Imagine the fraudโฆ
California NGOs:
219,861
$593 billion a year
New York NGOs:
119,559
$446 billion a year
Minnesota NGOs:
42,861
$120 billion a year.
New Jersey NGOs:
58,000
$113 billion a year
Washington NGOs
46,679
$140 billion a year
Just a few examples.
Insane.
I've written about this before, but I often wonder how much of our "economy" is fake.
Back in the day in Los Angeles there was a prevalence of "Cell Phone Accessory" stores. Sometimes several per block.
We'd film on these dumpy commercial streets, and be working in front of these shops for days. But we wouldn't see a single customer enter or exit.
The off duty cops we hired for traffic control explained that it's all money laundering. Same with the bodegas, the vape shops, and most of the restaurants.
In Los Angeles, and many other cities, there are miles and miles of streets full of businesses with no customers. And yes, most of them are owned by immigrants.
Another story, this time from San Francisco...
A new asian hotdog place opened in my neighborhood. It looked cute from the outside. Thought it might have good food (sometimes these places do). So I went in and ordered a hotdog....
The cute asian girl disappeared into the kitchen. Doesn't come out for a long time. After 15 minutes I walk to the counter and ask "how's it going in there?" but I got no answer.
So I peeked into the "kitchen". And to my surprise there was no kitchen--it was just an empty room. No fridge, no stove, no food.
And there was no cute asian girl.
She'd left.
She had my money so I stuck around to see what the fuck was going on. A few minutes later she returned with a hotdog. I have no idea where she got it from. (I asked but she pretended not to understand English๐)
So this raises some questions, because in San Francisco the health department "grade" must be placed in the window of the restaurant. And the fake hotdog place had a legit 99% rating (probably because they had no food on the premises).
So somebody from the city of San Francisco inspected, and passed, a fake restaurant. The inspectors were probably on the take. At best, they looked the other way.
These "shops" take up a lot of retail space--it's a lot of real estate. And retail space--especially in San Francisco and Los Angeles--is expensive, mainly because the cheap space is taken up with fake businesses.
In the past I've looked into opening retail businesses. The biggest expense is rent. And it's so expensive that I abandoned the business ideas after running the numbers.
So how much of the commercial real estate market is propped up by these sham businesses?
And how many honest entrepreneurial Americans could be running their own small businesses but aren't doing so because the rent is too damn high?
Once you start looking for fake businesses you can't stop seeing them.
So the next time you're driving around your city, look at the dumpy commercial strips, and the dirty "store" windows. Then look at the crappy strip malls with peeling paint, cracked signs, and empty potholed parking lots.
Then ask yourself, "How much of this is fake?"
I hate that I had to grow up in the generation that got to see what life was like before the internet and then have to watch as it single-handedly destroys every single social entertainment space. Video rental stores, movie theaters, malls, arcades, bowling alleys, etc. The infinite access to at-home entertainment is turning us all into lazy, antisocial, depressed hermits and weโre just willingly allowing this to happen to us. The long term ramifications of this are so dire.
It's crazy to me how Robin Hood is now popularized as "stealing from the rich to give to the poor"
(Socialist messaging)
In reality, Robin Hood stole back the taxes that a cruel leader unjustly levied against the population
(Anti-socialist messaging)