The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (No. 42)
May 20, 2022
The Good
TOTALLY AWESOME: Move Over, Iron Man — Real Jet-Suited Heroes May Soon Respond to Our Emergencies.
WELL, THIS WOULD BE VERY COOL IF TRUE—BUT . . . : Have researchers found an undersea road to the lost city of Atlantis?
HERE’S TO HOPING THIS IS MY FUTURE: 100-year-old man runs 100 meter race!
LOVE IT WHEN THIS KIND OF STUFF HAPPENS: $35 Goodwill statue turns out to be priceless Roman bust
CAPITALISM ROCKS: Anti-Capitalism: Trendy but Wrong
The average income in the most capitalist quartile of countries is an astonishing 6 times higher, in real terms, than the average income in the least capitalist economies ($36,770 and $6,140 respectively). For the poorest in society, this gap widens even more. The bottom 10 percent of income earners in the most capitalist countries make, on average, 7 times more than the poorest 10 percent in the least free economies. Similarly, more than 27 percent of people in the most socialist economies live in extreme poverty (as defined by the World Bank as an income of less than $1.90 a day), whereas just 1.8 percent of people in freest economies live in extreme poverty – a figure that is still too high (the optimal number is zero), but vastly better than the level that persists in the least free countries.
Economic measures aside, people living in the most capitalist countries also live on average 14 years longer, have an infant mortality rate 6 times lower, enjoy greater political and civil liberties, gender equality, and to the extent you can measure such things, greater happiness too – when compared to the least capitalist economies.
EXTREME POVERTY WENT FROM 42% OF THE WORLD POPULATION IN 1980 TO LESS THAN 10% TODAY. You can thank capitalism for that.
THE WORLD COULD USE A GOOD DEFINITION OF CAPITALISM. Oh, wait, here’s a pretty good one:
THIS IS THE TRUE AMERICA, OR, AT LEAST, WHAT’S LEFT OF IT:
IT’S SO EASY, BUT IT’S ALWAYS FUN TO WATCH ERIC SWALWELL GET HIS COMEUPPANCE:
The Bad
BUMMER! I hope the owner had flood insurance:
RESIST: Biden’s New ‘Ministry of Truth’ Director Turns out to Be a Raving Lunatic.
JUST SAYIN’. Lest we forget:
WELL, THIS IS THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AFTER ALL: 'Fictosexual' man married hologram bride, but now struggles to bond with her
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? I’m pretty sure that the same kind of graph could be done for universities and would yield similar results.
I DON’T MEAN TO RUB IT IN YOUR NOSE, BUT THE TRUTH IS, I WAS RIGHT AND YOU WERE WRONG: STUDY: masks might make COVID worse (No worries, though. I’m not asking for an apology!)
A massive study covering 35 European countries (602 million people) concluded that wearing COVID masks did not reduce transmission or deaths and may have exasperated the virus.
In the peer-reviewed study published in the journal Cureus, Dr. Beny Spira reviewed every European country with at least 1 million people between October 2020 – March 2021, when “the entire continent was undergoing an outburst of COVID-19.”
Mask mandates and compliance across these countries varied significantly, from 5 per cent to 95 per cent. By comparing each respective country’s infection and death statistics, along with these mask-wearing percentages, Spira drew two conclusions:
“While no cause-effect conclusions could be inferred from this observational analysis, the lack of negative correlations between mask usage and COVID-19 cases and deaths suggest that the widespread use of masks at a time when an effective intervention was most needed, i.e., during the strong 2020-2021 autumn-winter peak, was not able to reduce COVID-19 transmission. Moreover, the moderate positive correlation between mask usage and deaths in Western Europe also suggests that the universal use of masks may have had harmful unintended consequences.” [Emphasis added]
TO REPEAT: I AM NOT DEMANDING AN APOLOGY, BUT I WILL ACCEPT ONE: Pfizer documents: Over 1,200 people died during Pfizer vaccine trials
THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON SINCE THE 1990s. It started with the Clinton Administration. Report: Chinese Hackers Stole Trillions in Intellectual Property from Multinational Companies
SINCE WHEN DID THIS BECOME AMERICA? Supply chain disaster! Baby formula vanishes from store shelves
WE’RE LIVING THROUGH THE WORST PARTS OF ATLAS SHRUGGED: How Government Created the Baby Formula Shortage—and a Black Market for 'Unapproved' European Imports
The Ugly
YOU DO UNDERSTAND THAT HE’S ONLY 5-YEARS-OLD, RIGHT?!?!?!? As Thomas Jefferson wrote in his Notes on the State of Virginia: “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.”
Related: Biden’s HHS Secretary: Cutting Off Kids’ Genitals Is ‘Health Care’ And Taxpayers Should Pay For It
. . . and the Beautiful
I’VE ONLY RECENTLY DISCOVERED THE CONTEMPORARY COMPOSER, PHILIP GLASS. THIS IS REALLY QUITE LOVELY:
P.S.: Don’t forget to submit your aesthetic recommendations to: redneckaesthetic@gmail.com. Please always use as your subject line: “The Beautiful.”
Have a great weekend!