Wolf_of_Burlington

De temperantia, de morte! (“Moderation or death!") unless you own $pbx then go full degen!

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

This is how cheating works using a ring’s reflection to see hidden cards

[Retro Recall (☥𝐃𝐁) @RetroMoviesDB]

Kids today won't know how hard this intro goes

[Mephibosheth @AJT31560309]

@sarkonakj This is Kevin Loo. He doesn't care about your kids. He doesn't want rapists deported.

Loo should be jailed if Singh ever reoffends.

Fitting that Loo's background is in bankruptcy.

You are what you do.

[鈴森はるか 『haruka suzumori』 🇯🇵 @harukaawake]

🇯🇵 The former mayor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, warned that the Western Christian world might not be able to win against Islam.

The reason, according to him, is that Islam is driven by revenge and it will be hard to reason with that.

I hope he's proven wrong.

[Wolf_of_Burlington @rtravis22]

@ronmortgageguy Rookie numbers, we need to drastically reduce immigration for the foreseeable future. In a generation we can start back.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

There's a wild economics phenomenon behind the decline of every venue in these charts. Almost nobody knows its name.

Start with what it isn't. It isn't an American problem. Britain, the country that invented the pub, has lost 16,150 of them since 2000. Over a third, gone. Same slope, different continent, no car culture to blame.

The actual culprit was discovered by accident in 1966. An economist named William Baumol was hired to answer a boring question: why were symphony orchestras always broke? Sold-out halls, rich patrons, government grants, and the books never balanced. Any city. Any decade.

Then he noticed the thing hiding in plain sight. A Beethoven string quartet took four musicians and 40 minutes to perform in 1826. In 1966, it took four musicians and 40 minutes. Productivity gain across 140 years: zero. But those musicians live in the modern economy, where the factory worker's output grew 20x. Pay them like it's 1826 and they leave to work in the factory. So their wages rise while their output stands still, and costs climb forever.

Baumol called it cost disease. Every bar, bowling alley, and movie theater in these charts has a terminal case. A bartender pours the same drinks per hour as in 1980. A theater fills the same seats per screen. Flat output, compounding rent, labor, and insurance.

Your couch caught the opposite condition. Quality-adjusted TV prices fell 97% since 2000, per BLS. Streaming ships infinite content for $15 a month. One more night in costs approximately nothing.

Tickets up 42%. TVs down 97%. Americans and Brits both read those price tags every Friday for 25 years. The charts show the verdict.

And here's Baumol's grimmest finding: cost disease has no cure. Nothing makes a bar 10x better at being a bar, because the inefficiency IS the product. Humans, in a room, taking their time.

The couch just keeps getting cheaper.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Taiwan solved tax evasion in 1951 with a trick so cheap it should embarrass every tax authority on the planet.

The problem was an all-cash economy full of small shops. A merchant pockets the cash, skips the receipt, and the sale never existed. Auditors can't catch what was never recorded, and hiring enough of them to watch every noodle stand costs more than the missing tax.

So finance chief Ren Xianqun flipped the incentive. Print a lottery number on every receipt. Draw winners every two months on live TV. Top prize today: NT$10 million, about $310K.

Suddenly the customer and the shopkeeper want opposite things. The merchant wants the sale off the books. The customer wants the ticket. And there are millions more customers than merchants. Every transaction now carries a built-in witness demanding the paper trail.

Year one, reported tax revenue jumped 75%, from NT$29 million to NT$51 million. Seventy-five years later, roughly 70% of Taiwanese still play. Convenience stores redeem the smallest NT$200 prizes at the register, so even a coffee receipt feels like a scratch card.

The elegant part is what the audit force costs. The prize pool runs about NT$7 billion a year, roughly $20 million. In exchange, the government gets 23 million unpaid auditors working every checkout line in the country, forever. No inspector general on earth delivers that coverage at that price.

Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Slovakia all copied it. The most effective compliance tool ever built looks like a game, and that's exactly why it works.

[Michael Harris II〽️ @MoneyyyMikeee]

England I’m forever with you!! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Let’s Do It Tonight!!

[RAW EGG NATIONALIST @Babygravy9]

I once made a girlfriend cry during an argument about immigration because I said a dog born in a stable isn't a horse. It isn't.

Birthright citizenship, and the notion of magical soil it entails, is an affront to common sense and to the human experience for 200,000 years.

[Wolf_of_Burlington @rtravis22]

@HoodedClaw1974 21%

[Stephen A Smith @stephenasmith]

Gotta be honest, this @ufc event at the White House looks spectacular. This is a big time show. I’m not there, and we all know all the complaints folks had about renovations at and around the White House, etc, but — to be fair — this is some impressive stuff I’m looking at. Props to UFC President @danawhite and the show they’ve put on. It’s Bigtime. Plain and simple!!!

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

Reform vs Restore - which side are you really on? Take the quiz, and let us know your score...

https://t.co/Wx9ZgHHc0s

[Rupert Lowe MP @RupertLowe10]

The biggest action day in British history.

We are going to Restore Britain.

[Restore Britain @RestoreBritain]

Reform's Robert Jenrick fast-tracked visas for Sudanese fighting-age men and then bragged about putting countless illegals in hotels across Britain.

Never forget, never forgive.

[Chris Tomlinson @TomlinsonCJ]

"You can't ban Sikhs from carrying knives after a murder, that's collective blame!"
"Someone shot some people, we must ban guns for everyone!"

[Barstool Sports @barstoolsports]

Become ungovernable

[Wolf_of_Burlington @rtravis22]

@TiceRichard Vote Restore, get Restore. Push through the fear mongering.