“An intelligent, attractive former student commits a ghastly murder, reasoning that he is doing society a favor by ridding the world of a greedy capitalist. He is eventually taken into custody by authorities, jailed, and tried. This scenario does not describe Luigi Mangione, the affluent 28-year-old who recently admitted to killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in 2024 in an apparent message to the health-insurance industry. The tale is far older: it describes Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s nineteenth-century masterpiece Crime and Punishment.” (10/16/26)
“Pope Leo XIV was discharged from the hospital on Saturday after undergoing surgery for lung cancer, with his surgeon saying he could be fully recovered in about 10 days. Dr. Stefano Margaritora told Vatican News there were ‘no clinical reasons’ preventing the pontiff from making his planned trip to Latin America next month. The pontiff, who had been recovering at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital since Tuesday, walked out unaided before spending a couple of minutes speaking with well-wishers. He appeared to accept a gift of a homemade smiling Pope figure before getting in a car and being driven back to the Vatican.” (10/17/26)
Source: Independent Institute
by Alex Tokarev & Kristin Tokarev
“Everyone knows the math is getting worse. Americans are living longer. Birth rates are falling. Fewer workers are supporting more retirees. The Social Security trustees project the program’s trust funds will be depleted in the early 2030s, leaving payroll taxes insufficient to pay all scheduled benefits unless Congress acts. Yet every election brings the same warning: Don’t touch my Social Security! That’s why President Donald Trump’s reported interest in Australia’s retirement system matters. Not because Australia has discovered the silver bullet for that fiscal monster. Because someone in Washington is finally asking whether a retirement system designed during the Great Depression is still the best America can do in the 21st century.” (10/16/26)
“So, what good are the rich? Sumner had the good common sense to understand what so many do not understand today: ‘The great gains of a great capitalist in a modern state must be put under the head of wages of superintendence. Any one who believes that any great enterprise of an industrial character can be started without labor must have little experience of life.'” (10/16/26)
“I have not blogged for a while but recently I have allowed all the election advertising to get under my skin. The solution sets being discussed — to the extent any solutions are discussed rather than just promoting fear of the other team –are so divorced from any sensible analysis of cause and effect that it is almost intolerable to even listen. For this article, I have taken real things people have expressed concern about in this election cycle and I have proposed six meta issues that are closer to the true causes of people’s concerns. Of course, none of this is being discussed by anyone on either side in this election.” (10/16/26)
“Tom Cruise may possibly be the biggest movie star in the world. His career has been a constant stream of blockbusters spanning more than four decades. Cruise has historically made excellent decisions in picking his projects, but his newest film, Digger (2026), is certainly a departure from anything we’ve seen Tom Cruise do on the silver screen. But that’s not all—Digger is a departure from cinema as we have known it, at least in the years since Covid broke out. The headlines mostly dismiss the film as a box office flop. The film critics are not helping the matter either. They don’t like it, at all. Yet in the last few days after its opening, the chatter among the people in real life and social media has been quite positive.” (10/16/26)
“A judge dismissed child sex abuse charges against actor Timothy Busfield on Friday because, he said, prosecutors ‘failed to act in a fair and impartial manner.’ Busfield, 69, was indicted by a grand jury in New Mexico in February on four counts of criminal sexual contact of a child on the set of the Fox television series The Cleaning Lady. Busfield, who acted in and directed the show from 2022 to 2024, was indicted after accusations of groping twin boys who worked as child actors on the show. … He denied all charges, and said the boys’ parents were seeking ‘revenge’ after the child actors were not invited back for the show’s final season, Variety reported.” (10/16/26)
