Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

The president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Moritz Schularick, makes no secret in an interview with the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung that the signs are pointing toward a war economy. It is bizarre to witness how economists succumb to the intellectual mediocrity of central planning.

Professor Moritz Schularick, president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), seems to have found the ultimate solution to Germany’s economic problems. In conversation with the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung (NOZ), the economist complained about a leadership vacuum in German arms policy. He sees it as central to an active industrial policy that could lead Germany out of its economic woes. Schularick expects that arms production will act as a, in his own words, “job booster.”

He said literally: “If we want Europe to truly stand on its own in defense soon and not remain dependent on the MAGA-USA, then Defense Minister Boris Pistorius must be given the order to work with European partners to eventually replace the USA and its capabilities.”

Fatal War Rhetoric 

“Order to march,” military self-sufficiency — the vocabulary is both revealing and dangerous. It seems politics and state-adjacent economic research are converging on a common path regarding military policy and increasingly centrally planned industrial management. A return to market principles seems like a fairy tale in circles of German economists—no one believes anymore in the curative power of freedom from climate diktats, overregulation, and fiscal burdens.

According to Schularick, politics should implement a top-level arms coordinator to manage investment funds in response to the Russian threat. Perhaps he envisions himself in this role? After all, over €500 billion in defense investments are planned by the end of the decade to reduce security dependence on the U.S.

Production Capacity Shortfalls 

Schularick criticized the extremely slow pace of ramping up arms production. Since the war began four years ago, nothing has been done to significantly increase production capacity.

“How many Taurus missiles are finished per month? Not even a handful,” he laments. A clear industrial policy deficit, he concludes.

Here, the new spirit of German economic “academia” emerges: everything revolves around the much-praised global steering, an active industrial policy now pursued by Brussels and Berlin, dangerously fed by state-aligned research.

What was long predicted with three-quarter conviction now seems to be happening. Central planners, including Schularick, apparently assume they can repurpose idle German industrial capacity for the defense sector. Civil car production, in their view, can easily be converted into tank production. Besides producing goods private households do not demand, this creates yet another subsidy-dependent industry, consuming resources from civilian production and artificially raising civilian costs.

Germany’s “Rediscovered” Work Ethic in War Mode 

Schularick grows euphoric about the promising future of the war economy, astonishingly rediscovering a work ethic long absent in Germany. He notes production is still mostly single-shift, five days a week. Implicitly, we learn, these are the jobs of Germany’s economic future.

No one seems to think about what should be produced in the coming years to avoid empty shelves after just three weeks in a potential conflict. It’s not just about armored vehicles but also future technologies like autonomous systems, satellites, AI, or robotics, Schularick adds. Everywhere, German industry has fallen behind.

Where does this competitive disadvantage come from, the central planner wonders? Perhaps from German policy and the Brussels bureaucratic apparatus acting as internal antagonists?

The interview highlights the widening gap between economic reality and the hermetically sealed ivory tower of politics, state-backed research, and sympathetic media, which promote this massive economic mismanagement while failing to critically assess Russia’s actual military strength, which is not capable of a continental invasion.

We’ve seen this playbook during the COVID era: once set in motion, the state-affiliated media machine drives narratives across newspapers, radio, and social media bot armies, suppressing open discourse. Stories of Russian occupation are defended in apocalyptic tones, wearing the public down.

The Central Planners’ Dreamworld 

How do technocrats like Schularick, Merz, or von der Leyen envision converting production lines to military goods in practice? Beyond financing, there’s the question of knowledge transfer. Do blueprints come from the Internet or Boris Pistorius’ ministry?

The knowledge transfer required to build a centrally planned war economy from civilian industry is immense and time-consuming. Even after decades of bitter experience with green transformation—which only drove capital out of Germany—political learning curves remain negative.

Was this the goal? Ironically: to push industry into a corner with climate policies until it falters, then fill freed capacities with arms production?

Beyond the failed climate subsidy business emerges a new extraction pillar: the European defense sector. Whether this experiment can withstand real-world economic conditions—falling productivity, rising debt—is doubtful. Central planners like Schularick will surely have an explanation: they were blocked by forces opposed to European integration, joint war economy, and Brussels debt accumulation.

The Illusion of Central Planning 

No deep economic expertise is needed to see that militarization is doomed to fail. A brief glance at 20th-century history is enough. Beyond massive resource mismanagement, there are issues of national sovereignty, divergent EU geopolitical interests, and a divided Union—especially an Eastern bloc wary of conflict with Russia.

That even economists like Schularick succumb to the lure of powerful central planning shows they are not immune to personal vanity. Surely, they hope their institutes benefit—perhaps with a ministerial-level position as arms coordinator. Who knows which job descriptions are already circulating in Berlin and Brussels.

It is tragic, yet the motto everywhere seems to be: “After us, the flood.”

* * * 

About the author: Thomas Kolbe is a Germany graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

Alcohol consumption patterns in the U.S. vary sharply depending on where people live.

Cultural norms, climate, income levels, and access to services all shape how much residents spend on alcoholic beverages. This visualization, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, maps alcohol spending per adult across all 50 states.

The data comes from SmartAsset.

Alaska Leads by a Wide Margin

Alaska ranks first, with adults spending nearly $1,250 on alcohol in 2024.

The state’s top position is often linked to isolation, harsh weather conditions, and limited access to healthcare and addiction services. Higher prices due to transportation costs also push up total spending.

Wyoming and Colorado follow Alaska closely, both exceeding $1,200 per adult.

Regional Alcohol Spending Trends

Many of the highest-spending states cluster in the West and Northeast. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire rank in the top 10, alongside Oregon and Washington.

At the other end of the spectrum, Utah reports the lowest alcohol spending per adult at just over $600. A large religious population and stricter alcohol regulations help keep consumption and spending well below the national average.

Several Southern and Midwestern states, including West Virginia, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Oklahoma, also fall near the bottom of the rankings. Cultural attitudes, stricter alcohol regulations, and lower average incomes all help explain these patterns.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out Mapping Incarceration Rates Across the U.S. on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday repeated its long-standing objection to troops from NATO countries deploying to Ukrainian territory as part of a potential future peace deal, as Ukraine and its Western backers continue to push the idea.

“The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs warns that the deployment of military units, military facilities, warehouses, and other infrastructure of Western countries on Ukrainian territory will be classified as foreign intervention, posing a direct threat to the security of not only Russia but also other European countries,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

“All such units and facilities will be considered legitimate combat targets of the Russian Armed Forces,” Zakharova added. Her statement came after the UK and France signed a “declaration of intent” committing to lead a troop deployment to Ukraine.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the declaration “paves the way for the legal framework, under which British, French and partner forces could operate on Ukrainian soil,” though the document is lacking in details on what the force would actually look like.

The declaration was signed after Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a gathering of the so-called “coalition of the willing,” referring to the countries willing to send troops to Ukraine. US envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also attended the meeting.

While the US hasn’t committed to sending troops, it has signaled its willingness to provide air support and other types of assistance for European troops in Ukraine.

Zelensky’s office said in a statement on the coalition of the willing gathering that Ukraine “values the United States’ readiness to support forces tasked with preventing a recurrence of Russian aggression.”

Meanwhile some rare EU voices are belatedly urging more muscular diplomacy and not confrontation:

‘It’s time for EU to talk to Russia’ — Italian PM Meloni

Meloni echoed France’s Macron in that; she also called to appoint a special EU envoy for Ukraine for such talks pic.twitter.com/5B6eDoJVt9

— RT (@RT_com) January 9, 2026

The insistence on a Western troops deployment to Ukraine, the US willingness to provide a “NATO-style” security guarantee for the country, and Zelensky’s refusal to cede any territory to Russia make the chances of a peace deal being reached extremely unlikely.

Authored by Roger Bate via the Brownstone Institute,

Before Covid, I would have described myself as a technological optimist. New technologies almost always arrive amid exaggerated fears. Railways were supposed to cause mental breakdowns, bicycles were thought to make women infertile or insane, and early electricity was blamed for everything from moral decay to physical collapse. Over time, these anxieties faded, societies adapted, and living standards rose. The pattern was familiar enough that artificial intelligence seemed likely to follow it: disruptive, sometimes misused, but ultimately manageable.

The Covid years unsettled that confidence—not because technology failed, but because institutions did.

Across much of the world, governments and expert bodies responded to uncertainty with unprecedented social and biomedical interventions, justified by worst-case models and enforced with remarkable certainty. Competing hypotheses were marginalized rather than debated. Emergency measures hardened into long-term policy. When evidence shifted, admissions of error were rare, and accountability rarer still. The experience exposed a deeper problem than any single policy mistake: modern institutions appear poorly equipped to manage uncertainty without overreach.

That lesson now weighs heavily on debates over artificial intelligence.

The AI Risk Divide

Broadly speaking, concern about advanced AI falls into two camps. One group—associated with thinkers like Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares—argues that sufficiently advanced AI is catastrophically dangerous by default. In their deliberately stark formulation, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, the problem is not bad intentions but incentives: competition ensures someone will cut corners, and once a system escapes meaningful control, intentions no longer matter.

A second camp, including figures such as Stuart Russell, Nick Bostrom, and Max Tegmark, also takes AI risk seriously but is more optimistic that alignment, careful governance, and gradual deployment can keep systems under human control.

Despite their differences, both camps converge on one conclusion: unconstrained AI development is dangerous, and some form of oversight, coordination, or restraint is necessary. Where they diverge is on feasibility and urgency. What is rarely examined, however, is whether the institutions expected to provide that restraint are themselves fit for the role.

Covid suggests reason for doubt.

Covid was not merely a public-health crisis; it was a live experiment in expert-driven governance under uncertainty. Faced with incomplete data, authorities repeatedly chose maximal interventions justified by speculative harms. Dissent was often treated as a moral failing rather than a scientific necessity. Policies were defended not through transparent cost-benefit analysis but through appeals to authority and fear of hypothetical futures.

This pattern matters because it reveals how modern institutions behave when stakes are framed as existential. Incentives shift toward decisiveness, narrative control, and moral certainty. Error correction becomes reputationally costly. Precaution stops being a tool and becomes a doctrine.

The lesson is not that experts are uniquely flawed. It is that institutions reward overconfidence far more reliably than humility, especially when politics, funding, and public fear align. Once extraordinary powers are claimed in the name of safety, they are rarely surrendered willingly.

These are precisely the dynamics now visible in discussions of AI oversight.

The “What if” Machine

A recurring justification for expansive state intervention is the hypothetical bad actor: What if a terrorist builds this? What if a rogue state does that? From that premise flows the argument that governments must act pre-emptively, at scale, and often in secrecy, to prevent catastrophe.

During Covid, similar logic justified sweeping biomedical research agendas, emergency authorizations, and social controls. The reasoning was circular: because something dangerous might happen, the state must take extraordinary action now—action that itself carried significant, poorly understood risks.

AI governance is increasingly framed in the same way. The danger is not only that AI systems might behave unpredictably, but that fear of that possibility will legitimize permanent emergency governance—centralized control over computation, research, and information flows—on the grounds that there is no alternative.

Private Risk, Public Risk

One underappreciated distinction in these debates is between risks generated by private actors and risks generated by state authority. Private firms are constrained—imperfectly, but meaningfully—by liability, competition, reputation, and market discipline. These constraints do not eliminate harm, but they create feedback loops.

Governments operate differently. When states act in the name of catastrophic prevention, feedback weakens. Failures can be reclassified as necessities. Costs can be externalized. Secrecy can be justified by security. Hypothetical future harms become policy levers in the present.

Several AI thinkers implicitly acknowledge this. Bostrom has warned about “lock-in” effects—not just from AI systems, but from governance structures created during moments of panic. Anthony Aguirre’s call for global restraint, while logically coherent, relies on international coordination bodies whose recent track record on humility and error correction is poor. Even more moderate proposals assume regulators capable of resisting politicization and mission creep.

Covid gives us little reason to be confident in that assumption.

The Oversight Paradox

This leads to a troubling paradox at the heart of the AI debate. If one genuinely believes advanced AI must be constrained, slowed, or halted, it is governments and transnational institutions that are most likely to hold the power to do so. Yet these are precisely the actors whose recent behavior gives the least confidence in restrained, reversible use of that power.

Emergency framing is sticky. Authority acquired to manage hypothetical risks tends to persist and expand. Institutions rarely downgrade their own importance. In the AI context, this raises the possibility that the response to AI risk entrenches brittle, politicized systems of control that are harder to unwind than any individual technology.

The danger, in other words, is not only that AI escapes human control, but that fear of AI accelerates the concentration of authority in institutions already shown to be slow to admit error and hostile to dissent.

Rethinking the Real Risk

This is not an argument for complacency about AI, nor a denial that powerful technologies can do real harm. It is an argument for broadening the frame. Institutional failure is itself an existential variable. A system that assumes benevolent, self-correcting governance is no safer than one that assumes benevolent, aligned superintelligence.

Before Covid, it was reasonable to attribute most technological pessimism to human negativity bias—the tendency to believe that our generation’s challenges are uniquely unmanageable. After Covid, skepticism looks less like bias and more like experience.

The central question in the AI debate is therefore not just whether machines can be aligned with human values, but whether modern institutions can be trusted to manage uncertainty without amplifying it. If that trust has eroded—and Covid suggests it has—then calls for expansive AI oversight deserve at least as much scrutiny as claims of technological inevitability.

The greatest risk may not be that AI becomes too powerful, but that fear of that possibility justifies forms of control we later discover are far harder to live with—or escape.

Roger Bate is a Brownstone Fellow, Senior Fellow at the International Center for Law and Economics (Jan 2023-present), Board member of Africa Fighting Malaria (September 2000-present), and Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs (January 2000-present).

Silver prices surged to new all-time highs in December, extending a powerful end-of-year rally supported by geopolitical uncertainty and a weaker U.S. dollar.

Silver futures briefly touched around $80, marking an unprecedented 160% rally in 2025 that outpaced even gold. Against this backdrop, Visual Capitalists Bruno Venditti notes that understanding where the world’s silver reserves are concentrated provides crucial context for future supply dynamics.

The data for this visualization comes from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Mineral Commodity Summaries (January 2025). It estimates total global silver reserves at about 641,400 metric tons.

Peru’s Dominant Reserve Position

Peru stands out as the single largest holder of silver reserves, with an estimated 140,000 metric tons. This represents roughly 22% of the global total, giving the country a uniquely strategic position in the silver market.

Behind Peru is a cluster of countries with substantial, but smaller, reserve bases. Australia, Russia, and China each hold between 70,000 and 94,000 metric tons, collectively accounting for about 40% of global reserves.

Production Powerhouses vs. Reserve Depth

Mexico offers a striking contrast between production and reserves. It leads the world in silver production, yet holds just 37,000 metric tons of reserves, or about 6% of the global total. Currently, Mexico’s mining sector relies on intensive extraction with fewer projects with established reserves in the pipeline.

Silver in Green Technology

Global silver demand is poised to soar in the next decade, driven by emerging technologies like electric vehicles and solar power.

Silver demand from solar alone has grown from less than 50 million ounces (Moz) a decade ago to an expected 160 Moz in 2023.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out Mapped: Which Countries Hold the Most Gold Reserves? on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said on Jan. 7 that the U.S. population will likely grow by only 15 million people in the next 30 years, a decline from its last estimate.

The office projects 364 million people living in the United States in 2056, up from the current population of around 349 million.

The population growth will be 0.3 percent on average in the next 10 years, but will go down to an average rate of just 0.1 percent between 2037 and 2056, CBO projects.

The population projection is down 2.1 percent from the 372 million CBO estimated in a January 2025 report, and the 383 million it projected in a 2024 estimate.

The drop stems from declining fertility rates and lower numbers of immigrants coming to the country, according to the budget office.

For a generation to replace itself in the absence of immigration, the fertility rate needs to be 2.1 births per woman.

The fertility rate in the United States peaked in 2007 at 2.12 births per woman. It dropped to 1.6 births per woman in 2024, the most recent year for which data on fertility were available when the CBO compiled the new projections.

CBO projects the rate will decrease to 1.58 births per woman in 2026 and to 1.53 births per woman in 2036, and that the rate will not drop further in the following 20 years.

Women born in other countries are more likely to have more children. CBO projects the fertility rate for those women to fall from 1.79 births per woman in 2026 before flattening at 1.66 births per woman in 2036. Native-born women will have 1.5 births per woman in 2032, down from 1.53 births per woman currently, and stay around that rate through 2056, according to the office.

The office acknowledged its projections are “subject to considerable uncertainty” and that changes from the projections would impact the actual population.

President Donald Trump has attempted to increase the birth rate through various actions, including introducing taxpayer-funded savings accounts for newborns and making a deal to lower the cost of fertility drugs.

Immigration

CBO said that without net immigration, or more immigrants coming to the country than those leaving, the population would start shrinking in 2030.

The immigration projections are down from 2025, when CBO estimated net immigration would be 2 million in 2025, 1.5 million in 2026, and an average of 1.1 million per year from 2027 to 2055.

CBO said in 2025, just 410,000 immigrants were added. It also now projects an average of just 330,000 more immigrants entering the United States than leaving each year from 2026 to 2036, although it does forecast an increase to 1.2 million a year in the following two decades.

The reduction is partly because of a drop in illegal immigration under President Donald Trump, demographers said. CBO said the combined net immigration of three types of immigrants—people who illegally entered the country, people who illegally stayed after their legal status expired, and people who were paroled during the Biden administration—plummeted from 2.4 million in 2023 to 1.3 million in 2024 and negative 360,000 in 2025.

CBO said its immigration projections were uncertain, in part because future actions from Congress or a president could impact immigration.

Trump and administration officials have used a variety of methods to stem illegal immigration and strengthen vetting procedures, including a visa ban on applications for immigrants from some countries and deploying Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in U.S. cities to track down immigrants who are in the country illegally.

Trump’s tax and spending legislative package, passed by Congress and signed in July, included roughly $150 billion to ramp up immigration enforcement and deportation agenda over the next four years.

Even if the limits on immigration and increased deportations end with the Trump administration in three years, “it’s still a demographic shock,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, of the new forecast.

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin quietly began unwinding portions of their financial empires in California in the days leading up to Christmas, according to corporate filings reviewed by The New York Times, as progressive lawmakers consider a proposed billionaire wealth tax. This development confirms our earlier note that California is on an accelerated path toward self-destruction.

Here are the new details from NYT’s report that further confirm our previous reporting:

In the 10 days before Christmas, an entity connected to Mr. Brin, 52, terminated or moved 15 California limited liability companies that oversee some of his business interests and investments out of the state, according to documents seen by The New York Times. Seven of the companies — including those that appear to manage one of Mr. Brin’s superyachts and his interest in a private air terminal at San Jose’s international airport — were converted into Nevada entities.

Mr. Brin is joining Mr. Page, 52, in reducing his California presence. More than 45 California limited liability companies associated with Mr. Page filed documents last month to either become inactive or move out of the state, according to state records. A trust with ties to Mr. Page also purchased a $71.9 million mansion in Miami’s Coconut Grove neighborhood this week, according to a deed seen by The Times.

Another entity jointly managed by Mr. Brin and Mr. Page moved out of California and to Nevada on Christmas Eve, according to a filing seen by The Times.

The shrinking financial footprints of both Google founders in the state (plagued with an continued exodus) coincide with a proposed California ballot initiative backed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (S.E.I.U.-U.H.W), which would impose a one-time 5% tax on the assets of residents worth more than $1 billion, applied retroactively to those living in the stateJose’s Jan. 1.

Bill Ackman said it best on X, “California is on a path to self-destruction. Hollywood is already toast, and now the most productive entrepreneurs will leave, taking their tax revenues and job creation elsewhere.”

California is on a path to self-destruction. Hollywood is already toast and now the most productive entrepreneurs will leave taking their tax revenues and job creation elsewhere.

And then the Democrats highlight @CAgovernor Newsom as a great leader. Crazy. https://t.co/bFyLhARrNn

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) December 27, 2025

Even Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and a Democratic mega-donor who funds questionable left-wing causes, called out S.E.I.U.-U.H.W’s proposed billionaire tax. He wrote on X that this is a “horrendous idea” that might force tech founders and executives to flee the state.

“The proposed CA wealth tax is badly designed in so many ways that a simple social post cannot cover all of the massive flaws. One well-documented example is the horrendous idea to tax illiquid stock in the proposal. Poorly designed taxes incentivize avoidance, capital flight, and distortions that ultimately raise less revenue,” Hoffman wrote on X earlier this week.

Rep. Khanna reached out to me to discuss the proposed California wealth tax; and while I am against the proposed tax, I’m always open to dialogue with our elected leaders.

The proposed CA wealth tax is badly designed in so many ways that a simple social post cannot cover all of…

— Reid Hoffman (@reidhoffman) January 7, 2026

Elon Musk was among the earliest high-profile billionaires to leave California, citing high taxes and radical left-wing state leadership.

Authored by Steven Kritz via the Brownstone Institute,

It is generally acknowledged that the Baby Boom generation (of which I am a member) has been the most successful, socioeconomically speaking, in the history of this planet, and the prospects for the generations following to match or surpass us are not looking good. As a confirmation of the disparity, I recently read that while Baby Boomers make up approximately 20% of the current US population, they possess more than 50% of the wealth.    

In speaking with others of my generation, I have come to realize that very few Baby Boomers have even a modicum of insight as to how that success happened. The typical pabulum that I get from my peers is that they got their education and worked hard, implying that it should be no different for the younger generations. 

To be fair, I can see several historical and sociological factors that would lead Boomers to think this way. First of all, many of our parents pounded into our heads from an early age that going to college was the key to success. Some things just don’t change from generation to generation! In fact, when Boomers entered the work force en masse during the 1970s, we were the largest new worker cohort in the history of the country, and approximately 30% of us had a college degree, up from, at most, 10% for previous generations. 

However, despite our educational advantages, the 1970s was a disastrous time economically for everyone, but especially for those entering the workforce, and those permanently leaving the workforce, due to retirement or disability. We were plagued by two recessions, two huge oil shocks, and stagflation. Engineering as a career was absolutely dead. Add the extremely challenging geopolitical environment both at home and abroad, and we experienced an era when it was virtually impossible to get ahead solely through one’s education and hard work. 

I was able to sidestep much of this, at least socioeconomically speaking, even though my dad had suddenly and unexpectedly died at the age of 42 in mid-December 1969. That’s because I spent the first three years of the 1970s finishing college, the next four years in medical school, and the final three years of the decade as an Internal Medicine resident. In those days, the cost of living, including college and medical school could be handled without too much difficulty, and the pay as a medical resident was sufficient for me to have a very nice apartment in Brooklyn, while also being able to save some money. As such, I didn’t enter the “real” workforce until the middle of 1980. 

The timing for me was near perfect! Beginning in the middle of 1982, the greatest economic boom in history launched, and due to significant gains in the areas of racial equality and women’s rights, all groups participated. In fact, every quintile of household income set a record in all but two or three years of this boom, peaking in 1999. 

Given that the 1980s and 1990s were in the wheelhouse of every Baby Boomer’s working career, I could see where the attitude would be that getting an education and working hard would lead to success. Extrapolating this thinking to the younger generations, it would make sense for Boomers to believe that the younger generations, having an even higher percentage with a college degree, just need to keep working hard and they will also achieve the same level of success. However, there are several major flaws in this thought process. 

Some of it stems from the fact that the Boomers were the first “me” generation. It resulted in an inability to see the world from other than a personal bubble that was easily filled with nonsense. One of the things that has been completely missed by the Boomers is that Gen X, which is currently in its peak earnings years, has not, and never will catch up to the Boomers in terms of wealth accumulation. 

Carrying this train of thought further, one might ask the following questions: (1) Are Boomers smarter than the generations that followed? I’d say no, except for people born between 2005 and 2020, who were permanently damaged by the Covid response. The extent of the damage won’t be known for another decade or two, since that cohort has not entered the workforce as yet. (2) Did the Boomers work harder than the generations that followed? 

While every generation believes that the younger generations are overrun by lazy bastards, it’s not true. The reason for this misconception is that the tools available to each successive generation to help them work more effectively (and generate more wealth) evolve from generation to generation. 

In order to explain the success of the Boomers, one has to look at the economic environment within which each generation lived during its working lives. The wealth creation of the 1980s and 1990s was not because Boomers were so great; it was because we operated in an economic environment that was conducive to success at a level that had never been seen before. That economic environment can be described in one word: Reaganomics. 

Very recently, the word meritocracy has come back in vogue. What I can state with near certainty is that the era when meritocracy reached its zenith in this country was during the 1980s and 1990s, and it was largely due to an economic environment that promoted it. Since the end of the 20th century, those favorable conditions haven’t existed, other than during the years 2018 and 2019.

From the foregoing, it should be clear that most Boomers put the cart before the horse when it comes to explaining our generation’s success…and our children are paying a heavy price for this lack of insight. What has been particularly difficult for Millennials is that their childhood occurred during the greatest economic boom ever, only to enter the workforce beginning in 2000, when everything changed, and not for the better. 

Having not been taught the real reason why the Boomers succeeded, the younger generations do not understand (and actively resist) the efforts by the Trump administration to reestablish the economic environment of the 1980s and 1990s. The only taste of it occurred in 2018 and 2019, when household incomes in every quintile finally broke through the records previously set in 1999, but it was overshadowed by the Covid disaster, which distorted everything. 

As mentioned earlier, the term meritocracy has been resurrected, but what is really being put forward is credentialocracy. They are not the same. If they were, the younger generations would be doing just fine, socioeconomically speaking. We live in a country where having more initials after one’s name imputes greater intelligence, superior level of achievement, and higher ethical standing. More than anything, the disaster known as the Covid response taught us otherwise, in that the best and the brightest made everything much worse than it would have been had we done absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, this lesson has not penetrated most peoples’ personal bubble; at least not yet.

To make matters worse, our so-called educational system has cheapened the value of a credential, while charging higher and higher tuition to obtain it. In fact, our educational system rewards teachers, not for how well the students they teach perform, but by how many post-graduate credits and degrees the teacher obtains. 

To me, this credentialing madness reached the height of perversity and insanity when it became clear that the CDC’s recommendations for protecting children’s health with regard to school closings, social distancing, masking, and “vaccine” mandates were dictated to the head of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky (who has MD and MPH credentials) by Randi Weingarten, head of the largest teachers’ union (who has a JD credential). This is backwards, and tremendous damage has been done. Want more? Despite the fact that uptake of the Covid shots has dropped to around 5%, it is my observation that among the highly educated, uptake is several times higher. Are the best and the brightest in the process of self-immolation? 

Clearly, we need to decouple meritocracy from credentialocracy, and we must return to a state in which meritocracy can flourish. This will require unlearning the progressive garbage that’s replaced critical thinking over the past 55+ years, and an economic environment that fosters individual initiative. Otherwise, we’re done, and you might as well stick a fork in us now.

Steven Kritz, MD is a retired physician, who has been in the healthcare field for 50 years. He graduated from SUNY Downstate Medical School and completed IM Residency at Kings County Hospital. This was followed by almost 40 years of healthcare experience, including 19 years of direct patient care in a rural setting as a Board Certified Internist; 17 years of clinical research at a private-not-for-profit healthcare agency; and over 35 years of involvement in public health, and health systems infrastructure and administration activities. He retired 5 years ago, and became a member of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the agency where he had done clinical research, where he has been IRB Chair for the past 3 years.

President Trump’s push to revive Venezuela’s oil sector is colliding with a major technical obstacle: vast methane leaks from crumbling infrastructure that could scare off large international investors, according to Bloomberg.

Satellite monitoring shows huge plumes of methane rising from abandoned rigs, corroded pipelines and aging facilities across the country. Those emissions signal both lost revenue and deep operational problems — conditions that tend to deter major oil companies. As Clayton Nash of Tegre Corp. put it, “That’s one way that you’re going to know that you’ve got facilities that are not operated well.”

Each year Venezuela wastes about 13 billion cubic meters of natural gas through flaring, venting and leaks, roughly $1.4 billion in potential revenue. About a quarter of its total gas output escapes into the atmosphere — the highest rate globally and nearly ten times the world average. The scale of those leaks reflects decades of neglect, theft and underinvestment, leaving what remains of the system fragile and costly to repair.

Bloomberg writes that those realities complicate Trump’s effort to draw fresh capital. The White House is bringing U.S. oil executives to Washington on Friday to advance that plan, with the core message expected to be: “Do it for our country.” Yet analysts warn that political instability and Venezuela’s history of seizing foreign assets may keep major companies on the sidelines.

“We anticipate that large, publicly traded US and European majors will remain hesitant given their checkered history in the region,” said Quentin Peyle of Kayrros SA. “Instead, investment will likely come from smaller operators with a higher risk appetite.”

That shift carries its own risks. Smaller firms often lack the capital and incentives needed to modernize operations and control emissions at scale. Even if leaks are reduced, Deborah Gordon of RMI cautioned that “Venezuela’s fields will not only need an overhaul but also require careful operational management and oversight long into the future,” adding that the country’s extra-heavy crude would remain a major source of CO₂.

Restoring production near Venezuela’s former peak of almost 4 million barrels per day could require about $100 billion over the next decade. And the true condition of the infrastructure may remain hidden until output increases. As Nash warned, “You’re not going to find out how bad things are until you ramp up production.”

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

The overarching trend is that the US is militarily reasserting its historical “sphere of influence” over the Americas, and enforcing the maritime component of “Fortress America” is so important for Trump 2.0 that it’s willing to rubbish the “rules-based order” over it and even risk an accidental war with Russia.

The Russian-flagged Marinera tanker was just seized by the US in the Atlantic. It was earlier named the Bella 1 and is under US sanctions due to connections to Hezbollah. It sailed under the Guyanese flag from Iran to Venezuela and attempted to break the US’ blockade. It failed, turned around, changed its name to the Marinera, and received a temporary permit to sail under the Russian flag before being seized. Russian then demanded that its citizens on board be treated humanely and returned home.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth posted that “The blockade of sanctioned and illicit Venezuelan oil remains in FULL EFFECT — anywhere in the world.” This preceded Attorney General Pam Bondi threatening that criminal charges might be pursued against the crew. Her tweet and Hegseth’s other one about how the US will only permit “legitimate and lawful” energy commerce with Venezuela shows that it’s once again assuming so-called “police” functions. Here are three takeaways from this incident:

1. The US Is Surprisingly Nonchalant About An Accidental War With Russia

It was brazen even by the US’ standards to seize a Russian-flagged tanker, especially after Western media reported that Russia had dispatched ships and a submarine to escort it, which Russia didn’t confirm and none were nearby during the seizure. Nevertheless, Trump 2.0 calculated that there’d be no retaliation despite the deputy chairman of Russia’s parliamentary defense committee warning that “any attack on our carriers can be regarded as an attack on our territory, even if the ship is under a foreign flag.”

This incident interestingly occurred in parallel with the US backing European ceasefire guarantees for Ukraine that include British and French commitments to deploy troops there during that time even though Russia has repeatedly warned that they’d be legitimate targets. Quite clearly, the US is now surprisingly nonchalant about an accidental war with Russia, whether over seizing one of its flagged ships at sea or over NATO allies getting killed in Ukraine. This observation won’t be lost on Russia.

2. “Fortress America” Also Includes An Important Maritime Component

The goal of restoring the US’ unipolar hegemony over the Americas, which is described as the highest regional priority in its new National Security Strategy, can be referred to as building “Fortress America”. This isn’t being pursued just for reasons of prestige but also pragmatism in the sense of enabling the US to survive and even thrive if it’s ever expelled from the Eastern Hemisphere or decides to retreat from there since control over the hemisphere’s resources and markets would all but ensure this outcome.

As can be seen by this incident as well as Hegseth’s and Bondi’s posts about it, there’s also an important maritime component related to controlling the export of oil from Venezuela, which has the world’s largest reserves. This can only be achieved by maintaining the unilateral blockade and seizing all ships that violate it, both on law enforcement pretexts that embody the concept of extraterritoriality. Without this maritime component, “Fortress America” could never truly be built, but it’s not without some costs.

3. The US Is Dismantling The “Rules-Based Order” That It Built Over The Decades

The abovementioned point segues into the last one about how the US’ militarily enforced extraterritoriality vis-à-vis Venezuela dismantles the “rules-based order” that it built over the decades for maintaining its unipolar hegemony over the world after the end of the Old Cold War. This violates the international laws that the US used to selectively police across the world according to its arbitrary standards. Instead of international ones, the US is now policing its own, but also in pursuit of hegemony.

International law has increasingly become illusory due to the UN’s innate dysfunction, which is related to the deadlock among the UNSC’s five permanent members, with one usually vetoing significant proposals from the others. Even so, if the Great Powers abided by it in their ties with one another, then there’d be more predictability and less risk of war by miscalculation. The US is no longer interested in even that as proven by this incident, however, since building “Fortress America” now takes precedence over all else.

The trend connecting the three aforementioned takeaways is that the US is militantly reasserting its historical “sphere of influence” over the Americas, and this is so important for Trump 2.0 that it’s willing to rubbish the “rules-based order” over it and even risk an accidental war with Russia. The maritime component off of Venezuela’s Caribbean coast that’s been built before all else is justified by the administration as a law enforcement operation that prioritizes domestic laws over international ones.

Since this is taking place on the other side of the world where neither half of the Sino-Russo Entente has any military bases, they can’t challenge this even through indirect means, unlike how the US challenged Russia’s reassertion of its own historical “sphere of influence” in Ukraine through the ongoing proxy war. This doesn’t mean that the US’ grand strategic goal of restoring its unipolar hegemony over the Americas will succeed, just that if it doesn’t, then it’ll be due to intra-hemispheric reasons and not external forces.