Jon Hodge

Brewpub Owner

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

This post reminds me of a conversation I had last week with a friend.

He told me he was on the left. Proudly. Fine by me.

So I dug a little.

I asked him: "Have you ever seriously looked into economics? Because anyone who studies it in good faith, without intellectual dishonesty, will have a hard time staying on a Marxist line."

His answer stopped me cold:

"My entire social circle is on the left. If I'm not on the left, I'll be excluded."

Not "I read the arguments and they convinced me."

Not "the data supports it."

"I'll lose my friends."

That's the whole problem in one sentence.

His politics aren't a conclusion. They're a membership card.

And that's exactly what our schools stopped teaching. Too busy passing down an ideology instead of a method, they skipped the one skill that makes every other skill worth something: critical thinking. The ability to put your own beliefs on trial. To follow an argument where it leads, even when it costs you socially.

Being on the left isn't the problem. You can be left, right or center and still be intellectually honest.

The problem is never testing your views. Staying in pure emotion. Choosing belonging over truth.

When that becomes the norm at scale, you get a sick society. One that would rather collectively accept decline than individually admit it might be wrong.

A society that can't question itself can't fix itself.

Teach kids how to think. Not what to think.

[JoyAnn @JoyceS763]

HISTORY LESSON ON YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY CARD:

Just in case some of you young whippersnappers (& some older ones) didn’t know this. It’s easy to check out, if you don’t believe it. Be sure and show it to your family and friends. They need a little history lesson on what’s what and it doesn’t matter whether you are Democrat or Republican. Facts are FACTS.

Up until the 1980's, Social Security cards expressly stated the number and card were not to be used for identification purposes.

Since nearly everyone in the United States now has a number, it became convenient to use it anyway and the "NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION" message was removed.

Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program. His promises are in black, with updates in brackets.

1.) That participation in the Program would be completely voluntary [No longer voluntary],

2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual Incomes into the Program [Now 7.65% on the first $90,000, and 15% on the first $90,000 if you’re self-employed],

3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year [No longer tax deductible],

4.) That the money the participants put into the independent ‘Trust Fund’ rather than into the general operating fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program [Under Johnson the money was moved to the General Fund and spent], and

5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income [Under Clinton & Gore up to 85% of your Social Security can be taxed].

Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month — and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to ‘put away’ — you may be interested in the following:

Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent ‘Trust Fund’ and put it into the general fund so that Congress could spend it?
A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the democratically controlled House and Senate.

Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding?
A: The Democratic Party.

Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?
A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the ‘tie-breaking’ deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the US

AND MY FAVORITE:
Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?
A: That’s right! Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party. Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security payments! The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it!

Now, after violating the original contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away!

And the worst part about it is uninformed citizens believe it! If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and maybe changes will evolve. Maybe not, though. Some Democrats are awfully sure of what isn’t so.

[Theo Fleury @TheoFleury14]

If you ever wondered which side of the fence you sit on, this is a great test!

If a Conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one.

If a Liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a Conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat.

If a Liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a Conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.

If a Liberal is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.

If a Conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.

A Liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a Conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels.

Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down.

If a Conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church.

A Liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced.

If a Conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.

A Liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

If a Conservative reads this, he'll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh.

A Liberal will delete it because he's "offended".

[Jon Hodge @Boilerhaji88]

@BoiledSports Make Old Gold our official uniform color and ban Vegas Gold forever?

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

If you're about to vote Democrat, read this. Here's why socialism doesn't work, explained to a 10-year-old.

You're in a class of 30 students. One kid works like crazy and gets an A. Another does nothing and gets an F. The teacher decides that's unfair and gives everyone the class average: a C.

The A student stops working. Why bother if it changes nothing? The F student keeps doing nothing. Why work when you get a C for free?

Next year the class average drops to a D. Then lower. Then everyone is failing.

The teacher doesn't get it. He thinks the problem is that students don't show enough solidarity. So he punishes those who don't try hard enough. He watches everyone. He decides who studies what. He bans switching classes.

That's exactly what happened. Every time. In every country.

USSR, China, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Cambodia, Ethiopia, East Germany. Same result. Every time.

Socialism punishes those who produce and rewards those who don't. Eventually nobody produces. And when nobody produces, the government uses force to make people work.

It's not a bug. It's the design.

Two-thirds of Democrats now have a positive view of socialism. Even Fetterman, a sitting Democratic senator, says the word should be unacceptable in his own party. Read the menu before you order.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

In 2021, the head of the UN World Food Programme said $6 billion from Elon Musk could solve world hunger.

Elon replied: publish the plan, right here, publicly, and I'll sell Tesla stock on the spot.

The plan came out. And when you read it, it wasn't a plan to solve hunger. It was one year of food for 42 million people. A twelve-month subscription. And the year after? Start over.

A few months later, Elon summed up his view: if you care about the reality of goodness rather than the perception of it, philanthropy is extremely difficult.

"Reality of goodness over perception of goodness."

That line stuck with me for weeks. Does philanthropy actually work?

Gates-style philanthropy is first and foremost institutional capture. Foundations funding NGOs, funding governments, funding programs, producing reports, producing photos. Everyone's happy, and the aid machine keeps itself alive. Sixty years and hundreds of billions later, much of Africa is still dependent on aid. Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo laid it out in Dead Aid: aid breeds dependency, feeds corruption, and short-circuits the only mechanism that has ever lifted a country out of poverty.

So what actually works?

It's been tested. In Kenya, Berkeley researchers working with GiveDirectly randomly selected villages and gave every poor household about $1,000 in cash. No program. No training. No conditions. Just cash.

The result: people bought metal roofs, livestock, started small businesses. Barely any inflation. And every dollar injected generated around $2.50 of economic activity locally, including for neighbors who received nothing.

Why? Because you didn't give them charity. You gave them capital. You primed the pump.

And that's where everything hinges: ownership. Hernando de Soto showed that the world's poor hold trillions of dollars in assets, but without recognized property titles, it's dead capital. You can't borrow against it, pass it on, or grow it. Where property rights are respected, the system starts running. Where they aren't, no amount of aid will ever be enough.

Now reread Elon's post.

"Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America. This will be the first of many."

That's not a meal. That's not a handout. That's a property title. A piece of the company building the infrastructure of a multiplanetary civilization, owned directly by millions of kids.

A kid who gets a handout depends on the state. A kid who owns a share of SpaceX owns a piece of the future. He learns what an asset is, he has a stake in the economy working, and one day he'll vote as an owner, not as a client of the state.

Gates buys perception. Musk distributes ownership.

The reality of goodness versus its perception. And it's absolutely brilliant.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

On my way to the office this morning, I passed a group of young people protesting, a Palestinian flag draped over their shoulders.

And I asked myself a question I can't shake: why does this generation always fall into the same trap? No matter the history. No matter the context. Even the ones from wealthy families, who went to the best schools, who were dealt every good card. Always the same trap.

I don't think it's stupidity. I think it's a mechanism. And a mechanism can be taken apart, piece by piece.

A. The observation: everything the state touches becomes unaffordable.

Look at economist Mark Perry's famous chart, the one people call "the chart of the century." It tracks US prices since 2000.

At the top, what explodes: hospital services, college tuition, textbooks, childcare, housing. Increases of +100%, +150%, up to +250%, far above general inflation.

At the bottom, what collapses: TVs, software, phones, toys, clothing. A TV today costs a fraction of what it did in 2000, for an infinitely better product.

Look at what separates the two groups. It isn't technology. It isn't complexity. It's one variable: how much the state is involved.

At the top, sectors that are subsidized, regulated, shielded from competition, where the state funds demand and blocks supply. At the bottom, sectors where companies fight every single morning to serve you better and cheaper.

B. The mechanism: why it's systematic.

When the state subsidizes demand without freeing supply, prices rise. Every time. Guaranteed student loans, and universities raise tuition. Housing aid plus blocked building permits, and rents skyrocket. Administered healthcare, and bureaucracy eats the budget before it ever reaches the patient.

In France it's even more vicious, because the price doesn't disappear: it hides. You never see the hospital bill, you pay it through payroll contributions. You never see the cost of school, you pay it through taxes. Public spending at 57% of GDP, one of the heaviest tax burdens in the world, more than €3.4 trillion in debt. And the result? Overflowing ERs, falling PISA scores, young people who can't afford to live in the city where they work.

The market didn't fail in these sectors. It was never allowed in.

C. Suffering demands a culprit.

A 22-year-old lives all of this in their bones. They can't find a place to live. Their degree either buries them in debt or opens no doors. The future feels blocked. That suffering is real, and I don't deny it for a second.

But human beings can't stand suffering without a culprit. They need a face. A scapegoat.

And this is where everything is decided: who taught them how to read the world?

D. Whoever tells the story picks the villain.

Schools are public. Universities are public. Culture runs on grants. Film goes through funding committees. Public broadcasting shapes the narratives. The people handing down the interpretive framework are, overwhelmingly, paid by the very system that creates the problem.

Do you really think that system is going to name itself as the culprit?

No. It names the capitalist. The boss. The landlord. "The rich." The multinational. The commercial West. Same role, same casting, every time.

E. One lens, a thousand causes.

And this brings me back to that flag. A generation taught to read every situation through a single lens, oppressor on one side, rich, Western, capitalist, oppressed on the other, will apply that lens everywhere. To housing. To climate. To conflicts on the other side of the world. The cause changes, the lens stays. That's why the trap is always the same: it's not the cause that draws them in, it's the way of thinking that was installed in them.

F. The perfect inversion.

Here's the irony. Capitalism is the force that drove down the price of almost everything it touched. The state is the force that blew up the price of almost everything it captured. And young people blame the first for the crimes of the second.

It's like blaming the firefighter for the fire because you saw him at the scene.

G. The ballot box confirms it.

In the US, a few weeks out from the midterms, a large share of urban young voters is getting ready to vote Democrat for more state, more spending, more regulation. New York elected a self-described socialist mayor, carried by young voters, on promises of rent freezes and city-run grocery stores. Rent freezes, the policy that has made housing scarcer everywhere it's been tried. The cure that worsens the disease.

In France, it's the same play in two acts. Part of the youth votes for the radical left, which promises more state. Another part votes for the center, which promises to "manage" the state well, and has dug the debt deeper than ever. Two different ballots, one shared assumption: the problem is the market, the solution is the state.

H. The way out.

These young people aren't stupid. They're right to be angry. They're just aiming at the wrong target.

The day they understand that their rent, their tuition and their hospital are expensive precisely because the state runs them, their anger will change direction. They'll stop protesting against those who create. They'll start protesting against those who capture.

That day, the greatest intellectual scam of our time will be over.

[Larry Dean @larry_mcwethy]

Everyone should see this! Please repost!

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

“Barack Obama's political genius is his ability to say things that will sound good to people who have not followed the issues in any detail — regardless of how obviously fraudulent what he says may be to those who have.”

— Thomas Sowell

[The Vigilant Fox 🦊 @VigilantFox]

Rand Paul reveals Washington spent $4,600,000 of YOUR money to find out whether getting drunk makes you FALL DOWN.

Another $3,000,000 went to studying whether eating ants fights global warming.

$7,000,000 on a “smart toilet” that photographs your backside.

And $2,000,000 to learn if hot tubs help you relax.

Rand Paul kept the receipts. It gets dumber:

• NIH spent $1,000,000 to help people get over their fear of the dentist.

• USAID spent $48,000,000 to help disconnected Tunisian youth cope with modern society.

• NIH spent $36,000,000 to find out why stress turns hair gray.

• Washington even sent money to Central America to train people on how to apply for U.S. grants. Yes, really. We paid them to get better at taking our money.

Not one American with an ounce of common sense would vote to approve a dime of this garbage.

The government pisses away billions like this and never stops asking for MORE.

[Daniel Negreanu @RealKidPoker]

This is so well said:

“The price of free things is your freedom.”

People that grew up in communist or socialist countries understand this better than anyone.

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

Empirical evidence as to why socialism does not work!!

[Jon Hodge @Boilerhaji88]

@BoiledSports NW looking like ‘24 IU team…

[Davecryps @0xdavecryps]

HYPOTHETICALLY… IF I BOUGHT MY HOUSE FOR $125,000 IN 2002 AND THE COUNTY NOW SAYS IT’S WORTH $487,000, WHERE DID I ACTUALLY MAKE $362,000?

Did I sell it? No.

Did I receive $362,000? No.

Did somebody hand me a check for the new assessed value? Obviously not.

But my property taxes still go up because, on paper, my house is suddenly worth hundreds of thousands more.

That’s the part that doesn’t make sense to me.

This isn’t income.

It isn’t cash sitting in my bank account.

It’s a number someone assigned to my property, and now I’m being billed based on that number.

If my stock portfolio doubles but I don’t sell, I haven’t turned that gain into cash.

If my salary stays the same, I don’t suddenly owe more income tax because someone thinks I’m worth more.

So why does owning a home work differently?

WHY AM I PAYING TAX ON A GAIN I NEVER REALIZED?

A house isn’t just an investment.

It’s where people live.

You can pay off the mortgage, own the property outright, and still face a bigger bill every year because the value of the house went up on paper.

At some point, you have to ask what “owning” something actually means if the cost of keeping it can keep rising because of money you never received.

THIS ISN’T ABOUT WHETHER THE HOUSE IS “WORTH” MORE.

IT’S ABOUT BEING CHARGED FOR VALUE YOU NEVER TURNED INTO CASH.

And people are starting to notice.

[Jon Hodge @Boilerhaji88]

@JWerner247 Well I guess Bobby Hauk is available…

[Jon Hodge @Boilerhaji88]

@Jimeverett @SVPAnalytics You are absolutely correct Jim! The board comprises of a bunch of elites who love their status as a”board member “ and the power it wields to make them rich. I don’t see much hope for football.

[Jon Hodge @Boilerhaji88]

@BoiledSports I feel his pain! I was a frosh in 1984. Fortunately I got to witness the Late Jim Everett year. But after that …Tex came up with his longhorn cattle and drove us in to a complete mess.

[Jon Hodge @Boilerhaji88]

@BoiledSports Oh back in the early 2000’s when we had big holes!

[Jon Hodge @Boilerhaji88]

@TomDienhart1 I can tell you from back tailgate lot, that Barry Odem/Keen is not going to work out. Us JPC peons have checked out. Obviously the elite wealthy alumni don’t care. Thankfully our basketball isn’t embarrassing us. Tom,I know you have a job to do, just pick a good shade of lipstick

[Jon Hodge @Boilerhaji88]

@EngineerMarkets @GoldandBlackcom Coaches biggest decision is what kind of shingles to put on his 10k sq. House.