Joe Penniston

Yes, my name is Joe, no, I am not old and decrepit

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

People who obsess about taxing others are useful idiots.

Useful because they provide political cover for governments that never solve the problems they promise to solve.

Idiots because decades of higher spending, redistribution, and intervention have mostly made them worse off, more dependent, and more resentful.

Every failure becomes an excuse for more sacrifice. Every broken promise becomes a demand for more funding.

The result is predictable: higher costs, greater dependence, and louder complaints.

Then they blame the people paying the bill.

[mert @mert]

"ive been in office for 13 years and our yearly budget is 7 trillion but we can't help children unless we steal from the guy doing spaceflight"

[Mark Walker @markwalker5555]

One of the most laughable things on the internet is all the people in our government who have amassed a 39 trillion dollar debt telling us that if they could just tax Elon’s wealth, they could fix everything they have broken. 😂🤡

[Joe Penniston @JoetheShow94]

@BrianaRoseLee You're right! Shame on him for not funding places with his name on it so he can stroke his ego. Instead, he has built several companies that have created created revolutionary technologies to improve the world as we know it.

[Joe Penniston @JoetheShow94]

@iansmith06 Because his track record for building successful companies has spoken for itself. Meanwhile the government just keeps taking more and more of our money and promising to solve problems that only get worse.

[Joe Penniston @JoetheShow94]

@PeteHausen @bwill_2345 @iansmith06 You have your theoretical talking points, meanwhile, over here in reality, communism has killed tens of millions, but that is nothing compared to progress, right? You communists are completely blind to the last 110 years huh?

[Joe Penniston @JoetheShow94]

@Ally_Sammarco Wow Ally, you actually are correct for once. You see one creates value by creating things like electric vehicles, sending satellites into orbit, and the like. The other is a net drain on society. Snap was meant to be a bridge up, not replace the provider.

[Joe Penniston @JoetheShow94]

@AdviceFromLouis The government already takes 5.2 trillion every year and still goes into billions, if not trillions, of debt per year. Maybe we should learn to manage the money we already collect, so even more money isn't mismanaged, or, better yet, give it back to the people.

[Joe Penniston @JoetheShow94]

@Snypes_Da_Goat @catgirlprostate Social security is literally set up like a ponzi scheme. But sure, blame someone who literally had nothing to do with it instead of the politicians who have been stealing from it for years. Seems like we need more regulation on the government and less on everybody else.

[tetsuo @tetsuoai]

History's first trillionaire is a guy who catches rockets out of the sky with chopsticks and beams internet to every dead zone on the planet.

Same guy ships cars that drive themselves, humanoid robots for the factory floor, brain chips that let paralyzed people move a cursor with pure thought, and an AI running on a supercomputer his team stood up in months instead of years.

And the people crashing out about his net worth are doing it on the app he owns. The same app governments spent years trying to censor.

You cannot legislate a rocket into orbit.

[Henrick Johansson @compliantvc]

Elon Musk is about to become a trillionaire

If he agreed to pay just 80% of that as a wealth tax to the EU, the EU government could use its efficient operating experience to fund bicycles with solar panels attached to them for over 40 residents of the Netherlands

Elon is being selfish by not paying the wealth tax

[Joe Penniston @JoetheShow94]

@wifikris @GoldieLocks1776 Yes, usually if you put your life on the line for a cause, not only are you doing it out of the goodness of your heart, but you are willing to die for it. Sit down idiot

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

Socialists look at wealthy men buying politicians and conclude the problem is the market.

Then they propose giving politicians even more power over wealth.

It's a bit like noticing the bartender waters down the drinks and deciding the solution is to let him own the distillery.

If your complaint is that government can be captured by the rich, the obvious solution is to limit what government can hand out.

Instead, socialism hands the government a larger wallet, a bigger stick, and more authority over everyone else's lives, then acts surprised when people compete to capture it.

The diagnosis is often correct.

The prescription is more of the disease.

[Daniel Priestley @DanielPriestley]

Under capitalism, socialists are free to build socialism.

Under socialism, capitalists aren’t free to build anything.

Nothing stops a group of socialists pooling their money, forming a company, and splitting every wage and every pound of profit perfectly equally.... Or to donate all profit to the government.

It’s legal. It’s easy. Owning the means of production is as simple as setting up a company.

Marx wrote his manifesto before the invention of limited liability companies. Back then “seize the factory” meant seizing it from the handful of families who could afford one.

That argument expired the day anyone could start a company with limited liability, raise investment and hire who they want.

Socialists are free to lead by example and demonstrate their system works. They can out-recruit, out-motivate, out-build and out innovate based on their ideas if they like. It would prove the philosophy works. Capitalism will happily host their experiment.

The fact that nobody does this tells you a lot.

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

Reminder: if you have to vote like your life depends on it, politicians already have far too much power.

The solution isn't to give them even more power while making them less accountable.

That's exactly what communists advocate: concentrate authority, expand political control, and then pretend the people wield it.

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

The irony is that critics act like painful stabilization during recovery proves freedom failed, while ignoring that the crisis itself was produced by the interventionist policies they defend.

And the “people are eating donkey meat” line is just emotional propaganda. When socialist systems collapse people literally eat zoo animals, pets, rats, and tree bark. Argentina is nowhere near that.

During the Mao era, especially during disasters like the Great Chinese Famine, people often ate whatever protein they could find because of extreme shortages caused by collectivization and central planning. That included dogs in some areas, along with many other animals. The famine itself killed tens of millions of people.

[Joe Penniston @JoetheShow94]

@PotatoMcWhiskey No, we just have brains. We realize that things like rent control, printing money and more state power never work to solve the problem and most of the time end up making it worse.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Accurate

[KanekoaTheGreat @KanekoaTheGreat]

"Open borders? That's a Koch brothers proposal which essentially says there is no United States... It would make everyone in America poorer... Right-wing people would love an open border to bring in all kinds of people to work for $2 to $3 an hour."

- Bernie Sanders 2015

[Joe Penniston @JoetheShow94]

@Theycallmenoc @Mufastamond @mcsquared34 When a renter has an hvac issue, who pays for that? Now who pays for it when you own the home? The owner is the one taking all the risk, more risk=more reward. Also, do you honestly think that owning a home and renting a home cost the same?