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It turns out Greenland/Denmark and Canada aren't the only friendly countries that the US has been threatening, the Vatican's ambassador to the US (according to The Free Press and Letters from Leo a Catholic focused blog) was given both explicit and coded threats of military force against the Holy See.
JD Vance, a Catholic himself, has done a pretty rare thing for the Trump admin and said they're gonna get to the bottom of it first, instead of immediately dismissing it as fake news.. This doesn't confirm it as real, but that it wasn't immediately denied and dismissed like the typical M.O. is quite interesting.
This could help explain why Pope Leo has felt so emboldened to speak up against Trump's war efforts in Iran, cause the administration officials have been warmongering against them behind the scenes. The chance that the admin actually pulls the trigger and attacks the Vatican is obviously low, but that they keep threatening many of our allies both publically and privately seems quite concerning to me. It also opens up a new thing to consider, how many other allies are they threatening behind closed doors too?
The Pope planning to spend the 250th anniversary of the USA in the completely irrelevant island named Lampedusa (yeah we get the pun Leo), known solely for importing Africans into Europe, reminds me why I ultimately have to hate Catholicism. This is a serious insult to an entire country over a political dispute involving a transient administration. And never would an Italian pope consider missing an important political anniversary in Italy. If Catholicism continues supporting endless migration into America and Europe then I will support any effort to shatter them into a thousand pieces and scatter them into the winds. There’s a generous middle-ground between “not supporting the destruction of an alien civilization” and “bringing literally infinite aliens into your country”, I don’t know how they could get this so wrong.
(Just reasoning from love thy neighbor: the Hispanic laborer who works in America has the privilege of sending home remittances with significantly greater purchasing power. Due to average salary difference adjusted for USD, cost of living difference and purchasing power difference, the Hispanic laborer could effectively make 10x more than his American counterpart. This allows him to easily support a family back home, which according to God’s design is a key factor for happiness, but the poor American laborer does not have this same privilege. Even the poor Indian who migrates here to work at a gas station has greater odds of supporting a family due to the status / wellbeing differential between here and India. We oppress our poorest neighbor by forcing him to compete with foreign workers when he makes significantly less in two key ways: (1) he often makes far less in terms of purchasing potentials re Latin America, (2) he makes far less in terms of marital potential re all foreign migrants. Same amount of stressful work, but significantly different payoff for wellbeing. Seems evil to me.)
I like seeing the most incredibly leftist stereotypes imaginable coming from the nominal right simply by adding "foreign" or "immigrant" with it. The traditional (actual) conservative view of people like Reagan and Thatcher understood that growth is the rising tide that floats the boats for everyone, instead of constant regulation put to "protect" the poor. We oppress our poorest neighbors not by "forcing him to compete" but by sabotaging the market efficiency of our companies and slowing improvements.
It's the exact sort of thinking as an example that had blue states "protecting" taxi cab drivers from rideshare apps, slowing down the spread and hurting all the people who benefited from their use. The tradeoffs of neutered growth is that all the people who would benefit from it don't, and those people are disproportionately the poor who wouldn't have had any access before. A very poor person might have rarely ever taken a taxi long ago, the price being artificially restricted from competition (like taxi medallions) and instead end up stuck on public transit. Now it is so accessible to the poor that they're even ordering private taxis for groceries and restaurant food. It is not restriction, but growth that has allowed even the poorest Americans access.
Take this to almost anything and you see the same story. Whether it be from immigrant work, outsourcing, or automation, it helps the poor when the economy is grown. Factories allow poorer people to own cars. Developments like automated switchboards make phone bills cheaper. Laborers building homes help drive down rent (even if cities insist on restricting new homes and flooding the dam). You don't spend almost 15% of your income on clothing anymore because of growth. You've flown in a plane because of growth. You have a smartphone because of growth. You have cheap lighting in your homes because of growth. I can call a friend of mine all the way over in the UK for pennies because of growth. Do you wish to deny the poor all of this and all future things to come? If not, be pro growth and fight for efficiency in growing the economy, not temporary rent seeking "pro worker" progressiveism.
There is no denying that growth raises the ceiling. The left-wing view is that raising the ceiling is morally worthless if you do not raise the floor first.
And since the floor never changes, this means the left-wing view results in everyone in poverty forever.
“The real minimum wage is always zero.”
At age 18 when I read that it became instantly obvious to me how few people understand this. This hasn’t changed much in the interim.
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I don't think we're using "the floor" in the same sense - I mean "the floor" in the sense of how badly off the least fortunate members of society can get, and that can clearly be altered. The life of the man who has nothing could be improved considerably if we ended homelessness or gave everyone a UBI; it could be considerably worsened if we outlawed all charity or legalized selling oneself into slavery. You may think that raising the floor from its current position would have negative externalities, you may even think we should lower the floor from said current position, but it's trivially false that it "never changes".
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