▪️This is so delusional. The idea that poor countries are actually rich, it’s just the people who are poor(!) is nonsense. The GDP per capita for Mexico is less than $14,000. For Brazil it’s $10k and Philippines just $4,150. That’s poor!
▪️The idea that real wealth comes from natural resources like timber and mining is also nonsense. The market cap of Nvidia is more than the entire GDP of Brazil, so is Apple and Amazon. Tesla’s is nearly as large as Mexico’s GDP and triple the Philippines.
▪️Real wealth comes from innovation and industrialization. South Korea and Hong Kong went from wretchedly poor to fairly wealthy in just a few decades not because they suddenly found natural resources, but because of capitalism. It’s also why much of Europe is now stagnant and actually quite poor compared to the US, they have little innovation.
▪️The reality is that the poorest countries are generally the least capitalist, and least economically free. They are not friendly to private business and often nationalize many industries. Which is why they are undeveloped, despite often having much potential. There was never some era in the past, prior to Europeans or capitalism, where they were rich.
It’s bizarre to see them seesaw back and forth that Trump is totally clueless and aloof, just golfing all day, then all of a sudden he’s a dangerous king/dictator who’s diligently plotting to seize absolute power.
▪️This one is frustrating because, while it’s nice to see the vigor and speed that DOGE is acting with, they’re also sloppy with some of their findings. This is not some bombshell, millions of dead people’s SS numbers aren’t being paid out to fraudsters.
▪️This problem has been known for some time, you can read an inspector general’s report from 2015 about millions of names on the SS “numident” not being correctly annotated for deaths, even though they were older than 112 (the oldest known American at the time).
https://oig-files.ssa.gov/audits/full/A-06-14-34030_0.pdf
▪️There are innocent explanations for some of these. Expatriates that died outside the country, for example. Or immigrants given temporary work permit who returned to their country, people issued new numbers for various reasons, etc. However, most are simply due to the govt not diligently keeping track of deaths.
▪️It’s embarrassing that the govt has millions of numbers on the numident that are ...
