Sad guy

#LGH

[Sad guy @solarexsolarah]

@JoeOrrico What to do with braelon Allen?

[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.

[Sad guy @solarexsolarah]

Please stop this

[Virginia Tech Football @HokiesFB]

WEAR WHITE ‼️

#LetsGoHokies

[Sam @SamStro757]

What’s the deal with this..

Like, let’s wear maroon and orange on the road to stand out? Right?

[Eric Mac Lain @EricMacLain]

It’s sickening.

[CFB Kings @CFBKings]

If Pitt and Virginia Tech were in the SEC or B1G, this would be a Top 20 matchup.

[Sad guy @solarexsolarah]

WVU-VT woulda been sold out

[Moore College Football @Moore_CFB]

If West Virginia-Virginia were played in Morgantown or Charlottesville, this would be a sold-out, electric on-campus environment.

Instead, we get this at a sterile NFL stadium with no real connection to either program.

College football belongs on campus.

📸: @SLight20

[Jack Mac @JackMac]

No way lol

[Tanning Salon Don @TheSalonDon]

Everything that got more expensive is funded by the welfare state

Everything that got less expensive is a free market item

Absolutely insane chart

[11 Yanks @11Yanks]

"But the US is getting preferential treatment"

[Stewart Robson @srob_]

The idea that the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah are core parts of “west” virginia’s identity is laughable.

Like come on guys

[Sad guy @solarexsolarah]

@B1OBEY0ND

[Hayes Fawcett @Hayesfawcett3]

BREAKING: Four-Star LB Amarri Irvin has Flipped his Commitment from Notre Dame to Virginia Tech, he tells me for @Rivals

The 6’0 215 had been committed to the Fighting Irish since November

“ALL GLORY TO GOD, GO HOKIES 🦃”

https://t.co/ciNnsso83A

[Sad guy @solarexsolarah]

@hail2snerd Now do it without James Franklins contributions

[Gooner Eurychus 🏆 @GoonerEG]

This was Manchester City's last game.

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

The premise of your tweet is super racist.

You are saying that Black voters and Democratic voters are the SAME people.

That's insane.

Jim Crow racists also thought they were on the right side.

The test for racism isn't whether you mean well.

It's whether your framework treats people as individuals or as racial categories.

You are literally fighting for the EXACT same thing that the civil rights movement was trying to DEFEAT.

That's super racist dude.

[Murray Hill Guy @MurrayHillGuy1]

The modern Left is basically 4 groups:

1. Boomers who watch cable TV all day
2. Minorities obsessed with “free stuff” and Zohran Mamdani
3. Women who went crazy off birth control & SSRIs
4. Mentally ill gender goblins

[Geiger Capital @Geiger_Capital]

Truly insane to watch…

Trump asks Congress to stand up if they believe it’s the duty of the US government to prioritize American citizens over illegal aliens…

Not one Democrat stood up.

[Hans Mahncke @HansMahncke]

This has to be one of the most spectacular self-owns in media history, and that’s saying something given the competition. Anderson Cooper’s entire narrative hinges on a supposed gotcha attacking Trump over the white crosses. Then you watch the video and every single farmer Anderson met over there was either viciously attacked themselves, knew multiple farmers who were murdered, or both.

[Leading Report @LeadingReport]

BREAKING: President Trump formally terminating rules that forced car makers into putting start-stop feature into vehicles.