Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

In a tense street encounter captured in Minneapolis’s Somali-dominated Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, filmmaker Nick Shirley attempted to interview residents about life as Muslims in America—only to face demands to delete footage, refusals to speak English, and claims that women can’t appear on camera, highlighting the cultural chasm.

Shirley’s video, part of his documentary series probing U.S. migration impacts, shows him approaching locals in the area dubbed “Little Mogadishu,” asking “What’s it like being a Muslim here in the United States?” 

The responses quickly escalate to hostility, with demands to “delete the footage.”

The clip, shows a man insisting “I’m not speaking English, only ONE Somali language.” Another echoes, “I’m not speaking English.” 

When Shirley asks, “Can women speak on camera?” the response is blunt, “No.” 

🚨 HOLY CRAP! Nick Shirley tried talking to Somalians in Minnesota — and it proved exactly why none of them should be here

They DEMANDED he deletes the footage in a truly bizarre moment. pic.twitter.com/LarE5IpXA7

“I’m not speaking English — only ONE Somali language.”

“I’m not…

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 28, 2025

The footage, filmed amid empty storefronts, captures the enclave’s insularity, raising assimilation alarms in a diaspora resettled since the 1990s under refugee programs.

This standoff exemplifies the “Somalification of America” Trump advisor Stephen Miller has decried, turning elections into “clan rivalries.” 

Minnesota’s 100K+ Somali population surged under Obama-Biden, fueling Dem dominance and electing Ilhan Omar amid feuds. 

But as we’ve also detailed, it’s bred fraud. Feeding Our Future’s $250M COVID heist saw Somali-led nonprofits indicted, while child care and autism scams bilked millions—Rep. Kristin Robbins fuming: “We’re at the tip of the iceberg.” 

Trump’s recent Temporary protected status termination branded it a “hub of fraudulent money laundering,” with gangs “terrorizing” and billions missing. 

It’s hardly integrating into America when the mayor of Minneapolis feels the need to conduct speeches in Somali.Jacob Frey’s recent Somali speech—“This is our city”—drew “pandering” blasts.

In a recent Newsmax segment, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons discussed President Trump’s push to revoke TPS for Somalis in Minnesota amid the allegations of widespread immigration fraud, including marriage scams, visa overstays, and forged documents uncovered in DHS’s “Operation Twin Shield.” 

🚨 BREAKING: Somalians and other Muslim migrants are in mass PANIC, fearing imminent immigration raids and deportations now that President Trump is DONE with their BS.

ICE DIRECTOR: “Minneapolis, could be Philly…could be ANYWHERE!” 👀🔥 pic.twitter.com/6ReEftU6l3

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 28, 2025

Lyons emphasised that deportations could target cities like Minneapolis or Philadelphia, emphasizing ICE’s focus on removing those who entered under false pretenses, fueling reported panic among Somali and other Muslim migrant communities as stricter enforcement looms.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Last year, the economic impact of violence reached $19.1 trillion, or $717 billion higher than the previous year.

This came as conflict deaths hit 25-year highs, and wars continued in the Ukraine and Gaza. In response to heightened geopolitical tensions, European nations have injected billions into defense spending. Even Japan plans to double its defense spending to 2% of GDP.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows the global cost of conflict in 2024, based on analysis from the Institute for Economic and Peace.

Breaking Down the Cost of Conflict

Below, we show the economic impact of violence worldwide, with figures including direct and indirect costs:

In 2024, military spending grew by $540 billion to reach $9 trillion.

Overall, 84 countries increased spending on military as a share of GDP, with Norway, Denmark, and Bangladesh seeing the greatest jumps. U.S. military spending totaled $949 billion, while China followed at $450 billion, in international dollars.

As the second-highest cost, internal security expenditure hit $5.7 trillion. This includes costs associated with policing and the judicial system.

Meanwhile, GDP losses causes by conflict surged 44% in 2024 to reach $462 billion. Compared to 2008, GDP losses have more than quadrupled, while the cost of conflict deaths has followed a similar trend.

Adding to this, the cost of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) had an economic toll of $343 billion. Today, 122 million people globally are forcibly displaced, more than doubling from 2008.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on Europe’s biggest armies.

Via Remix News,

After a forced conscript was beaten in his groin area to the point that he lost an “organ” following emergency surgery, Ukrainian authorities have moved to arrest the recruitment center head.

The staff of the Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigation (DBR) arrested the head of one of the district recruitment and military service preparation centers (TCK) in the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast.

The recruiter is accused of brutally beating a conscripted man for refusing to perform a fluorographic examination during the medical aptitude test (VLK), reported by the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine and the DBR, based on the announcements of Ukrainian news outlet Pravda.ua.

The DBR investigated complaints from citizens and parliamentarians that beatings, torture, and demands for money had taken place in a TCK operation in Transcarpathia. Notably, neighboring Hungary has alleged that recruits from the Transcarpathia region are targeted for recruitment at an especially high rate due to them being ethnic Hungarians.

“Investigators uncovered numerous abuses of power committed by a senior officer at the center,” the DBR communication was quoted by the source.

Based on the investigation, it was revealed that the man was sent to the hospital for a VLK examination together with other citizens.

When he refused the examination, the lieutenant colonel deliberately inflicted at least five blows against the victim, targeting the groin area.

As a result, the victim suffered serious physical injuries that required the “surgical removal of an organ.”

The officer was charged with abuse of power during martial law, with serious consequences. On the motion of the prosecutors, the court ordered an arrest without the possibility of bail. Based on the source, it was also revealed that the possible involvement of other persons, including police officers, in the case is currently being investigated.

This beating is likely just the tip of the iceberg, though. As already reported by Remix News, a Hungarian citizen and entrepreneur, József Sebestyén, died in July in the Beregsász hospital after Ukrainian recruiters severely beat him with iron bars in a forest, with the incident also caught on film.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has forcefully condemned forced conscription in Ukraine after the beating death. Speaking on Kossuth Radio, Orbán linked the tragic incident directly to the ongoing war, asserting that a country where such events occur due to forced conscription is unfit for European Union membership.

“A country where this could happen cannot be a member of the EU,” said Orbán.

“We are talking about a Hungarian-Ukrainian dual citizen. This entitles us to avoid using cautious language. They beat a Hungarian citizen to death, that’s the situation. And this is a case that we need to investigate, as this cannot happen,” Orbán stated, emphasizing the gravity of the situation. 

He highlighted that while the front lines might seem distant to many Hungarians, “the war is taking place in our neighboring country. The threat is directly here.”

A video post on this topic from Remix News was immediately flagged by X and censored, meaning that EU censors may be jumping on this report due to its sensitive nature.

For years, videos of Ukrainian recruits being dragged off the streets and beaten have been circulating, making the arrest of one of these recruiters quite out of the ordinary.

Read more here…

Submitted By Thomas Kolbe

Abu Dhabi’s state-owned energy giant ADNOC has acquired nearly all shares of German chemical powerhouse Covestro. Germany is gradually losing its strategic position in critical industrial sectors. The sell-off is accelerating.

Remember the big media spectacle “MADE FOR GERMANY” this past July? Chancellor Friedrich Merz staged a meeting with 61 corporate CEOs, proudly announcing supposed future investments of €631 billion.

Even then, given the ongoing capital flight from Germany, it was clear that the event was mainly a media stunt – a sad attempt to distract the public from the real state of the German industrial base.

Sell-Off Accelerates 

Since that day, Germany’s industrial sell-off has not slowed – it has accelerated. Companies have already made their judgment: suffocating regulations, exploding compliance costs in the name of climate policy, and an administratively hostile environment have turned investments into a risk.

In short: industrial production is being systematically and willfully strangled by lawmakers.

Last week, German chemical giant Covestro grabbed the headlines. This time, it was Abu Dhabi’s ADNOC on a bargain hunt – Black Friday has become a daily routine.

At around €62 per share, for a total transaction value of €15 billion, ADNOC increased its stake to over 95% – effectively taking control of company policy.

Loss of Capital and Know-How 

Capital gains will no longer flow to Germany but to Abu Dhabi. Strategic decisions about investment and location policy are now made by owners abroad.

This is especially critical for a company of clear strategic importance: Covestro’s high-performance plastics and polyurethanes are essential for Germany’s key industries – from automotive and machinery to construction and electrical engineering. Covestro is a central element of the industrial value chain, whose stability largely determines the future of the entire German industrial base.

About 40% of the 15,000 employees still work in Germany, many at the Leverkusen headquarters. But even Covestro has not escaped the general decline. Germany’s chemical industry now operates at just 71% capacity – a drop of more than 20% from the record year of 2018 – a sector now navigating increasingly rough waters.

Covestro has reported negative net earnings in recent years, while operating profit (EBIT) fell by more than 50% from 2023 to 2024, down to €87 million. Pressure from international competitors, high energy costs, and increasingly complex Brussels regulations have pushed the company to the limits of its competitiveness.

A Broader Trend 

The trend of selling off Germany’s industrial crown jewels began with the sale of Augsburg-based robotics and automation specialist KUKA in 2016. At the time, China’s Midea Group acquired a majority stake for €4.6 billion.

Even then, the same spectacle played out: the new investor publicly promised jobs and location guarantees, but quickly shifted to a mode where strategic decisions were tied exclusively to return expectations and location quality.

There is simply no place for sentimental traditionalism or patriotic rhetoric in this world. Global industry moves forward – and no one outside Europe shares the passion for risky green policy experiments.

Dramatic Consequences 

Covestro and KUKA are just two prominent examples of a secular trend. Year after year, Germany loses net direct investment. Last year alone, €64.5 billion flowed out – capital that is being invested elsewhere in new production capacity. Note: this is a net figure, which is expected to be even higher this year.

Germany’s economy is bleeding, while political leaders respond with half-hearted industrial subsidies – like the so-called “industrial electricity price” – and ever-new regulations. Many companies are likely to exit in anticipation of the cost tsunami from the CO₂ certificate market starting in 2027.

The U.S. Factor 

Above all, the United States beckons as an alternative production base. The Trump administration has made it clear that it will use every lever – including tariff pressure – to advance reindustrialization. This includes deregulation of the energy sector, an end to costly renewable experiments, and an industrial policy that welcomes investors rather than driving them away.

Add to that promises from Arab states like Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia to invest trillions in U.S. production – concrete proof of Washington’s seriousness. “Made for USA” will become a major political and economic mantra in the years to come. The U.S. economy is currently growing at over 4%, accelerating global capital shifts.

The list of German companies moving to the U.S. is growing. Hamburg-based metal producer Aurubis, automotive groups Stellantis, and supplier Bosch are among firms planning to strengthen the North American economy with billions in investments.

No One Sacrifices the Green God 

It would be too simplistic to blame this trend solely on U.S. trade policy. Long before Trump returned to the White House, it was clear that industrial production in Germany – and across the EU – had become unprofitable. As long as national policy enforces the Green Deal and its “green transformation,” nothing will change.

No one dares to sacrifice the Green God – the destructive CO₂ narrative driving economic collapse.

Half-hearted protests by Mittelstand associations, such as the Family Entrepreneurs, calling for broader political discourse including the Alternative for Germany – and their sharp political and media pushback – show that Germany still does not recognize the seriousness of the situation.

With each major corporation relocating abroad, the backbone of the German economy – the deeply integrated Mittelstand – is weakened. Even the public sector hiring half a million people cannot mask the fact that industry has cut hundreds of thousands of jobs and will continue to lose value in the coming years.

Celebrating the reintroduction of an EV subsidy as a major industrial policy step is, at its core, nothing more than a declaration of bankruptcy of eco-socialist policies that have propelled the country into a spiral of poverty.

In the U.S., alcohol consumption remains widespread, with nearly half the population aged 12 or older reporting that they consumed alcohol within the past month.

This visualization, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, explores the scale of drinking behavior across America, including how many people drink, binge drink, or engage in heavier levels of alcohol use, using data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration as of 2024.

How Many Americans Drink Alcohol Regularly?

Out of the 288.8 million Americans aged 12 or older, 134 million (46.5%) reported drinking alcohol at least once in the past 30 days.

The data table below shows the number of regular alcohol drinkers in the U.S., along with binge drinkers and heavy drinkers.

Binge drinkers are defined as those who consumed five or more drinks (four for women) on one occasion, and heavy drinkers are those who engaged in binge drinking at least five times in the past 30 days.

Despite alcohol drinkers making up nearly half of the U.S. population of those aged 12 or older, the share in 2024 (46.5%) has declined slightly since 2022 when it was 48.7%.

The Number of Binge and Heavy Drinkers in the U.S.

Of the 134.3 million alcohol drinkers in the U.S., 57.9 million people engaged in binge drinking, which represents 20.1% of the total population and 43.1% of all alcohol users.

This reveals a significant overlap between casual use and occasional high-risk consumption, highlighting how binge drinking behavior is deeply embedded within the broader drinking population.

Heavy alcohol users—those who binge drink on at least five days in the past month—number 14.5 million in America. This represents 5% of the total population above 12 years old and 10.8% of alcohol users.

While this group is much smaller than the broader categories of alcohol and binge drinkers, heavy drinkers make up one quarter of all binge drinkers, and account for one in every 10 regular alcohol drinkers in the country.

To learn more about alcohol consumption in the U.S., check out this graphic which breaks down which U.S. states drink the most beer.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Putin will visit India late next week to meet with Modi for their annual summit, the first time that the Russian leader will travel to India since the special operation began, his last one being in December 2021.

Aleksei Zakharov, a Fellow at India’s esteemed Observer Research Foundation, published a detailed article about how “Key Policy Outcomes Expected at the India-Russia Summit”.

It’s an excellent read, but it omits mention of their large-scale labor migration talks, which might lead to a deal next week.

Air Marshal Anil Chopra (Retired), the former Director-General of the Center for Air Power Studies in New Delhi, published an intriguing piece about this at RT in early November.

He noted how both countries representatives “discussed potential collaboration on social and labor issues”, contextualizing their conversation by adding that Russia “plans to recruit up to 1 million foreign workers – including from India. The Russian Labor Ministry estimates the shortfall could expand to 3.1 million workers by 2030.”

He makes a lot of compelling arguments about how India could help resolve this dimension of “Russia’s demography problem”, but what’s left out is how its labor migrants pose less of a security risk than Russia’s traditional ones from Central Asia. Conor Gallagher touched upon this in early November in his extensively detailed analysis about the US’ evolving strategy towards that region. From this point here near the end for the next several paragraphs, he describes Russia’s new approach towards migration.

Not only is Russia “getting rid of 700,000-plus migrants, mostly Central Asians, a process which was jumpstarted by the terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall in outer Moscow in March 2024”, but “the Concept of State Migration Policy for 2026-2030…focuses not on increasing the population through Central Asian citizens, but on strengthening control, digitalization, and the task of attracting only those migrants who share the ‘traditional spiritual and moral values’ of Russian society.”

Putin spoke about the security threats posed by “the migration factor” in early November during a meeting with the Council on Interethnic Relations where they discussed ways to fine-tune the State Interethnic Policy, the updated version of which was then approved by month’s end. It’s not declared, but the innuendo is that Central Asian Muslims are at a greater risk of radicalism and being manipulated by foreign forces than other labor migrants such as Indians (both Muslims and especially Hindus).

It’s within this economic-security context that Russia is exploring a large-scale migrant labor deal with India that might be clinched during the Putin-Modi Summit. To be clear, recent policy changes won’t lead to Indians playing a role in “population replacement”, only in labor replacement since most likely won’t be offered a path to residency and then citizenship. The sole purpose is for Indians to meet Russia’s labor shortage in lieu of Central Asian Muslims in exchange for profitable remittance opportunities.

Indians are among the most Russian-friendly people in the world as proven by credible surveys, and unlike Central Asian Muslims, they harbor no historical grievances (whether objectively existing or subjectively perceived) that could be manipulated by foreign forces to weaponize them against Russia.

Their society is also proudly secular and this makes them much less likely to be radicalized into terrorists.

It therefore wouldn’t be surprising if Putin clinches a large-scale labor migration deal with Modi.

The First Assistant U.S. Attorney for Vermont announced that on November 24, 2025, Chief Judge Christina Reiss sentenced Serhat Gumrukcu, 43, of Los Angeles—formerly the “scientific founder”, “inventor” and largest shareholder of publicly listed Enochian Biosciences, which eventually became Renovaro—to life in prison for the January 6, 2018, murder-for-hire of Gregory Davis in Barnet, Vermont.

Gumrukcu was first brought to the attention of market participants by former short seller Hindenburg Research back in 2022 who called his company a $600 million Nasdaq-listed scam “based on a lifetime of lies”. 

A jury convicted him in April 2025 of murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, according to the DOJ. 

Gumrukcu had formerly been praised by Enochian (then Renovaro) CEO Mark Dybul – who once worked under Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Health – with Dybul writing in November 2019 that he was “one of those rare geniuses that is not bound by scientific discipline or dogma”. Hindenburg then accused Dybul of turning a “blind eye to outrageous fraud” perpetrated by Gumrukcu in a stunning follow up report after the “inventor’s” death. 

The Department of Justice press release says that his co-conspirators were sentenced in September 2025: Berk Eratay received 110 months of imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release; Aron Ethridge received 140 months followed by five years of supervised release; and Jerry Banks received 200 months followed by five years of supervised release.

According to prosecutors, Gumrukcu ordered Davis’s killing because Davis threatened legal action over a failed oil-commodities deal that was also the basis of Gumrukcu’s wire-fraud conviction. Gumrukcu also feared that Davis would interfere with a biotech merger involving his claimed HIV “cure.”

Evidence showed that Eratay enlisted Ethridge, who then hired Banks. On January 6, 2018, Banks posed as a Deputy U.S. Marshal and abducted Davis from his Vermont home; Davis’s body was found the next day nearby. Communications, financial records, and location data documented the dispute between Gumrukcu and Davis and tied Gumrukcu, Eratay, Ethridge, and Banks to the crime.

At sentencing, Melissa Davis, the victim’s widow, thanked investigators and prosecutors. She praised the Vermont State Police “for every call, every update,” the FBI for its “coordination across state lines” and “relentless pursuit of truth,” and the prosecution team whose “strength, commitment, and unwavering pursuit of justice…will stay with me for the rest of my life.”

She said she often felt proud in court, “knowing God had appointed each of you to pursue justice for Gregg,” and also expressed gratitude to her victim advocate, the U.S. Marshals Service, and Chief Judge Reiss.

A supposed mind-reading magician turned biomedical entrepreneur, Gumrukcu mingled with Hollywood elites and earned millions through unconventional medical ventures. But during his five-week trial in Burlington, he faced a far different spotlight—three days on the witness stand, denying involvement in the 2018 murder-for-hire of former business partner Gregory Davis.

Though he claimed innocence, Gumrukcu admitted under oath to lying to authorities and said he’d told “so many lies” in past deals he couldn’t remember them all. He acknowledged buying a fake medical degree from Russia, calling it “cheating,” and described his younger self as “arrogant,” advocating unorthodox treatments like leeches and mistletoe.

As part of their investigation into Enochian and Gumrukcu, Hindenburg Research ordered the very same degree to prove that it was fake back in 2022. 

Way back when, @HindenburgRes published on Enochian Biosciences, now Renovaro $RENB. Their scientific genius, Serhat Gumrukcu, just took the stand this week to deny he hired someone to murder a dude he defrauded. But he DID admit, just as Hindenburg uncovered, that he bought a… pic.twitter.com/G7cfLCV1zB

— Codfish Johnny (@CodfishJohnny) April 17, 2025

Prosecutors argued Gumrukcu had Davis killed to prevent him from exposing fraud tied to a failed oil deal—one that could have derailed a lucrative biomedical contract with Enochian BioSciences.

“Gregg Davis was a problem for the defendant,” said prosecutor Paul Van de Graaf. “It was the defendant who paid for the murder.”

Van de Graaf outlined how Gumrukcu financed the $200,000 plot, with testimony from three co-conspirators, including former assistant Berk Eratay. Eratay claimed Gumrukcu told him he wanted to “get rid of a problem,” prompting Eratay to enlist others, including hitman Jerry Banks. Banks testified he posed as a U.S. marshal, kidnapped Davis, and executed him in rural Vermont.

Defense attorney Ethan Balogh argued it was Eratay who “ran the op,” not Gumrukcu. He said the funds were meant for a cryptocurrency project and portrayed Davis as untrustworthy. Balogh accused the three key witnesses—who took plea deals to avoid life sentences—of lying to save themselves: “These men were all going to die in the cage.”

Prosecutors countered that none of them had a reason to kill Davis—except Gumrukcu. As Van de Graaf said, even “peaceful” men can outsource their violence.

As Hindenburg noted in a subsequent report, the story of Gumrukcu’s rise and fall, up to awaiting trial was chronicled in a podcast produced by Amazon’s Wondery (Spotify, Apple).

Authored by Peter Earle via the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER),

In a recent analysis gone viral, financial blogger Michael W. Green traced how modern American families can earn anywhere from $40,000 to $100,000 and still fall further behind. The argument is devastatingly simple: the mathematical parameters defining “poverty” are built upon a benchmark drawn in 1963, multiplied by three, and only lightly adjusted for inflation. Everything else—childcare, healthcare, housing, transportation, and the structural design of the welfare state—has transformed beyond recognition. The result is a system in which the official poverty line tells us less about deprivation than it does about starvation. And once you trace the math, the inescapable metaphor emerges: America’s working households require escape velocity to break free from the gravitational well of modern costs of living.

In physics, escape velocity is the minimum energy needed to break free from a body’s gravitational pull. Below that threshold, every burst of energy merely bends the trajectory and drops the object back into orbit. The same dynamic now governs mobility in the United States.

Using conservative assumptions, a bare-bones “participation budget,” the minimal cost necessary for a household to work, raise children, and avoid freefall, is roughly between $136,000 to $150,000. That figure doesn’t represent luxurious living; it’s the updated application of Mollie Orshansky’s original method, which assumed food was one-third of a household’s budget. Today, food is closer to 5 to 7 percent, and the real multipliers reside in the unavoidable costs of existing in a post-industrial service economy. The system still uses the original 1963 architecture, so the “poverty line” is measured as if housing, childcare, and healthcare still operated like they did during the Kennedy administration.

Below this new-era threshold, income gains are eaten by benefit cliffs: the loss of Medicaid, SNAP, childcare subsidies, and at that same point a sudden, full exposure to market prices in sectors that the United States has spent decades distorting through subsidies, mandates, and regulatory sclerosis. A family can leap from $45,000 to $65,000 and end up poorer, because the system confiscates more than 100 percent of that incremental income. From that perspective, it’s not irrational to stay put rather than aggressively seek higher earnings that will only bring more hardship and deprivation.

Using the 1963 poverty line today is like measuring the distance from Earth to the moon with a yardstick whose markings have been sandblasted away. It ensures two outcomes.

First, because the benchmark is too low, benefits are means-tested too early.

The ladder gets sawed off halfway up. The poor face marginal tax rates that would make a hedge fund blanch, and the working poor find that one extra dollar of income can trigger thousands of dollars in lost benefits. The mathematics are inherently punitive, punishing upward mobility and the productive instincts that animate it.

Second, persistent inflation, especially in non-discretionary categories, reshapes the spending basket faster than the poverty formula can adjust.

This is not purely the result of supply-and-demand fundamentals. It is a direct consequence of decades of monetary expansion, financial repression, interest-rate suppression, and regulatory barriers that choke off the supply in housing, healthcare, education, and childcare. When the Federal Reserve aims to stabilize macroeconomic aggregates, it also inadvertently distorts the production of essential goods that determine whether a family can remain afloat. Price levels matter for survival even if economic science has come to prefer analyzing rates of change.

A similar mismatch between past prices and present reality—the real versus nominal divide—haunts the financial system. The $10,000 reporting requirement for bank transfers was created in the early 1970s, when $10,000 represented a down payment on a house. Today it represents two or three months’ rent in many cities—or a single dental emergency. Inflation has quietly turned an anti-money-laundering threshold into a mass-surveillance dragnet for normal people performing normal transactions. That same inflation, coupled with outdated benchmarks, now pushes American families into poverty by statistical invisibility and brutally repels attempts at upward mobility.

When escape velocity is $140–$150k, and the effective marginal tax rate is 80–120 percent, buying scratch-off tickets ceases to be obviously irrational. One needs a tremendous economic leap of roughly $100,000 a year to continue living without disruption. In a nonlinear system with cliffs and arbitrary phase changes, a low-probability high-payout gamble can be mathematically defensible. Tilting at heavy-tailed payoffs is not illogical; it is a response to a payoff structure policymakers engineered.

A likely response, politically, is to suggest simply lifting eligibility all the way up to the true cost-of-living threshold. But indexing benefits to the real cost of American life would balloon federal outlays by trillions. Extending Medicaid, SNAP, housing subsidies, and childcare credits to households making $140,000 would produce deficit dynamics that would make the 2020–2021 stimulus era look mild and restrained. The welfare state is already actuarially fragile; expanding it to cover half the U.S. population would collapse it.

On the other hand, three somewhat simple reforms could help restore a sane poverty escape velocity:

• Use a modern participation-budget approach, not a 1963 grocery multiple. If there is to be a social safety net, it should be driven by means testing which phases out smoothly, not falls off cliffs.

• Deregulate housing, healthcare, childcare, and education: the sectors where supply is most strangled by regulation. Deregulation—particularly zoning, certificate of need laws, licensing, and insurance mandates—would create downward price pressure far more powerful than subsidies.

• The Federal Reserve’s century-long experiment with cheap money has inflated asset prices, destroyed purchasing power, raised the cost of entry into middle-class life, and widened the gap between wages and participation requirements. A quick fix could be rendered by shifting from discretion to a rules-based monetary regime (whether Taylor-style, commodity-linked, or another transparent, market-tested anchor) to stabilize prices and reduce the boom-bust cycles that erode household stability.

America’s primary poverty crisis is not moral failure, laziness, or poor financial literacy. It is math. A system built on 1963 assumptions cannot function in a 2025 reality.

Until the parameters shift, which is to say until lawmakers acknowledge the true cost of participation, that escape velocity will remain impossibly out of reach for tens of millions. The tragedy is not that people are failing; it is that the system is calibrated for a world that has not existed in over three generations.

There is no reform, no genuine improvement in the condition of the poor, no revival in the living standards of consumers—or of any American who works—without monetary reform beginning at the very top, with the Federal Reserve.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

China’s factory activity staged a slight improvement in November, but once again printed below the median estimate and extended its streak of declines to a record as the country’s economic slowdown deepens. 

The official manufacturing PMI rose to 49.2 from 49.0 in October but remained below the 50 mark that separates growth and contraction for an eighth month. The median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg was 49.4.

Adding insult to injury, the official non-manufacturing PMI fell to 49.5 from 50.1, below the 50.0 consensus forecast, and dropping into contraction for the first time since the economy reopened in 2023l it was driven by weakness in the real estate and residential services sectors. 

The readings offer a preliminary glimpse of how the world’s second-biggest economy fared in November, after months of global trade turbulence and an unprecedented decline in investment. They suggest that GDP extended its decline and is now well below the 4.8% level Beijing pretends China is growing at. So far this quarter, industrial production had its smallest gain since the start of the year…

… while exports unexpectedly contracted, as global demand failed to offset the slump in shipments to the US. 

According to Bloomberg Economics, the November PMI pointed to continuing broad economic weakness and hinted at a further down-drift in consumption. Services dropped sharply into contraction, a stark contrast to the flat reading in 2024 after the long October holiday. Manufacturing and construction also remained in contraction, despite a modest seasonal rebound.

The good news is that tensions with the US eased modestly after a temporary truce last month following a meeting in South Korea between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. Even so, key details of the deal, including questions over Chinese shipments of rare earths, are still being negotiated, underscoring the fragility of the agreement. In fact, as reported here previously, there is still no actual rare earths agreement.

Meanwhile, a diplomatic spat with Japan in recent weeks has added to trade uncertainty, as China contemplates economic countermeasures.

Beyond geopolitical risks, weak domestic demand is still casting a pall over the outlook for Chinese factories. Growth in retail sales slowed for the fifth straight month in October, the longest such streak since the country shuttered shops because of the Covid pandemic more than four years ago.

As Bloomberg notes, the recent downswing in the economy doesn’t mean that additional stimulus measures are on the table. Chinese policymakers are in no rush to act now that their annual growth target of around 5% for this year looks to be within reach. Meanwhile, China’s credit growth – previously the envy of the western world – has slowed to a trickle as the demand simply isn’t there, as Beijing is scared to making China’s massive debt bubble even bigger. 

China already injected additional stimulus worth 1 trillion yuan ($141 billion) since late September, including unused bond quota for provinces to expand investment and repay arrears owed to companies, as well as new funding for policy banks to spur investment. That, however, has not been enough, as we reported recently in “China Prepares New Property Stimulus Package As Housing Crisis Enters Year Six.”

Looking at the next five years, Beijing has made clear it plans to keep tech and manufacturing as the top priorities even as it pledged to “significantly” boost the share of consumption in its economy. Net exports contributed nearly a third of China’s growth this year.

China’s economic growth decelerated last quarter to the slowest pace in a year. Analysts see a further slowdown, forecasting the weakest this quarter since the final three months of 2022, when the nation was nearing the end of its Covid Zero lockdowns.