Basic Optimism

@Smirkley It's even worse than that, he doesn't have a majority in the parliament. It's a minority government that is deciding this.

Sanchez didn’t ask the people whether they wanted amnesty for 900,000 illegal migrants. He didn’t even ask Parliament. The government lied and said this as roughly 500,000 migrants, then got 900,000 applications and may end up over one million. All by executive decree. Any accusations of illiberalism from those who attacked Central Europe? Of democratic backsliding? Of bypassing institutions? Of course not. For liberals, more and more immigration is never illiberal or undemocratic.

They said boycott, they said disaster, they said Trump would kill the World Cup meanwhile there were 504,000 fans in 8 matches. Record attendance incoming. The media was wrong again.

@avidseries China has more inequality than the US so it’s weird that socialists would take that as an example.

China began lifting millions out of poverty only after it began rejecting socialism. Before it did this, it was poorer than most of the countries in Africa. Now it's one of the world's two economic superpowers.

@lisandroalm @JMilei Gracias ! VLC!

Placas subidas por @BasicOptimism sobre la gestión del Presidente @JMilei con una gran verdad. "La izquierda dice pelear por los pobres, pero cuando 1.2millones de niños salen de la pobreza junto a un gobierno que ellos odian, lo detestan." Fenómeno Barrial.

@Rory_Talks_Ball Tell me you’ve never been to a college football game without telling me. The atmosphere there is now better than in most Premier League stadiums, where loyal supporters have been priced out and replaced by tourists.

Zohran, your city spent $72 million on homelessness in 2019. By 2025 it was $368 million. A 400% increase. The cost per homeless person is $81,000 a year, more than the median New Yorker earns and the homeless population grew 26%. If that tells us anything, it's that with Elon's $1 trillion, you wouldn't fix homelessness in NYC. You would create millions more.

Socialists keep saying "just take @elonmusk $1 trillion and fix everything" but this what that actually fixes: Africa hunger? Already received $2.6 trillion in aid since 1960. Still hungry. NYC homelessness? @NYCMayor is already spending $81,000 per homeless person per year. There are more homeless than ever. Minnesota social programs? $1 trillion would fund their Medicaid fraud alone for 111 years. @GavinNewsom's high-speed rail? Already $231 billion over budget. Not a single foot of track laid. Public education? The US already spends $1.3 trillion a year on it. Test scores keep dropping. The US Government? The US spends $7 trillion a year. $1 trillion funds the federal government for 57 days. And here's the worse, confiscating Elon's wealth doesn't even give you $1 trillion. His wealth is in stock so if you force him to sell, you crash the valuation, wipe out thousands of investors and employees, and end up with a fraction of what you thought you'd get. So you don't fix hunger, you don't fix homelessness, you don't fix schools but you get a market crash and mass layoffs. America doesn't have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem, created by the same politicians who think they know better than the market how to allocate capital.

Isn’t it weird that for so many western feminists, activism stops when it’s time to criticize the men that actually imprison women? The burqas. The child marriages. The honor killings. Suddenly it’s about respecting different cultures.

How can anyone hate @elonmusk? Do they hate the fact that he created 150,000 high-paying jobs in clean energy and aerospace? Or is it the fact that he kept Ukraine online when the country's infrastructure was collapsing? Or the fact that he built a chip that lets paralyzed people control computers with their thoughts? Or the fact that he paid $11 billion in taxes in a single year, more than any individual in U.S. history? Or the fact that Starlink now connects hospitals and schools in places governments ignored for decades? Or the fact that he restored free speech to the most important public square on the internet? Or is it the fact that after the Space Shuttle retired, America had no way to send its own astronauts to space and he fixed it, faster and cheaper, with rockets that land themselves back on the pad? Or the fact that he forced the entire auto industry to go electric, not with regulation, not with lobbying, just with a better product? Or the fact that his self-driving technology already prevents thousands of crashes every year? Or the fact that he doesn't own a superyacht, doesn't have a private island and every dollar goes straight back into rockets, batteries, and brain interfaces because he actually believes the future depends on it? Or the fact that he built Gigafactories in America and Germany when everyone else was outsourcing to China? He built rockets, electrified transport, kept a nation online during a war, and gave life back to the paralyzed. This is who they hate?

They are not harming the economy to save the planet, they are harming the economy because like communism, it's the philosophy of envy. They don't care about the planet, they all take planes, they all eat meat and they don't want solutions like nuclear. This isn't about the planet, they just don't want other people to have more than what they have.

I don’t find that line of argument very persuasive; these are people willing to do significant harm to the economy in order to a) dole out welfare, and b) “save” the planet from climate change. They clearly have a moral compass (albeit misaligned), so wrecking a country purely to win elections doesn’t pass the smell test for me.

Liberals could probably keep the right out of power across the West for a generation if they just gave up on replacement migration. The fact that they won’t indicates that this is their biggest priority, their reason for being.

@cosmorxn @ArtemisConsort Just look at the incentive. The left doesn't care about pension or humanitarian reasons, they want to stay in power and the migrants they welcome will vote for them for decades.

What is the most plausible explanation for this devotion to mass immigration? I’ve been thinking about it for years but I can’t steelman it. I mean, they must know that migrants from the third world (and their offspring!) are very costly, so that’s the pensions argument out the window. They can’t really be doing it for humanitarian reasons since it’s been well established that it’s more cost effective to help them while they’re in their own countries. Is there something else, or are they perhaps genuinely ignorant of the above?

@ArtemisConsort It's easier to import voters than to convince the ones who are already there. This is why.

@oscar_puente_ @grok ¿Puedes comparar la tasa de violaciones y robos entre Madrid y Barcelona? Gracias.

Lo que hemos visto estos días es que Barcelona sigue siendo la de las olimpiadas mágicas del 92. Creatividad, buen gusto, precisión…y Madrid la del Relaxing Cup of cafe con leche en la plaza mayor. Almeida y Ayuso dignos herederos de la Botella.

Update on my favourite map after Fujimori won the Peruvian presidential election. How it started vs How it’s going:

Since @JMilei’s victory in Argentina and the defunding of USAID, the left has lost almost every major election in Latin America. 🇩🇴 Dominican Republic, 2024 🇸🇻 El Salvador, 2024 🇵🇦 Panama, 2024 🇪🇨 Ecuador, 2025 🇧🇴 Bolivia, 2025 🇭🇳 Honduras, 2025 🇨🇱 Chile, 2025 🇨🇷 Costa Rica, 2026 🇵🇪 Peru, 2026 And Colombia is next.

@translatisfy @AlexLacl It's less than that... With his new salary at Ferrari, he saves more every year in taxes by living in Monaco. Also keep in mind that's the money he pledged over several years, so it's even less than that.

@AlexLacl @BasicOptimism That would be 6.94% of his wealth. Sorry but little Mormon grandmas that aren’t millionaires are giving away 10%

They don’t reject capitalism, they just don’t want anyone to be richer than them. As Thomas Sowell said: “Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, ‘social justice’.”

@PekkaKnight2 @AlexLacl His sources are obviously wrong. Just look at Hamilton's salary, check how much he saves on taxes by living in Monaco and you can see how ridiculous is the amount he pledged (which is different from donated) to give to charity. Hypocrisy at its finest.

@AlexLacl @BasicOptimism Using X as a source isn’t a good idea. Also, so what? That doesn’t mean he is right, and he is still dating a billionaire.

@ThomBrady5 Unfortunately, the communist is currently projected to win.

all of Latin America is flipping right-wing

@EricLDaugh She hasn't won yet.