I see New Hampshire doesn’t have any billionaires. I guess Hardscrabble’s Maple Syrup empire came up a little short.
This map from HowMuch.Net reveals the wealthiest billionaire in each U.S. state.
“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” – Patrick Henry
“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.” – Samuel Adams
After observing the reaction of the America people, over the last two months, to a virus that will not kill 99.97% of them, I wondered how could a country created upon the blood and courage of patriot farmers and leaders who knew they would hang if their revolution failed, have degenerated into an infantilized nation of obedient slaves to un-Constitutionalized authoritarianism. It saddens me that a country borne by revolutionary means against an overbearing authoritarian monarchy has turned into a nation of bed-wetters curled up in their basements sucking their thumbs, begging government overlords to protect them from a virus.
I guess it shouldn’t be surprising after decades of government public school indoctrination where U.S. History facts have been usurped by feelings, diversity and gender agendas pushed by less than mediocre teachers. Government controlled education hasn’t taught children to think critically or question authority, but to obey rules and allow emotions to drive their actions. When multiple generations have been programmed to feel, rather than think, using panic and fear to make them do as they are told isn’t a difficult task. This pandemic reaction is a testament to their decades long propaganda and misinformation campaign. Rather than developing herd immunity the country developed a herd mentality.
Continue reading “WHAT WOULD COOL HAND LUKE & VIRGIL HILTS DO?”
Guest Post by Simon Black
Every morning here in Puerto Rico, I wake up around 6am as the sun rises over the ocean in front of my house. And I pretty much head straight to the gym.
Once there, one of my favorite medieval torture devices is a fairly new exercise bike called a Peloton.
In case you haven’t used one before, a Peloton is like any other stationary exercise bike. You pedal a lot, and it sucks.
The key difference is that Peloton bikes are connected to the Internet, and the company live streams classes directly to the integrated monitor on your bike.
So instead of going to a spinning class, you can simulate being in a class and having someone yell at you from thousands of miles away.
Continue reading “How to become a billionaire in five easy steps”
Billionaires like views of the Pacific Ocean.
San Francisco has more billionaires per inhabitant in the world — with one billionaire for approximately every 11,600 residents, according to data released Thursday by global wealth consultancy Wealth-X. San Francisco is followed by New York, Dubai and Hong Kong.
In terms of numbers alone, New York has the largest billionaire population globally (105 individuals), followed by Hong Kong (87), San Francisco (75), Moscow (70), London (65) and Beijing (55). To put that in context, San Francisco has over 860,000 residents. New York has over 8.6 million.
Are rich people idle “rentiers,” as economist Thomas Piketty calls them, who inherit wealth and add no social value? In supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders’ plan for higher estate taxes, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich claimed that “America is creating a new aristocracy of the non-working super rich.” And in plugging Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax, Paul Krugman said “we seem to be heading toward a society dominated by vast, often inherited fortunes.”
In fact, today’s economy is dominated by entrepreneurial innovation, which is generating rapid turnover in the ranks of the wealthy. And even among the declining share of the rich who inherited their wealth, many are impressive company builders or philanthropists in their own right.
In the U.S. economy, wealth is dynamic, which is clear from the Forbes annual list of the 400 richest Americans. Fully 43% of the people on the list in 2018 were not on it 10 years ago. The newcomers are entrepreneurs driving economic growth. There is Jensen Huang, co-founder of graphics chip maker Nvidia NVDA, +1.14% and Shahid Khan, who built automotive parts maker Flex-N-Gate. There are Brian Acton and Jay Koum, co-founders of WhatsApp, which provides free phone service globally for more than 1 billion users.
Continue reading “Let’s stop bashing billionaires — they are making our lives better”
Guest Post by Simon Black
Bill Gates and I don’t agree on taxes.
He says that he should pay more. And I consider it my moral duty to pay as little tax as possible. I don’t want to fund the government’s destruction, corruption and waste.
But in an interview with Fareed Zakaria, Bill Gates did echo my Universal Law of Prosperity: produce more than you consume.
Bill noted that the government “only collect[s] about 20% of GDP and we spend like 24% of GDP, so you can’t let that deficit grow faster than the economy.”
The US has over $22 trillion in debt, and is adding $1+ trillion of red ink every year. And this is in good times.
Continue reading “Guess how much Britain’s richest man saves on taxes by moving to Monaco?”
Guest Post by Simon Black
Howard Marks is one of the smartest, wealthiest investors in the world.
As founder of Oaktree Capital, Marks manages around $120 billion. And his track record ranks him among the greatest investors in history.
So it’s probably no surprise that Marks is deeply concerned about “the rising tide of anti-capitalism,” and dedicated one of his famous memos to this new political trend.
In the eyes of anti-capitalists, wealthy people, big businesses, and investment funds are all evil. Period.
Just look at how New York City pushed Amazon to walk away from its multi-billion dollar expansion there: these anti-capitalists aren’t rational. This is no longer a political agenda. They’re waging a holy war… it’s a bizarre jihad against prosperity.
Continue reading “Billionaire investor’s take on America’s socialist fever”
Guest Post by Bill Bonner
A physician cannot heal the sick if he is ignorant of the causes of certain conditions of the body, nor can a statesman help his fellow citizens if he cannot follow how, why or by what process each event had developed.
– Polybius
Whenever you see the “we should do this” or “we should do that” in the public media, it is always followed by something that is idiotic or immoral.
Usually both.
The modern era is no exception.
“It’s high time we abolish billionaires” says a serious front-page story in The New York Times. The “rich” are becoming the new villains… the “them” that will rally mobs… and voters… to action:
In Part One of this article I analyzed the similarities of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy to Strauss & Howe’s Fourth Turning, trying to assess how Donald Trump’s ascension to power fits into the theories put forth by those authors. In Part Two of this article I compared and contrasted Donald Trump’s rise to power to the rise of The Mule in Asimov’s masterpiece. Unusually gifted individuals come along once in a lifetime to disrupt the plans of the existing social order. Despite the forlorn hope Donald Trump or some other savior can reverse our course, decades of missteps, dreadful decisions, ineffectual leadership, and unconcealed treachery have paved a path to destruction for the American Empire.
“Mr. Advocate, the rotten tree-trunk, until the very moment when the storm-blast breaks it in two, has all the appearance of might it ever had. The storm-blast whistles through the branches of the Empire even now. Listen with the ears of psychohistory, and you will hear the creaking.” – Isaac Asimov, Foundation
“Now any dogma, based primarily on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon to use on others, since it is almost impossible to guarantee that the weapon will never be turned on the user.” – Isaac Asimov, Foundation
The elitist ruling class gathers at Davos and their secretive Bilderberg meetings to plot the course of the world, divvying up the vast wealth plundered through their globalization schemes, and developing the newest propaganda narrative to keep the global masses confused, distracted, and powerless to fight back. Despite their wealth and power, an epic level of hubris is always their undoing.
Guest Post by Paul Craig Roberts
Marx and Lenin were ahead of their time. Marx wrote before offshoring of jobs and the financialization of the economy. Lenin presided over a communist revolution that jumped the gun by taking place in a country in which feudal elements still predominated over capitalism. In 21st century America capitalism has been unfettered from the regulations that democratized it and made it serve society. Today capitalism is being financialized with the consequence that its productive power is being drained into the service of debt.
When I was a young man, an individual with one million dollars was very rich. Anyone with a few millions more was considered richer than rich. Today there are people who have thousands of millions of dollars.
Few earned their billions by producing goods and services sold to consumers.
The neoliberal economists, who prescribe economic policy not only in the West but also in Russia and China, incorrectly claim that money received is money earned. In fact, how did the Less-Than-One-Percent really get their thousands of millions?
They got them through political connections and through purely financial transactions.
When the Soviet Union fell apart as a consequence of hardline communists arresting President Gorbachev, well connected individuals in Russia and the Soviet province of Ukraine, especially those well connected to Washington and Israel, ended up with massive holdings that formerly were state properties.
Continue reading “Where are Marx and Lenin when we need them?”
“The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
“I know that history is going to be dominated by an improbable event, I just don’t know what that event will be.” ― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Nassim Taleb is a prickly arrogant SOB who doesn’t give a crap what intellectuals, academics, and other establishment elitists think about him. He has an Ivy league MBA, but despises everything about the curriculum of Ivy League MBA programs. He has a PhD, but scorns academics and their worship of theories and models. He enjoys poking holes in the storylines of the propaganda spewing corporate media. He glories in ridiculing the predictions of captured “experts” mouthing the talking points of whichever corporate interest is paying them blood money.
I read his brilliant Black Swan book back in 2008. It was a difficult read, but there were so many gems of wisdom throughout the book, it was a powerful tome predicting the financial collapse in real time. He wrote it in 2006. He understands the world doesn’t operate the way Ivy League models say it is supposed to operate. The world is propelled by black swans, not a normal distribution of the world. He was right in 2006 and he’s right now. The paragraph below has been making the rounds in the alternate media this past week. The establishment media would never publicize it, as their job is to protect the crumbling social order.
WASHINGTON—Calmly stating that they would not even need to think twice about doing so, the nation’s wealthiest individuals ominously reminded the populace during a press conference Wednesday that they could easily drop another $10 billion on the 2016 election. “We want to make it completely clear to voters that there’s absolutely no reason—none at all—why we couldn’t shell out another $10 billion between now and next November,” said casino magnate Sheldon Adelson on behalf of the top tenth of a percent of income-earners in the U.S., adding that creating dozens of new and extremely well-funded super PACs would mean practically nothing to them. “Trust me, we’ve got plenty to throw around, so it really wouldn’t be a problem. We could spread it around a bunch of congressional races, or, heck, we could put it all on one presidential candidate—it doesn’t really affect us much either way. Why don’t we toss in a billion right now just to give you a taste?” The nation’s wealthiest families then added that they would have no problem repeating the process for the next 30 election cycles before silently walking off the stage.
