I Spy With My Little Eye

The understandably ugly and detailed chart below does have a disconcerting trend about it. What it is, is the items that have shown the largest growth rates in personal consumption expenditures in the US. It is their long term annualized growth rate. Obviously the internet is #1 because of its relatively recency and booming growth. HOwever, I want you to look at the items and see if you can see what I see ( you will have to click on it). FYI, the average growth rate of all items was only 7.41%

Outsource the Children!

Damn I'm Good



This is a chart showing you consumer spending on day care and nursery schools as a percent of our total spending. It doesn't even hit 1% of total spending in the economy (as not everybody is having children and there are other items people buy aside from day care), but the percent increase is just phenomenal.

Keep having kids, but refuse to bring them up! I'm sure there are no consequences!

As the Patron Saint Frick wrote in his 17th letter to the Corinthians

"Enjoy the decline!"

Some Quick Cappy Cap Math

Did some quick math here because I read something and I couldn't believe it. How often do you find the average cost of day care on an AR 15 forum? But apparently the numbers are not false. It's true. Over $11,000 per year, per child in day care costs.

Now, permit the ole Captain a bit of Back of Napkin Economics:

2.2 children per woman on average translates into $25,665 in annual child care expenses.

Median income of the average US female. $46,367.

Net of taxes (because I know how you ladies like all those splendifferiffic social programs because you care for the children), which would be in the 25% tax bracket. $34,775.

We subtract the $25,665 from the $34,775 and you get $9,110.

Divide by 2,000 working hours and that's $4.56/per hour! (And at that rate you'll be able to pay off your $100,000 in student loans for your Masters in Communications in a short 11 years!)

Now I know there are child care credits and insurance and so forth and so on. Just as child care isn't the only form of outsourcing we pay for other people to raise our children (pre-school, afterschool activities, before-school activities, etc. etc.)

But it really behooves the question "Is it worth paying somebody else to raise your kids?" Even throwing in the male median income ($47k and change), men are merely netting $10.73 after child care expenses.

But, again, I am that evil capitalist that asks stupid questions and likes to use "facts"

and "statistics"

and doesn't understand that emotions trump reality,

and has this stupid notion that one parent should stay home to raise the little kinder and take care of the house while the other goes and works

and likes to point out a plurality of women are simply working in fields where they take care of other people's children behooving the question why not just take of your own damn kids.

And far be it from me to ask whether the time lost bringing up your children is worth the opportunity cost of $4.56 or $10.73/hr. I'm sure the career is rewarding and your family is just as stable as that blasted and accursed "June and Ward Cleaver" NUCLEAR FAMILY (booooo!!!! hisssss!!!!). Yes, let us not factor in the costs of therapists, drama, mental health costs, teenage pregnancies, booze/drug rehab, divorce and all the other wonderful societal traits associated with the latch key kids. No, those things are merely conspiracies foisted upon society by the evil patriarch and do not exist.

So ignore the Captain in the corner, for he know not what he speaks of. What does he know. He just wants to bang his drums all day and enjoy the decline!

Update!

We Will Treat Them As Equals...

and they will not like it.

Calling All Young Males

Dr. Helen is asking young males for input in her new book. Go wonder over yonder and see if you can't help contribute your 2 cents over there.

Weekend Linkage

From the front lines in Wisconsin on the Glenn Grothman saga, a female's point of view which I believe was necessary.

Dalrock advances his philosophy to realize a very common problem we face here in the freedom/libertarian/manosphere world - you can't argue with ignorance or people who do not wish to be intellectually honest.

The term "crusaderism" is spreading! I'll be dead by the time this happens, but hopefully the term will make it into the lexicon of political discussion to aptly describe the world's most evil and corrupt people.

Have kids first. Then ask whether you have the time to adequately finance and raise them.

Chained to a desk, or chained to a man, I hope the desk hugs you back at night. But, then again, I have no skin in this game. I'm just thoroughly entertained watching full grown adults wade through the consequences of 1970's feminism.

Lord, grant me the strength (and life expectancy) to count the ways.

Union Loafers

I Hope She "Finds Herself"

Ug, you can just tell it was a mistake to bring three children into the world with this one.

But then again, never let children or responsibilities get in the way of your EPL Fantasy.

Men, you are hereby ordered to continue to enjoy the decline!

Dem Der Democrat Debt

You must watch it till the end.

I'm Just Glad I Have a Motorcycle

No, it can't be something as simple as supply and demand! It must be greedy speculators, or Big Oil! Or Wall Street!

The only thing I would add to it is how the weak dollar (caused by debt and our inability to produce anything that gives our currency value) is also to blame for high gas prices.

That's What I'm TalkingggggBout!

The Sad State of Virginia Community College

Fly by night degree mills I can understand, but a community college, which I presume is accredited, is offering a CULINARY SCHOOL?!?!

"Culinary arts provides more than slicing and dicing?" Yeah, like try a ton of debt, no employable skills, no job offers (just ask previous years' graduates) and increased taxes to the sucker taxpayers of Virginia. Trust me kids, I KNOW, I TAUGHT AT ONE OF THOSE CULINARY SCHOOLS. GET THE HELL OUT NOW KIDS! YOU'RE BEING TAKEN LIKE CHUMPS!

Wincing, I clicked on their little "My Future at VCCS" and amongst the expected mushy, sappy, touchy-feely garbage is a video you just have to watch. Wonderful happy music, with pretty birds and smileys and unicorns, but nothing about the shocking state of the labor market for young people or anything that would help them practically.

Would somebody over at Virginia Community College please get the funding to buy 10,000 copies of my books to distribute to those poor kids? Or how about some of these conservative institutions? You know how the government buys billions of dollars in vaccinations against malaria, AID's, or whatever else to use in Africa or wherever else? How about the private sector counterpart buy 10 million copies of my book and ship them to all the students in all of the colleges in the US? Not only would it vaccinate these poor kids from destroying their futures, it's an incredible return on investment! Imagine instead of millions of idiotic, brainwashed kids voting for socialism, they're woken up and they start voting for capitalism, lowering corporate tax rates, eliminating regulation. Somebody tell the Koch Foundation, or Peter Thiel, or heck any corporation's CSR department. Ug, how the heck do you fight this sickness!?

Go Glenn Grothman, Go

Roissy has discovered the tendered legislation to acknowledge single parenthood is a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect. Though he has it slightly wrong, in the post it cites single mothers, whereas I believe the legislation cites single parents (as it should).

Regardless it is interesting to see the contrast in the comments between what I deem mature, wise, tough fatherly love-maturity (though a bit crass) and the knee-jerk, reactionary rush-to-run behind the children, claim victim status and blame sexism (all while ignoring the children of course). It's also interesting to note the Yahoo article put in "single moms" as the target of the legislation, when the legislation is targeted towards single-parents (including single dads). Then again, what do you expect from those political and philosophical sophisticates who go to Yahoo for their news.

Regardless, what we're seeing here is the Manosphere, men in general, and women who genuinely do care about family, society and the country, clashing with the established media and political forces that have benefited and profited from single-parent households via the trillions of dollars in social programs that goes to "fight" (but never resolve) the symptoms. The conflict will be interesting, but in the end the productive and responsible members of society will win, if for any other reason they're based in reality, whereas the idea "single-parent households" are in general a "good thing" is based in La-La Land.

Americana Community Bank Posts a Profit!

Congratulations are due to Americana Community Bank! For the first time in years, they finally posted a profit!

Some of you may remember this bank as the bank that I applied to in 2007, but they instead gave the job to my old boss. Americana is also the bank that when I asked them during the interview if they were making any bad real estate loans, they assured me that they had a great portfolio of clients and wouldn't have to worry about a "housing bubble." They were ALSO the bank that subsequently got a cease and desist order from the Feds.


But now it looks like they actually managed to make a profit! And I want to congratulate my old boss and the higher ups at Americana that claimed they didn't have any loan quality issues for the fine and outstanding jobs they did! It only took $14.5 million in cumulative losses, and a cease and desist order, and who knows how much in taxpayer money or shareholder money to recapitalize the firm, but by golly, you "leaders of men" and "financial geniuses" turned that bank around lickity split! I, and all the other young morons who obviously didn't know what we're talking about, salute you for the fine job you did!

As a visual aid to my youthful stupidity, I created this chart to compare what the company would have wasted paying stupid me 4 years salary vs. their minimal losses over those 4 years:



You see, this is why young people should never be trusted and why gray hair is the single, most important factor when deciding who to lead your companies. Additionally, you don't want any of the "out of the box thinkers" because they obviously never would have predicted the housing bubble and could NEVER lead a firm to greatness.

/sarcasm

Girls and boys, let this be a lesson to you. NEVER distrust yourself just because somebody is "older" and has "more experience." Chances are, given how this country is run, you can do a better job in most industries, especially banking. Besides, if you don't have faith in yourself, you'll sell yourself short and increase your chances of being the "scapegoat" when these morons play the blame game as the Feds come in and raid your office.

Divorce and Religion - Two Veritable Industries

"Incidentally, her Catholic priest recommended to her that she seek a divorce (and later the Archdiocese of Washington would breezily approve the annulment, after having the sac to ask me for a $500 "donation" to finance their declaring that my marriage to her never happened and my children were henceforth bastards)."

Your Manosphere Humor of the Day

I want the bear serving the pizza from a "Beer Tree."

The "We're Americans" Bubble

After nearly 4 years of the media citing "green sprouts" or "slow downs in collapsing prices" and other such optimistic spins, there are some signs the economy is indeed turning around. Not booming (like it should based on economic history), but it is growing and and it is slowly turning around.

Naturally democrats (who have depressed and lowered people's expectations with essentially 3 years of economic stagnation) highlight this tepid recovery as proof positive Obama's economic plan is working. Republicans, actually fear it because with Obama at an incomprehensibly high 45% approval rating already, a continued economic expansion will hurt their election chances. I, however, fear this small economic recovery for another reason:

It's going to cause another bubble.

Understand Americans are incredibly and overly optimistic about the country, about the economy, about their futures and about themselves. They have this foolish notion that there is something "special" about America. That somehow America is "unique" and "we always get out of it! Because we're America!" Unfortunately there is nothing unique or inherent about America that makes us special or immune to economic collapse or the economic realities of the real world. Americanism, yes, THAT is special and unique. Free markets, free people, total personal responsibility, void of government interference and reality TV. Yes, that had never been tried before in the history of the world and it was the "Great American Experiment." But modern-day Americans are simply American't's who prefer to collect a government pay check, major in a worthless subject, expect the government to solve all problems and just plain don't have the work ethic or innovation to achieve Americanism.

Regardless of how delusional the average American is, it doesn't change the fact that they are operating under the false premise that "America always comes back." And this, combined with other ingredients makes it very likely we're going to have another bubble.

First, no matter how convinced you are "America always prevails in the end" it is ultimately the people residing in the geographical location known as America that will determine whether or not we do indeed come back. There is not an "American God" or "deity" looking down at us, intervening with his divine powers to make the land under our feet somehow magical and great. It is the people and their ability to produce, innovate, create, pursue profit, wealth and fun that makes the country great. And frankly boys and girls, we just aren't as great as we think we are.

Long term average economic growth is collapsing. It was originally 4.25% back in the 40's-60's and now has collapsed to about 2.5%.

The economic growth necessary to rationalize a genuine, booming, and sustained economic recovery is just not there. And it is no function of "monetary policy," it isn't even a function of fiscal policy. It's the fact most Americans rather watch "American Idol," major in communications, get a job in a non-profit and vote for socialism than get off their lazy asses, study up on economics, go to school for something that will produce genuine economic growth, and start voting for policies and politicians that advocate creating wealth instead of merely spreading dwindling levels of it around. Again, the country is full of American't's, not your WWII grandfather who became and engineer and could fix his own car. The economic growth just plain isn't there to "bring America back."

The second contributing factor to the "Yeah for Us" Bubble is the harshness and length of the current recession we're in. People, psychologically, are desperate for a recovery, whether we have the economic growth to make it a reality or not. And given the length and the painfully slow progress the economy has made, any little sign of a sustained recovery, no matter how weak, is going to be heralded as the greatest news ever. All one has to do is look at articles from 2003 when the unemployment rate peaked at 6.3% under Bush and the media ripped him apart and called the economy "the worst in 50 years," versus today where the people have become so desperate (and effectively brainwashed) that they're thankful that the unemployment rate dropped below 9% and a two-freaking-month extension of the payroll tax actually makes headline news.

And finally, there is the 9,000 pound gorilla in the room I'm amazed nobody on the left talks about, and that is debt. Forget wars, forget "big oil," forget "evil corporations." The majority of debt is caused by social spending we just plain can't afford (look it the freak up instead of thinking you know more than me). Not only have we gone into debt by multiple trillions of dollars per year for the past 3 years, given future commitments to entitlement spending such as Medicare and Social Security, our current debt levels are dwarfed by what we must incur in the future.

But debt is a crafty little creature. To simplify it for the non-economists out there, debt you can consider to be "future anti-economic growth." Kind of like matter and anti-matter. You can spend the money today, but in the future when it needs to be paid back, it counters economic growth. Also making matters worse, it's not like we're spending our trillions of dollars in debt on veritable INVESTMENTS. We giving the majority of it away to people who plain don't provide anything in return. Welfare recipients, social security recipients, WIC recipients, colleges and universities, Solyndra, GM, the "chillllldren," retirees, medical bills for people on the verge of death, even wars fall under this category. This isn't to insult or criticize these people or items (though some certainly do deserve criticism, ridicule and an immediate cutting off of funds), but to point out the fact NONE of these expenditures provide a return. It's not like you're lending money to IBM to build a new factory in Georgia at 7% and their ROI is 13%, paying back not only the taxpayer, but creating jobs and providing a net return of 6% to the shareholder. No. The $89,000 in medicare you spent to keep Grandpa Jones alive another 6 months is GONE.

Such debt levels, debt commitments and the fact most of it is merely wealth transfers that have no return, will inhibit any long term economic growth (not to mention drive productive people and businesses away who don't care to be around when the tab comes due).

Now, you combine all these factors and you now have the perfect storm for another bubble.

• A delusional population
• desperate for any good news,
• believing in an almost religious belief that "America always wins,"
• none of whom seem to be willing to go and produce something but all want to major in "music therapy,"
• who also coincidentally keep voting for socialism

all residing in a country that;

• has deteriorating and declining long term economic growth
• crippling levels of debt
• all of which was wasted (not invested) on items that will never pay them back
  
• and a population so ignorant about basic economics they cannot vote real leaders to effectively lead it

Mix that all in with a dash of "entitlementitis" and BLAMO! Congratulations, you got a bubble that dwarfs the insanity of the tulip bulb bubble, the dollar volume of the housing bubble, and the the arrogance of the Dotcom bubble!

Of course, where will we see evidence of the bubble occurring? Asset prices as always, my dear Watson. Asset prices.

The stock market is overvalued if you want to look at it using P/E ratios or dividend yields.

I can't believe the US Treasury is getting as cheap of interest rates as it is.

The only reason the US dollar has recovered slightly is because the US' debt situation sucks only marginally less than Europe.

Why people keep going into debt to finance an education when there isn't an economy to provide them any jobs, I'll never know.

And let's not forget about that retirement bubble too. Yes, you just keep investing in that 401k because the government told you to. Never mind the ROI is laughable. You just keep plugging away thinking you're going to "retire" at, well, any age.

In the end I do know I'm fighting something more difficult than a 250 pound jiujitsu black belt. Because, whereas I can take on a 250 pound jiujitsu master, at least I can engage him (albeit, very briefly). When it comes to convincing people of the real and dire economic consequences facing the nation, and their galactically optimistic attitudes towards the future, I'm dealing with a mental disease. I'm dealing with people who have a psychological problem. I'm dealing with delusional American't's whose perceptions of themselves are only outdone by the enormous economic problems this country has. And since the situation is so hopeless, and there is such a discrepancy between what American't's think they're capable of versus what they'll inevitably deliver, there is, of course, only two things to do:

1. Sit back and watch reality crush their little "Yeah for Us" La-La Land Bubble

and

2. Enjoy the decline!

You Can't Teach "Leadership"

Just as you can't teach integrity or morals.

But MBA schools and colleges sure can charge a lot of money to a lot of naive people making them think such things can be "taught."

Which behooves a question (that I ask in my book):

"How, precisely, does a 22 year old fresh out of "business school" think he's smart, able or experienced enough to lead anything?"

I know, I know. Why ask the question.

The Captain Goes Shopping!

In addition to an AR15, book sales have allowed me to purchase two new items.

A new flask and a new "tactileneck."

I do believe that if you really want to be a true Cappy Cappite watching "Archer" is a must.

Race Card Trumps Gender Card

Language warning as the University of Man, is well, staffed by men and they have taken the stance (which I agree with) that they're men and they're going to curse if they want to curse.

Background:

East Indian doctorate, with an OK command of the English language is talking to a co-worker about said co-worker's mom who recently passed away. Inquiring about the funeral process, the East Indian is confused about buying a plot of land to bury the mother in and asks

"Why not burn her and put her in box?"

Said co-worker is not offended because the East Indian doctorate is obviously concerned, but just didn't know enough English to say, "are you going to cremate her?"

Two catty #@#$&%'s overhear this and file a harassment complaint.

Said co-worker informs HR he's not insulted and wants the complaint dropped.

The HR *&%$# says the women were offended by proxy.

See what our fine East Indian friend and said co-worker came up with as a response.