We Need More Inequality, Not Less

From Mises.org (July 15, 2022):

We are bombarded regularly with narratives touting the ravaging effects of income inequality in capitalist societies. For many, inequality is the signature economic story of the twentieth century and must be averted at all costs. But inequality is only problematic when it’s the culmination of corrupt policies that grant favors to privileged groups. In reality, market-driven inequality is the source of unbridled progress.

By vetting the quality of ideas, markets reward talented and insightful individuals for responding to consumer demands. Unlike government-mandated privileges, markets are impartial observers of value. Political connections are unnecessary for players to succeed in the free market; only a willingness to employ one’s talents to serve consumers will reap success.

However, since some people are more talented than others, markets will invariably produce inequality. Yet inequalities are likely to result in positive outcomes due to talented individuals’ ability to improve average people’s living standard. Most people lack the ability to revolutionize society, but luckily for ordinary people, gifted individuals’ pursuits set off economic and technological changes that boost long-term economic growth and create opportunities for average people to join elite circles.

Amazon made Jeff Bezos a wealthy man, but the entity has also transformed thousands of small businesses into lucrative ventures by providing a place for them to market their products to the globe. In fact, through its store, the company has launched forty thousand millionaires. Amazon’s ripple effect is so significant that it has even made its affiliates’ customers widely successful, as Celinne Dacosta points out in her feature on Rasmus and Christian Mikkelsen:

Rasmus and Christian Mikkelsen are twin brothers who quickly became pioneers in the Amazon book and Audiobook publishing space, having collectively released over 150 books. The growing industry motivated the twins to co-found PublishingLife.com, an online education business that helps ordinary people escape their 9-to-5. With the use of the twins’ Amazon book publishing business model, hundreds of people have been able to achieve life-changing results. To date, their students have made a combined $20 million dollars in verified earnings.

Without talent inequality, supercompanies like Amazon and Google would not exist, and there would be fewer outlets for average people to create wealth. Inequality is beneficial to society, because if we were all equal, the world would be remarkably mediocre. Culturally, this world would be bereft of artistic and literary wonders, since people would be incapable of rising to the level of William Shakespeare or Pablo Picasso.

Our understanding of science would equally be warped in the absence of minds like Galileo Galiei, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein. Unfortunately, life in this realm of mediocrity would be nasty, brutish, and short. Dying from simple ailments would be the order of the day, considering that society would lack people with the curiosity and talent of men like Louis Pasteur and Alexander Fleming, who revolutionized our approach to treating diseases.

Even more sinister is that the absence of extraordinary people would fail to trigger the benign envy that usually motivates people to improve their circumstances. Without inequality, there can be no progress, since its absence suggests that we are all equally talented. And if this is the case, then the creativity required to advance society cannot emerge.

Never forget that when all men are equally competent, no man can be excellent. As such, a truly equal society is one where we are all similarly mediocre and living a life that’s below humanity’s potential. [source]

I concur. Without inequality, you have a potential for group think.

Whiz kid offered Google job out of high school but got rejected by 16 colleges —now he’s suing for discrimination

From NY Post.com (Mar. 3, 2025):

Stanley Zhong was a near-perfect college applicant.

Out of the more than 2 million kids who take the SAT annually, he’s one of roughly 2,000 to score a 1590 or higher.

His high school GPA was a 4.42 on a 4.0 scale. He even had an offer in hand to work a PhD-level job at Google before graduating high school.

Stanley, who intended to study computer science, also managed his own startup, e-document signature platform Rabbit-Sign, while still a high schooler.

By anyone’s expectations, the Palo Alto, Calif., teen should have been Harvard- or MIT-bound. Yet Stanley, now 19, was met with disappointment after disappointment in 2023 when college admissions letters started trickling in.

Stanley was rejected by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell University, Georgia Tech, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, the University of Illinois, the University of Michigan, the University of Washington and the University of Wisconsin.

Only the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Maryland — with respective 31% and 44% admissions rates — accepted him. Stanley’s father, Nan Zhong, was astounded.

“I did hear that Asians seem to be facing a higher bar when it comes to college admissions, but I thought maybe it’s an urban legend,” Nan told The Post.

“But then when the rejections rolled in one after another, I was dumbfounded. What started with surprise turned into frustration and then finally it turned into anger.”

With just two offers of admission out of 18 schools, Nan became convinced that his whiz kid must have been discriminated against — and decided to take the schools who rejected his son to court.

“There’s nothing more un-American than this,” Nan said of the alleged discrimination his son faced. “I don’t really think [these schools] give a damn about the damage they’re doing to these kids.”

Asian American students have long gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to affirmative action. The Supreme Court outlawed affirmative action in college admissions in June 2023, finding that Asian students were systemically overlooked.

Because Stanley applied for admissions shortly before the ruling, the Zhongs decided to sue colleges located in states that had pre-existing laws prohibiting racial discrimination in admissions.

Affirmative action has been banned at public universities in Stanley’s home state of California since 1996.

So far, the family has filed lawsuits against the University of California system and the University of Washington, alleging the schools “[engaged] in racially discriminatory admissions practices that disadvantage highly qualified Asian-American applicants.”

“[Stanley’s admissions] results stand in stark contrast to his receipt of a full-time job offer from Google for a position requiring a PhD degree or equivalent practical experience,” the lawsuit claims. “Stanley’s experience is emblematic of a broader pattern of racial discrimination against highly qualified Asian-American applicants at UC.” [read more]

Disgraceful. This is racism by these woke universities.

Wildlife Park Removes a Gang of Parrots for Cussing Out the Customers

From Red State.com (Sept. 30, 2020):

At Lincolnshire Wildlife Park in Great Britain, a bunch of feathers got recently ruffled over five new African grey parrots.

Not long ago, the beaked bunch of Eric, Jade, Elsie, Tyson, and Billy were individually donated to the sanctuary.

They were collectively quarantined.

Evidently, at least one was a bad egg. And that hooligan passed on some switchblade ways to the rest.

Once placed on public display, the crew brandished a crude chorus like street-corner cretins heckling from their nest of naughtiness.

CNN reports:

“It just went ballistic, they were all swearing,” the venue’s chief executive Steve Nichols told CNN Travel on Tuesday. “We were a little concerned about the children.”

The taloned, tawdry talkers were cussing out customers.

“They literally, within a very short period of time, starting swearing at each other. ‘F**k off’ is the most common one.”

Steve noted the F-Bomb send-off is “a very easy one for them to learn,” but they’ll repeat “anything you can think of.”

Amid the cacophony of cursing, it seems a gang war got going:

“The visitors were giving them as much back as what they were giving to them.”

More from CNN:

Nichols said the group of birds would encourage the language “to trigger reaction or a response” from guests, according to BBC.

…

“With the five, one would swear and another would laugh and that would carry on”…

The fowl-mouthed flock spared no one — not even Steve:

“I get called a ‘fat t**t’ every time I walk past.”

Finally, staff broke up the brood.

The CEO hopes with each instigator among better-behaved birds, a more appropriate influence will win out.

It appears the park doesn’t know which parrot was the source of obscenity. Perhaps they all claimed a little birdie told ’em the words.

If faculty search the suspects for clues, my advice is to look for a prison tattoo.

Of course, separating the X-rated ornithological offenders could backfire bigly.

As indicated to the BBC, Steve’s aware:

“I’m hoping they learn different words within colonies – but if they teach the others bad language and I end up with 250 swearing birds, I don’t know what we’ll do.”

If you’re thinking you’ve heard of the park before, you’re probably right.

Earlier this year, one of its colorful caged characters, Chico, went viral with his soaring rendition of Beyoncé's “If I Were a Boy”:

They’d better keep Chico away from the Filthy Five.

Otherwise, spectators could soon be served a crowed cover of Cardi B.

As for reforming the tasteless tropical troupe, hopefully the brightly-bedecked delinquents can swear off their off-color ways.

Indeed, at Lincolnshire Wildlife Park, vulgarity is for the birds. [source]

Crazy birds. Someone taught those birds potty language. Not good.

FBI arrests 5 people in connection with drone attack plot against White House UFC Freedom 250 event

From NY Post.com (June 16):

WASHINGTON — The FBI thwarted an explosive drone attack targeting Sunday’s UFC Freedom 250 event on the White House South Lawn and have already taken five suspects into custody, officials told The Post Tuesday.

The multi-phase terror attack allegedly involved using explosive-laden drone aircraft to strike buildings in the vicinity of the event, sparking mass panic and driving the fleeing crowd toward a sniper team poised to pick victims off, the officials said.

A “second wave” of attackers then allegedly planned to storm the White House gate, the officials added.

Fox News Digital first reported on the attack plan.

The plot was “stopped cold” on June 10 after investigators executed a search warrant in Cincinnati, where the first arrest was made, FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement.

Some of the suspects traveled to Fredericksburg, Va. on June 12 or 13 to make preparations for the attack.

Upon investigating a suspect’s iPhone, authorities found at least 23 users of encrypted chat app Signal involved in discussing parameters of what could have been a devastating terror attack in the heart of the nation’s capital.

A suspect told investigators the goal of the attack was to target “capitalist elites,” “billionaires” and politicians who received money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), officials also said.

“While the result represented the best of investigative work, it was also nothing out of the ordinary for this law enforcement team — we are built to detect, respond to, and bring to justice those who threaten the lives of American citizens — particularly during large gatherings like the historic UFC 250 fight,” Patel later wrote on X praising the coordinated law enforcement effort.

The high-profile combat sports extravaganza coincided with President Trump’s 80th birthday, and was attended by around 4,300 people, including 1,200 active-duty service members.

An estimated 80,000 to 85,000 more fans attended a ticketed watch party on the Ellipse just south of the executive mansion, while thousands more without tickets gathered on the National Mall to try to catch a view of the seven-fight card on giant screens. [source]

Kudos to the FBI stopping the attack. Good for the mother alerting the authorities. Sounds like these potential terrorists are anti-Semitic.

More articles on potential attack:

• DHS: Illegal Alien Led Foiled White House UFC Terror Plot
• Whistleblower lawyer was targeted in UFC terror plot, FBI still trying to figure out why

US payrolls rise by 172,000 in May, topping expectations

From NY Post.com (June 5):

America’s labor market delivered another pleasant surprise in May as employers added far more jobs than expected, though the strong numbers could give the Federal Reserve another reason to hold off on cutting interest rates.

US employers added 172,000 jobs last month while the unemployment rate held steady at 4.3%, according to Labor Department data released Friday.

Employment remains a bright spot in the economy — with an average of 188,000 jobs gained each of the past three months — after a disappointing 2025. Last year, employers largely held off on growing their workforces amid uncertainties about US tariff policy and cuts to the federal government, experts said.

“Consumers are still spending, businesses are still hiring, and the job market remains one of the strongest pillars holding up the economy,” Sung Won Sohn, professor of finance and economics at Loyola Marymount University, told The Post.

May’s payroll gain easily topped economists’ expectations for roughly 80,000 new jobs and came after the government revised March and April hiring figures higher by a combined 93,000 jobs.

President Trump appeared to tie the numbers to his long-standing calls for interest rate cuts.

“With a great Jobs Report, like just announced, stocks should go up, not down. That’s the way it was for 200 years. Growth does not mean inflation! How else can a Country attain GREATNESS???” he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

Stocks dropped, though, as investors took the strong jobs numbers to mean the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates high through the rest of the year.

The Dow closed down 695 points, or 1.4%. A tech selloff prompted the Nasdaq to decline 4.2% — ending its worst week in over a year — while the S&P 500 dropped 2.6%

The stronger-than-expected employment numbers suggest the labor market remains remarkably resilient despite concerns about slowing economic growth and uncertainty facing businesses.

With the World Cup coming to the US this summer, job gains were concentrated in leisure and hospitality. They added 70,000 positions in May. Local government added 55,000 jobs, while health care payrolls increased by 35,000.

The financial sector was one of the few weak spots, with 22,000 jobs shed.

Still, Sohn said the breadth of hiring in May was encouraging because job growth was not concentrated in a single industry.

“The key point is that job creation was not limited to one tiny corner of the economy,” he told The Post.

Average hourly earnings rose 0.3% in May and were up 3.4% from a year earlier, matching economists’ expectations.

The unemployment rate has now remained in a narrow range between 4.3% and 4.5% since July 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The report arrived days after separate Labor Department data showed job openings climbed to 7.62 million in April, the highest level since May 2024 and a sign that demand for workers remains intact even as hiring has slowed.

The increase in openings was driven overwhelmingly by professional and business services, a broad category that includes many white-collar jobs. Openings in the sector jumped by 668,000 positions in April, accounting for roughly 90% of the nationwide increase.

But the April surge in job openings has yet to translate into a major hiring boom.

While employers posted more jobs, Labor Department data showed employment in professional and business services was little changed in May, suggesting companies may be searching for talent while remaining cautious about expanding payrolls. [source]

More winning!

Chinese province’s new ‘Smart Religion' app makes Christians register to attend worship services

From Christian Post.com (Mar. 11, 2023):

Christians in China's populous Henan province are now reportedly required to register on a government app to attend worship services and must make online reservations before taking part in worship, according to a report from a U.S.-based human rights group.

The app, called "Smart Religion" and developed by the Ethnic and Religious Affairs Commission of Henan Province, asks believers to give personal information, including their name, phone number, government ID number, permanent residence, occupation and date of birth to receive approval to attend a service, ChinaAid reported this week.

It's a requirement not only for churches but also mosques and Buddhist temples, states the group, which documents religious persecution in China and supports Chinese prisoners of conscience.

Henan has one of the largest Christian populations in China. Local Christians say the cumbersome application procedures have reduced the number of believers attending churches. According to the Texas-based nongovernmental organization, many elderly people and those less tech-savvy may find it challenging to access the app. However, officials say such people will be assisted.

Once allowed into a place of worship, believers must also have their temperature taken, the group said, commenting that the app may be related in some way to COVID-19 restrictions.

ChinaAid contends these management measures were not implemented to protect people's religious rights but rather as a means to achieve political purposes.

"This so-called 'Smart Religion' online application has been officially launched in some parts of Henan. In August 2022, the Ethnic and Religious Affairs Bureau of Puyang County in Henan and the Henan Billion Second Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. signed a project contract for the 'Construction of an Independent Command Platform for the Management of Smart Religion,'" China Aid Special Correspondent Gao Zhensaithe wrote.

"According to the official website of the Ministry of Ethnic and Religious Affairs of China, as early as July 2020, at the symposium on the construction of a religious big data management platform held in Henan, several platform projects, such as the construction of 'Smart Religion,' were inspected. The digital platform is the foundation of the religious affairs management improvement project, and the China Construction Bank of the Henan Branch provided technical support."

China only recognizes five religious groups that submit to the government's influence. Christians from unregistered churches bear the brunt of the persecution.

In a report released last month, ChinaAid said the Chinese Communist Party intensified the persecution of churches and Christians leading up to the 20th Party Congress in 2022.

"Fraud" charges being brought against house church pastors and leaders in mainland China had increased, with the traditional practice of tithing and offering in churches being seen as an illegal activity, the report said.

The authorities allegedly used the updated "Measures for the Financial Management of Religious Activity Venues," implemented last June, to fabricate charges against house churches.

"We are gravely concerned about how the Communist regime also treats the State-sanctioned church," ChinaAid's President and Founder Bob Fu said in a statement. "Previously, they asked for sole allegiance to the Communist Party, but since the 20th National Party Congress, they shifted their emphasis to aligning with Xi Jinping."

"Their goal," he added, "is not only to curate a 'socialist-friendly' church; they hope to erase it. The international community needs to know about these trends and developments as China continues to rise on the global stage."

The Chinese Communist Party remains focused on religious sinicization.

"Before, during, and after the opening of the Congress, China's state-run religious groups lavished compliments and praise on Xi with more extravagant words and phrases than China's state-run media, showing that religious Sinicization is evolving from supporting the CCP to worship and allegiance to Xi Jinping," the report added.

The Chinese government also implemented strict regulations against religious content on the internet, which ChinaAid contends was aimed at "removing Christianity from cyberspace." The group stresses that Christians have faced "unprecedented" online censorship since the implementation of the "Administrative Measures for Internet Religious Information and Services" in 2022.

China is ranked as the 16th worst country when it comes to Christian persecution, according to the 2023 Open Doors World Watch List.

"Tightening restrictions and increasing surveillance are putting Christians in China under intensifying pressure, as the Communist Party seeks to limits all threats to its power," Open Doors, which monitors persecution in over 60 countries, states in a factsheet. [source]

Just terrible, then that’s the Chi-Coms for you. Always persecuting.

Romans 13 and the American Revolution

From The Public Discourse.com (May 14):

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, Christians are once again debating the moral significance of the American Founding. Was the American Revolution an act of justified resistance, or a failure of obedience?

On a first reading, Scripture seems to leave little room for ambiguity; Romans chapter 13 declares, in no uncertain terms: “be subject to the governing authorities.” This came at a time of Roman oppression and persecution of Christians, yet Paul still describes Caesar and the government as a magistrate intended to maintain order, “the one in authority … God’s servant for your good.”

Many American Christians nevertheless have long believed the Revolution, the ultimate act of resistance to the crown’s authority, was not only permissible, but righteous. But the Revolution, and in connection, the Founding, did not conform to one single theological vision. It produced competing views, some grounded in rights, others in order, and still others in providence. The tension between these three approaches creates downstream questions, like the role of faith in public life. How should Christians engage in public life, and to what extent is the American experiment a godly enterprise? Revisiting the Founding’s approaches can clarify what faithful political judgment requires today.

Rights First

The rights-first approach aligns most closely with the political philosophy of John Locke. This approach views liberty as a birthright and upholds the concept of government by consent. This approach is exemplified by John Allen’s Oration Upon the Beauties of Liberty, which was delivered from a distinctively Baptist-separatist standpoint. Allen stresses the right of everyone to freedom, “according to their own sphere of life,” and the crown’s actions taking away the birthright of its citizens as being “contrary to the spirit of the law and the rights of an Englishman.” For Allen, monarchy is legitimate only insofar as it rests on the will and consent of the people; for him, it exists primarily to secure individual freedoms.

Allen invokes Scripture in suggesting law as the prerequisite and standard for government, arguing that “where there is no Law, there is no transgression.” Though framed in biblical language, Allen’s argument is unmistakably Lockean: liberty grounded in rights, consent as the basis of authority, and resistance justified by arbitrary power, with tyranny constituting an effective dissolution of political obligation. Instead of submitting Scripture to sustained exegesis, Allen isolates particular themes to the detriment of Romans 13:5’s insistence that subjection is owed “not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience.”

In America’s Appeal to the Impartial World, congregational minister Moses Mather uses similarly Lockean language of God-given natural rights, stating: “Free agency, or a rational existence, with its powers and faculties … is the gift of God to man … hence man hath an absolute property in, and right of dominion over himself.” This leads to an argument for government based on consent and a general principle of non-coercion, whereby “whatever is absolutely the property of a man, he cannot be divested of, but by his own voluntary act, or consent, either expressed, or implied.” This lays the groundwork for civil authority as by the “voice and consent” of the people.

This view sits uneasily with Romans 13, placing ultimate authority in the people’s consent alone. Mather ultimately urges colonists to “withstand and repel the attacks of tyranny,” once again baptizing Lockean categories more than offering a distinctively Christian account of political resistance. [read more]

Happy 250th Birthday, America! 😊💓🎆