You might expect me to talk about Iran’s attack on Israel this past weekend, which is obviously the big news. I have little to add to that until we see how it plays out from here. In other areas of interest, there are lots of facts and figures of which you might not be aware. So, this missive will concentrate on that. Hopefully, you will find this informative.

A couple of weeks ago, Ben Shapiro “broke the internet” (his words) with a provocative review of Social Security. Basically, he said it was going bankrupt (true) and that we needed to get rid of it. I’m not so sure about that last part. Let’s dig into the issue.

Now, let’s look at a little history of Social Security. It was started as part of FDR’s New Deal in 1935. The retirement age was set at 65. In 1935, the average American lived only to age 60. So, the average person had been dead for 5 years before they could collect social security. Which means they collected nothing.

The math worked.

We have just begun the longest general election in our lifetimes. Many of you are tired of it already. If not, don’t worry. We have over seven more months to talk about it. But for now, let’s give it a rest and look at where the economy is and where it might be going.

The Good News: The Dow, NASDAQ and S&P 500 are all at or close to all-time highs. So, are Bitcoin, Gold, and most home prices. Unemployment is below 4%. There are jobs created every month and economic growth is solid. Corporate earnings are at all-time highs and growing by 8% a year. The dollar has been strong and interest rates, although up from the lows of a few years ago, are still below 40-year averages. Consumer spending continues to be strong. Happy days are here again, right?

The Reason for the Good News: What is causing all this strength? Well, the United States economy, though choked by more taxes and regulations than in the past, is still a beacon of economic freedom in the world. There are brilliant entrepreneurs creating new businesses and ideas every day. The U.S. economy wants to grow. It always has.

My new podcast with Generalissimo Duane Patterson of the Hugh Hewitt show has launched! You can find it wherever you listen to Podcasts (Apple, Spotify, iHeart, Pandora, wherever). It will come up on ANY podcast App. Just search for Look Through The Chaos and it should pop up. We plan to do 2 podcasts a week to release every Tuesday and Thursday. Many of you have been asking me for this and now it’s happening! Don’t miss the first episode (which posted Tuesday) as it will explain what we are doing and why and you will understand our humor a bit better.

I think this is the first time I have used the song title as the title of the missive. It is apropos. There is a lot of “never meanin’ what they say and never sayin’ what they mean” going on right now. In this blog, we will rip into a few of these issues in search of the truth. Truth is something you will never find in the propaganda media.

Recently, I have strayed from popular multi-topic blogs and written missives focusing on a single issue. Well, back by popular demand, here is a discussion of five different matters. I suspect that in most of these, I will be telling you something you do not know.

Border: Everything the federal government does this year has one objective – to get Joe Biden reelected so he and Kamala can continue the march to Neo-Marxism in our culture. December was the biggest month ever in illegal border crossings with over 302,000. And those do not include ones that were never noticed. But the number dropped roughly in half in January. Why? The crime and drug deaths caused by this border policy are hurting Biden’s poll numbers as even a significant number of Democrats oppose it. But the base and controlling interests in the Dem party favor the cultural erosion, crime and illegal votes that this policy promotes.

California is in deep fiscal doodoo (technical term). Gavin Newsom’s plan is to use the “rainy day fund” and cover up the rest of the problem until he is no longer governor in less than three years (or maybe this year if Joe gets replaced). But there is a way to fix it. And it doesn’t even involve cutting any bloated spending or raising taxes.

We, on the right, are all about winning elections and policy disputes. Meanwhile, the left has spent decades changing the culture of America. It is universally understood that culture is upstream from politics. Win the culture, and you will eventually win the elections. We have been losing the culture and are in danger of having lost it. This missive is longer than usual, but I hope you will stick with it. This is important stuff that is not discussed enough.

This will be the last in my series of 2024 forecasts. We have covered the election, the economy, society, and culture. Now it is time to look across the oceans and gaze into the fog of the future. I will also make a foreign policy suggestion which is far out of the consensus of political thinking at the moment. Chaos, which is the premise of this blog, abounds overseas every bit as much or more than it does in the United States.

I am going to suspend the forecasts until next week so I can comment on the presidential race since many of you have been asking. I am old enough to remember when Monday Night Football started. Imagine, football on a weekday! Everybody watched. The broadcast team was Howard Cosell and “Dandy” Don Meredith. Each game, when Meredith thought that one team was ahead by enough that the other team could no longer win, he would sing “Turn out the lights. The party’s over.” He was off key and did not have a good voice, but we all waited for when he would declare the game was effectively over.

Bob Dylan was right. The answers are indeed blowing in the wind. Or, as Winston Churchill once declared, “the future is unknowable”. Nonetheless, we want to know what the future holds before the hand of God shows it to us. To that end, here are my forecasts for the economy in 2024, including a peek at 2025.