the moon compared to what goes on down-market.” ...

To make meaningful inroads, the U.S. would instead need to focus on tax reform and expanding social safety nets, according to RSM’s Brusuelas. ...

Rasmussen poll finds the socialist future predicted by Tucker Carlson in 2018 is nearer than when he first believed

 A little Bible lingo for the Christians out there lol.

Rasmussen Poll: 51% of Young Voters Back Democratic Socialist for '28

Hey, I thought young people were going all MAGA?

Re-read Tucker here, or here. He was already highly critical of the feckless Trump in December 2018, who can be nothing but a transitional figure.

I first said Trump was a transitional figure in July 2018. I just didn't know how long the transition would be. And I still don't. 

But merely transitional he must be. There's no there there. He has no vision thingy, but he does have plenty of people still trying with all their might to pour their vision into him.

The reason is simple. He's empty, and their attempts simply underscore it.

Old man Trump is not attracting a movement like Reagan did. That's what really ticks off the anti-Boomer Cons.

 

 

 

Nowadays socialism is dressed up as billions of taxpayer dollars given to chipmakers

 

This socialist got almost a million votes for the presidency from behind bars in 1912

 Just sayin'.

This guy is the political analog to the slip-and-fall lawyer, turning up at every opportunity to exploit it for socialism

 

Bernie Sanders calls out automaker CEOs at UAW rally: ‘It is time for you to end your greed’

These fools argue about the distinctions between communism and socialism when it's the lack of contradiction between the Democrats' economic liberalism and socialism they ought to be talking about

Bernie Sanders says military socialism is bad socialism, social socialism is good socialism, doesn't get it that most military spending is on PEOPLE

The Defense Department knows it needs to become more efficient. It now spends a third of its budget on personnel and maintenance. That will rise to 100% by 2024, thanks to retirement and medical costs. 

More. 

The nuclear family is communist and the US military is socialist, and yet they call it capitalism.

The standing army of socialism: The US military's officer corps is teeming with lefties like Vitameatavindamin, trained by the likes of Tom Nichols

NeverTrump Tom Nichols has to vote socialist in order to save the free market system

US Naval War College professor upset about the exercise of raw political power at the same time upset candidate Trump didn't do more to stop Russkies from interfering in his election.  Like the US Navy takes orders from unelected politicians.

Plan B for socialism, aka Bill Clinton's Third Way

Elizabeth Warren wants to cancel your health insurance culture AND your income tax culture and replace them with socialism

[T]his time, a wholesale government takeover of health insurance would actually be a step toward socialism, which is still viewed more negatively than positively by Americans overall. “You don’t win with a message of socialism in a swing state like Florida,” said Bill Nelson, a former Florida senator and Biden surrogate.

More here.

Dayton shooter said he would happily vote for Elizabeth Warren, wanted socialism

Connor Betts: Twitter Posts on Being a Leftist, Guns

Try as the totalitarians might, America will never be socialist

#puritanism

#socialism

Freedom means no TSA and no CNN in US airports and David Bentley Hart permanently relocated to socialist Europe

"a fat Don Quixote"

Democrats should man-up and go full socialist and back Bernie: They're gonna lose anyway, might as well pick someone whose lunacy at least has some gravitas

Don't want no gaffe machine!

Don't need no furry queen!

Can't have no renegade cop!

Or a fake Indian tomahawk chop!

Just give us that Bernie man,

And his hurdy-gurdy socialist plan.

Socialists have never cared about actual workers anywhere and have always viewed them as a means to an end

And "the workers" never existed, either. Socialism had to invent them.

Trump says tyrannical, socialist government will never happen to us

My health insurance plan costs me $15,520 a year before I even use it, and that's the cheap one.

True believers are piling on Cernovich in defense of Christianity much like defenders of socialism pile on its critics

True believers say Catholic pedophile priests, Catholic betrayals of its own supporters, and legalized licentiousness everywhere are not representative of Christian civilization, much in the same way that the left has said perennially that Stalin's crimes in Russia and Maduro's in Venezuela, et cetera, do not represent real socialism.

The true believer dies hard because ideology, whether it's religious or not, is the opiate of the people, blinding it to the reality staring it in the face.

And the reality of Islam is that it exalts servility to a religious principle.

George Washington, dear friends, would not take the Lord's Supper, nor kneel in church. The father of our country, first in the hearts of his countrymen for many reasons, including those.

Must see video: Tucker Carlson says socialism is exactly what we're going to get unless we stop worshipping at the altar of (capitalist) materialism

Pretty smart coming from a guy who eschews intellectualism.

For example, I wish he had said that you can't have limited government without individuals composing it who first limit themselves. He says that, and more, just not in a lapidary way. Tucker is revolting against the reductionism of Conservatism Inc. to mere materialism. He is revolting against ideology, and it's amazing. 

Here.

Bons mots:

Republicans see it as their duty to make the world safe for banking.

Questioning markets feels like apostasy to social conservatives.

Economics and culture are not separable one from the other.

Rural America now looks like Detroit.

Putting corporations first is bondage.

We tax capital at half the rate we tax labor.

Divided countries are easier to rule.

Market capitalism is not a religion. It's a tool.

Libertarians tell a lie when they say any deviation from market fundamentalism is socialism.