Mark Cope

Member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Husband. Father. Real Estate Developer. Ironman.

[Milton Friedman Quotes @MiltonFriedmanW]

Milton Friedman explains why our government keeps growing:

“I don’t believe it’s true for a second that we have so much government because people have such demands upon government.”

“We have so much government because once you get started in an area, it becomes a preserve of the people who can best take advantage of it, and they have a far greater interest in maintaining it than the population at large has in destroying it.”

[Handre @Handre]

Milton Friedman's greatest regret.

The federal government discovered the perfect crime in 1943: make employers collect taxes before workers ever see their paychecks. You think you earn $60,000 per year, but you actually earn $75,000 and hand over $15,000 to politicians without ever touching it. The psychological difference is enormous.

Before payroll withholding, Americans wrote quarterly checks directly to the Treasury. Picture yourself sitting at your kitchen table, writing a $3,750 check to the IRS every three months. The pain was immediate and visceral. Politicians faced constant pressure to justify every dollar because citizens felt the extraction in real time.

Withholding transforms this concrete loss into an abstract accounting entry. Your employer becomes an unpaid tax collector, and you never experience the actual cost of government. Worse, most people celebrate their tax refunds as government generosity rather than recognizing them as interest-free loans they provided to politicians. The Treasury collects your money throughout the year, spends it immediately, then returns your own cash and receives gratitude.

This system enables the explosion in government spending you witness today. Defense contractors billing $640 for toilet seats, agricultural subsidies for corn syrup, and congressional salaries for 535 people who rarely show up to work. When taxation feels painless, voters stop demanding accountability for how their money gets spent.

Milton Friedman helped design withholding as a wartime emergency measure and later called it his greatest regret. Free market economists recognized that the psychological pain of direct taxation creates political pressure for fiscal restraint. The temporary always becomes permanent in government hands, and the emergency justification disappears while the extraction mechanism remains forever.

[Fr. Joseph Krupp @Joeinblack]

So, I make $100 and the government takes 1/3 of that.
I take the 2/3 remaining to me and I buy something that I need.
They tax that.
I take what is left over and split it in half: half to the bank and have to an investment account.
The interest I make from the bank?
They tax that.
The interest I make from my investments?
They tax that.
If somehow, after all the confiscations, I’m able to buy myself a piece of land they will tax my purchase.
Then, even though they pretend I owe the land, they charge me every year for the right to live on it.
While the Democrats and Republicans keep us fighting each other over how much billionaires are taxed, we stop looking at how much money they take from us and pour into a monstrous bureaucracy that every day seems to take away a little more of our freedoms and give us less in return.
Just a note for all of you who have picked a side in the tyrannical two party system.

[Mark Cope @markaaroncope]

@joshnaa2gez I agree completely that anyone can control their thoughts and tendencies and get married and have children and be faithful forever. No matter what. No matter what tendencies they feel.

[Derrick Evans @DerrickEvans4WV]

What an insane statistic.

If you spent $1 million per day, every single day since Jesus was born, you would have only spent $740 billion.

Less than 2% of our national debt. That’s hard to even comprehend.

[Mark Cope @markaaroncope]

@BabaDClint Fake news click bait says I

[Mark Cope @markaaroncope]

@DamiDefi It’s just gambling.

[Handre @Handre]

The 1920-21 depression was the sharpest economic contraction in American history, yet you've probably never heard of it. Industrial production collapsed 32%. Unemployment spiked from 4% to 12% in twelve months. By every measure, this downturn dwarfed the initial shock of 1929.

President Warren Harding faced enormous pressure to "do something." Labor leaders demanded public works programs. Businessmen begged for bailouts and trade protection. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon advised Harding to slash government spending and let wages fall. Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover (yes, that Hoover) pushed for massive federal intervention.

Harding chose Mellon. The federal budget dropped from $6.4 billion to $3.2 billion in two years. No stimulus packages. No bailouts. No alphabet soup of new agencies. Government employment fell 40%. When you let markets clear, they clear fast.

The recovery started in July 1921. By 1923, unemployment had dropped to 2.4% and industrial production reached new highs. The entire episode lasted eighteen months from peak to full recovery. Compare that to Japan's lost decade of intervention, or the European debt crisis that dragged on for years, or our own jobless recovery after 2008.

Most economics textbooks omit this episode because liquidating malinvestments and allowing price adjustments works exactly as free market theory predicts: a fact that destroys the Keynesian narrative that government must spend its way out of recessions. Politicians today claim they learned the lessons of the 1930s, but they studiously ignore the more important lesson of 1921.

[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.

[Mark Cope @markaaroncope]

I have pondered this, and I will give you a good answer. IMO, THE CHURCH HAS MOVED ON. The wheat and tares are separating. The world will go its way. The prophets are focused on a higher and holier calling to follow Christ - far more important than political results that the church cannot control. The sifting is happening. Has happened. Will continue to happen. The church’s stance is clear. There is no need to berate or lecture - they are focused now on the 5 virgins that WANT to put oil in their lamps and trying to save as many others as will listen.

[Mark Cope @markaaroncope]

One cannot come unto Christ AND ALSO watch TV-MA media.

It is impossible to choose both.

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 NOW: Indiana Gov. Mike Braun has just signed a proclamation declaring June "NUCLEAR FAMILY MONTH," the same as Tennessee, instead of LGBTQ Pride

👏🏻👏🏻

"The nuclear family, consisting of one husband, one wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children, is God's design for the family structure and has been the foundation of society since the creation of the world."

"Research reports that children living with their married, biological parents have better physical and emotional well-being."

"When families weaken, society must compensate with expensive, inferior approaches such as welfare systems, schools as surrogate parents, and police as surrogate discipline..."

"I, Mike Braun, Governor of the State of Indiana, do hereby proclaim the month of June, 2026, as Nuclear Family Month in the State of Indiana, and invite all citizens to duly note this occasion."

[Mark Cope @markaaroncope]

@AnneOfTheBooks *its

[Mark Cope @markaaroncope]

@AnneOfTheBooks Have you read it? ❤️ it’s witness that Jesus is the Christ is undeniably of God the Father.

[Peacemaking Saint @PeacemakingSt]

Can’t think of a better example of an attitude of happiness and spirit of optimism.

There is so much to be joyful about in this life thanks to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I miss President Hinckley.

[Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok]

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) signed a resolution declaring June as "Nuclear Family Month" instead of Pride month.

Happy Nuclear Family Month, Tennessee!

[Steve Hilton @SteveHiltonx]

Day 1: My first Executive Order as governor.

Establishing the Taxpayer Fraud Strike Force to bring accountability for $425 billion stolen from taxpayers on Gavin Newsom's watch.

It will investigate whether Newsom was criminally negligent, and prosecute if warranted.

[Latter-day Truth @Latterdaytruth]

The rainbow is a sign of God’s covenant with Enoch (see JST) and Noah related to the taking up of the righteous and God’s promise to never flood the Earth again.

It’s been perverted as a sign of the “inclusivity” of all ways of life, including those that directly oppose God’s law.

God doesn’t want you to stay as you are, but to grow and become like Him. He is a Father and husband to a loving wife, our Mother in Heaven.

Marriage between a Man and a Woman is ordained of God. Other marriages are not.

Gender is eternal and binary.

These truths are continually under attacks. Stay vigilant and follow the Lord’s prophet today, Dallin H. Oaks.

[In Defense of Family | Megan @defense_of_fam]

“Societies are not held together primarily by law and its enforcement, but by those who voluntarily obey the unenforceable because of their sense of accountability to God.” - Dallin H. Oaks