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Joined December 2008
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Students For Liberty retweeted
Komunizm w praktyce to likwidacja wolności i demokracji.
Świetnie, że młodzi przypominają młodym o zamordystycznych rządach partii komunistycznych.
Czechoslovakia, 1945: the Nazis are gone, the war’s over, people are dancing in the streets. For a few years it actually feels like freedom.
Didn’t last. By 1948 the Communist Party, backed by Moscow, staged a coup and took the whole country. Then came 40+ years of one-party rule: secret police, show trials, censorship, closed borders, empty store shelves.
It took until November 1989, the Velvet Revolution, students leading the way, for the country to actually be free again.
Students For Liberty retweeted
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the far left – at Baton Rouge, LA
Students For Liberty retweeted
I never imagined I would repost a text written by the furthest-left of all Greek politicians.
Yet, even he is intellectually more honest than the Brazilian left.
Thank you, Varoufakis.
I am going to write something below that should be seen as the musings of one who celebrated – and still celebrates – Lula’s victory over Bolsonaro Jr. Here it goes:
I cannot for the life of me justify why o why Brazil’s courts had to demand of Bolsonaro that he hands over his passport the moment he lost the election. That he disputed the veracity of the election result is a sign of a faulty character, evidence that he is a bad loser. BUT, he had every right to being a bad loser; to dispute, rightly or wrongly, any result.
As for the argument that he was being investigated for other misdemeanours or crimes, that doesn’t wash either: What would have happened if Bolsonaro had won the election? Would the judges also prevent him from travelling abroad, as President-elect? I very much doubt that – which means that the judges were conflating executive and judicial powers.
To those who tell me that the Bolsonaro clan is a fascistic, criminal family, my reply is: You and I may very well think that. Alas, the judiciary has no right to use its powers to indict and to pursue someone because – or immediately after – they lost an election. It is shameful, to be precise. And it is also dangerous for those of us on the left who know what it means to be banned and hounded by rogue judges and police commissioners.
But I also have a message to Bolsonaro supporters, or those sitting on the fence, who assume that Lula is somehow behind the judges. He is not! This is the same court that imprisoned, falsely, Lula himself. What we have in Brazil is a judiciary that overreaches and habitually crosses the line that ought to separate judicial from political power.
It is such a shame that a judge took it upon himself to go after Bolsonaro on the eve of his defeat and, in doing so, to sully Lula’s stupendous victory.
One last point that my comrades in Brazil should note: If Bolsonaro and Rubio wanted to mount a campaign against Lula and Brazilian democracy they could never have been aided better than by that judge’s reckless writ.
Students For Liberty retweeted
This is so sad and so scary! I have been to Brazil seven trips, and this is horrible
Students For Liberty retweeted
The politic parallels between Brazil and Venezuela are growing. Investors should pull out before risk escalates.
Students For Liberty retweeted
Free elections depend on neutral courts that stay within their limits. In Brazil’s latest election, they did not, and that undermines trust in the democratic process, writes Cato’s @hiperfalcon.
Students For Liberty retweeted
Yep. The socialist calculation debate ENDED socialism/communism as a viable program EVEN IN THEORY. It's never been answered. And the only reason communist sympathy is rising today is weaponized and intentionally induced ignorance by "academics" and fifth columnists. That's it.
They have no answer for how a centrally planned society can overcome the knowledge problem that decentralized private property and free exchange solves. So their answer is simply lies, fraud, theft, vibes, and violence.
Students For Liberty retweeted
The Aral Sea debacle remains the best riposte to the idea that environmentalism is best served by socialism. It really is not.
In 1960 the Aral Sea was the fourth-largest lake on Earth, and the fishing towns on its shore were hauling in 160 tons of fish a day.
Then a cotton plan written in Moscow sent the sea's two rivers into the fields. By 2009, more than 90% of the sea's water was gone.
This is what Soviet central planning did to nature. 🧵
Students For Liberty retweeted
Yes, he was. One of the finest economists of the 20th century. South African leaders ought to be reading all the stuff he wrote.
Students For Liberty retweeted
Is the United States the worst at everything? Link to full video below 👇
Students For Liberty retweeted
Did ideology make great economists forget basic economics?
“They typically have not indicated that they are building their wealth to eventually make the world a better place.”
They built their wealth PRECISELY BY making the world a better place already!
They don’t need to compensate the world; their wealth is the result having already compensated millions of people with cheaper and new goods (which people valued more than their dollars), just as much these people compensated them with their dollars, which they valued more than they goods they produced).
Trade is MUTUALLY beneficial! Both parties benefit.
What amazes me is the attitude of so many of the centibillionaires.
A 5% tax will not make any difference to the way they live. Their spending may be extravagant, but it is still much less than their (correctly measured) income.
They know that, as gifted as some of them indeed are, they have benefited from extreme luck (and the help of the state, and, to speak like an economist, monopoly rents).
They know that their effective tax rate is low, relative to what many others pay.
They know that extreme inequality is extremely unpopular, and can lead to political unrest, backlash, or worse.
They must admit that, morally, it is hard to argue for a society in which some become obscenely wealthy, while so many are poor and see their income stagnate.
They typically have not indicated that they are building their wealth to eventually make the world a better place.
But they are still willing to fight the tax, spending hundreds of millions in California to avoid paying the tax. Why?
They simply think what is theirs is theirs, end of story.
They believe in the slippery slope, and if they do not take a stand on this levy, the government will come back for more.
They hate the state and the notion that their money will be misused?
Or?
Students For Liberty retweeted
Must read!
In 2024, @elonmusk picked a fight with a single Brazilian Supreme Court Justice. The judge took X offline across the entire country for 38 days.
Two years later, that same judge is caught up in a banking scandal involving billions in alleged fraud, multimillion-dollar contracts with judges' families, and yacht parties with paid escorts.
Now Brazil is about to make a choice that could lead to his impeachment. 🧵
Students For Liberty retweeted
Here we go again! 👀
Join us next April in Warsaw! Register at libertycon.net
Students For Liberty retweeted
John Cowperthwaite did more for human prosperity than any development economist drawing a government salary ever managed, and he did it by refusing to do almost anything at all.
As Hong Kong's Financial Secretary from 1961 to 1971, Cowperthwaite ran one of the most radically free economies the modern world has ever seen. He kept taxes flat and low (the top income tax rate sat at 15%), ran consistent budget surpluses, abolished import tariffs, and blocked nearly every subsidy request that crossed his desk. When British civil servants demanded economic statistics to justify intervention, he refused to collect them. Not out of laziness. He genuinely believed that giving planners numbers gave them excuses.
The results? In 1960, Hong Kong's per capita income stood at roughly 28% of Britain's. By 1997, Hong Kong had surpassed Britain. That trajectory happened without natural resources, without foreign aid, and without a single five-year plan drafted by well-intentioned economists from Oxford. Hong Kong had a harbor, people willing to work, and a bureaucrat with enough intellectual discipline to keep the state out of their way.
Capital flows toward secure property rights and reliable rules, and flees the moment politicians start allocating it. Every industry Beijing picked as a "priority sector" during those same decades burned through subsidies and produced junk. Hong Kong's industries emerged organically, serving real demand, building real wealth.
You benefit from this history whether you know it or not, because Hong Kong's success gave the world a controlled experiment that still embarrasses every advocate of managed development. The control group thrived. The planned economies didn't.
Cowperthwaite retired to St Andrews, received a knighthood, and gave almost no interviews. That restraint was entirely in character.
Students For Liberty retweeted
this California wealth tax thing is just incredible.
so in October 2025, a California healthcare union proposed a "one time" 5% tax on any billionaire's wealth. the ballot measure will be voted on next month. In early December 2025, California announced that it would be a retroactive tax if passed, applying to anyone with CA residency as of Jan 1, 2026. The objective is to pay for Medi-Cal, California's incredibly dysfunctional healthcare system. (which also functions as a glorified welfare apparatus, but that's a discussion for another time).
polls reveal that the CA electorate is split around 50/50 on the tax, but prediction markets only give Prop 40 a ~23% chance of passing (there are competing measures on the ballet that would nullify it).
there are 200 billionaires in CA, worth collectively somewhere between $2.3 and $2.6 trillion. 5% of that is around $100b, accounting for a small amount of attrition. proponents of the tax forecasted a significant windfall, assuming only a 10% departure rate.
supporters thought they were being clever with the retroactive concept. no billionares would leave CA in the few short months between the tax being proposed and the residency cutoff date, without the tax even having passed yet, right?
well as it turns out, they did.
a new paper [1] from two academics at Stanford called "The Net Present Value of the California Billionaire Tax Act", argues that not only did more billionaires leave due to the proposed tax than its proponents expected, but that the value of the tax, if it does pass, is actually negative.
proponents of the tax only assumed 10% avoidance, that is, only 10% of the taxable base of targeted billionaires would leave CA within the very short Oct-Dec 2025 window. Jaros and Rauh, the Stanford academics, find that a lower bound of 28.6% of the taxable base managed to leave.
just based on known departures, those departures total $577b in net worth, or $28.8b in potential tax lost. this of course does not capture everyone (many left without announcing their departure), so the authors normalize to departure rates estimated from other wealth tax events, and apply other discounts for litigation, arriving arrive at a figure of only $28-$36b in forecasted tax revenues.
but this isn't all! all of the income taxes paid by the departed billionaires are also forsaken. the authors estimate that CA billionaires pay $3.3- 5.8b in annual income taxes. they assume a midpoint of $2b lost in annual collections from departed billionaires. the net present value of that lost income stream is -$68.9 billion.
so when you add it all up you get:
+ $30b one-time tax windfall (estimated)
- $69b in present value of lost future income taxes
= - 38.9b overall net present value of the tax
of course, this analysis is highly estimate driven. the authors simulate the parameters 100k times and find a negative NPV of the implemented tax 85 percent of the time.
and if the tax doesn't pass, which it's not looking like it will, California still ended up losing at least $577b in departed net worth, and they have permanently poisoned the well with entrepreneurs who will now worry about future wealth taxes.
[1]: nber.org/system/files/workin…
