Unleash Prosperity Hotline – Weekend Edition Issue #781
05/26/2023, 05/27/2023, 05/28/2023
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1) Our Kids Really Do Think the World Is Coming to an End
As nearly every standardized test is showing, our schools are doing an abysmal job teaching kids how to read or do the math, but they’re wildly succeeding with their climate change indoctrination. This headline from the Daily Telegraph earlier this week shows that the campaign of fear and misinformation is terrorizing our school children. This, in turn, leading to all sorts of maladies, including a rise in teen depression, suicide, lower productivity, and a decline in birth rates (who wants to bring kids into a world that will be uninhabitable in 50 years). Psychologists are attributing these dysfunctions to a new syndrome called “eco-anxiety.”
Congratulations to Governor Kevin Stitt, whose unwavering commitment to full school choice for kids has paid off with one of the most comprehensive school choice programs in the country. By our count, Oklahoma has become the 7th state this year to expand educational freedom.
The new Oklahoma law creates a tax credit to offset the cost of private school tuition. The credit is worth $5,000 to $7,500 based on household income, with the largest credit going to households that make under $75,000. Homeschoolers can qualify for a $1,000 credit.
Now we just need to get Texas and North Carolina to get school choice over the goal line.
We mentioned last week that the new Census data on cities show that thanks to a hemorrhaging of its population in recent decades, Chicago now has a lower population today than 100 years ago even though the U.S. population has more than tripled over that time period. Some of our readers questioned the validity of that surprising statistic. So for the doubting Thomases, here is the Census data from our demographer Wendell Cox:
Things may get a lot worse before they get better in what was once “the city with broad shoulders.” The newly elected Marxist mayor, Brandon Johnson, has proposed a giant tax increase on Chicago’s few remaining businesses, including a new financial transaction tax. TheNew York Post reports that the iconic $66 billion Chicago Mercantile Exchange – one of the anchor businesses still left standing in the windy city – has threatened to relocate if the tax is put into law.
4) More Signs of Blue State Dysphoria: New York Is Bleeding Money Again
Last week New York’s Democratic Comptroller Tom DiNapoli reported the state’s personal income tax receipts continue to decline – with a shocking 50% decline in income tax collections last month from a year ago. This reduction is in part fueled by the flight of the state's people and capital to red states.
Even worse, this spring the state legislature went on a spending spree. New York now spends more money on public education than any other state and is 85 percent above the national average. Overall, state spending has gone up a staggering 25 percent since the 2019 to 2020 fiscal year, thanks to “free” federal money.
DiNapoli's report warns "that much of the increased spending is recurring and may present a growing fiscal challenge to the state, particularly as temporary federal aid wanes and if a more pronounced or extended economic downturn occurs."
Here is our prediction: NY’s hapless Governor Kathy Hochul is going to come running to Washington for a budget bailout. We hope congressional Republicans will respond: Drop Dead!
This is really sad. Debating in high school used to be some of the best preparation for critical thinking. Specifically, requiring kids to debate both sides of an issue. No more. To the left, there is no debate on the evils of capitalism, so judges are reportedly banning arguments in favor of it.
Lila Lavender, the 2019 national debate champion, whose paradigm reads, “Before anything else, including being a debate judge, I am a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist. . . . I cannot check the revolutionary proletarian science at the door when I’m judging. . . . I will no longer evaluate and thus never vote for rightest capitalist-imperialist positions/arguments. . . . Examples of arguments of this nature are as follows: fascism good, capitalism good, imperialist war good, neoliberalism good, defenses of US or otherwise bourgeois nationalism, Zionism or normalizing Israel, colonialism good, US white fascist policing good, etc.”
