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We haven’t checked in on Venezuela for a while. Formerly one of the world’s richest countries, Venezuela has become destitute since it was taken over by socialists Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. The country has gone downhill in an ever-worsening spiral of poverty and dysfunction. Things have gotten so bad that American liberals no longer hold up Venezuela as an example of “real socialism.”
The London Times reports:
[T]his is a country still suffering the trauma of the most spectacular currency collapse of our times. The Venezuelan bolivar, which in the 1960s was considered as solid a store of value as the Swiss franc, is now worth less than the paper it is printed on. If you converted a million dollars into bolivars in 2013 — when Nicolás Maduro first came to power — and left it in an interest-accruing Venezuelan bank for the past decade, your current balance would be about 3 cents.
Let’s hear it for socialism! And also for money-printing. Venezuela kept printing currency until it could no longer afford the paper and ink, but how different is that from the path our own government is currently on?
All this became glaringly apparent during an especially precipitous period of the downward spiral, during 2018 and 2019. With annual inflation touching two million per cent, a brick of notes was needed to buy a sandwich. The government ran out of the ink and paper physically needed to print more money.
Debit cards, along with bartering, became essential; with everyone from coconut sellers in the Caribbean to barbers in Caracas using cheap card readers to make transactions. But banks were slow to keep up with the devaluation, failing to raise their limits per transaction. Buying just a few items in a supermarket could therefore require three or four bank cards.
Life under socialism isn’t just poor and violent, it is crazy, too.
In mid-2019, the Maduro government quietly threw in the towel and allowed people to officially use US dollars. It turned out to be a transformational moment, taming price rises and bringing in some stability.
At least 60 per cent of retail transactions in Venezuela are believed to be in dollars, either in cash or with cards.
So the viciously anti-American kleptocrats are rescued, sort of, by the American dollar. But the damage is done, as Venezuela’s economy has shrunk by 75%. The last word:
[One Venezuelan] lamented, “Nobody’s got any money. There’s nothing much left to steal.”
I suppose the kleptocrats long for the good old days, when there was still something in Venezuela worth stealing. Chavez’s daughter Maria Gabriela, a perfect exemplar of leftism who represented Venezuela in the United Nations, made off with a cool $4.2 billion. But she was a piker compared to her father’s Treasury Minister, Alejandro Andrade, who slipped away from Venezuela with $11.2 billion in Swiss banks. As I wrote back in 2015:
If you want a world in which a few obscenely rich jet-setters lord it over a sea of poor people, socialism is the ideology for you.
But even those halcyon days have come to an end, as “[t]here’s nothing much left to steal.” It is as Margaret Thatcher memorably said: the problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other people’s money.
DEI (racial and other quotas) is intrinsically evil. At The Hill, Matt Cole and Chris Nicholson reveal a shocking, practical downside to DEI hysteria: “DEI killed the CHIPS Act.”
The issue is critical because Taiwan now produces 90% of the world’s advanced microchips, and China has indicated its intention to annex Taiwan in the near future. So the CHIPS Act sought to incentivize chip production in the U.S. Unfortunately, that isn’t what is happening.
Handouts abound. There’s plenty for the left—requirements that chipmakers submit detailed plans to educate, employ, and train lots of women and people of color, as well as “justice-involved individuals,” more commonly known as ex-cons. There’s plenty for the right—veterans and members of rural communities find their way into the typical DEI definition of minorities. …
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Because equity is so critical, the makers of humanity’s most complex technology must rely on local labor and apprentices from all those underrepresented groups, as [the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company] discovered to its dismay.Tired of delays at its first fab, the company flew in 500 employees from Taiwan. This angered local workers, since the implication was that they weren’t skilled enough. With CHIPS grants at risk, TSMC caved in December, agreeing to rely on those workers and invest more in training them. A month later, it postponed its second Arizona fab.
Now TSMC has revealed plans to build a second fab in Japan. Its first, which broke ground in 2021, is about to begin production. TSMC has learned that when the Japanese promise money, they actually give it, and they allow it to use competent workers. TSMC is also sampling Germany’s chip subsidies, as is Intel.
It isn’t only TSMC that is being stymied by DEI:
Intel is also building fabs in Poland and Israel, which means it would rather risk Russian aggression and Hamas rockets over dealing with America’s DEI regime. Samsung is pivoting toward making its South Korean homeland the semiconductor superpower after Taiwan falls.
In short, the world’s best chipmakers are tired of being pawns in the CHIPS Act’s political games. They’ve quietly given up on America. …
[C]hipmakers have to make sure they hire plenty of female construction workers, even though less than 10 percent of U.S. construction workers are women. They also have to ensure childcare for the female construction workers and engineers who don’t exist yet. They have to remove degree requirements and set “diverse hiring slate policies,” which sounds like code for quotas. They must create plans to do all this with “close and ongoing coordination with on-the-ground stakeholders.”
No wonder Intel politely postponed its Columbus fab and started planning one in Ireland.
Access to microchips is a national security issue, as well as being fundamental to a modern economy. And yet Congressional majorities care more about DEI shibboleths and feeding pork to their constituencies than about American security and prosperity. Of course, that isn’t really an irony. The whole point of DEI is hating America, and if it imperils our security and our prosperity, so much the better.
According to his Martin Kulldorff bio, Ph.D., Dr.h.c., is an epidemiologist, a biostatistician, and a founding fellow at Hillsdale College’s Academy for Science and Freedom. He was a Professor of Medicine at Harvard University for thirteen years. Dr. Kulldorff’s research centers on developing and applying new disease surveillance methods for post-market drug and vaccine safety surveillance and for the early detection and monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks. In October 2020, he co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, advocating for a pandemic strategy of focused protection instead of lockdowns.
City Journal has just published Professor Kulldorff’s account of the censorship of his work and his involuntary departure from Harvard. It was something (many things) he thought and said — crimes against the groupthink of the Covid regime. His account runs to 2,500 words and is titled “Harvard tramples the truth.” It’s straight outta Cambridge. It’s straight outta D.C. It’s straight outta Orwell.
It opens: “I am no longer a professor of medicine at Harvard. The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as I discovered, truth can get you fired. This is my story—a story of a Harvard biostatistician and infectious-disease epidemiologist, clinging to the truth as the world lost its way during the Covid pandemic.” Read every word here.
Via InstaPundit, I learn that Karl Marx died on this day in 1883. I concur with Glenn Reynolds’ suggestion that March 14 should therefore be a holiday:
Marx performed the difficult feat of being wrong about everything. Most people are right about some things and wrong about others; the law of averages sets in. But if you are an ideologue, like Marx, and if your ideology is stupid, you can be wrong across the board. Marx’s historical analyses were either recycled conventional wisdom or wildly off the mark. He knew nothing about economics, which is why his labor theory of value–the lynchpin of his entire philosophy–is absurd. (Even Marx recognized that; he never finished the key section of Capital, leaving that inglorious task to Engels.) And he pontificated endlessly about workers and the means of production, without even once, as far as is known, setting foot in a factory.
Marx survives in historical memory for two reasons. First, hardly anyone has actually read Capital or his lesser works. Even a person of moderate intelligence could hardly do so without recognizing their foolishness. Second, Marx’s philosophy has served as a pretext for sadists to seize control of governments around the globe. Which is exactly what Marx intended.
Marx was a bad man, equally so in his private and public lives. He should be remembered only as an exemplar of how much damage a single-minded and hate-filled man can do.
“Fat is fine” is the new mantra of those who want fat people to be accepted in spite of how they look and despite health problems associated with obesity. “Body positivity” is defined as “a movement where people whose bodies may not be seen as acceptable by society feel good about themselves and their looks.” The body positive movement, along with a related “anti-diet” movement and “health at every size,” are normalizing fat, which is discouraging people from losing weight or getting fit. The New York Times decried social media, such as Instagram, where influencers are pushing the notion that boys should be muscular or girls should be slim.
Obesity in the US has reached epidemic proportions, affecting 34% of adults and 15-20% of children, according to data from the National Institute of Health (NIH). Additionally, 17% of children and 68% of adults qualify as overweight, marking the first step toward obesity.
America leads the world not only in terms of obesity rates but also in athletic people, fat foods, and diet foods. So, food manufacturers, weight loss companies, and fitness equipment manufacturers can make money whether people lose weight or not. The food companies can even make people fat and then sell them the cure.
WebMD said, “People who are overweight can be considered healthy if their waist size is less than 35 inches for women or 40 inches for men, and if they do not have two or more of the following conditions: High blood pressure, high blood sugar, and high cholesterol.” It goes on to recommend that overweight people not gain additional weight and that they should “lose a few pounds.” However, a 40-inch waist for a man would suggest that he needs to lose a lot more than a few pounds.
Even the standards of research are being changed. WebMD stated, “Obesity and its related diseases claim many lives each year. The annual figure was initially estimated at 400,000, but was recently revised to 112,000, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.” It seems a bit odd that established research needed such a broad adjustment. Additionally, if roughly 51% of the population is obese, then there are over 173 million obese people in America. If only 112,000 of them die of obesity, it doesn’t seem like as much of a threat. And this is consistent with findings of a study cited by WebMD: “One thing that came as a huge surprise was that the study found no increased risk of death for overweight people.”
At the same time that articles are telling people that they can be fat and healthy, and WebMD claims that fat people do not run a higher risk of death, the University of Chicago Medicine reports that “Thirteen types of cancer and 200 other health conditions are related to obesity.”
It seems counterintuitive that being fat is healthy, and it is a bit suspicious that the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United States NIH both declared obesity an epidemic, but WebMD and other sources are claiming that there is little or no connection between fat and poor health. The recent rise of “wokeism” has also infiltrated the obesity issue, using the term “fat shaming.” According to The Washington Post, doctors can be guilty of fat shaming, and “fatphobia persists in medicine.”
This bizarre movement of not being able to say things that are true but offensive is at such an extreme that a morbidly obese fashion model named Tess Holliday, who weighs 260 pounds and wears a size 22, told the media that she identifies as anorexic. The news story was edited on YouTube because the word “anorexic” cannot pass the censors. Now, we aren’t even allowed to say the names of health problems or identify them as health problems.
A quick Google search reveals any number of articles with titles like “There’s No Such Thing as ‘Junk Food‘” and “Why There’s No Such Thing as ‘Good’ or ‘Bad’ Foods.” There have been allegations that fast food companies have been funding researchers and influencers to promote the anti-diet and body-positive image.
It is well-documented that fifty years ago, sugar companies paid researchers to promote the notion that dietary fat, not sugar, was the cause of obesity and ill health. More recently, The Washington Post reported that General Mills, the company which makes Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms cereals, has been pushing the anti-diet movement. The company sponsored a campaign citing anti-diet research and condemning “food shaming.” They offered giveaways and sponsorship to registered dietitians who tagged their cereal endorsements with the hashtag #DerailTheShame. General Mills went so far as to pay lobbyists to influence federal policies to keep health information off food labels.
The profit incentive of fast-food companies, combined with the rejection of reality often associated with the “Woke” movement and the notion that no one should ever be held accountable for their actions, is contributing to the demise of an entire generation by encouraging them to be overweight.
Often, analogies are made between smoking and obesity. The cigarette companies tried to push scientific studies that claimed cigarettes did not cause cancer. Fortunately, the government was not convinced and launched anti-smoking campaigns, stressing the health threat of smoking, eventually leading to a reduction in the percentage of adults who smoked. In 1965, 42% of adults smoked. In 2021, it was only 11.5%.
By pushing a narrative that fat is healthy, the exact opposite is going to happen. The percentage of obese Americans will increase. Fortunately, the fast food companies can fund new research, adjusting the statistics to reduce the number of deaths.
The post Woke Body Positive and Anti-Diet Movements Normalizing Obesity appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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Male abdominal obesity" by Lymantria, licensed under CC BY 3.0. Original image source: [Picasa Web Albums](https://picasaweb.google.com/105432035598159259077/SeychellesIslands2007#5308347760697849058), reviewed by Lymantria on 14 September 2011.
The globalist government in Poland is reportedly seeking to criminalise "incitement to hatred" against LGBT people with three years in prison.
The post Globalist Polish Government Pushes Scottish-Style Hate Speech Law with Three Years in Prison appeared first on Breitbart.
Gay comedian Jerrod Carmichael won't drop his beef with Dave Chappelle.
The post Golden Globes Host Jerrod Carmichael Calls Dave Chappelle an ‘Egomaniac,’ Says Gay Jokes Still ‘Scary for Me’ appeared first on Breitbart.
A woman accused of posing as a 14-year-old homeschooler while having a sexual relationship with a child is in trouble once again in Tampa Bay, Florida.
The post FL Woman Accused of Posing as Teen Homeschooler for Sex with Child Is Arrested Again appeared first on Breitbart.
The producers of the West End's multiracial staging of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, starring Spider-Man actor Tom Holland, have condemned what they call "deplorable racial abuse" aimed at actress Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, who plays Juliet.
The post ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Theatre Producers Condemn Online ‘Abuse’ of Tom Holland’s Black Co-Star appeared first on Breitbart.
Brazilian “anti-fake news crusader” Alexandre de Moraes has opened an inquiry into Elon Musk and Twitter for defying censorship orders.
The post Brazil: ‘Fake News’ Crusader Judge Orders Investigation of Elon Musk for ‘Obstruction of Justice’ appeared first on Breitbart.
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According to a Department of Homeland Security report reviewed by Breitbart Texas, nearly 25,000 migrants from Special Interest Countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa have been apprehended entering the United States during the first six months of fiscal
The post CBP Source: Special Interest Migrant Incursions Climbing at Southern Border appeared first on Breitbart.
Tennessee is divided over reparations, with a black Memphis pastor leading the charge against a bill that would prohibit the funding of a proposed reparations study in the state.
The post Tennessee Progressives Fight So-Called ‘White Supremacist Legislation’ Banning Local Reparations Task Forces appeared first on Breitbart.
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On Monday, Cowlitz County Superior Court Judge Gary Bashor found Washington state's "high capacity" magazine ban violated both the U.S. Constitution and Washington state's constitution.
The post Judge Finds Washington State ‘High Capacity’ Magazine Ban Unconstitutional appeared first on Breitbart.
“The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” – JFK
Capitalism and free markets are the primary drivers of wealth creation while also protecting personal freedoms. Socialism and government intervention tend to erode personal freedoms and produce only temporary prosperity, addressing specific issues for certain groups while impoverishing others and overlooking the underlying causes of problems.
Biden’s American Rescue Plan was a good example of how ineffective socialism is at solving economic problems. By sending a $1,500 check to every poor person, he claimed, incorrectly, to have done more to reduce poverty than any other president.
Firstly, the American Rescue Plan drove up the US debt and pushed inflation to levels not seen in decades. Additionally, the $1,500 did not reduce poverty. The poverty threshold for a family of 3 is $25,820 per year. So, unless these families fell short by exactly $1,500, he did not bring them above the threshold that year. And unless he planned to send checks to all 37.9 million Americans living below the poverty line every year, forever, he has not eliminated poverty.
The only way for these people to rise out of poverty is to get a better job with a higher salary. So, the solution is free markets, not socialism.
The US ranks among the most capitalist countries in the world. In a capitalist society, the means of production are controlled by private businesses and private citizens, not the government. The economy runs according to the market, not central planning. Prices, wages, quantities, and types of production are determined by the market, with information transmitted from buyers to sellers millions of times per day.
In a capitalist society, a fast-food restaurant has the right to make a fish and peanut butter milkshake, but by refusing to buy that product, citizens signal that they do not want it, and the producer will either stop selling it or go out of business.
On average, the more government intervention there is in the economy, the lower the standard of living will be. As a hypothetical example, if the peanut butter and fish milkshake company had a government subsidy, it could remain in business, even though no one wants that product. The money the government spends supporting the unwanted fish and peanut butter milkshake company could have been spent on border security, which is one of the only purviews of government in capitalism.
In a true capitalist society, the government only has three responsibilities: maintaining courts and public security for protecting personal property rights, building infrastructure, and protecting the border. The further the government deviates from these limited mandates, the more money is wasted.
This report will compare four countries: the US, which has an economic freedom score calculated by Freedom House of 8.22, and the more socialist countries, Germany with an economic freedom score of 7.85, China with a score of 6.2, and Venezuela with a score of 3.34.
Standard of living can be quantified in the Quality of Life Index, which ranks countries based on the level of wealth, comfort, necessities, and material goods available to citizens. It also examines physical and mental health and wellness. Germany, with a score of 91.26, ranks slightly higher than the US at 89.11, but this is probably because of obesity and obesity-related illnesses, which decrease the health indicator in the US. But on some level, obesity is a positive sign of wealth. China, at 82.80, and Venezuela, at 71.66, rank worse off, with a lower standard of living.
While socialist countries offer free or heavily subsidized higher education, the United States boasts a diverse array of prestigious universities and colleges, many of which are privately funded. This competitive landscape fosters innovation and excellence in education, attracting students from around the world. The US has 3,100 universities, with 53 ranked in the top 100 globally. China has 2,495 universities, with 6 ranked in the top 100; Germany has 461 universities, with only 1 ranked in the top 100; and Venezuela has 73 universities, with 0 ranked in the top 100.
In terms of the average number of years of education citizens have, in Germany and the US, most adults have had 14 years of education, while in China, the average is 8 years, and in Venezuela, it’s 6.6 years.
For infrastructure, China is always touted as the leader in transportation because they have high-speed rail. However, the US has a much broader transportation infrastructure than any country in the world. The US has 148,553 kilometers of railroad, China has 10,767 kilometers (with a population four times the size of the US), Germany has 33,401 kilometers, and Venezuela has 682 kilometers.
Socialist countries usually have a government-owned national flagship airline, such as Air China or Conviasa in Venezuela. In the US, the airlines are private, and the US has more flights, with more Americans flying each year than citizens in any other country. Furthermore, Americans can afford to buy cars. Cars per capita in the US are 860 out of 1000, in Germany it’s 627 out of 1000, in China it’s 223 out of 1000, and in Venezuela it’s 149 out of 1000.
The US does not have a government sovereign wealth fund. Our outbound investment is private, and yet, the US is the largest source of outbound investment on the planet.
In socialist countries, citizens depend on the government to create jobs. The US, with a relatively free market for jobs, has a low unemployment rate of 3.6%, while in socialist China it is 5.1%, and in Venezuela, it is 7.5%. However, in China, youth unemployment had reached 21.3% last year before Beijing stopped reporting and then changed the definition of youth unemployment to make the number smaller. This is another example of the benefits of a free-market society. We have private institutions, NGOs, and associations that collect and publish data, so there is greater transparency.
The salaries between the US and socialist countries are vastly different. The average American earns about $75,269 per year, while the average German only earns $48,845. In China, it’s $12,598, and in Venezuela, it’s $3,910.
And the final kicker in a socialist country is income tax. In both China and Germany, the top income tax rate is 45%. In the US, it is 37%, and in Venezuela, it is 34%. So, Americans earn dramatically more than people in socialist countries and get to keep a larger percentage of their salary compared to most socialist countries.
Apart from failing to deliver in terms of economic well-being, socialism also falls short of its claim to offer greater freedom. Economic freedom, as already discussed, is higher in the U.S. In general, personal freedoms are also higher. According to the Human Freedom Index, which evaluates countries across the following criteria: Rule of law, Security and safety, Movement, Religion, Association, assembly, and civil society, Expression and information, public health, and a number of other factors, Germany ranked higher than the US at 18th. But this was largely because of the lack of social welfare in the US and because of the higher crime rate. The US ranked as the 23rd most free country in the world, China 152, and Venezuela 163.
As a result of capitalism, Americans earn more, keep more of their salary, and have greater freedom than in socialist countries. Let’s vote to keep it that way.
The post Capitalism, Not Socialism, Makes Us Richer and Freer appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Charles “Chuck” Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., look on as Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks on the American Rescue Plan Friday, March 12, 2021, in the Rose Garden of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
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A BLM activist will only have to pay back £1 of the tens of thousands she stole from a charity intended to help disadvantaged black children.
The post Convicted BLM Fraudster Only to Pay Back £1 of £70,000 Stolen Charity Donations appeared first on Breitbart.
Planet Fitness has been hit with bomb threats following an incident involving a transgender woman shaving in the women's locker room.
The post Planet Fitness Slammed with More Than Two Dozen Bomb Threats After Transgender Locker Room Incident appeared first on Breitbart.
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A group of anti-Israel protesters calling for Congress to support a ceasefire and end military aid to Israel shut down the Senate cafeteria.
The post Anti-Israel Protesters Shut Down Senate Cafeteria appeared first on Breitbart.
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Donald Trump believes abortion is a state issue, in contrast to those who want to use the federal government to undermine states’ rights.
The post Report: Democrats Fear Donald Trump’s Abortion Position Wins Moderates appeared first on Breitbart.
Freshman Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) suggested that black Americans should be exempt from paying taxes as a form of reparations.
The post Democrat Rep. Jasmine Crockett: Black Americans Should Not Pay Taxes as a Form of Reparations appeared first on Breitbart.
Ban on smartphones for under-16s has split the right between conservatives and libertarians over whether such intervention is worthwhile.
The post UK Considers Smart Phone Ban For Under-16s as Fears of Harmful Effects Grow appeared first on Breitbart.
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Special operations forces require special men. Union major Henry Harrison Young was such a man—born for war.
The post Exclusive–O’Donnell: Lincoln’s Special Forces; Henry Harrison Young, A Man Born for War appeared first on Breitbart.
A Colorado paraprofessional has been hit with felony assault charges for allegedly abusing multiple non-verbal children with special needs.
The post Police: Colorado School Bus Aide Abused Multiple Non-Verbal Disabled Students appeared first on Breitbart.
Tareck El Aissami, former Venezuelan oil minister, has resurfaced in handcuffs, charged with treason, money laundering, and corruption.
The post Socialist Purge: Venezuela Charges Hezbollah-Linked Former Oil Minister with ‘Treason’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio pledged closer cooperation with the United States on artificial intelligence research.
The post Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio Meets Joe Biden, Emphasizing AI Concerns appeared first on Breitbart.
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