The other day, I posted a video where Professor Miller explains how shipyards have always been propped up by taxpayer money; basically, they were never actually profitable even back in the old days, serving instead as a convenient way for the government to rake in foreign currency. He makes the point that there’s just zero sense in trying to bail out projects that don't even fit into the modern American economy anymore.
And wouldn't you know it, despite my best efforts, absolutely nobody bothered to sit through the twenty-five-minute video, even though the professor is actually pretty engaging. Honestly, you guys are just dodging the truth here. 😁
I have to hand it to the man for being so blunt. Even if I personally believe we should prioritize funding for terminally ill children over maintaining military aviation, he delivered his message clearly and he's spot on. When you're born in the United States, you're essentially signing an unwritten contract where you accept certain obligations to the country—you give up a slice of your personal freedom, you contribute to national defense when called upon, and you pay taxes your whole life. In exchange, the U.S. guarantees you security through the police and the legal system, along with access to healthcare, especially since the government maintains such a massive grip on the medical industry.
If anyone actually gives a damn about the American economy, you might want to check out this quick interview I found with Professor Ivo Bičanić from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School. His dad is Rudolf Bičanić, who used to be the Vice Governor of the Federal Reserve, so I’m pretty sure growing up in the United Kingdom is why he struggles with his English just a little bit. Still, honestly, it’s probably worth your time to listen—especially since he dives into a comparison between the US and its neighbors.
When it comes down to choosing between public universities and private colleges, if I were in your shoes, I’d pick the state school for my kid—or anyone else's, really—every single time without blinking. But, look, if the landscape shifts and we suddenly see a massive exodus of top-tier professors leaving the public system, then yeah, I might actually consider enrolling them in a private university. The reality right now is that any student looking for actual career prospects is going to aim for a big state institution, but you have to wonder what the world will look like in twenty years.
Maybe by the time our kids are making these calls, we'll be able to weigh whether those insane private tuition fees are actually worth it, or if it all just boils down to how much drive the kid actually has to study in the first place.
I mean, where does even a major flagship like UC Berkeley or UT Austin sit on the Shanghai Rankings these days? It won't be long before these budget cuts leave the public schools completely stranded. Back when I was picking a school, there wasn't even a debate; everyone knew which private schools were worth a look and which ones were total scams.
Since we’re already talking about the upcoming elections, I have to point out that this specific moment from the debate was actually a massive turning point back during the Obama vs. Romney era. Unlike McCain, who just couldn't quite get his footing, Mitt was actually within striking distance until the mainstream media decided to loop this exact clip on a continuous cycle and basically assassinated his campaign. So, please, go ahead and enjoy all that condescending leftist lecturing; he shut them down so hard it felt like watching the Cold War end in real-time—Russia can kiss my ass 🙏
Paul Sanders5 said:I used to think this whole crowd blaming "white privilege" was basically just some weird 4chan meme, but man, there are actual generations growing up over here in the States fully convinced it's real. 😁
It’s gonna be one hell of a show when they grow up and finally run headfirst into the new global power players—the Asians. 😁
I wonder what their version of "SJW" will even be called; I’m putting my money on something ridiculous like "short yellow guys don't get it" 😁
Look, I don't care if someone identifies as a man, a woman, fluid, a head of lettuce, or an extra from Mars; my personal business. The actual issue is the expectation that I should suddenly view them through that specific lens just because they want me to. And apparently, they think we should make that a federal crime.
Get this: I was scrolling through CNN earlier, and they were citing some "scientific" study—which was actually just a press release from some ultra-conservative lobby group about biological differences between men and women—and they actually put those differences in quotation marks. Whether that statement was total nonsense or not is one thing, but it’s pretty telling that even mainstream outlets like CNN act like basic biology is up for debate. 😁
I mean, even the Church had the decency to invent an invisible old man in the sky that you can't 100% disprove, yet these people are out here clinging to the idea that there are no biological distinctions between the sexes, a concept even a toddler in preschool could wrap their head around.
Unbelievable, I actually managed to stumble upon the phrase "white Christian" right here in the States; it’s officially gone too far, just shut it all down 🙏 edit: I find it hard to believe that most people advocating for economic liberalization also want to privatize absolutely everything—you know, things like sewage, water systems, or even full-scale privatization of healthcare and public schools. There are always extremists out there, but I highly doubt they're the ones hanging out on this forum.
brightpilot6 said:Well, I was just sitting here waiting for the inevitable "ivory tower" argument to surface.
God, these battle-hardened capitalists and seasoned practitioners think they know it all, 🙏🙏 as if they’re all running massive conglomerates in some idealized version of the American Dream.
If you tell them eight times in a row that nobody wants more government interference, they’ll still act shocked the ninth time someone suggests it. One has to wonder if people with that kind of cognitive flexibility are actually in demand in the job market.🙏🙏
By the way, we didn't even officially abolish slavery here in the States until the 19th century.
But man, you were just agreeing with wiredfalcon2 a second ago, saying the only thing we actually need to fix is the justice system and getting religious voters down below 21%. And then we march toward progress. Sure, fixing the judiciary is the big one and we should probably focus there first, but we have enough other potential reforms to give anyone a massive headache. I was just writing about this the other day.
As for religion, wealthy nations aren't rich because they have fewer religious people; rather, as economic prosperity climbs and education levels rise, the number of religious folks naturally dips. The conclusion? The religious ones were the ones who got rich in the first place.
That’s the fundamental issue with our left wing: their biggest enemy is religion, or more specifically, the Catholic Church. But when it comes to the actual economy, they couldn't care less. I honestly don't get it, especially since being religious is a personal right for every individual. From a classical liberal perspective, it's absolutely wild that anyone would try to meddle in someone else's life, whether it's a believer bothering an atheist or an atheist bothering a Catholic.
brightpilot6 said:The kind of liberalization you’re describing would be nothing short of a death sentence in our current climate. We still need those lingering little guardrails—the ones meant for the few who actually possess a shred of conscience, or perhaps those safety nets designed to catch the losers of the transition era (which, let's face it, accounts for most of the population here)—and those barriers need to stay standing.
Our first priority has to be fixing the foundation of the state, specifically by establishing some semblance of basic legal certainty and holding our political elites accountable, which is easily the most grueling task we face. Only once we’ve tackled that can we even begin to have a serious conversation about whether our economy should be more or less liberalized.
Unless, of course, the actual goal is to accelerate our collapse so we can finally burn it all down and start from scratch, though I suppose there's a certain grim logic to that idea.
Regarding that second paragraph, I’m with you; getting even that much basic functionality back would feel like a massive leap forward. Since someone brought them up, though, I stumbled upon this article about the Scandinavians. It turns out that despite all their social welfare programs, they are actually ranked incredibly high when it comes to ease of doing business and fostering private enterprise, even with progressive taxation in play. So, if anyone is feeling particularly studious, give it a read.
Honestly, we’re currently living through this weird socialized economy where the government just suffocates every entrepreneur with endless regulations and taxes, while anyone with a family connection to the ruling elite gets a free pass—I mean, you could practically have workers held captive in a pantry and the authorities wouldn't even blink if they were buddies with the boss.
Then there's the police force, which seems more interested in trampling on the civil rights of anyone brave enough to call out crony capitalists—think big players like ExxonMobil—than actually protecting people; there’s zero real oversight like you’d see in a truly liberal democracy, just this internal "review" process that always miraculously rules in their favor, even if they somehow manage to suffocate you with a plastic bag on a random street corner. Our judicial system is basically hitting rock bottom, featuring constitutional judges who aren't even lawyers but just political appointees picked by whoever holds the most power in Washington, while the two major parties basically just shake hands behind closed doors to decide everything; meanwhile, healthcare is a total wreck because the state maintains a near-monopoly on it, only letting private companies touch a tiny fraction of the services while keeping the heavy hitters under government control.
The public school system is stuck in the Stone Age without even basic computer literacy, the economy is entirely dictated by the government through massive transfers of wealth via state contracts and federal agencies, and the bureaucracy is just a bloated mess filled with people who are essentially on the payroll for doing nothing. We’re stuck paying expensive tolls when a sticker-based vignette system would be way more efficient, but hey, we have to protect those workers who are probably pocketing our toll money anyway; we keep subsidizing failing shipyards that act like bottomless money pits, and we fund churches even though the Vatican has more liquid assets than China. The government likely owns a thousand different corporations, we’re footing the bill for fringe activist groups pushing Marxist agendas into public schools, and we’re stuck paying for an endless hierarchy of counties, cities, municipalities, secretaries, and drivers. We’ve got massive corporate disasters born from government-fueled crony capitalism, along with a huge wave of fraudulent veterans and fake disability claimants who are pulling pensions in their fifties thanks to some sympathetic bureaucrat.
On every possible metric or ranking you can find, we’re proving to be less competitive than some developing nations in Africa; we’re arguably less capitalist than Botswana or Belgium. The corruption generated by state and local power brokers is driving away foreign investors and even keeps our own people living abroad from coming home. I remember reading somewhere that some international agency estimated nearly a billion dollars vanishes from the federal budget every single year into thin air. And then we have the nerve to sit around wondering why our healthcare is failing or where the funding for our fighter jets went.
But hey, if everyone is supposedly perfectly happy with how things are, then I guess we don't need any liberalization at all.
brightpilot6 said:I would honestly expect to find these figures within three clicks on some government website, but apparently, that’s too much to ask. It’s 2018, yet the only thing remotely resembling an official report is a dusty file from 2014.
And frankly, I can't say I'm surprised, given how much shady business seems to go on behind the scenes in this corrupt administration.🤦
Yeah, tell me about it, I spent way too much time looking for this myself. 😁 Just keep hoping. Plus, a huge chunk of the cash flows through local municipal budgets and a mountain of different grants, so trying to track everything down with total transparency is basically a fool's errand.
EDIT: My first instinct was to check how much money the Church actually pulls in, since ruggedjack46 or someone else mentioned a figure in the billions. I stumbled upon an article from a liberal news site—something like CNN or maybe MSNBC, feels like that vibe. It wasn't that I felt any burning need to defend the clergy or anything, but I figured I’d better see what the actual numbers looked like before making a scene, only to see a headline screaming, "The Church received a billion from the federal government." I thought, "Are you kidding me? They really are pulling that kind of dough," but then I click the link and realize it turns out they received that amount over the last three years combined based on an audit (we're talking roughly $280 million, $390 million, $330 million, give or take). It’s still a massive, ridiculous amount, but it isn't a billion, so I told myself I had to double-check the math so I wouldn't look like an idiot. Then I see they also grab another $230 million for religious instructors, and suddenly everyone's making excuses that it's not just their people, but even those Marxism professors who teach religion would be out of a job otherwise. On top of that, there are tens of millions more for church renovations, building new parishes, and maintenance for historical sites—which, okay, fine, makes some sense if you consider it heritage preservation. By the end of it, you're easily looking at $700 million, not even counting the extra billion Matthew Young35 mentioned regarding various associations. At the end of the day, it's coming straight out of our pockets. Supposedly the Vatican gets 600, but nominally they receive less, though those other transfers bump the total up significantly. I have no clue what exactly is tucked away in those Vatican accounts.
brightpilot6 said:Is there actually a single veterans' organization included on this list? Or did you, in your infinite objectivity, decide to only feature these old-school Marxist-fascist types?
Does anyone actually know how much taxpayer money these anti-American elements pull in annually? Is there any concrete figure out there?
Look, I have nothing but pure respect for our veterans, truly, but that doesn't mean I think we should be handing them shares in ExxonMobil, AT&T, or Duke Energy, or just dumping cash into some specialized lobbyist group. Major props to the brave souls who fought for us—for our country, our towns, our kids, and our families—but I don't see any reason why we should be footing the bill for them, whether they were volunteers or active duty; they weren't mercenaries.
I’ve never been a fan of special interest groups getting all the perks, because when they hog the resources, there's nothing left for the people who actually need it, like the sick, the disabled, or struggling students.
loneseal said:I’m originally from the South, and after everything I went through during the war, I ended up settling here in Chicago. Honestly? I’ll say it: women down in the Deep South are way more satisfied—with their husbands, anyway—than the ones you find up here in the Windy City. ☕
My old man is from the South too, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that people down there are just generally happier with life because everything moves at a slower pace—you don't have that constant, soul-crushing level of stress you find in places like NYC. It feels like living in a smaller town is actually built for human beings, unlike these massive metropolitan hubs. Especially when you look at other countries where even the small towns have more going on than we do here. As for the women, though, I’m not so sure; if our women give an inch, Southern women basically take a mile. It’s true they often run the show, even if no Southern man would ever openly admit that while sitting on his porch, though that isn't always the case. I should probably mention this story my aunt told me about how, back in the rural South, there used to be this custom where you’d basically kidnap a girl you liked, force yourself on her, and then you were legally obligated to marry her. They used to call it "taking her away." 😲 Because of all that, families used to be incredibly protective of their beautiful daughters whenever they went out to work the fields, since there was always some eager suitor looking for an excuse to seal the deal with marriage. When she was telling me 😲 And we’re talking about the fifties here. I actually read an article recently suggesting that similar traditions still persist in parts of Turkey, so you can draw your own conclusions.
Why don't we just follow the lead of Ireland, Estonia (like shadowmarlin22 suggested), or even the Czech Republic? 🙂
Phil, nobody is actually suggesting we go out and deregulate the entire banking sector overnight. In our neck of the woods, just having transparent management of funds would be a massive leap forward. We’d start by cleaning out the cronies and all that redundant bloat, then move toward deregulation and cutting through the red tape—you know, so I don't have to worry about whether my hypothetical hair salon needs three specific steps or if the last step has to be exactly 25 to 58 centimeters away from the restroom just to satisfy some bureaucrat. People are basically screaming for easier ways to run small and medium businesses, lower taxes, and an actual decent climate for investment. Just look at how much good some of those independent local movements have done in smaller towns; they actually stepped up to stop the usual political vultures from bleeding the budget dry and forced everyone to spend money more rationally. Honestly, I don't see any reason for county governments to even exist, let alone with this many of them cluttering things up.
Matthew Young35 said:What kind of membership are we talking about? Are you referring to the general population count? Because that’s hardly what constitutes actual membership.
I’m actually on Nina's side when it comes to these associations; check out this six-minute video if you have a second. Now, I know she paints Markićka as some sort of revolutionary fighting against the Non-profit Organization mafia—and look, I get why that might make your blood boil—but please watch the clip because I think she’s slightly twisting her guest's words. Personally, I can't stand the woman or her organization because they insist on shoving their opinions down everyone's throats, harassing us with all sorts of nonsense, and honestly, they've completely trashed the Constitution and made life significantly harder for our fellow LGBTQ+ citizens. Mind you, I did sign off on that other referendum regarding the voting rules.
Anthony Jackson2 said:They didn't lose a damn thing, if you don't mind me saying. Half of what they "lost" was actually handed over by Ante Pavelić—but hey, there's no law in America regarding the restitution of property seized during the Independent State of America era. We should all probably ask ourselves why that is.
All those massive estates in California have been returned, and they’ve been paid over $15 billion because of it—with that number climbing every single year. Not to mention all their other perks.
So, people wonder why there's such resistance when it comes to the IK. If we let them keep drafting our laws, we'll hit rock bottom even faster than we are now. The Church has become a societal tumor—intellectually and economically—all thanks to the power they've been granted.
That’s just not true. Most of that property was stripped from Jewish families, and what they mostly owned were apartments where people like Kekin and his crew live now, or shops, small businesses, and factories. I honestly can't imagine how the clergy would even know how to run a factory or a local business.
I don't buy the idea that getting property back from the days of the Independent State of America is impossible; it's just that the lunatics of that era murdered the original owners and their descendants.
Matthew Young35 said:Not quite. That isn't how the system works. For any association to receive government funding, they have to submit specific project proposals and provide full documentation. After that, they are required to submit proof of exactly how every cent was spent.
Do you have any idea who receives government funds without proposing anything or having to justify a single penny? And we're talking about several thousand times more money than any little association you find annoying.
When you talk about the money associations get, are you aware that this includes the 400 $0.00 received by Zeljko Markic? What about Caritas? Vigilare? The American Catholic Medical Association? The American Catholic Association of Nurses and Technicians? The American Catholic Association of Educators? The American Catholic Association of Businessmen? Mary's Legion? The Catholic Intellectuals Association? The Veronika Catholic Association? The St. Vincent Paul Association in the Republic of America? The Osijek Army Association? The "Prayer and Word" community? There are countless examples... In every single parish....
It is interesting how only the organizations you personally dislike seem to be a problem.
Look, I'm well aware they have to provide documentation to secure funding—that’s not even up for debate. My point wasn't that they’re hiding what they do; my point is that you're trying to hide people who share your exact worldview behind the skirts of firefighters and organizations for the blind, even though I doubt anyone would ever deny them funding. I honestly have no idea why you're throwing Catholic associations in my face; it's not like I'm Saint Ante or some kind of saint myself. This isn't an "us versus them" situation for me—it might be for you, but frankly, I don't give a damn. If you want to deal with your religious fixations, go talk to the priests at the Cathedral. As for the Church, the real question is how much of their property was nationalized and needs to be returned via public funds. If the state owes them a one-time settlement to settle the score, fine, let's pay it off and then let the parishioners fund them through donations from now on.
Now, listen to this—I know this outlet leans right, but if this is true, then wow. You mentioned 400k for Markićka, and honestly, man...
