John C Brannen 🇺🇸 👨‍👩‍👦

Veteran NFLT ARO - Solid Conservative - Oenophile - HNWI

[The Motley Fool @themotleyfool]

The stock market has created more wealth through patience than prediction.

[The Motley Fool @themotleyfool]

Investing gets easier when you stop trying to impress people.

[Money Wisdom @MoneyWisdom_]

“There are substantial rewards for adopting a regular routine of investing and following it no matter what, and additional rewards for buying more shares when most investors are scared into selling.”

— Peter Lynch

[U.S. Department of the Interior @Interior]

On Saturday, the Desert Shield and Desert Storm Memorial opens in Washington, D.C., honoring the courage and sacrifice of American servicemembers who answered the call to defend freedom and helped liberate Kuwait.

Their service will never be forgotten.

[Money Wisdom @MoneyWisdom_]

"High-value financial advice: Spend less. Save more. Wait longer. Lower your expectations."

— Morgan Housel

[Aviation @xAviation]

USAF Tri-bomber fleet!

📹: 30ne3

[Money Wisdom @MoneyWisdom_]

Growing your net worth requires calculated risk-taking. Don't let the fear of losses keep you from pursuing worthwhile opportunities.

[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.

[Tanya Narbut🇮🇱🇺🇦 @NarbutTanya]

Мелани Филипс очень доходчиво объясняет удивительное превращение левых либералов в бесчеловечную фашистоидную дрянь. Все предельно просто и закономерно.

[Franklin Graham @Franklin_Graham]

Take a minute to listen to this classic by Paul Harvey…

[The Motley Fool @themotleyfool]

Compounding is what happens when patience meets discipline.

[Money Wisdom @MoneyWisdom_]

“You can build wealth without a high income, but you have no chance of building wealth without a high savings rate.”

— Morgan Housel

[Money Wisdom @MoneyWisdom_]

"The key is to save as much as you can, as early as you can."

— Peter Lynch

[Gunther Eagleman™ @GuntherEagleman]

Paul Harvey went on the radio in 1965 with "If I Were the Devil."

Over 60 years ago, he laid out exactly how you'd tear a nation apart. Go after the family. Take God out of the schools. Turn people against each other and call it progress.

Listen to it today and it doesn't sound like a warning anymore.

It sounds like a checklist.

Every American should hear it at least once a year.

Then look around.

[Investment Wisdom @InvestingCanons]

Stanley Druckenmiller: “You need ruthless discipline.”

The ability to invest unemotionally. The courage to invest opposite the crowd. A willingness to watch other strategies outperform in the short-term.

If you don't stay disciplined, you don't stand a chance.

[World of Engineering @engineers_feed]

"Never odd or even" spelled backward is still "Never odd or even."

[World of Statistics @stats_feed]

What generation are you?

Lost Generation - 1883-1900
Greatest Generation - 1901-1927
Silent Generation - 1928-1945
Baby Boomer - 1946-1964
Generation X - 1965 - 1980
Millennial - 1981-1996
Generation Z - 1997-2012
Generation Alpha - 2013 - 2024
Generation Beta - 2025 - present

[World of Engineering @engineers_feed]

Always have a comma in your password, if part of a leak it will break the CSV.

Follow me for more cybersecurity advice.