To expand on and vulgarize the difference between the UHC CEO assassination and the Charlie Kirk one:
UHC CEO: 1-8-7 with no BiPap in your mouth, foo’.
Charlie Kirk: Biology is, like, real.
I do agree that political assassination and a wave of same is and would be bad, but there’s just no way to pretend those two people did equivalent harm. None at all.
Why Peak China may finally have arrived.
Agreed. Both China and America are on the decline. The world will be very different in a few decades in ways we cannot yet imagine.
FYI an uncertain economy is even worse for investment and future growth than a merely bad economy.
A bad economy is predictable. Uncertainty, however, is economic death. And Trump is overloading us with uncertainty. In fact, providing nothing but. This will result in very bad things. Already is, really, but unless an actual nuclear attack or tsunami hits economic headwinds generally take 6-9 months to have much noticeable effect.
We’re in the winds now. Storm is coming; depression is on the way. Just give it time.
As I’ve observed before, if you think you hated Pax Americana just wait till it’s gone. And it’s going.
(Most of you are gonna be totally fucked.)
Europe has even more potentially society-ending challenges ahead than the United States, despite the creeping anti-science authoritarianism here at home. Among them:
1) Demographic crisis. Shared with the rest of the world, of course. And no, immigration won’t solve it. Their more-generous social safety net is going to need some re-vamping that will cause massive social unrest.
2) Islamization. Once a society becomes ~10% Muslim, it’s enough to throw it into chaos and often dissolve the existing culture. Many EU countries are getting close to this threshold or have exceeded it. And no matter what idiot feminists think, this will be very, very bad for women there.
3) Russia. It’ll be invading soon. Europe is not even close to any kind of ready.
4) Immigration of unattached economic anti-western migrant men. Even apart from Islamization, this is a huge issue and will be getting much worse.
5) AMOC collapse. This will make a lot of Europe a whole lot colder on average while having minimal effect on the US.
The US and China are best-positioned to endure and even prosper here. That is, assuming we in the US don’t strangle ourselves to death, which we are merrily on the way to doing by killing science, research and clean energy.
But Europe is pretty much fucked no matter what.
Saying the only way to fund trade schools is via cuts to scientific and medical research at Harvard is the Trump equivalent to the woke demand that social services should be financed by defunding police.
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) May 27, 2025
It’s also similar to the left’s assertion that if we could just not send those evil and bad rockets to evil bad and scary space, we’d be able to fund everything.
Without weighing in on the hotness of Hillary Clinton, I do think that progressivism basically going from a sex-positive movement to a sex-negative movement hurt Democrats a lot. https://t.co/5jdmgZrtun
— Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) May 28, 2025
I also hold no opinion on Hillary Clinton’s past or present hotness, but I very much agree that the turn to anti-sex prudishness did some harm to the Dems — though it does comport directionally with Gen Z and their weird schoolmarmishness.
A lot of people simultaneously see immigration as charity from and punishment to the western world for its sins, they don’t actually care about immigrants as people outside that https://t.co/MTKmaQJO5v
— Dhaaruni ✨✨✨ (@dhaaruni) May 16, 2025
And the funny thing is the pro-immigration and anti-immigration people largely agree on this! That is, even the pro-immigrant side sees immigrants as punishment for alleged past Western sins.
Not very healthy on either side.
Depression still on track, no matter what pauses or changes Trump is doing. Tariffs are still tanking the economy and the policy chaos and uncertainty is even worse than the tariffs themselves.
Not much has changed, except to get worse.
The age of America is ending. We’ve somehow managed to strangle ourselves with no outside assistance.
The world that’s coming will be much more dangerous and worse. The evil degrowthers will cheer, though China, India and now Europe will be ramping up emissions more than the US ever would have, so it’ll be a net loss even there. The wake of our decline will stir into motion much war, much death, and probably a nuclear exchange or two before it’s done.
I never thought it’d all wrap up like this, in a pathetic suicide. But perhaps that’s the only way it could’ve concluded.
I’ve been planning for Social Security not to exist when I retire and looks like DOGE might make that happen. Glad I started planning for that more than 20 years ago.
Poverty rate is gonna jump and elderly are gonna be dying in the streets. But we all knew it was coming. Well, the smart ones did. The rich absolutely despise Social Security and covet that money. It was only a matter of time before they stole it all.
Coworkers inappropriate question.
It’s funny how often we’re told women never do anything like this when they do it very frequently but just usually aren’t called out for it as men are. Because they are “not a threat.”
Double standards like this are another (stupid) reason a lot of people voted for Trump.
One of AOC’s major blind spots is she doesn’t understand how many blue collar workers look down on workers like waitresses. They don’t see them as brothers and sisters to stand with, but as servants who exist to get them coffee and afford them to experience being superior to… https://t.co/aDLcSps0xF
— Nicky Frank (@NickyFrank30) March 20, 2025
That’s right. She doesn’t understand it because it makes no sense. But people always want to feel that they’re better than someone else, even if the average contractor or construction worker should have more solidarity with the waitress in the café than the billionaire being a clown on TV.
But everyone in America sees themselves as a temporarily-embarrassed millionaire so class solidarity isn’t much of a thing.
The world is so ridiculous now, it almost makes me long for George W. Bush.
Almost.
Recession chance is 90%. Great Recession II chance is 85%. Depression chance is now an also-depressing 80%.
Given the above 80% chance of depression, the further likelihood it’ll be Great Depression-like is 60%, Long Depression-like is 40%.