Chapter 11: Ukraine’s Magical $100 Billion to America’s Problems

35. Tucker ‘Got You’ Pense

 It’s what journalist – TV broadcasters – live for. The ‘Gotch Ya’ moment. And we saw that same joy Tucker Carlson had with VP Mike Pence’s answer to his questions about all the money going to Ukraine at the expense of America’s exploding problems. 

VP Mike Pense:  ‘Oh, Well, it’s not my concern.’

Tucker Carlson: 

‘You are distressed that Ukrainians don’t have enough American tanks, every city in the United States became much worse, over the past 3 years. Drive around, there’s not one city that’s gotten better in the United States. And it’s visible. Our economy has degraded, the suicide rate has jumped, public disorder, filth and crime have exponentially increased and yet, your concern is that the Ukrainians, a country most people can’t find on a map, who have received tens of billions of US tax dollars, don’t have enough tanks. I think it’s a fair question to ask, where’s the concern for the United States in that?’ 


VP Mike Pense:  ‘Well, it’s not my concern.’ 

Stunned audience – almost a gasp while supporters tried to applaud through the embarrassment - the disconnected leaders from the woes of the average American. 

More so, the savvy Tucker Carlson is to the real issues of the common man. Kudo’s for pulling back the curtain on the corruption of our national priorities for war at the expense of America’s basics – at least, that’s the optics of the exchange. 

But let’s take a second look at that $100 billion. 

Putin Supporters talk of the schools, US border, American infrastructure, crime, homeless, drug addiction and any of the dozen other political trophies of victims to gov’t mismanagement.

And then off to conspiracies as Trumps legal persecution – like so many other headlines, there to distract and obscure the money laundering of the globalist war in Ukraine – as critics say of it. 

As a budding economist, it’s stunning no one looked at the $20 trillion the gov’t spent during this same 2 years of Ukraine’s war. 

And yet, somehow, Ukraine’s $100 billion would plug the hole that the other $20 trillion spent - has not.

Ukraine’s magical $100 billion.

The conspiracy would seem to be more about this $20 trillion vs Ukraine’s $100 billion – 0.05% by compare. 

Where’s a good conspiracy specialist when you need one? 

Tucker has made some great calls with valuable exposes, decent research to lead and a novel read of issues. 

How then did he overlook - not account for - this $16 trillion spent by the feds over the last 2 years? 

How bout the other $7 trillion spent by state and county gov’ts on top that? 

He really should have found that context given how often Tucker likes to use this punchline bout Ukraine – like so many others. 

Tucker dropped the ball on this one. That is to say that this was actually Tuckers ‘Gotch Ya’ moment rather than Pence’s. 

And so here we go to a whole other book on the topic with the simple solution for it: Gov’t Priced Markets. 

In a nutshell, the gov’t’s present system requires 10 x to 20 x times more money (over their present budget) to cover all these American projects. 

The reasons are all too familiar: 

Gov’t siphons off about 95% for things like political corruption, incompetence, grid lock and as often, unrelated side jobs. 

This 95% figure is not given to whip crowds into a frensy and go storm the polls. 

Worse: 

It’s to introduce another Raghu-nomics book. A new system for next generation public projects now possible and completed with our Gov’t Priced Market program. That’s book #18 of the Raghu-nomics series. Hope to have it out in the coming months. In short, we propose a tax credit against 50% the price gov’t charges for the same service. 

Some great examples: 

California has an average cost of about $80,000 to cover a single homeless person. Any service provider offering a similar shelter would qualify for a $40k tax credit – half the gov’t price. ..And, no need wait for gov’t budget approval – that can take decades – in part because gov’t has no money. They get it from you – as taxes. Tax credits allow us to sidestep this horrific bureaucratic nightmare. Just assign it to your own tax filing. 

CA has about 100,000 homeless. Sounds like a lot, but there are 1.2 million vacant homes. We don’t have a housing problem, but a market mismatch of it. 

CA ‘s average home has 3 bedrooms. Putting up 3 homeless persons in your 3-bedroom house will now pay $120k year in tax credits. $10k a month for your 3-bedroom home. We will see a deluge of the wealthy opening their vacant homes for the tax credits. It will take just 35k homes to house all of CA homeless. Just 3% of our excess – vacant - housing would solve CA homelessness. 

That’s true for most of the country and so, solving homelessness could actually be done in a matter of days with the Gov’t Priced Markets program – among a host of other such issues. 

Again, this would all be done on just 50% the cost of gov’t homeless programs. 

Transportation is a great example: looking at a 96% savings.

It now cost CA $200 million per square mile of rail – on a good day. It regularly runs $450 million a square mile on a bad day. A half billion per mile. And growing. 

Meanwhile, Florida’s private rail service, Brightline, averages about $8 million per mile to build = 4% the costs on a CA good day, 2% on a CA bad day. 

Brightline would now get to pocket $98 million in tax credits per mile. 

 A better graphic of these cost efficiencies is that Florida’s private rail providers can put in about 1,000 miles of rail for every 20 miles by CA’s gov’t. Or..about $100 billion in tax credits per thousand miles. Yes, we will get rail built rather quickly with this Gov’t Priced Markets program. 

Brightline’s present 170 mile service would give them $16 billion in tax credits. It cost them $6 billion to build it. It means a 150% profit – before their first ride was even taken. They could now cut their ticket prices by 2/3rds to just $25 each way vs today’s $75. Dramatically improve ridership. 

That gives you some idea of how much money can be found in replacing these gov’t run programs with private programs run off 50% the cost of state agencies. 

And….the 20 reasons why this program is so much more cost efficient then gov’t services.

The point, the problem with America’s lack of services is not Ukraine’s $100 billion. It’s gov’t corruption - ONLY. 

And yes, I put this Gov’t Priced Market here to see if anyone in the world would actually read this far in to it.