“As a coeditor of Inequality.org, I get a lot of fan mail (and a few complaints). Greg B. recently wrote in, ‘None of my problems exist as a result of someone else being a billionaire’. My response to Greg: ‘An economy rigged to funnel so much wealth and power to the billionaire class is bad for you and everyone else. It undermines your life in some major ways.’ I wrote my new book, Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power are Ruining Our Lives and Planet, for folks like Greg to talk about how extreme wealth inequality disrupts our daily lives. Here are 10 ways you are being burned by billionaires, pulled from my book.” (10/15/25)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Connor O’Keeffe
“[W]hen it comes to fighting back against progressivism, socialism, globalism, interventionism, or whatever you want to call the ideology of the political establishment, the American right has long struggled to do so meaningfully. The reason was best explained in a 1938 pamphlet by the Old Right writer Garet Garrett, called The Revolution Was. Garrett witnessed a conservative movement that was similarly staring down a powerful coalition of New Deal Democrats, crony business leaders, and outright socialists …. In his pamphlet, Garrett argued that the fundamental problem with the conservatives of his day was that they were looking in the wrong direction. … as long as the American right ignored the institutional changes that had already happened and, therefore, allowed them to remain in place, it was effectively a certainty that they would lose. That what they were advocating against would come to pass.” (10/15/25)
“He came, he saw, he conquered. That just about describes President Trump’s 12,000-mile round trip from Washington, DC, to Israel and Egypt. He addressed Israel’s Knesset in Jerusalem, greeted the hostages and their families, hopped on Air Force One for a flight to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, signed the first phase of a Gaza peace deal, delivered a moving speech, met with the leaders of 27 countries to push the next phases of his 20-point peace plan forward and take a well-earned victory lap, and returned to Washington after what most people would consider a full day. The guns are silent, relief supplies are pouring into Gaza, IDF troops have withdrawn to agreed areas and the 20 surviving hostages have been released, along with four of the 28 bodies of the dead, the others to be returned when they are found by Hamas.” (10/14/25)
“You might be, as I am, alarmed about the future of liberty. How deep are the roots of liberty when so many submitted to authoritarian measures in response to COVID, and approved the use of coercion against those less eager to comply? Unable to visualize alternatives, public acceptance of top-down coercive solutions to COVID demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice liberty for the promise of safety. To restore liberty, our understanding of liberty needs to deepen.” (10/15/25)
“The nation’s halting and uneven clean energy rollout — exacerbated by President Donald Trump’s hostility to anything green — threatens our prosperity, our climate, and our communities. Left unchecked, rising temperatures (driven largely by fossil fuels and the industries that burn them) will destroy ecosystems, disrupt our economy, and destabilize our society. Some opportunistic politicians think they have a solution in the latest media fad, the so-called ‘Abundance’ movement. They argue that the rules and regulations put in place to protect the environment are in fact obstacles impeding our ability to build the clean energy our climate needs. Their logic is nonsensical: Cut environmental regulations to protect the environment and unleash energy abundance.” (10/15/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mark Nayler
“Between May 17 and September 30, there were 3,832 deaths in Spain linked to extreme heat, an increase of almost 87% from 2024. Many of these victims had underlying health conditions, 96% were over 65, and almost two thirds were 85 or older. But boiling Spanish summers are not a new phenomenon, nor is the global warming that politicians like to blame whenever fatalities result from extreme weather. The awkward truth for Spain’s Socialist-led government, which has promised to reduce socioeconomic inequality, is that energy poverty is the more decisive factor in heat-related deaths.” (10/15/25)
“The failure of liberal-minded politicians to keep government officials accountable is a cause for great fear, especially when those state actors are perceived to be actively and intentionally undermining the public’s sense of security. As the American philosopher Judith Shklar explains, what she calls the ‘liberalism of fear’ regards ‘abuses of public powers in all regimes with equal trepidation.’ Knowing that ‘every page of political history’ teaches that ‘some agents of government will behave lawlessly and brutally in small or big ways most of the time unless they are prevented from doing so,’ a liberalism that considers the propagation of fear in society an evil will worry ‘about the excesses of official agents at every level of government.'” (10/15/25)
“What do Jimmy Kimmel and the late J. Edgar Hoover have in common? A kink for women’s dresswear? Nope. Both denied the existence of major criminal organizations. Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1924 to 1972, refused to affirm that the Mafia crime syndicate existed. Repeatedly, over the years. Rumors that he was being blackmailed by the Mafia itself, over his own cross-dressing kinks (the mob allegedly had photos), is not affirmed by major historians, who say his denial-of-the-facts was just politics. So when we encounter those rejecting the reality of Antifa, take them with a grain of salt.” (10/15/25)
“In March of this year, Laya’s world came crashing down. Following a series of skirmishes in the coastal region of Syria, the country’s transitional government had mobilized forces to put down what it saw as a brewing rebellion among Alawites, a minority offshoot of Shia Islam and the religion of former President Bashar al-Assad. The operation quickly turned into a bloodbath. Government-affiliated militants and non-state actors swept through coastal towns, going door to door and killing any Alawite men they could find. Hundreds of bodies were dumped in the sea or in mass graves. ‘They killed my cousin,’ recalled Laya, who lost several relatives in the attacks. ‘They came to his door and killed him there, in front of his wife and children.'” (10/15/25)
“Since 2017, I’ve known that international adoption is in decline. But only recently, while writing the introduction to the 15th-anniversary edition of Selfish Reasons, did I realize that both forms of infant adoption in the United States have become incredibly rare. Domestically, birth parents only put about one out of every 200 babies born up for adoption. … Internationally, the situation is even bleaker. In 2004, U.S. international adoptions peaked at 22,988. In 2023, the last available year, the total was just 1,275 — a 94% fall. Two decades ago, the market share of imported adoptees was about 50%. Now it’s about 7%.” (10/15/25)
