RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/03/08/the-myth-of-americas-decline/

North America may suffer from some of the world’s poorest political leadership. Yet it seems destined to remain the wealthiest, most dominant place on Earth.

This may come as a surprise to many. After all, generations of pundits have insisted that the future will be forged elsewhere – Europe for some, Japan for others and, more recently, China. But none have the resources, the dynamic population and innovative acumen of North Americans.

Once taken for granted, China’s claim to the future is looking especially wobbly. In 2018, Chinese foreign ministry official Zhao Lijian described efforts to slow China’s dominion as being ‘as stupid as Don Quixote versus the windmills’. He added that ‘China’s win is unstoppable’. Today, China’s triumph looks far from inevitable. Projections that China could surpass the US in terms of aggregate economic output as soon as 2028 are being readjusted to 2036. Some now believe it won’t happen at all.

As for Japan or the EU, neither are likely to ever surpass the US. Each has experienced consistently slower growth. According to International Monetary Fund data, the eurozone economy grew about six per cent over the past 15 years, compared with growth of 82 per cent for the US during the same period. Europe’s once formidable industrial base has eroded in large part due to the ever rising burden of regulation. Germany’s economy, the most powerful economy in the EU, is barely the size of that of California.

Nothing better reflects the tectonic shift in global economic power than investment flows. Between 2012 and 2022, US inbound foreign investment swelled by nearly $100 billion in adjusted dollars, well above the level of investment into China. Levels of inbound investment into the EU and the UK have actually fallen during the same period.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/03/11/bidens-criminally-fuzzy-tax-math/

At one point during his State of the Union speech, President Joe Biden ranted about how billionaires don’t pay enough in taxes and asked the public to envision all the great things that we could do if the super-rich “paid their fair share.”

In doing so, he took lying with statistics to a new, otherworldly level.

Here’s what Biden said:

THE PRESIDENT: You know, there are 1,000 billionaires in America. You know what the average federal tax is for those billionaires?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Zero!

THE PRESIDENT: No.

They’re making great sacrifices — 8.2%.

AUDIENCE: Booo —

THE PRESIDENT: That’s far less than the vast majority of Americans pay.

No billionaire should pay a lower federal tax rate than a teacher, a sanitation worker, or a nurse.

I proposed a minimum tax for billionaires of 25%— just 25%. You know what that would raise? That would raise $500 billion over the next 10 years.

And imagine what that could do for America. Imagine a future with affordable childcare, millions of families can get what they need to go to work to help grow the economy.

Imagine a future with paid leave, because no one should have to choose between working and taking care of their sick family member.

Imagine — imagine a future with home care and eldercare, and people living with disabilities so they can stay in their homes and family caregivers can finally get the pay they deserve.

All Biden has is imagination — and no facts to back it up —  when it comes to this issue.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/10/the-treason-of-the-intellectuals-the-undoing-of-thought/

Last week, the commentator Lee Smith had me on “Words That Matter,” his show for Epoch TV. He had recently come across an essay I had written some thirty years ago about Julien Benda’s 1927 book La Trahison des clercs, “the treason of the intellectuals,” and was struck by its contemporary relevance. We covered a lot of ground in the half hour allotted to us. The show will air in a week or two.  I hope you will watch it.  In the meantime, I share the original essay, with some modifications, below. 

“When hatred of culture becomes itself a part of culture, the life of the mind loses all meaning.”
—Alain Finkielkraut, The Undoing of Thought

“Today we are trying to spread knowledge everywhere. Who knows if in centuries to come there will not be universities for re- establishing our former ignorance?”
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-99)

In 1927, the French essayist Julien Benda published his famous attack on the intellectual corruption of the age, La Trahison des clercs. I said “famous,” but perhaps “once famous” would be more accurate. For today, in the United States anyway, only the title of the book, not its argument, enjoys much currency. “La trahison des clercs” is one of those memorable phrases that bristles with hints and associations without stating anything definite. Benda tells us that he uses the term “clerc” in “the medieval sense,” i.e., to mean “scribe,” someone we would now call a member of the intelligentsia. Academics and journalists, pundits, moralists, and pontificators of all varieties are, in this sense, “clercs.” The English translation, “The Treason of the Intellectuals,” sums it up neatly.

The “treason” in question was the betrayal by the “clerks” of their vocation as intellectuals. From the time of the pre-Socratics, intellectuals, considered in their role as intellectuals, had been a breed apart. In Benda’s terms, they were understood to be “all those whose activity essentially is not the pursuit of practical aims, all those who seek their joy in the practice of an art or a science or a metaphysical speculation, in short, in the possession of non-material advantages.” Thanks to such men, Benda wrote, “Humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honored good. This contradiction was an honor to the human species and formed the rift whereby civilization slipped into the world.”