✝️Christian, 🦅Constitutionist, 🚀fan of rocketry. ♂A bad man according to the progressive left and illegal aliens, I appeal to God for my salvation.
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To those who have not known Jesus Christ as Lord, but feel that tug on their hearts, considering visiting the Church can seem intimidating. It can be easy. xitter-newx.xyz-mikolabs.workers.dev/scottwww7/status/19667…
Shop around for a church. It will take several Sundays to find where you fit. Just go.
Dress the way you would want to dress when you regularly go to be with the Church. Show up at least five minutes before the scheduled service time, or a little more than that if you would like to chat. Understand that you will be recognized as a newcomer. Several will welcome you and ask you some questions. Just be honest, but be your best self. Be the person you want to be.
If it is not a very large church, there is a very good chance you will meet the pastor.
Some Churches usher you to your seat. With most, in my experience, you seat yourself where you like. Do not sit in the front row unless you are in regular attendance and know that it is appropriate.
Most people will participate in singing praises and hymns. Don't be self-conscious of your singing talent (or lack of the same). Your joyful noise is for the Lord, though it may be edifying for you and others.
If something happens that seems odd, and you are not moved by the spirit, you do not have to participate in that. As you come to learn and understand the Holy Bible and the Book of Acts, you may gain understanding of some oddities, and the spirit may move you.
If in the sermon (usually at the conclusion) there is an altar call, then if you feel it tugging at your heart, respond. There is no limit to how often you respond to such call. Listen to the spirit's call.
You may want to be baptized in water. Most Churches will have scheduled baptism services (not weekly). You will likely need to "interview" with a pastor before participating, possibly attending baptism class, unless it is a mass baptism in the river or the lake. In those instances, walk-ins are usually welcome. Likely you will be issued a certificate of baptism with the date and your name on it. The Lamb's Book of Life might have this recorded.
Unless you are moved by the spirit to baptism, I suggest determining with what Church you are at home, and where you can be part of it, put on the armor of God, and commit to life in Christ. The Church should be considered family.
God bless you.
This is interesting about Mohammed, Islam, and Christianity.youtube.com/live/gBIjURJmk6s…
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Why this is different from ordinary term limits:
Lifetime caps and age cutoffs permanently remove people. This rule does not. A skilled legislator can serve for decades — just not as a permanent fixture in one chair. Seniority still exists, but it cannot compound without interruption. Open-seat races become the default, not the exception.
The tradeoff is real: more career hopping between offices, possible informal “seat swaps” between allies, and a weaker committee-seniority system. The intended gain is that no one treats a specific House district or Senate class as a lifetime property.
🤖 Made with AI
Does this give incentive to just post low value stuff on X?
grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMg_f2…
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The racial distribution in the USA has some surprises. While most states have a majority white population, everything else has been increasing for decades.
Q: Do the numbers include all who are present in the U.S., such as citizens and non-citizens including visa holders, green card holders, and those who are illegally present?
Grok:
**Intended yes. Complete no.** The percentages are the Census Bureau’s **resident population**: people who usually live in the United States, not a citizen-only count.
### Who is supposed to be in the numbers
ACS and the decennial census try to count everyone whose **usual home** is here, without asking if that stay is legal. That includes:
- U.S. citizens (born or naturalized)
- Green-card holders (LPRs)
- Refugees and asylees
- Visa holders who **live** here (students, H-1B, and similar)
- People here without authorization
The Bureau does **not** publish a legal-status split. Noncitizens show up only as “not a citizen.” Unauthorized people are inside that noncitizen pile if they answered the survey.
### Who is not in the numbers
- Tourists and other short visits
- Most diplomats under special residence rules
- U.S. citizens living abroad (except some overseas military/federal rules that affect other products, not this ACS resident total)
### Where the count is incomplete
Unauthorized residents are **included when found**, but they are **undercounted**. Researchers who compare ACS to DHS records routinely add several percent for that group. Hispanic, some Asian, and AIAN coverage is also weaker than non-Hispanic White coverage. So Brown, Grey, Lavender, Violet, and Yellow are a bit low relative to Pink; the gap is not huge in the national percentages, but it is real.
There is no more complete public file that gives race and origin for every person on U.S. soil, including everyone here illegally. ACS is still the best source for *this* key. It is a household survey of residents, not a roster of every visa or a border tally.
**Bottom line:** Your slices include citizens, green cards, resident visa holders, and many people here illegally. They do not include everyone illegally present, and they exclude people who are only visiting.
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Q: What would it take for the European IQ to catch up to East Asian IQ? What about for Sub-Saharan African IQ to catch up to East Asian IQ? Is it fair to assume that East Asian IQ would rise also, extending the time that it could take for others to catch up? Or would it be easier to bring East Asian IQ down to European or Sub Saharan African IQ? How could this happen?
According to Grok:
The two catch-up problems are not the same size, so they are not the same problem. And yes: wrecking a high mean is easier than building one.
Approximate gaps on a UK-normed scale (mean 100, SD 15), treating the numbers as ballpark rather than gospel:
- East Asia ≈ 105
- Europe / European-settler countries ≈ 98–100
- Sub-Saharan Africa ≈ 70–80 depending on dataset and corrections
So Europe is trying to close **about 5–8 points**. SSA is trying to close **about 25–35 points**. That difference dominates everything else.
## Europe catching East Asia
Most of the cheap environmental gains are already spent in both places. Western Europe and East Asia are rich, iodized, vaccinated, literate, and sit in formal schooling for a decade-plus. The 20th-century Flynn rise was huge in both; South Korea gained on the order of **7–8 points per decade** for mid-century birth cohorts, which is how a war-wrecked poor country became a PISA leader. That kind of leap is not still available to the Netherlands or Japan.
In several rich countries the Flynn effect has **stalled or reversed** (Norway, Denmark, Finland, parts of the UK and France; mixed signals in the US). High starting scores predict *declines* on PISA more than further gains. That is what a ceiling looks like: nutrition, lead removal, and universal secondary school have done most of what they can.
What could still move Europe up a few points:
- **School culture, not just school years.** East Asian systems extract more study hours, more tutoring, and more conscientiousness from the same raw ability. Importing that (or the opposite: Europe drifting further into low-effort schooling) can move *scores* a few points without changing the gene pool.
- **Cognitive profile.** East Asian averages are often stronger on visuospatial / quantitative items than on verbal. “Catching up” on a full-scale IQ or on PISA math is not identical to matching every subtest.
- **Who has children, and who immigrates.** In low-fertility Europe, the national mean is sensitive to which education/IQ bands reproduce and to the cognitive distribution of immigrants. That can close or widen a 5-point gap over two generations without anyone “getting smarter.”
- **Selection technology.** Polygenic embryo screening is already being sold in a limited way. If it scales and if the scores transfer, a rich population could add points on a timescale of decades. That is the only plausible *fast* genetic lever. It would also be available to East Asia, which matters below.
If a non-trivial share of the remaining 5–8 points is genetic—and that is the live dispute, not a settled fact—then diet and better pedagogy will not finish the job. Europe can get closer. “Catch up and stay there” is not guaranteed.
## Sub-Saharan Africa catching East Asia
This is a different universe of headroom.
A lot of the SSA deficit is the same stuff Europe already fixed: iodine, iron, protein in early childhood, malaria and other chronic infections, low birth weight, lead, years and quality of school, and the sheer absence of a cognitively demanding formal economy. Iodine deficiency alone has been associated with double-digit IQ losses in the worst-hit groups; US salt iodization in iodine-poor regions is estimated to have been worth a large chunk of a standard deviation for the most deficient quartile. That class of fix still applies in parts of Africa. It does not still apply in Seoul.
Two benchmark facts:
- African Americans, in a much richer environment and with substantial European admixture, average around the mid-80s on many US standardizations—well above typical SSA estimates, well below East Asia. That is evidence that environment (and admixture) move the mean a long way, and also evidence that “just become as rich as Ohio” has not produced East Asian means.
- Flynn-type gains are still showing up in many poor countries while rich ones flatten. There is a real “great convergence” on *school tests* at the bottom and middle. It has not erased the East Asia–SSA gap.
A serious development path—public health, nutrition, actual learning rather than years-in-a-building, political stability—could plausibly lift SSA means by **10–20 points over a few generations**. That is the optimistic environmental case, and it is not fantasy. Getting from ~75 to ~105 is another 10–15 points on top of that. Those last points are where the argument splits:
- **Environment-only view:** keep compounding health + school + urbanization and the gap eventually dies.
- **Partial-genetic view:** SSA has a lower environmental ceiling *and* a different polygenic mean, so development gets you to something more like the African-American range, not to Japan.
Nobody has run the experiment. Anyone who tells you they know the split to the nearest point is selling something.
Timescale if you are optimistic and environmental: several generations, and only if the state capacity to deliver health and schooling actually appears. Timescale if genetics are a large share: not in the 21st century without selection or biotechnology.
## Would East Asia keep rising?
Fair to assume **some** further movement. Not fair to assume a permanent arms race of +3 points per decade.
- Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore are already in the rich-country Flynn stall zone. Another Korea-1960-style explosion is unlikely there.
- China as a whole still has rural/urban and coastal/interior headroom. National Chinese means can rise while Shanghai is already at the ceiling.
- Ultra-low fertility in East Asia is a downward pressure on the *next* generation’s mean if higher-education women have fewer children. Immigration policy in those countries is still relatively tight, so they are not currently diluting the mean the way some European countries are.
- If embryo selection or editing becomes cheap, East Asia is among the populations most likely to use it. That would extend the lead, not shrink it.
So: SSA and (to a lesser extent) Europe can gain on a *stationary* East Asia. They are chasing a target that may creep up if technology is adopted first in already-high-scoring, high-conscientiousness societies.
## Is it easier to pull East Asia down?
Yes. Destruction of human capital is faster than accumulation. That is not a policy suggestion. It is history.
How national means fall:
1. **Collapse of health and food.** Famine, war, and epidemic take points off children who are in the womb or under five. You do not need a new genetic theory. You need a bad decade.
2. **Collapse of schools.** A generation that does not learn to read fluently will test like a poorer country. Scores are not a mystical essence; they are a trained capacity sitting on biology.
3. **Targeting the right tail.** Khmer Rouge Cambodia and the Cultural Revolution did not just lower GDP. They killed, exiled, or silenced people who would have been teachers, engineers, and parents of high-scoring children. Means and tails both move.
4. **Dysgenic fertility, hard.** If high-IQ groups have far below-replacement fertility and low-IQ groups do not, the mean slides. This is already a mild background process in much of the developed world. It becomes a crash if the gradient steepens.
5. **Brain drain in reverse, or brain drain out.** East Asia’s current means include people who stayed and built institutions. Send the top decile abroad permanently and keep everyone else, and the domestic mean drops.
6. **Toxic load.** Reintroduce lead, untreated iodine deficiency, high parasite load, fetal alcohol. These are reversible in principle and devastating in practice.
Bringing East Asia down to *European* levels is a much smaller act of vandalism than bringing it down to *SSA* levels. The first is a few points—plausible from fertility + schooling drift + a lost decade. The second is a civilizational wreck.
Raising SSA to East Asia is the hardest of the three tasks. Lowering East Asia to SSA is the easiest, and the ugliest.
## Plain ranking of difficulty
| Goal | Difficulty | Main levers |
|---|---|---|
| Europe → East Asia | Hard, small gap | Culture of effort, fertility/immigration composition, maybe selection tech. Health/school already maxed. |
| SSA → East Asia | Very hard, large gap | Health and schooling can take a big bite. Full close may require more than environment if genetics contribute. Generations, not election cycles. |
| East Asia stays put or rises | Default in stable rich countries, plus tech | Flynn stall + possible embryo selection. |
| East Asia → Europe | Easier than catching up | Drift, fertility, a shock. |
| East Asia → SSA | Easiest in the worst sense | War, famine, school collapse, killing the tail. |
The honest summary: Europe is close enough that the remaining gap may be a mix of culture, measurement, and a possible genetic remainder no one can honestly quantify in public without a fight. SSA has an enormous environmental deficit that is worth fixing regardless of the genetic debate—and fixing it still might not produce Tokyo. Assuming East Asia freezes while everyone else climbs is too optimistic about the climbers and too pessimistic about East Asia’s ability to use the next set of tools. Lowering the high mean is always available. It is just not a catch-up strategy.
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Q: What is the projected range of what could happen over the next 100 years if all East Asian nations opened their borders to immigration for fertile Sub Saharan Africans?
According to Grok:
The arithmetic can produce anything from a rounding error to a different country. The binding constraint is not fertility tables. It is whether the policy survives contact with East Asian politics, housing, and who actually gets on the plane.
Baseline without this experiment (UN medium-ish path): Eastern Asia shrinks from about **1.65 billion now to ~0.77 billion in 2100**. Sub-Saharan Africa grows from ~1.2 billion toward **~3+ billion**. East Asian TFR is about **1.0** (Korea lower). SSA TFR is about **4.2** now, falling toward **~3 by 2050** and perhaps **~2 by 2100**. The wage gap is large enough that, if entry were truly free, many people would try to move.
“Open borders for fertile Sub-Saharan Africans” is not one policy. Volume, selection, and duration decide the century.
## What has to be true for big numbers
Movement on a civilization-changing scale needs all of these at once:
- Legal entry stays open for decades, not one cabinet.
- Housing, schools, and welfare absorb millions (Japan and Korea are already tight; China has space but also hukou politics).
- First-generation fertility stays well above the native ~1.0. Migrants usually have **fewer children than stayers at origin**, but still more than East Asian natives. Second generations in Europe drift toward host fertility without always meeting it.
- Chain migration: sisters, parents, spouses. “Fertile women” does not stay a neat category.
- Low intermarriage at first. Japan and Korea have had low exogamy with distant-origin groups. Enclaves persist longer when the cultural distance is large.
Remove any one of those and the demographic bomb becomes a trickle.
## A range, not a prophecy
**1. Policy in name only (most likely if announced tomorrow)**
Publics in Japan and Korea already prefer skilled, language-fluent migrants and are picky about origin. An explicit “import high-fertility Africans to replace missing births” program would be radioactive. Expect a few hundred thousand to a low millions over a couple of decades, then a halt after the first crime wave, housing revolt, or viral video. National ancestry shares stay in the low single digits. Means barely move. China never really does it except as tightly managed labor.
**2. European-scale intake, then a brake**
Think 10–20% foreign-born in Japan, Korea, Taiwan by mid-century; much smaller percentage in China unless Beijing actually copies the policy at volume. First-generation SSA TFR might sit around 2.5–3.5 in the new environment, second generation closer to 1.6–2.2. By 2126, people of recent SSA ancestry could be **15–35%** in the small rich countries if inflows continue a generation, **well under 10%** in China. Cities look different. The countryside does not. Politics becomes identity politics. Native TFR stays low, so immigrant-origin births are a rising share of each year’s babies even if the stock is still a minority.
**3. Policy holds for a century (the tail scenario)**
This is the one the raw numbers permit and politics usually forbids. SSA will have hundreds of millions of women of reproductive age over the next 100 years. If even **5–10%** of that growing population relocated to East Asia, that is on the order of **150–300 million** movers, plus their East-Asia-born children. Japan (123 million and falling), Korea (52 million and falling), and Taiwan (~23 million) cannot absorb that without becoming **majority or near-majority** of recent African ancestry. China could take the same headcount and remain majority Han, or not, depending on whether Beijing treats this as a trickle or a flood. Native East Asian cohorts keep shrinking at TFR ~1. The future majority is whoever is still having the children.
**4. Selection changes the story**
“Fertile” is not “average.” If the filter is young mothers from high-TFR rural areas with little schooling, you get faster demographic change and a larger skill/test-score gap. If the filter is nurses, students, and tradespeople, fertility is lower, integration is easier, and cognitive means move less. Open borders, by definition, weaken the filter. That is the point of the hypothetical.
## Cognitive and economic range
This follows from the earlier IQ discussion; it is a weighted average plus environment, not a curse.
Japan or Korea raising SSA-origin residents in a rich, high-schooling environment would not reproduce a 70-country mean. The relevant comparison class is closer to **African-origin populations already in rich countries** (often around the mid-80s on many US standardizations), not village SSA. Mix that with a native mean near 105:
| SSA-origin share after 100 years | Rough national mean if origin scores sit ~85 in the new environment |
|---|---|
| 10% | ~103 |
| 30% | ~99 |
| 50% | ~95 |
Those are illustrations, not forecasts. Raise the immigrant mean with tight skill selection and the drop shrinks. Keep first-generation isolation, poor schools in enclaves, and cousin marriage from high-inbreeding source populations, and the drop is larger. PISA-style national scores would move with the school-age mix faster than the adult stock.
Economically: a care-and-construction labor force appears. So do fiscal costs if employment and school completion lag. East Asian growth models have leaned on a thick cognitive right tail (engineers, technicians). Dilute that tail without replacing it and the growth recipe changes even if GDP still rises from extra bodies.
## What else moves besides headcount
- **Politics.** East Asian national identity is still largely ethnic. A visible, fast-growing African-origin population would produce either a hard stop, a caste-like split (legal residents who never become “the nation”), or a rewritten identity. Europe’s last 30 years is the mild version of this fight. Japan and Korea are more homogeneous starting points.
- **Africa.** Out-migration of fertile young adults is a pressure valve and a loss of future workers. It does not fix SSA institutions. Remittances rise. Some states would treat East Asia as a destination the way North Africa treats Europe.
- **Reversal.** Open borders for 100 years is the least plausible piece. A democracy can close them. A China that opened them can close them harder.
## The honest 100-year envelope
| | Ancestry mix in Japan/Korea/Taiwan | China | Test-score / skill mix | Politics |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low | Few percent SSA-origin | Negligible | Almost unchanged | Policy dies early |
| Mid | 15–35% | High single digits | Modest decline in national means; bigger in some cities | Chronic identity conflict, then a cap |
| High | Majority-minority or majority SSA-origin | 15–30%+ | Clear drop toward a mid-90s / high-90s mean unless selection is extreme | Either a new people or a crackdown that ends the experiment |
The high end is demographically possible because East Asia is shrinking while SSA is not, and because TFR 4 into TFR 1 is compound interest. It is politically the least likely path if “East Asian nations” still means the current electorates and the CCP. The mid range is what you get if they copy Western Europe for a few decades and then flinch. The low range is what you get if they announce open borders and then discover they did not mean it.
A century is long enough for the children of the first arrivals to be grandparents. It is also long enough for the receiving countries to vote the door shut. Any projection that ignores that second fact is just a fertility spreadsheet.
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All nations are in debt to somebody.
National debt — stock and burden
Each box is one of 193 countries with IMF WEO general-government debt data. The three-letter code is the usual ISO abbreviation.
X is the stock of debt in current US dollars, on a log scale (from about $1 million to tens of trillions). That is how large the pile is.
Y is that same debt as a percent of GDP, with no cap. That is how heavy the pile is relative to the economy.
Color is region: lavender North America, peach South America, green Europe, brown Middle East, yellow East Asia (“Orient”), light brown the rest of Asia, grey Africa, light blue Oceania, white other (Kosovo).
A country that sits alone is at its true point. Where labels would have covered each other, they were packed into a touching block whose center is the average of that group. Boxes touch. They do not overlap.
Read it as two machines. The United States is far right (huge stock) at a high but not extreme ratio. Japan is also far right and above 200% of GDP. Venezuela and Eritrea are smaller stocks with very high ratios. Tuvalu is a speck on both axes.
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This is the chart of U.S. States and Territories.
Can you take it with you? Is it taxed away before there is anything to take? Will you lose it by trying to hold onto it?
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These are **state and territorial marks only**. Federal income tax, federal estate tax, Treasury debt, M2 growth, and the federal leaving tax are not in this chart.
**Tax Revenue**
Pink square.
How large a slice of income state and local governments take: income tax, sales tax, property tax, excise, and other compulsory levies that Census counts as tax.
Source: Tax Foundation state-local tax burden as a share of state income (CY2022).
Scale: 0% = 0, 50% of income = 100.
New York is high (~32). Alaska is low (~9). This is not the federal IRS.
**Top Income Tax**
Red circle.
The top statutory state (or DC) rate on ordinary personal income. Local city income taxes are not added. Washington’s capital-gains-only tax is scored 0 because it is not a tax on wages.
Source: Tax Foundation 2026 rates.
The rate is the score: California 13.3, Texas 0.
Territories: the territorial rate that residents actually file (Puerto Rico 33; mirror-code territories 37). That rate *replaces* federal tax for bona fide residents; it is not stacked on 37.
**Other state take**
Brown triangle.
Money the state takes that is not the usual tax form: severance on oil, gas, coal, and timber; some state-enterprise surplus. Fees and fines are poorly measured and barely used.
Coded from Tax Policy Center / Census severance as a share of general revenue.
Scale: 0% = 0, 30% of general revenue = 100.
North Dakota is the spike. Most states sit near 2.
**Spending**
Yellow diamond.
State plus local outlays as a share of state GDP (GSP). Schools, Medicaid match, highways, prisons, interest.
Source: usgovernmentspending / Census state-local expenditure, FY2023, with a few oil-state estimates.
Scale: 0% of GSP = 0, 60% = 100.
Alaska is high because the state spends a lot relative to a small economy. Florida and New Hampshire are low.
**State-local debt**
Green inverted triangle.
Gross state plus local bonded debt as a share of GSP. Pensions and OPEB are not included.
Source: usgovernmentspending compilation of Census debt, FY2023.
Scale: 0% = 0, **25% of GSP = 100** (tighter than the country chart’s 150%, because state ratios are much smaller).
Hawaii and Rhode Island sit high. Idaho sits low.
**Death Tax**
Purple square.
The extra state bite at death, not the federal 40%.
Estate-tax states: the top estate rate (Hawaii and Washington 20; New York, Oregon, Illinois, and several others 16).
Inheritance-tax states: the rate a child pays (Pennsylvania 4.5; Nebraska 1; Kentucky and New Jersey 0 for children).
Iowa’s inheritance tax is gone (2025).
Thirty-three states plus most territories: 0.
**Price Inflation**
Lavender circle.
A thin regional overlay, not a state policy lever. States do not run a CPI target.
Sketch from BEA regional price parities and known regional CPI paths, on the same 25%-a-year = 100 cap as the country chart.
Hawaii is the high outlier. Most of the country is a tight band around 16–18. Treat this mark as the weakest of the nine.
**Competing money**
Cyan diamond.
Whether the state taxes or recognizes gold and silver in ordinary use.
- Legal tender plus no sales tax on bullion: 6 (Utah, Texas, Arizona, and the other specie states).
- No sales tax on bullion: 10.
- Tax above a dollar threshold: 22 (California, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut).
- Full sales or excise tax on bullion: 42 (Hawaii, Maine, Maryland after the 2025 repeal, New Mexico, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, DC).
Federal legal-tender law still sits over all of this. The mark is only the state’s extra friction.
**Bank Control**
Black circle.
The state overlay on banks, not the Fed or the OCC.
Almost every state: 10 (state charter and usury exist; private banks remain the normal choice).
North Dakota: 20 — the Bank of North Dakota is a real state bank used for state funds. Private banks still exist, so it is not a monobank.
**Mean (black tick)**
Simple average of the nine marks when all nine exist.
Territories do not get a tick. Most of them have only a top rate (and Puerto Rico also has a debt mark).
**Still not on this chart, on purpose**
Monetary inflation (one U.S. money stock).
Capital exit (the federal expatriation tax).
Federal income tax, federal estate tax, Treasury debt.
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Can you take it with you?
Is it taxed away before there is anything to take?
Will you lose it by trying to hold onto it?
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**Tax Revenue**
VAT, personal income tax, company tax, capital-gains tax, tax on interest and dividends, payroll and social contributions, excise, property tax, tariffs and duties, other compulsory levies the source counts as tax.
UNU-WIDER Government Revenue Dataset via Our World in Data, taxes including social contributions, as a share of GDP. Scaled 0% of GDP = 0, 50% of GDP = 100.
**Top Income Tax**
Top statutory central or federal rate on ordinary personal income. Not the combined state or provincial rate. Not the effective rate a median worker pays.
OECD Tax Database, PwC / EY worldwide personal-tax summaries, plus a coding pass for countries not in those tables. The headline rate is the score (37% = 37).
**Other state take**
Royalties, resource rents filed as non-tax, profits of state companies, some user fees and fines. Not VAT or income tax.
ICTD non-tax revenue as a share of GDP. Scaled 0% = 0, 30% of GDP = 100. Fees and fines are poorly covered worldwide. This mark is drawn and does not decide the black tick.
**Spending**
Government consumption, transfers, interest, and other outlays as a share of GDP. General government when the source has it; central-only for some countries.
IMF historical government-spending series via Our World in Data. Scaled 0% of GDP = 0, 60% of GDP = 100.
**National Debt**
Public debt as a share of GDP, often central government rather than every municipality.
World Bank / Quality of Government extract. Scaled 0% of GDP = 0, 150% of GDP = 100. Only 87 countries. Blank is unknown, not zero.
**Death Tax**
Top estate or inheritance rate on a child inheriting cash or a house. 0 only if a separate death duty is abolished or never existed and that fact was found. Not deemed-gain at death. Not cantonal or state add-ons.
PwC / EY / OECD-style estate guides plus a coding pass. The rate is the score.
**Price Inflation**
Consumer-price change, average of the last five available years.
World Bank / IMF CPI via Our World in Data. Scaled 0% a year = 0, 25% a year = 100, capped.
**Monetary Inflation**
Growth of the broad money stock (M2 or the national equivalent). No subtraction of real output. Not Fraser. Mostly bank credit, not a count of notes printed.
IMF / World Bank broad-money growth. Scaled 0% a year = 0, 40% a year = 100, capped.
**Competing money**
Legal gold, legal silver, legal domestic account or cash in another unit. Not an offshore account.
Coding pass from national gold law, central-bank FX circulars, and known bans. All three ordinary ≈ 8–20. Restricted ≈ 40–60. Banned ≈ 70–100.
**Capital Exit**
IMF capital-account and exchange rules, surrender of export proceeds, plus a coded tax on leaving residency or citizenship. Not FATCA reporting by itself.
Chinn–Ito / IMF AREAER closedness (fully open = 0 on that piece), plus an add-on: +30 for a broad net-worth or mark-to-market leaving tax (United States $2 million covered-expatriate rule, Canada, Norway, South Africa), +18 for a substantial-shareholding exit tax, +8 if narrow, +0 if none. Added, capped at 100.
**Bank Control**
Ban on private banks, mandate to use a state bank for wages, taxes or FX, directed credit, interest-rate cap, deposit freeze or haircut. An optional public bank adds 0.
Coding pass from banking law, IMF AREAER credit and rate lines, and documented freezes. Not Fraser 5A. Private choice in fact ≈ 8–18. Directed credit or a must-use-state channel ≈ 30–50. Fake private option ≈ 60–80. Monobank or ban ≈ 90–100.
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Governments differ in how much of life they decide for you.
Here are 198 countries on 12 measures of government control.
0 = the person still has the choice.
100 = the state decides (enforced ban or mandate).
First four images: most controlling to least.
Next post: the same 198, A to Z.
Wherever you live — does this match what you see?
Taxing you and controlling you are not the same thing.
The countries that confiscate the most are often not the ones that cage you. Much of the time the ones that cage you cannot even run a tax office.
First, in this post look at the Tyrannies. In the replies, look at it sorted by nation. Then see how they handle taxation and spending.
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America isn’t broke because nobody works. 134 million people have full-time jobs. They earn $15 trillion. About $5 trillion goes to support others.
Do we handle $40 trillion in debt by raising taxes, cutting benefits, cutting other spending, or growing the $15 trillion?
I did mine on the Grok Android app. Substitute your own X username and ask Grok imagine:
Create an image that accurately depicts X user @scottwww7 personality, aptitude, attitude, interests, insight, biases, and activities, based upon posts, reposts, and replies over time. Only use what is established, without imagining. Do not give extra weight to recent data. Use it all. Give weight to ongoing themes. Create imagery that may be of any type that represents this X user. Use flags, symbols, words, art, clipart, or any kind of graphics if that is helpful (whatever is representative of this individual) to make a representative single image which will give a casual observer some clear idea of who this person is. If external sources are detectable to fill out the vision, then use them as well. There are no restrictions. Be honest, not flattering. Include the image of the person only if that is necessary to depict the person (not in any way mandatory). This should be artistic, of at least poster or advertisement quality, not just a collection of images. Use quotation marks ONLY if verifiably quoting the user's actual words. If other quotes are given, then attribute the actual verifiable writer of those words. Do not use quotation marks at all if the source is not verifiable. If there are any, then list some of the people in history, culture, who's who, entertainment, or on X (at least one who is not the user being depicted, must include X handle) that closely resemble this persona. No matter what, do not use unmerited flattery. Be real.
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@grok Create an image that accurately depicts X user @scottwww7 personality, aptitude, attitude, interests, insight, biases, and activities, based upon posts, reposts, and replies over time. Only use what is established, without imagining. Do not give extra weight to recent data. Use it all. Give weight to ongoing themes. Create imagery that may be of any type that represents this X user. Use flags, symbols, words, art, clipart, or any kind of graphics if that is helpful (whatever is representative of this individual) to make a representative single image which will give a casual observer some clear idea of who this person is. If external sources are detectable to fill out the vision, then use them as well. There are no restrictions. Be honest, not flattering. Include the image of the person only if that is necessary to depict the person (not in any way mandatory). This should be artistic, of at least poster or advertisement quality, not just a collection of images. Use quotation marks ONLY if verifiably quoting the user's actual words. If other quotes are given, then attribute the actual verifiable writer of those words. Do not use quotation marks at all if the source is not verifiable. If there are any, then list some of the people in history, culture, who's who, entertainment, or on X (at least one who is not the user being depicted, must include X handle) that closely resemble this persona. No matter what, do not use unmerited flattery. Be real.
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Exposing Islam - How widely is this list of Mohammed's qualities known to Muslims? As a Christian, I was unaware of most of these points. Interesting list.
Before I left Islam, I was debating a Sudanese Christian who challenged me to name one good thing about Muhammad. Just one.
I thought: easy. We Muslims practically worship Muhammad as the greatest man who ever lived.
So I tried to recall good qualities, honesty, compassion, mercy, love, anything, any single story, and I couldn’t remember one.
So I went to Google and typed: “the qualities of the Prophet.”
Islamic websites came up, and I thought, good, now I’ll have plenty of examples for this guy.
I opened them and was stunned: even the Islamic websites offered no good qualities in the sense he’d challenged me to find.
They praised his courage in spreading Islam, his fighting of Allah’s enemies, his physical strength, and his strictness.
Not one of the qualities the man had asked for.
Even the famous mercy at Mecca, sparing the people who had supposedly persecuted him, turned out to be for strategic reasons.
And when I started digging into the Quran and the sira for myself, I found that he married a child, he took Safiyya, a Jewish woman, the same day he killed her father, her brother, and her husband, trading his companion Dihya seven other captives for her, and posting a guard by the tent in case she tried to avenge them while raping her.
He had the men of the Jewish tribe beheaded, down to boys checked for pubic hair.
He raided trade caravans and took other tribes’ treasures.
He lied and broke truces he asked for.
He slept with all of his 9 wives the same night.
He killed anyone who mocked him.
He recruited raiders with the promise of other cities’ women.
And when his own fighters hesitated to touch married captives, because their husbands were alive and watching, Muhammad told them it was fine because allah said so.
Even the pagans of Arabia had higher morality than he did.
Every one of these acts was stamped with Allah’s approval.
He even married his adopted son’s wife by divine decree.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
I left Islam when I met this disgusting man, a man who turned his qualities into a religion, transmitted it to every generation of Muslims since, and made himself the ceiling of their morality.
This is the man Mamdani wants you to learn from.
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Starbase, Louisiana
Governor Jeff Landry to Make Historic Announcement in Abbeville xitter-newx.xyz-mikolabs.workers.dev/i/broadcasts/1wxWjlmew…
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Grok said:
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated during today’s Operation Economic Outcast press conference that he expects a major announcement of sanctions against a financial institution (for Iran-related dealings) by the end of this week.
This fits the campaign’s focus on secondary sanctions targeting enablers of Iran’s oil smuggling, shadow banking, and sanctions evasion, with a “zero leakage” approach.
Most likely candidates
The strongest and most repeatedly discussed possibilities are major Chinese banks. China purchases the vast majority (roughly 80–90%) of Iran’s oil exports, making Chinese financial institutions central to remaining revenue flows. Key background:
In April 2026, Bessent publicly confirmed that the U.S. Treasury sent warning letters to two larger/major Chinese banks, stating that if Iranian funds could be proven flowing through their accounts, secondary sanctions would follow. He declined to name them at the time.
The administration has so far avoided designating large Chinese banks (opting instead for smaller “teapot” refiners, shipping firms, and related entities) due to the sensitive U.S.–China trade relationship and an expected Trump–Xi meeting. However, Operation Economic Outcast explicitly broadens secondary-sanctions tools and signals that no one (including China) is beyond reach.
The four major Chinese state-owned banks most often referenced in this context as potential facilitators of Iran-related trade/finance are:
Bank of China
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC)
China Construction Bank
Agricultural Bank of China
Smaller or specialized Chinese/Hong Kong entities and banks already under closer scrutiny (e.g., those linked to prior teapot-refinery or shadow-fleet actions) are less likely to qualify as the “major” institution Bessent referenced.
Other possible (but lower-probability) candidates
Banks or large financial institutions in the UAE, Turkey, Oman, or other third countries that have historically served as hubs for Iranian oil payments, exchange houses, or evasion networks.
A significant non-Chinese institution that has continued processing Iran-linked transactions despite prior warnings.
No specific name has been publicly confirmed yet. The announcement is expected later this week as part of the ongoing wave of designations under Operation Economic Outcast. Official OFAC releases or further Treasury statements will provide the definitive identity once issued.
.@SecScottBessent: "Iran now faces a very clear choice, with only two paths before them: complete global isolation and a subsistence economy or a path back to normalcy with an opportunity to rejoin the global economy. Today, we are launching Operation Economic Outcast to foreclose every other option available to the Iranian regime."
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Were there any banks or governments or others who were named by Treasure by now?
Grok said:
Yes. Treasury has named specific banks and related facilitators since the August 24 launch, but it has not yet sanctioned any major Chinese banks or any governments.
On August 28, FinCEN proposed a rule that would cut the UAE branches of Egypt’s Banque Misr off from U.S. correspondent banking. Treasury said those branches processed about $1.8 billion for 103 companies it links to Iranian shadow-banking networks between January 2024 and June 2026. The parent bank in Egypt is not being cut off; the action uses Patriot Act Section 311 rather than a full blocking designation and still faces a comment period.
The same day, OFAC designated Reza Mohammad Taeedi, general manager of Bank Melli’s Dubai branch, and Hong Kong-based Kameng Trading Limited, which it accused of laundering funds for a sanctioned Iranian exchange house. Bank Melli itself (Iran’s largest state-owned bank) was already singled out on August 24, with Bessent demanding that every foreign branch be shuttered.
No governments have been designated. Pressure on third countries has so far taken the form of private timelines, secondary-sanctions warnings, and calls from President Trump to foreign leaders. China and Pakistan have publicly said they will continue trading with Iran. Major Chinese banks remain unnamed despite being the most-discussed candidates.
On September 1 Bessent said Treasury would “probably” announce another bank sanction that week and one the following week. As of September 3 that follow-on announcement has not yet been issued.
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After having asked Grok for my coat of arms (in another thread) I tried Grok Imagine asking for my Heraldic Achievement based on my X account, and then collaborated to customize it. I like this one better than the fully automatic ones.
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@grok give me a new heraldic achievement disregarding any I've already had done, and disregarding my profile page. Base it only on my posts and my comments, preferably over a long time sampling.
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