As we start the new year, what might we expect to see in the year 2024? What are the likely surprises? And what is not even talked about at all by the MSM, but is on the minds of many Americans?

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It’s a presidential election year, which many prognosticators claim should be a normal-to-good year in the stock market as incumbent politicians seek to assure voters and investors that all is well in Washington, DC and all the state capitals.

Socialist Antonio Gramsci’s “long march through the institutions” describes the slow and gradual intellectual capture of a society through its influential and powerful institutions, including the church, media, the arts, corporations, schools, and universities, eventually leading to full infiltration.

It takes little awareness to realize that these strategies have succeeded. In the United States, all of Gramsci’s institutions are now socialist in their politics and collectivist in their ethics.

Free markets is an unambiguous term, which implies a lack of inappropriate government intervention as consumers and firms pursue their own interest in a competitive environment. (my emphasis)

—Clifford Winston, “This Economist Really Loves Free Markets”

A glance at the introductory sections in the 2024 budget put forth by the Biden administration might invite dangerous bouts of laughter if only the topic were not so serious and our so-called leaders not so delusional.

As a frequent X/Twitter user, I follow a variety of accounts that touch on a number of niches: whether that is economics, finance, Catholicism, college football . . . or in this case, Lord of the Rings. A popular Twitter account that regularly shares content related to J.R.R. Tolkien’s work broke from character to offer an insight on another tweet. In the tweet he refers to, a food inspector is shown interrupting the business of a diner, which the poster laments.

In 2008, the Republican party conspired to deny Ron Paul a floor speech and to generally ignore him at the GOP convention in Minneapolis. The GOP, after all, had bent over fought against Paul every step of the way so it could nominate uber-establishment Republican John McCain instead. As a result, Paul’s supporters organized the “Rally for the Republic” and anti-convention down the street from the establishment convention. The rally sold more than 10,000 tickets and was broadcast on C-Span. 

About a month ago, I called out Paul Krugman for blaming economic pessimism on Republicans. He compared the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index to what he sees as a “surreally good” economy and came to the conclusion that the survey respondents must be warped by partisanship.

The nineteenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hill Green was one of the key figures in the transition from classical liberalism to “modern” liberalism, in which the state, no longer a mere “night watchman,” if it ever was that, takes on a much more active role. The state in Green’s view ought to aid people in realizing their “real selves,” and doing this often involves supplying them with various goods and services. For this reason, Green is regarded as one of the intellectual founders of the “welfare” state. But for Green the state was much more than a provider of welfare.

A clip from the 1990 movie Home Alone where the lead character purchases groceries, household goods, and toys recently went viral because he paid a total of $19.83 whereas today the same purchase would cost over three times as much. Ironically, while this evidence of the Federal Reserve’s failure to maintain the dollar’s value was going viral, stocks rose because investors believed the Fed had successfully engineered a “soft landing” by bringing down price inflation without causing a recession and would soon begin reducing interest rates.