Reflections From a Murky Pond

It’s looking like the days of fake meat may well be coming to an end. The Liberal/Progressive Eco-Fascists’, Climatards’, and Food Nazi’s dream of normalizing – and, of course, later mandating – plant-based “meat” products seems to be failing hard, wrecked upon the rocks of basic economics.

Beyond Meat is cutting its workforce by a 19% – approximately 200 employees – in a desperate move to slash eight figures’ worth of spending from its operation in order to survive it’s revenue collapse, which is now projected to be down by as much as $120 million (9-14%) from a year ago.

This failure is about as surprising as politician either lying or finding a way to “tax” more of your money. It’s simple economics. Fake meat is just too expensive; the only ones buying are the privileged coastal elites. And, even for them, it’s more about virtue signalling and supporting a Left-wing cause than wanting to eat the stuff. Certainly all attempts to mainstream fake meat have failed, with only 54% of people even trying vegetable-based meat alternative offerings at more blue-collar restaurants.

It’s really quite simple. It’s basic, almost remedial, economics. Any product that only appeals to a small number of potential customers and is necessarily priced above the pain point for the majority of people is doomed to either failure or being restricted to a small, niche offering.

And, given that the same Liberal and Progressive coastal elites that made a market for fake meat did so as a moralistic attack on normal people and as a way of entrenching their Warmist ideology, very few will miss this industry at all.

Tags: America | Climate Change | Coastal Elites | Eco-Fascists | Economics | Elitism | Fake Meat | Food & Drink | Food Nazis | Liberals | Progressives | Society | Vegans

This entry was posted on Friday, October 21st, 2022 at 5:00 am and is filed under Food & Drink, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

So, Creepy Uncle Joe’s handlers and caretakers aka the Biden Administration is planning replenishing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a per barrel cost of just under $80. This comes just two years after Democrats blocked President Trump from topping up the petroleum reserve for approximately $24 per barrel, 30% of what Biden & Co. expected cost.

But then, this is and was to be expected. Democrats never cared how much damage they caused to Americans in their war against President Trump and we who supported him. Hence, all it took was a successful removal of him from office to reverse their “policy positions.“

Tags: 2022 Elections | America | Biden | Coup | Coup D'Etat | Economics | Federal Petroleum Reserve | Oil | Petroleum | Politics | Trump

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 19th, 2022 at 7:00 am and is filed under Announcements. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Honestly, explaining Bidenflation is all too easy. It’s the cost of voting stupid on a lot of people’s part and the cost of not forbidding the Dems from installing a doddering, senile, pedophile in the White House. And, despite Biden and his overworked handlers trying to blame everyone and everything else, the staggering rise of inflation is mostly and primarily a result of disastrous leadership, and devastating tax-and-spend policies.

Tags: America | Biden | Democrats | Economic Collapse | Economics | Economy | Humor | Inflation | Politics

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 1st, 2022 at 7:00 am and is filed under 2022 Elections, 2024 Elections, Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Bad policies matter, something that Democrats, the primary source of policies which are untenably bad for those who actively contribute to and grow the economy, don’t seem to be able to learn this. Or, since those who can be described as the Makers aren’t normally their constituencies, they don’t care. That’s why a lot of these Makers are voting with their feet.

Now, nationally it’s still a small thing, but one that has increased dramatically. Only about 2.5% of the current US population has emigrated. But that’s a little over double what it was 20 years ago. The numbers of wealth generators, i.e., actual taxpayers, who have internally migrated is far more stunning, and that’s what is actually important.

Which States Are Winning And Loosing
(Click Either Image Below To Enlarge)

As you can see, people with wealth are leaving Blue States in very expensive droves. Well, expensive to the Leftist governments of those Democrat safezones. Loosing over $55 billion in residents’ Annual Gross Income is no small or easily coped with thing for state governments. And the numbers shown are just personal monies. It doesn’t include all the businesses moving out of Democrat-controlled zone.

And, while this is going to have very large impact on politics, the economic impact and the follow-on effects thereof are going to be more important as we move into the not too distant future. It is not unwarranted to posit that many of the Left-wing areas will go the way of Detroit, which is still on track for effective abandonment, not being able to sustain its infrastructure without the tax monies of those who fled mismanagement and a government antagonistic towards those who generate actual wealth.

Yeah, millions of Americans are voting with their feet. And, their voting against Democrats’ bad ideas and punitive policies.

Tags: America | Blue States | Democrats | Economic Collapse | Economics | Economy | Emigration | Exodus | Immigration | Liberals | Politics | Progressives | Red States | Society | Taxation | Taxes | Taxpayers | White Flight

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 4th, 2022 at 7:00 am and is filed under Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Despite the GOP’s scaremongering – it is election season, after all – the provisions with the Dems’ Orwellianly named Inflation Reduction Act to grant the IRS nearly $80 billion in new funding in order to, among other things, hire 87,000 new employees, won’t dramatically effect anyone in the next few years. Many of these “new hires” will simply be replacements for the current staff, approximately half of whom are at or approaching retirement age.

But, there’s no more truth or accuracy in the Dems’ claims that the middle-class and small businesses won’t experience greater scrutiny and/or audits. When the stated goal of increasing the IRS’ budget is to increase collections by $204 billion, you can be sure that the IRS is going to target anyone and everyone that they can. You can also be sure that the “Billionaires” and “Megacorporations,” most or all of whom have more and better tax attorneys than the IRS ever will, won’t be the IRS’ primary targets or the major sources of that $204 billion in extra tax collections.

Understand that approximately 50% of the largest corporations in America are already audited each year. Admittedly though, this is down from 100% of them during the Obama Regime. And yet, the Dems want to increase tax collection by $204 billion.

The largest corporations in the United States with over $20 billion of assets have had their rate of audits go from nearly 100% to 50%. Among wealthy individuals who had a positive income of a million dollars or more, the audit rate fell from 8.4% in 2010 to 2.4% in 2019.

— Janet Holtzblatt
Senior Fellow, Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center

But, simply put and much to the chagrin of Dems and their IRS, 38% of those audits fail to find any way to take more of these people’s and corporations’ money than they had agreed to pay.

No; their dog isn’t going to bite the “rich.” He will bite other people instead.

So, that fairly massive increase in tax collections is going to have to come from somewhere and somebody else. And it’s not going to be just the 1% either, since returning to Obama era audit rates for all individuals making over $400,000 would generate only 28%, or $9.9 billion of that expected $204 billion. And, even if the IRS increased audit rates 30x for taxpayers making over $400,000 and to a 100% audit rate upon taxpayers with incomes over $10 million, this would only raise to approximately $28 billion of it.

No, the IRS has a long and ongoing to this very day history of targeting the poor’s – those with $25K or less in income – tax returns for audits at a rate of 5x that of all other groups combined. I would expect that this rate would normalize somewhat… because the rates of audits will dramatically increase for those making between $26K – $200k per year and for most small-to-mid sized businesses, bringing them closer to what the poor suffer from.

It’s simple math and pragmatism. The IRS wants or needs to show increased collection and the poor and the middle-class through the 2%’ers are the ones without the resources to combat the IRS. And, there’s 100s of millions more of us. Of course we’re the ones who will be targeted by the IRS the most overall.

So yeah, the Democrats’ junkyard dog, the IRS won’t bite many now. But, it will most likely do so in 2026 and 2027 if it isn’t put down before then.

Tags: Democrats | Economics | IRS | Lies | Politics | Taxes | Theft

This entry was posted on Monday, August 29th, 2022 at 5:00 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.