Quote of the Day
In what might run against the consensus opinion, I think Tuesday’s results are bad news for those hoping the Democratic Party will rejuvenate itself by embracing the “abundance agenda.”
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None of this is to argue that policy debates about permitting reform, zoning liberalization, and other items on the abundance agenda are going to stop in the new Congress or in states with new Democratic governments. But the abundance agenda didn’t get a huge boost from Tuesday’s elections either.
As a way for market-curious liberal wonks to organize their thoughts and direct their activism, the idea of abundance can do a lot of work. But Tuesday’s elections are evidence against the notion that the abundance agenda is the code needed to crack America’s politics and fix all its problems.
Christian Britschgi
November 10, 2026
Is the abundance agenda dead?
The abundance the wonks want comes from letting markets work. The abundance others promise comes from taking it from someone else.
The socialists and communists promise people free stuff. Abundance for everyone, they say, if you just vote for them (or support their violent revolution). The promise comes packaged in slogans that amount to “feast on the carcasses of the rich” or literally “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
The leaders, of course, don’t really care about the abundance-for-everyone part. They want the power, and with the power they will take more than their share of the “abundance.” What the “useful idiots” don’t understand is that abundance grows fastest where there are free markets and free minds. In contrast, socialist and communist systems cannot coexist with free markets and free minds.
It is ironic that what the useful idiots want is most easily achieved under the very system they fervently oppose. That is what makes them useful to the tyrants and simultaneously demonstrates their idiocy.
If the billionaires would just endow libraries and operas, like they used to do, or even build a money bin like Uncle Scrooge, I would be happy enough to let them indulge themselves. But when they start intruding on everybody’s personal life as the current crop are wont to do, that is when a wealth tax starts to have an appeal to me. The problem is especially acute with the ex-wives club and the 2nd or 3rd generation away from the guys who actually made the fortune. What deters me is that the billionaires don’t have enough money to satisfy the insatiable appetite of the left and the wealth tax will inevitably trickle down to the middle class aka me. We should, however, eliminate the foundation scam. If Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller are in Hell, the Devil could torture them with a list of the things their foundations have done. A simple requirement that foundations spend down their assets in x years and cease operations would do. Have to prevent rollovers too. This would take some very tight drafting by clever lawyers to prevent evasion.
How much profit has Elon forgone to push money into rocketry research and development?
I don’t know if you know that getting off our home world is almost certainly the only way our species survives
Is that not in the same category as an art museum or the Smithsonian or community libraries?
Elon is trying to better our lives not run them. I am not going to support a wealth tax anyway because of the obvious trajectory as seen in the income tax but the ex-wives club, the leftist heirs club, Soros and Bloomberg really piss me off. The foundation law which not original with me would at least stop the poison from being immortal.
At one time there was a Democratic President who said “a rising tide lifts all boats”. Now he would be run out of the party — in fact, that has been true for decades now.
Just as at one time the Democratic party was welcoming to Jews. Then they ran Joe Lieberman out of the party.
Speaking of idiots, Microsoft 365 and Outlook is down and MS is having a problem fixing it because their engineers can’t burn through the authentication system. Security Theater strikes again. Perhaps you have more insight since that is your profession . Meanwhile have the Frogs gotten their refrigerators back.
I haven’t looked into either of those issues, so I’m certain you know as much or more about them as I do.
Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » IS THAT THEY WORK AGAINST WHAT THEY CLAIM TO WANT: The Irony of Useful Idiots.
Swedish author Johan Norberg has said “You have to continue to create wealth in order to use it.” A basic concept that is sadly beyond the reach of too many.
For a subject beyond the economy that’s infested with useful idiots, I suggest Islam and all the gays and women supporting radical proponents of it.
“Literally ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’” That of course never works out because it ends up being each according to his or her desires and those with the ability are either jailed or killed for not meeting those desires.
Also, there is one thing the useful idiots want more than abundance and that is revenge. Every Marxist movement is based upon stirring upon vengeance in the hearts and minds of the useful idiots. Instead of inspiring the idiots to create, the Marxist foments destruction and death. This happens over and over again because “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9 (KJV). Add to that how easily deceived women are, Genesis 3:13, 1 Timothy 2:13–14 and 2 Corinthians 11:3, and you get more than 100 million deaths and still counting.