Which countries have the most educated populations?

Higher levels of tertiary education among a populace generally indicate greater potential for innovation and economic growth, but this isn’t always the case.

In this graphic, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualizes educational attainment by country, breaking things down into three categories: below high-school, high-school or diploma, and college or university degree.

Data & Discussion

This data comes from the OECD’s Education at a Glance 2025 report. It compares educational attainment among working-age adults across 45 countries as of 2024.

Leaders in Higher Education

Canada tops the list with nearly 65% of adults holding a college or university degree, followed closely by Ireland and South Korea.

These nations have invested heavily in expanding access to higher education, driven by knowledge-based economies that reward advanced qualifications.

According to other OECD data, higher levels of education bring significant earnings advantages.

For instance, across OECD nations, tertiary graduates typically earn double the income of individuals who have not completed secondary education (high school).

Balanced Education Models in Europe

Countries like Austria and Germany demonstrate a more balanced split between tertiary and vocational education (education related to a specific job or trade).

For example, Germany ranks 19th in the world in terms of GDP per capita, despite only 34% of its adults having a university degree.

The country has a strong apprenticeship system where students combine hands-on training with theoretical learning, resulting in a high rate of employment upon graduation.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The Universities Producing the Most Billionaires on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán marked the anniversary of the 1956 Revolution in Budapest with a public address portraying his government as the spiritual heir of those who rose up against Soviet tanks nearly 70 years ago.

Speaking before tens of thousands gathered for a Peace March on the national holiday, Orbán cast modern-day Brussels as Hungary’s new oppressor and vowed that the country would remain “a strong and sovereign nation with dignity” standing for peace while the rest of Europe “marches with the war alliance.”

“The pro-war countries have already formed a coalition of the willing,” Orbán declared. “They are willing to send others to die. If Brussels had not blocked the U.S. President’s peace mission, the war would be over. Everybody knows that if Donald Trump had been president, the war would not have broken out, and if he were not chained now, there would be peace.”

🇭🇺🕊 Budapest today: tens of thousands stand for one cause: #peace! pic.twitter.com/eyWts1cm9S

— Balázs Orbán (@BalazsOrban_HU) October 23, 2025

Throughout the speech, Orbán repeatedly drew parallels between the 1956 uprising against Soviet domination and his government’s present-day confrontations with the European Union. “From there, the Soviets have left, the IMF has gone home, and the pro-migration Brussels will go the same way,” he said to loud applause. “None of them could swallow us. We were stuck in their throats.”

🕊️ The day of the Budapest Peace March has come. Today we send a message to the whole world: Hungary says NO to war! We will not die for Ukraine. We will not send our children to the slaughterhouse at Brussels’ command.

🔴 Watch my speech live at 1pm CET here on X. pic.twitter.com/PQKd1lrYSY

— Orbán Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) October 23, 2025

Portraying Hungary as the “only migrant-free country in Europe,” Orbán praised supporters of his Fidesz movement for defending “families against the whole Brussels snake pit,” expelling “LGBTQ activists from schools,” and maintaining a “Christian and patriotic constitution.” He described his supporters as “the largest national patriotic movement in Central Europe, and perhaps in Europe as a whole.”

🚨 BREAKING:

This is the Power of Hungary.

No EU flags only Support for Hungary.

200,000+ people for Peace and PM Orbán Viktor. 🇭🇺 pic.twitter.com/gGLNjuaepw

— Based Hungary 🇭🇺 (@HungaryBased) October 23, 2025

On foreign policy, Orbán insisted that Hungary would not be drawn into the conflict in Ukraine, calling it “not our war.” “We will not give our money, we will not give our weapons, we will not go to war, and we will not die for Ukraine — but we will live for Hungary,” he said. He rejected any prospect of Ukraine joining the European Union or NATO, asserting that such membership “would bring the war in, take our money out, and destroy our economy. Partnership, yes; membership, no.”

As the 2026 elections draw closer — Hungarians will head to the polls in April next year — Orbán framed the coming months as a historic choice between “peace or war, freedom or slavery.” He urged his followers to convince “misled Hungarians” that opposition parties “sent here from Brussels” are tools of “the Brussels bureaucrats who want to impose the migration pact on us.”

Calling on Hungary’s youth to “wake up, rebel, your country is waiting for you,” Orbán warned that “the Brussels empire wants you to be homeless Europeans… It wants you to stay in the virtual world, hooked up to a computer.”

Concluding his speech on Kossuth Square, Orbán declared: “In 1956, Budapest was the European capital of freedom. In 2025, Budapest will be the European capital of peace. God above us all, Hungary above all!”

Read more here…

Like it or not, advertising is culture.  Marketing is an expression of a society’s norms, values and demographics.  It is meant to serve the free market by appealing to either a target demographic or the most common demographic as a way to sell products and services.  That said, advertising can also be used as propaganda, designed to sell ideologies rather than soda, cars and insurance.

This has been the primary setting of marketing in the west for at least the past ten years – The vast majority of commercials have political messaging embedded within them.  Though it might not be obvious for the unaware, once you notice the patterns it’s impossible to avoid them. 

A new propaganda advertisement paid for by Denmark’s state television and posing as a promotion for a science show called “Evolution.”  

The commercial features an “expert” interrupting a white Danish couple as they flirt with each other.  He explains to them that the history of war in Denmark introduced foreign DNA into their gene pool which “protected them from disease”.  He then compares their relationship to inbreeding and suggests they find new partners with more “exotic” genetics. 

The woman then smiles as if she’s intrigued by the idea.

This ad in Denmark shows two Danes making out before an “expert” shows up and tells them that they shouldn’t date each other because that is inbreeding and that they need to have kids with non-whites. pic.twitter.com/liNcIVCnez

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) October 26, 2025

The series was originally created in 2020, but is now being re-aired with “inbreeding” ads this year.  Perhaps Danish TV is unaware of the rapid political shift away from woke propaganda from 2020 to 2025?  This messaging is a stark contrast from Denmark’s “Do It For Denmark” ad campaign in 2014, which encouraged Danish couples to get busy and combat the nation’s population decline by making more babies.  

Setting aside the lack of historical context and scientific accuracy, the inbreeding commercial plays into an ongoing trend of anti-white sentiment in advertising in Europe over the last decade.  It also is clearly meant to support the government’s pro-mass immigration stance, which has led to Denmark’s foreign numbers doubling to 16.3% of the population in less than ten years (as well as a 30% increase in violent crime over the same time period).   

One trend that has been noticed in Europe and the US is the increasing prevalence of minorities in advertising while white people (specifically white men) are greatly diminished.  In the UK, for example, the population is 83% white, but you wouldn’t know by watching their advertisements.  Black citizens in the UK are 4% of the population, yet they make up over 50% of actors featured in commercials as noted in Channel 4’s “mirror” data.  

One is hard pressed to find happy white couples in these ads.  Instead, mixed-race couples dominate marketing in the west, despite the fact that they represent only 10% of all marriages in the US and Europe.   

Mention this over-representation in the UK in a political setting, however, and you will be attacked as a racist.  The common retort:  “Why do you care?” 

‘She should be utterly ashamed of herself.’

Labour’s Wes Streeting condemns Reform MP Sarah Pochin’s remarks about adverts ‘full of black people,’ labelling them racist. pic.twitter.com/gHNbBF9Fj8

— LBC (@LBC) October 26, 2025

But what would the progressive response be if minorities were being systematically removed from advertising below their percentage of the population?  Well, we already know how they would respond.

The Sidney Sweeney jeans/genes ad broadcast this summer for American Eagle triggered a salty firestorm among leftists who accused the company and Sweeney of “Nazi propaganda.”  A beautiful white woman talking about her good genes was treated like the ultimate social crime.  Leftists couldn’t handle just one commercial that stepped outside of their narrative. 

This is how much the political left cares about controlling the messaging of advertising.  They care because they believe that marketing is a tool for social engineering.  And, they seem to be particularly interested in getting rid of white couples, not just in media, but in the real world.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

Germany’s dramatic economic collapse is dragging its geopolitical standing down with it. Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul has now learned what it means to be treated as a second-tier diplomat, receiving the red card from Beijing. A humiliation and a reprimand for Germany.

The school of life can be cruel. Growing up usually means losing lofty ideals, fringe ideologies and the dreamy mindset of an inexperienced existence to the harsh reality of the world. Reality follows its own rules, unimpressed by self-delusion.

That moment of maturity, the exit from the bubble of hermetically sealed party ideology, has now arrived for Germany’s top diplomat.

A Minister of Fantasies

Johann Wadephul, who only recently wandered through wonderland attributing the German economic miracle to Turkish immigrants, had to cancel his first official visit to China at the last minute because Beijing saw no need to speak with a German delegation.

The Christian Democrat is learning, much like his BlackRock-seasoned party colleague Friedrich Merz, that Germany’s dramatic economic decline is being followed instantly by a loss of geopolitical relevance.

Wadephul’s first China trip was intended as a reset in the strained diplomatic relationship with Beijing. A high-profile business delegation was set to accompany him and help ease tensions over critical rare earth supplies.

China has been threatening a complete export ban for weeks, a measure that would instantly paralyze key German industries.

Suddenly Business Matters

The delegation was to include representatives from the German automotive industry, Siemens Healthineers, the German Robotics Association and a leading importer of rare earth elements. Together, they were meant to relieve pressure in Beijing and secure access to the essential resources that Germany’s industrial base cannot function without.

When Beijing made clear that it would not entertain additional talks beyond the mandatory meeting of foreign ministers, Wadephul was forced to cancel the trip late Friday. A last-ditch attempt to save face and limit the political damage.

Perhaps Wadephul should have copied his predecessor Annalena Baerbock and focused on moral-philosophical escapism such as feminist foreign policy. It is harmless, fits the German zeitgeist and would have earned him brownie points among left-leaning coalition partners.

The Giant’s Achilles Heel

Right now Europe would desperately need a delegation that positions itself smartly in the slipstream of the Americans.

Every giant has a weakness. China’s economy is caught in a self-reinforcing deflationary spiral triggered by draconian US tariffs and a long-festering property crisis caused by massive state-driven capital misallocation.

Deflation is fatal because China’s growth relies on the fiat-credit machine. Rising insolvencies mean shrinking loan books. The credit turbo sputters, collateral values collapse through fire sales and oversupply, especially in real estate. Then the state must intervene again, inject more government credit and weaken its currency further.

It is a vicious cycle gripping nearly every modern economy.

China’s answer has always been the same: a colossal export-subsidy engine, a mercantilist model built at the expense of trade partners who lost production capacity to China.

Beijing’s trade surplus accounts for roughly 1 percent of global GDP. Roughly 1 trillion US dollars, fueled by massive export aid.

On top of that come geopolitical Trojan horses like the Belt and Road Initiative, opening markets wherever China needs raw materials.

China Is Desperate for Replacement Markets

Europe’s internal market has become essential for Beijing to dump excess production. The US market is increasingly blocked since Donald Trump’s tariff offensive: Chinese exports to the United States have crashed by a staggering 27 percent.

At the same time, Chinese exports to Germany rose 10.7 percent in the first half of the year.

To prevent a labor-market meltdown at home, Beijing is flooding alternative markets with overcapacity. The Communist Party is facing a youth unemployment rate likely around 20 percent. The social explosive lies right there.

This is precisely where Europe — especially Berlin — could apply leverage. In the escalating struggle for rare earth access, crucial for German industry and especially automakers, Europe could build real bargaining power by teaming up with the United States.

Irresponsible and Stubborn

It is irresponsible, considering China’s 90 percent dominance in rare-earth refining, not to side with Washington and secure strategic advantages for Europe’s own industrial survival.

Ideologically rigid, strategically naive and severely weakened by its trade debacles with the US, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is stumbling from one pseudo-summit to the next like a dethroned Brussels queen.

One gets the impression that the entire climate circus, the theatrical solidarity on Ukraine and the delusional green posture have become a psychological overcompensation for the visible failure of the Brussels project.

Time to Seek Alliance with the United States

Europe should have embraced geopolitical division of labor with Washington from the start. Especially now that the US, under a hyperactive foreign-policy president, is openly claiming leadership. Trump is right to point at EU protectionism, ubiquitous climate regulation and a policy increasingly hostile to markets.

Washington is on the offensive: deregulation, tax cuts, junking the quasi-religious climate cult. It’s working: the US economy is growing 3.8 percent, new debt fell from 6.7 to 5.8 percent. Trump is recalibrating the system while Europe tumbles in the opposite direction: higher debt, deeper recession.

Wadephul and his fellow European diplomats must finally accept this reality and drop their escalating crusade over censorship laws, scrap the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and the online-surveillance regime entirely. Instead, they should seek fair trade with the US without hidden climate protectionism.

Europe is resource-poor and energy-dependent, importing up to 60 percent of its energy. Without Russian energy and raw materials, Europe’s prosperity model collapses.

And the attack on a Eurasian rapprochement between continental Europe and resource-rich Russia did not come from Washington, despite media mantras to the contrary. It came straight from the heart of the European Union.

* * *

About the author: Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/ Germany, is a 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.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

Lots of attention was drawn to the Great Nicobar Island Project (GNIP) last month, which aims to develop this namesake island in India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands union territory, after Indian National Congress leader Sonia Gandhi published an op-ed at The Hindu lambasting it. Her criticisms mostly center on its potential environmental consequences while ignoring its geostrategic significance, thus prompting the ruling BJP spokesman to rhetorically ask on whose behalf she’s lobbying against it.

For background, India has been practicing what it calls the Act East Policy for over a decade after Prime Minister Narendra Modi rebranded the Look East Policy in 2014 to emphasize his proactive intentions, which aim to comprehensively strengthen ties between his civilization-state and ASEAN. The Trilateral Highway with Myanmar and Thailand was supposed to be this policy’s flagship project but has run into trouble due to the latest phase of Myanmar’s civil war.

The GNIP is now envisaged as the new flagship.

As Savitri Mumukshu wrote on X, “By developing Great Nicobar into a deep-sea port, airport, and military hub, India gains a vital strategic foothold just 160 km from the Malacca Strait, a vital chokepoint through which 80% of China’s oil imports and 40% of global trade pass. This allows India to monitor maritime traffic, project power across the eastern Indian Ocean, and quickly use naval and air assets”.

Some words will now be said about this insight in light of the nascent Sino-Indo rapprochement.

Mutually friendly rhetoric from the past few weeks aside, China and India are still veritably competitors with one another, if not still rivals. All that’s recently changed is that there now appears to be a renewed interest in responsibly managing border tensions with a view towards gradually growing bilateral trade. This is a significant achievement given the bad blood between them since summer 2020’s lethal clashes over the Galwan River Valley but neither is naively imagining that the other is now a trusted partner.

India practices what can be described as a Hyper-Realist foreign policy in the sense that its Minister of External Affairs explicitly details his country’s interests and openly seeks to advance them. This contrasts with most countries’ top diplomats, who usually only hint at what their interests are and then quietly pursue them. There’s no ambiguity when it comes to Indian foreign policy. The GNIP can therefore be interpreted as a means of counterbalancing what it considers to be China’s regional hegemonic policies.

It’s unimportant whether observers share India’s assessment of China’s regional approach since all that matters is that the GNIP is meant to become the new lynchpin of its Act East Policy. It’s outwardly driven by economic imperatives but crucially includes unstated military-strategic goals with respect to entrenching India’s envisaged role as the guardian of its eponymous ocean. These aren’t objectively threatening to China but are intended to counterbalance and deter it in case tensions one day return.

With all this insight in mind, while some critics of the GNIP might truly mean well, their advocacy against it inadvertently harms India’s grand strategic interests. The global systemic transition to multipolarity is such that Great Powers like India are independently advancing their interests vis-à-vis their peers like China. This isn’t a sign of unipolarity’s impending return like some members of the Alt-Media Community might fear but a natural development that stabilizes the emerging balance of power.

Moderna – which has been around less than 10 years and ‘somehow’ convinced the government to mandate their mRNA jabs for hundreds of millions of Americans to participate in normal life during the pandemic – announced this week that its vaccine for birth defects did not perform well in a clinical trial, so they’re scrapping it. 

The company’s mRNA vaccine for cytomegalovirus (CMV) did not meet the primary efficacy endpoint in preventing CMV infection in healthy females of childbearing age (16-40) in a phase 3 randomized trial involving around 7,500 women. 

Pregnant mothers can pass CMV to their babies – with about 1 in every 200 born with CMV and around 20% of babies who contract it suffering from birth defects or long term health problems, including hearing loss. 

As the Epoch Times notes further, Moderna’s CMV vaccine utilizes messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology, just like its only approved shots, which target COVID-19.

Moderna executives said in January that the trial for the CMV vaccine, mRNA-1647, needed to keep going because interim results did not show enough efficacy, but expressed optimism that the shot would ultimately be successful, noting it could be the first such vaccine on the market because no others exist as of yet.

The efficacy of the shot turned out to be between 6 percent and 23 percent, depending on the case definition.

“We are clearly disappointed by the failure to prevent primary infection because it means there is still no vaccine for the prevention of congenital CMV despite the many decades of work by the field,” Dr. Stephen Hoge, Moderna’s president, said in a statement.

The company has decided to discontinue its CMV program.

Moderna said that the vaccine was “generally well-tolerated … with a safety profile consistent with earlier studies.” It will continue studying mRNA-1647 in bone marrow transplant patients.

“CMV does cause significant disease in other contexts, including reactivation of the latent virus in those undergoing bone marrow transplantation, and we will continue to explore the potential of mRNA-1647 to suppress disease associated with reactivation in those high-risk patients through our ongoing Phase 2 study,” Hoge said.

That study started in 2023 and is scheduled to be completed in 2026. About 224 people were set to receive the vaccine or placebo after ceasing prophylactic treatment for CMV, including the drug letermovir.

Moderna said its 2025 financial outbreak is not expected to be impacted by the trial failure.

“Moderna anticipated minimal initial revenue contribution from mRNA-1647 given necessary investments in market building and launch,” it stated.

Moderna still expects to break even in 2028.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Various blue states are facing towering budget deficits as federal pandemic payments end and expenditures rise.

The result is a widening gap between the two parties on tax policies as Democratic leaders seek to avoid massive budget cuts in favor of tax increases. Two of the most economically moronic measures can be found in California and Illinois where leaders could be pushing high-tax residents out of their respective states.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom is seeking a billionaire tax that would target roughly 180 individuals who are expected to remain in the state, like some voluntary canned hunt. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson is facing the same exodus of businesses as California. His solution? A head tax on the very large corporations is needed for the city to survive. Even the far-left governor, J.B. Pritzker, is opposing the move as economically suicidal. However, groups like the teachers’ unions are pushing for this and other new taxes to support, among other things, a bloated pension plan for its members.

The Great Sucking Sound

California has long been bleeding tax revenue as residents move to states like Florida and Texas. Corporations have followed suit with major companies either moving out of the state or closing stores in cities like San Francisco. Despite the towering deficit, Newsom and the Democratic Party continue to spend wildly on a boondoggle bullet train and to engage in last-minute redistricting to gerrymander the state further. They have also moved to extend Medi-Cal to illegal immigrants at a massive cost to the budget. Newsom is also pushing ahead with a Commission to pay reparations to black citizens.

With a governor campaigning virtually full-time for president, spending is expected to continue apace until 2028. So, where can a presidential aspirant find money without losing votes? The obvious choice is with the wealthiest citizens.

California unions and liberal academics are demanding a new tax on those billionaires who have not had the sense to leave the state.

The “2026 Billionaire Tax Act” would hit roughly 180 citizens with a new tax demand to plug holes in the state’s health care system. While denied by Democrats in Congress,  the “One Big Beautiful Bill” cut off funds used for illegal immigrants ‘ health care, which produced a shortfall for California. That is part of the money Democrats want restored, or they will keep the government closed.  Another 10% of the funds would be used to support public K-12 education.

Two of the academics pushing this measure are UC Berkeley economics professor Emmanuel Saez, law professor Brian Galle, and Stanford law professor Darien Shanske.  They insist that there is history to support the success of such wealth taxes in a few cities and states like Washington. Advocates are counting on the unions to get the initiative on the ballot, and they know it is always popular to soak the rich. Teachers’ unions have also demanded wealth taxes in states like Massachusetts.

Wealth taxes are in vogue among Democrats.  In every election, Democrats insist that the wealthiest are not paying their fair share of taxes, even though the top 1 percent pays more taxes than the bottom 90 percent combined. It is an ageless mantra. Figures like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass) sought to ride the wealth tax into the White House, unleashing what she thought would be a class warfare over tax policy. She thrilled many on the left by declaring that she was coming after “the diamonds, the yachts, and the Rembrandts too.” Then, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, another Democratic presidential contender at the time, also promised that “we will tax the hell out of the wealthy.”

In the California effort, fewer than 200 Californians would bear the new tax burden —the wealthiest 0.0005% of residents. They will face a 5% tax on everything they own.

For years, some of us have opposed wealth taxes on constitutional grounds in the federal system and practical grounds in the state systems. Practically, you must create a new bureaucracy for the estimation of wealth in everything from art to boats to real estate. Under the plan, the Franchise Tax Board would require all California residents to declare their total net worth, including interests in private companies, real estate, art, and intellectual property. The individuals would then have to pay the debt in full or spread over five years with interest, with steep penalties for underreporting.

They hope to raise $100 billion in a flash and then divvy it up among their favorite causes.  Of course, the problem is that, while some assets like homes are not mobile, the owners are. California expects these individuals to sit through a campaign where they are treated as the fatted calves for the slaughter, and then sell off five percent of their property for the privilege of staying. There is an obvious alternative that billionaires like Elon Musk have already taken: they can get the heck out of California. Many have already done so. Indeed, California moved to force those leaving to pay a tax.

In the meantime, there is no reason to believe that, once legislators can tap into wealth taxes, they will stop at billionaires as they move the threshold wealth line down for greater revenue streams.

These measures seem to me as highly dubious and likely to make things much worse.  I will admit that Milton Friedman ruined me during my college years at the University of Chicago. However, California is already one of the highest tax states in the union. It is experiencing massive homelessness, crime, and other problems. At the same time, it is one of the most expensive places to live or have a business. In the mix of these elements, it wants to tell the highest earners now that they will be treated as basic digestives for Democratic policies. It will likely not only cause many to leave but will discourage others from coming with their income and businesses. Could you imagine a billionaire moving to the state to arrive just in time to be clipped for five percent of their wealth?

Rather than address runaway spending and poor management, Democrats and unions are treating the wealthy as static chumps who will not have the sense or desire to leave. It will be like a canned hunt with the cage door open.

Keep in mind that these are people who have spent their lives making money and optimizing conditions to make more money. The advocates are counting on billionaires just loving the state so much that they will stay at virtually any price. We will see.

As I discuss in my forthcoming book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, there is a common myth that the top five percent of this country do not “pay their fair share.” However, putting that debate aside, the question is whether it will produce more revenue than it costs the state in the long run. As these politicians campaign on clipping the “fat cats” who are not paying their fair share, many are likely to follow Musk with their money and their minions.

Head Hunters with a Dwindling Game Population

In my home city of Chicago, the economic conditions are becoming even more dire. Mayor Brandon Johnson has proven nothing short of a disaster as the city has spent itself into a deep deficit. In the meantime, many businesses and residents are fleeing the crime and high taxes. Any first-year economics student would see this as a time to rebuild the economy by attracting new businesses and retaining existing businesses.

Not Brandon Johnson. The creation of the far-left Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU) came as Johnson took office with gimmicky plans for city-supported stores and open sanctuary policies. When money ran out, he became increasingly desperate and inflammatory, often accusing critics of being racists. He has a $1 billion deficit and, rather than cut the budget, he has tried every possible measure to raise money, including a ridiculous bond that even liberals on the City Council said would send the city into a rat hole of debt.

Moreover, the Regional Transportation Authority, which oversees the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra, and Pace, is now expecting an almost $900 million shortfall by 2028. Again, the impulse is not to view the RTA budget and operations as unprofitable, but to raise fares and impose new taxes, including fees on DoorDash and delivery orders, higher tolls, and real estate transfer taxes.

However, even Pritzker thinks that Johnson and the unions are nuts on reintroducing a corporate “head tax.” Barely able to convince many companies to stay in the state, Chicago would actually make it more costly to hire Chicagoans with an additional $ 21-per-employee tax. Chicago previously tried a smaller $2 head tax, which was ended by Democrat former Mayor Rahm Emanuel because it was seen as discouraging businesses from coming to the city.  Johnson thinks that an exponential increase will now make it work. It is like preventing the sinking of the Titanic by increasing the amount of seawater.

However, Johnson listens to the unions and particularly the teachers’ unions, and they want a slew of new taxes to support their bloated pension fund and other city programs. In addition, they want to impose a 5% levy on corporations with global payrolls exceeding $8 million, applied to all compensation paid to employees earning more than $200,000.

It would further suppress economic growth and increase the revenue deficits. At some point, the city will go the way of Detroit in an irreversible plunge toward insolvency.

Over the last decade, Chicago has lost one out of five businesses and currently ranks as a city with the highest commercial property tax in the nation. However, Johnson and the unions want to double down on more taxes, as if there were magical infusions of money with no consequences.

There is even a plan to increase Chicago’s “cloud tax” and a new 50-cent-per-user “social media amusement tax.”

The CTU is calling for a coercive campaign to force the remaining thriving corporations and institutions to pay more. In a publication titled “Chicago is NOT broke: millions on the table if wealthy pay their fair share,” the CTU called for Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT), a program where “wealthy universities and private hospitals that currently pay no property taxes” would pay a lump sum payment in exchange. My alma mater, the University of Chicago, is an intellectual hub that brings in intellectuals, research, and students to the city. The CTU wants to hit it and hospitals with PILOT charges.

It also wants to hit landlords with new profit taxes and penalize vacant properties.

With the recent passing of my mother, I gave serious thought to buying her home and investing in its total restoration. It is a beautiful old home, but I could not imagine owning a property in Chicago despite my love for the city. It is simply not economically feasible. It was a hard decision. I would love to invest in the city of my birth. However, the mayor and the City Council seem hellbent on destroying this city. In the meantime, the state is also spending wildly. The result is that many of the people I grew up with have left the city, and most have closed their businesses.

With the rise of Democratic Socialists in California, Illinois, and New York, these economic policies are likely to spread only to major cities. I fear that the result will be disastrous for our great cities.  There is a perverse incentive for some of these politicians. Wealthy Republicans and conservative residents are fleeing these states, leaving Democrats more solidly in control. However, they are cutting off the top income earners and job creators. With the cutting off of subsidies under the Trump Administration, they must either reduce spending or tax those remaining.

We have seen this before, and it is not pretty.

The level of depravity and insanity present in the minds of progressives has been exposed in recent months to the shock of many in the American public.  The murder of Charlie Kirk in particular triggered a gleeful celebration among millions of Democrats that cannot be ignored.  The event proved beyond a doubt that the woke left has no intention of ever engaging in rational discussion or compromise. 

Leftists never admit they are wrong.  They always double down. 

The power of the radical left resides in their mental illness.  When faced with a rabid mob devoid of reason and drunk on delusion, the average opponent backs down.  Normal people with common sense often recoil in horror when confronted by total madness.  Progressives know this, and they take advantage of it. 

For many years the Democratic Party has denied that they are deliberately fueling this fervor.  They pretend as if the mob is merely “reacting” to the supposed crimes of conservatives and the Trump Administration.  In reality, most of the things leftists blindly believe are fed to them through a series of political gatekeepers, and many of these gatekeepers are prominent Democrats attempting to set off more riots and more violence.

For better or worse, their tactics have not changed in the past decade.

James Carville, a veteran Democrat strategist best known for his work on the Bill Clinton campaign, has been an ever present fixture of leftist punditry for the past couple decades.  During a discussion on the Trump Administration on his Politics War Room podcast with co-host Al Hunt, Carville accused the administration of trying to “control” higher education with an offer for preferential funding for colleges.

Carville suggested that any universities that agree to Trump’s terms are “collaborators”.  The running theme of the podcast is, of course, that Trump and his team are a gang of criminals and Neo-Nazis that need to be punished.  The former strategist then revealed his fantasy – A “walk of shame” in which Trump allies are shaved bald, forced into orange pajamas, and paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue while people get to spit on them (Start at 11:25).

The sentiment is reminiscent of the Game Of Thrones walk of shame in which the peasants punish Queen Cersei Lannister by stripping her naked, spitting on her and pummeling her as she is forced to march across the city.  Democrats and leftist activists have also taken to yelling “Shame” as a way to silence their opponents during speeches and debates.

The practice has become a kind of liberal collectivist ritual rather than an effective from of protest.  They are acting out a struggle session even though no one is afraid of them.    

Growing mob outside federal building in LA shout “SHAME! SHAME!” at National Guard troops… pic.twitter.com/Ctpp14kemS

— Brandon Straka #WalkAway (@BrandonStraka) June 11, 2025

It’s not surprising that Democrats continue to mimic fictional events as a way to dramatize their positions and exaggerate their “pain.”  Most leftist ideas come from fantasy, from Game of Thrones to The Handmaid’s Tale, the political left is drowning in drama that doesn’t remotely match reality. 

Carville argues that this kind of punishment is the “only way to discourage future collaborators.”  His dream of totalitarian revenge in 2029 is a common one among leftists.  It runs parallel to ongoing threats of oppression and violence against conservatives “once Democrats get back into power”.

Of course, the rage that the political left feels has little or nothing to do with any trespasses committed against them.  They’re angry because they lost control, not because Trump is exerting control. 

The policy of cutting of federal funds to far-left activist colleges was designed by Trump to stop the spread of DEI and woke propaganda; an ideology which has poisoned American education and churned out an army of brainwashed students with poor education and zero critical thinking skills.  Democrats have avidly supported the progressive politicization of academia for decades because it is the lifeblood of their party.  

It’s the ultimate form of gaslighting.  The Democrats under the Biden Administration joyfully enacted mass censorship, communist cancel culture, DEI racism, mob violence and intimidation, targeted lawfare, and ideological child grooming in public schools.  Yet, conservatives are monsters for winning an election and trying to repair the damage done? 

The majority of Americans voted for a return to normality, and the left is furious.

Should Democrats return to power in 2029 it is clear that their only motivation will be to ensure that their opponents are humiliated and prevented from taking office ever again (like they tried to do in 2021).  Carville’s fantasy is a window into the liberal hive mind; his dream is shared among a large number of leftists.  

Authored by Autumn Spredemann via The Epoch Times,

Amid a global rush by companies small and large to adopt artificial intelligence (AI), experts are warning about escalating concerns over data security.

As AI capabilities accelerate, cybersecurity and privacy experts warn that the same models capable of detecting fraud, securing networks, or anonymizing records can also infer identities, reassemble stripped-out details, and expose sensitive information, according to a report by McKinsey & Company released in May.

Ninety percent of companies lack the modernization to defend against AI-driven threats, a 2025 Accenture cybersecurity resilience report stated. The report included insights from 2,286 security and technology executives across 24 industries in 17 countries regarding the state of AI-cyber attack readiness.

So far this year, the Identity Theft Resource Center has confirmed 1,732 data breaches. The center also noted that the “continued rise of AI-powered phishing attacks” is becoming more sophisticated and challenging to detect. Some of the main industries plagued by these data breaches include financial services, health care, and professional services.

“It is the predictable consequence of a technology that has been deployed with breathtaking speed, often outpacing organizational discipline, regulatory provisions, and user vigilance. The fundamental design of most generative AI systems makes this outcome almost inevitable,” Danie Strachan, senior privacy counsel at VeraSafe, told The Epoch Times.

Because AI systems are designed to absorb an immense volume of information for training, this creates vulnerabilities.

“When employees, often with their best intentions, provide AI systems with sensitive business data—be it strategy documents, confidential client information, or internal financial records— that information is absorbed into a system over which the company has little to no control,” Strachan said.

This is especially true if consumer versions of these AI tools are used and protective measures are not enabled.

“It is very much similar to pinning your confidential files on a public noticeboard and hoping no one takes a copy,” Strachan said.

Grok, DeepSeek, and ChatGPT apps are displayed on a smartphone screen in London on Feb. 20, 2025. So far this year, the Identity Theft Resource Center has confirmed 1,732 data breaches. Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images

Multifaceted Threat

There are different ways someone’s personal data can end up in the wrong hands or be exposed by AI tools. Hacker-directed attacks and theft are well known, but another way this occurs is through what researchers call “privacy leakage.”

Publicly accessible Large Language Models (LLMs) are a common way for information to end up in a data breach or “leak.”

This year, according to Obsidian Security, a security researcher discovered 143,000 user queries and conversations from popular LLM models—including ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, and Copilot—were available to the public on Archive.org.

“This discovery follows closely on the heels of recent disclosures that ChatGPT queries were being indexed by search engines like Google. Incidents like these continue to raise broader concerns about data leakage and inadvertent exposure of sensitive information through AI platforms,” the Obsidian report stated.

“The highest risk is the inadvertent exposure of sensitive data when team members interact with public-facing AI tools,” Strachan said.

He added it’s not just personal data at risk, but organizational information, given the high volume of people who use LLMs for work tasks.

“With access to multimodal AI, the risk extends to documents, spreadsheets, transcripts, and audio recordings from meetings, and video content. This data, once shared, can be used to train future models, potentially surfacing in responses to queries from other users, including competitors,” Strachan said.

But it’s not just through LLMs that data breaches occur. AI chatbots can access information in nearly every aspect of the digital world.

“I recorded 47 cases of data exposure on gaming platforms in Q3, the vast majority of which were related to AI chatbots that have unlimited access to the backend,” Michael Pedrotti, the co-founder of game server hosting company GhostCap, told The Epoch Times.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the OpenAI DevDay event in San Francisco on Nov. 6, 2023. This year, a security researcher discovered 143,000 user queries and conversations from popular LLM models—including ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, and Copilot—were available to the public on Archive.org. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Pedrotti said the mounting pressure to implement AI systems facilitates security “catastrophes.”

“Organizations relate AI directly to customer databases without the existence of adequate isolation layers. The executives who insist on AI implementation in weeks are cutting corners,” he said.

“The outcome is AI systems that have access to everything, including payment cards, personal messages, without oversight or logging policies.”

Pedrotti has spent years working with cybersecurity infrastructure. He said the most hazardous data privacy blind spot is in what he called “vectors embeddings.” These are representations of data, such as words, images, or audio, transformed into numerical “vectors” that allow AI models to process and understand complex information by placing similar data points closer together.

“These mathematical encodings of the text seem anonymous, but the personal data is fully retrievable,” Pedrotti said.

For the moment, Pedrotti said it isn’t possible to delete records in AI models like in traditional databases, because information is permanently embedded.

“I have even uncovered sensitive employee discussions with corporate AI helpers months after they deleted the original messages in Slack. The information is incorporated into the fundamental body of AI,” he said.

“AI’s potential benefits, particularly on the bottom line, are causing organizations to want to jump on the bandwagon quickly,” Parker Pearson, chief strategy officer at Donoma Software, told The Epoch Times.

Pearson said she has seen this pattern with other technology booms.

“The common denominator of each of these ’tech-rushes’ is that important details, usually with a direct security impact, get overlooked or overruled in the moment,” she said.

A man at a laptop in Washington on March 18, 2025. A recent survey of 1,000 U.S. adults revealed 84 percent of internet users have “unsafe” password practices, such as using personal information. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Taking Action

Pearson believes the situation will get worse unless more proactive steps are taken.

At an individual level, she said people need to educate themselves on good cybersecurity practices—strong passwords and multi-factor authentication are common knowledge to some, but evidence suggests the majority of internet users have poor digital practices.

A recent survey by web security company All About Cookies, of 1,000 U.S. adults, revealed 84 percent of internet users have “unsafe” password practices, such as using personal information. In the same group, 50 percent of respondents reported reusing passwords, and 59 percent claimed to share at least one account password with others, such as on a streaming platform or a bank account.

Pearson said it’s time to stop trusting that companies will live up to their data privacy statements.

“Start asking questions before automatically handing over personally identifiable information. Start pushing for accountability,” she said.

“There needs to be consequences far beyond the 12 months of identity monitoring offered by organizations that have been breached. Frankly, the fact that is accepted as remediation is offensive.”

Pearson believes organizations that fail to maintain data trust should pay a higher penalty as their customers will likely be impacted forever.

Most cybersecurity experts agree that smart individual practices are important, but Strachan said that when it comes to AI data privacy, the majority of the accountability lies at the business end.

“The burden of reducing AI risks falls on organizations. They must implement staff awareness programs that train their employees to treat every prompt like an email to the front page of a daily newspaper,” he said.

Strachan believes that to reduce risks, businesses should deploy enterprise AI tools with training disabled, data retention limited, and access tightly controlled. He said AI “explodes” the risk surface of privacy management, which will become more complex as the technology evolves.

People visit an AI data center at SK Networks during the Mobile World Congress, the world’s biggest mobile fair, in Barcelona on March 3, 2025. The United States and the European Union have begun to address data security in the midst of progressive advancement of AI systems. Manaure Quinter/AFP via Getty Images

Legislation is also being outpaced by increasingly advanced AI systems that are currently exploiting privacy grey areas.

“AI businesses are taking advantage of a huge privacy legislation loophole. According to them, model training is not data storage, which means they do not need to be deleted at all,” Pedrotti said.

He has followed cases of companies shifting training operations offshore, specifically to avoid regulatory compliance and deliver the service to the same users.

“The use of cross-jurisdictional models establishes loopholes,” he said.

“The existing laws focus on the data gathering aspect but do not explain how AI works with such data and permanently incorporates it into the algorithms.”

Pearson said some of the current AI-legislation “gaps” vulnerable to exploitation include cross-border information flows, training data, web scraping, algorithmic decision-making, and third-party data sharing.

Strachan echoed the same concerns. “Regulatory delays are creating dangerous ambiguity around liability. … This created grey areas threat actors can potentially exploit, particularly in cross-border scenarios where jurisdictional gaps amplify the problem,” he said.

The United States and the European Union have begun to address data security in the midst of progressively advancing AI systems.

The White House’s 2025 AI Action Plan highlighted the need to boost cybersecurity for critical infrastructure. The report noted that AI systems are susceptible to adversarial inputs such as data poisoning and privacy attacks.

Officials in the EU have taken a similar stance, pointing out that a lack of proper security with LLMs could result in breaches of sensitive or private information used to train AI models.

Update(2050ET): Despite plenty of earlier predictions to the contrary, Argentina President Javier Milei’s party is on track to finish first in Argentina’s midterms with over 90% of votes counted, in a big comeback. According to a breaking news wire:

MILEI’S PARTY HAS 41.5% IN BUENOS AIRES TO PERONISM’S 40.8%

According to the English-langauge Buenos Aires Times at 9:30pm local time, “Official results point to a decisive win for President Javier Milei and La Libertad Avanza. The only force to be running in every province, the ruling party’s alliance with ex-president Mauricio Macri’s PRO party has won it more than 40 percent of the national vote for lower house deputies.”

Official results now in from Argentina…

Javier Milei’s La Libertad Avanza (purple) has 40.8% of the votes, while the Peronist left-wing opposition (blue) has 24.4%.

90%+ counted. An even better outcome for Milei than their most optimistic prediction. pic.twitter.com/DclKba9maT

— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) October 27, 2025

The Wall Street Journal reviews of the significance:

That means it should secure at least one-third of the seats in both chambers—the critical threshold that allows Milei to preserve his veto power and defend his sweeping decrees. The result, stronger than most polls had predicted, gives Milei fresh political momentum after months of unrest over deep spending cuts and a grinding recession last year.

It also shores up his standing with Washington and the International Monetary Fund, which have tied future financial support to the survival of his austerity experiment. Market analysts expect Argentine bonds and the peso to rally when trading opens Monday, reflecting relief that Milei still has political traction. The U.S. announced a $20 billion currency swap this month to prop up Argentina’s currency and promised to raise another $20 billion from private banks and sovereign-wealth funds.

My friend President Javier Milei’s party has swept Argentina’s national legislative elections, winning 40.84% of the vote compared to 24.50% for the Kirchnerist bloc, with 91% of ballots counted.

President Trump and I simply say, “VIVA LA LIBERTAD, CARAJO!”

🇦🇷🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/WpzPzlFnor

— Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) October 27, 2025

Recall the crucial words of Trump from earlier this month, “If he wins, we’re staying with him. And if he doesn’t win, we’re gone.” He just survived and thrived in this major test of his austerity agenda, despite a public turnout which was a low in decades.

* * *

Some 36 million eligible Argentines are headed to the polls Sunday for legislative elections which are key to determining the fate of President Javier Milei’s sweeping reform agenda, and could unsettle financial markets if his support collapses, despite record US assistance in the form of the ultra-controversial big beautiful bailout from the Trump administration, which could also hang in the balance.

The midterm vote is being closely watched internationally, as it marks the first nationwide referendum on the self-styled anarcho-capitalist’s austerity measures and economic deregulation efforts since he assumed office two years ago. At the start of this past week, Argentina assets soared on the heels of US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent calling the South American country “a systemically important US ally in Latin America,” adding that the US Treasury “stands ready to do what is needed within its mandate to support Argentina. All options for stabilization are on the table.”

But the potential $40 billion bailout package for Argentina is also on the line (Bessent indicated the extra $20 billion on top of the initial $20bn would come from “the private sector” – which seems somewhat wishful given the scenario of private investors wanting to risk such sums in volatile Argentina). The aid could be withdrawn by Trump if his populist ally Milei tanks. President Trump even spelled out, “If he doesn’t win, we’re not going to waste our time, because his opponents’ philosophy has no chance of making Argentina great again.”

On Sunday, voters are choosing half of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies and one-third of the Senate. It was the campaign period leading up to the vote which saw a sharp decline in the peso, prompting Milei to the request emergency financial support from Washington. Should the Sunday vote go against Milei – and there are a number of signs suggesting this will be the case – then Trump “will not be generous” – as he’s forewarned in prior comments.

President Milei’s La Libertad Avanza party, which remains a newcomer in Argentine politics, currently holds just 37 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and six in the Senate, giving it less than 15% of the total seats in Congress. The party desperately needs to expand its representation to at least one-third of Congress, a goal that would strengthen its ability to block opposition efforts to derail Milei’s ambitious agenda.

If Milei’s party performs weak, this could serve to quickly resolve domestic controversy for Trump at home:

On October 19, a reporter asked Trump why he decided to aid Argentina despite concerns among US soya producers. “Argentina is fighting for its life,” Trump answered. “Young lady, you don’t know anything about it. … They have no money. They have no anything.”

US aid to Argentina didn’t directly harm US soya producers – they have been hurt by a separate Trump policy, his trade war with China. But the timing of the aid and the soya bean export troubles pose a problem of optics for the White House.

But as for “optics” – a loss in these midterms will mark a defeat of US credibility in the region, given the aforementioned multibillion-dollar lifeline from the White House.

With a few hours until polls close, reports of low voter turnout, a bad sign for the Argentine Trump ally…

🇦🇷Low voter turnout in the midterms in Argentina. This isn’t a good sign for Milei’s party as Peronists have a better ‘get out the vote’ apparatus. The midterm election in the province of Buenos Aires where Milei’s party underperformed compared to the polls also saw low turnout. https://t.co/1jt0cZlllk

— Nicolás Saldías (@NicSaldias) October 26, 2025

Milei himself faces reelection in 2027, and the national direction after Sunday will signal whether Milei’s “chainsaw” austerity program will have any staying power. Politico notes, “LLA is expected to gain seats — though not enough to secure a majority against the left-wing Peronist coalition — but if the president’s coalition underperforms, it could lead to a broad selloff of Argentinian assets.”

The vote is happening between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. (1100–2100 GMT), and some preliminary results are expected to emerge roughly three hours after polls close.