Kroger plans to cut 3,000 corporate jobs over three years, saying a leaner company will help lower grocery prices. Investors face a harder question: how much of the savings will survive the supermarket price wars?

The announcement puts thousands of employees in a period of uncertainty while giving shoppers another promise of relief at checkout. For shareholders, it marks a major test of CEO Greg Foran’s effort to make Kroger more competitive.

Reducing payroll can improve the numbers. Getting customers to put more groceries in their carts requires more than a smaller headquarters.

More Than One-Third of Corporate Positions Face Cuts

Foran outlined the reductions in an internal memo on Monday, October 12. The planned cuts represent approximately 37% of Kroger’s roughly 8,200 corporate employees, according to Reuters. Details about affected roles will be shared in the coming months.

The percentage applies to corporate staffing. The announcement does not describe a 37% reduction across Kroger’s entire workforce, and the three-year plan does not mean 3,000 employees have already been dismissed.

Kroger has yet to identify the departments affected or provide a detailed schedule. In the memo shared with Grocery Dive, Foran described an organization with “more layers, more handoffs and more overhead than we need.” He said simplifying operations would support faster decisions and free resources for lower prices, employees and a better shopping experience.

That leaves employees waiting for specifics and investors waiting for a financial breakdown. The number of positions alone cannot establish the eventual savings after severance, technology spending and other implementation costs.

The Pressure Behind the Announcement

Kroger’s latest financial results help explain the urgency.

In September, the company lowered its full-year identical-sales growth forecast, excluding fuel, to 0.2%–0.8%, down from 1%–2%. Second-quarter identical sales increased just 0.2%. Those figures include a significant pharmacy-related headwind from the Inflation Reduction Act, so they require more context than a simple conclusion that grocery demand has stalled.

Even with that qualification, the revised outlook increases pressure on management to improve sales momentum.

A large store network comes with expenses that continue whether customers buy a full week’s groceries or a few essentials. When sales grow slowly, wages, healthcare, transportation and administrative costs become harder to absorb.

Corporate reductions offer one way to address that squeeze. But the strategy depends on what happens afterward. If lower prices attract more business, the savings could help finance a stronger competitive position. If rivals respond with their own discounts, Kroger may have to keep spending simply to hold its ground.

The financial benefit depends on whether the cuts help Kroger win more shopping trips.

Where AI Fits Into the Restructuring

The announcement arrives as Kroger expands its use of artificial intelligence. Reuters reported that the company recently outlined an AI strategy covering workflow management and tools such as an AI shopping assistant. Foran’s memo called for reducing duplicated work and adapting to technology.

That connection matters, but the available disclosures do not establish that AI will directly replace every eliminated position.

For investors, the useful question is what the technology can accomplish after the organizational changes. Automating repetitive administrative tasks could reduce expenses and speed up decisions. Poor implementation could create new costs, errors or bottlenecks that offset part of the benefit.

A supermarket still needs accurate ordering, reliable deliveries, effective promotions and well-stocked shelves. Any productivity gains at headquarters must support those daily operations.

The strongest evidence of success would be sustained operating improvements with fewer resources. An AI announcement, by itself, cannot demonstrate that.

The reverse also deserves attention. Higher sales caused by rising prices can conceal weakening demand if customers are buying fewer products.

For Kroger, investors need to know whether its pricing strategy changes shopping behavior. Lower shelf prices become financially useful when they encourage enough additional purchases to justify the investment.

The Next Test Arrives October 20

Kroger’s September earnings release said it would hold an investor update on October 20, with additional details about strategic initiatives and longer-term financial targets. That creates a near-term opportunity for management to explain how the corporate reductions fit into its broader plan.

Investors should look for:

• Expected savings and implementation costs. These would help establish the economic benefit beyond the headcount announcement.
• The allocation of savings. Pricing, employee investment, technology and retained earnings have different implications for shareholders.
• Evidence of stronger demand. More transactions or higher unit volumes would support the case that price investments are working.
• Operating profit and cash flow. Improvement would provide evidence that the changes are strengthening the business.
• Specific staffing decisions. The affected functions and timing will help reveal how much execution risk Kroger is taking.

These details will be more useful than another broad promise of efficiency.

Kroger Has to Make the Savings Count

Kroger’s plan is a substantial corporate restructuring with a clear consumer promise: lower overhead should help deliver lower grocery prices.

For employees, the consequences are immediate uncertainty. For shoppers, the benefit remains to be demonstrated. For shareholders, the opportunity depends on whether a smaller corporate organization can support a stronger retail business.

The investment case gets stronger when lower costs produce better stores, more purchases and durable cash flow. The layoffs alone cannot prove that outcome.

The reverse also deserves attention. Higher sales caused by rising prices can conceal weakening demand if customers are buying fewer products.

For Kroger, investors need to know whether its pricing strategy changes shopping behavior. Lower shelf prices become financially useful when they encourage enough additional purchases to justify the investment.

The Next Test Arrives October 20

Kroger’s September earnings release said it would hold an investor update on October 20, with additional details about strategic initiatives and longer-term financial targets. That creates a near-term opportunity for management to explain how the corporate reductions fit into its broader plan.

Investors should look for:

• Expected savings and implementation costs. These would help establish the economic benefit beyond the headcount announcement.
• The allocation of savings. Pricing, employee investment, technology and retained earnings have different implications for shareholders.
• Evidence of stronger demand. More transactions or higher unit volumes would support the case that price investments are working.
• Operating profit and cash flow. Improvement would provide evidence that the changes are strengthening the business.
• Specific staffing decisions. The affected functions and timing will help reveal how much execution risk Kroger is taking.

These details will be more useful than another broad promise of efficiency.

Kroger Has to Make the Savings Count

Kroger’s plan is a substantial corporate restructuring with a clear consumer promise: lower overhead should help deliver lower grocery prices.

For employees, the consequences are immediate uncertainty. For shoppers, the benefit remains to be demonstrated. For shareholders, the opportunity depends on whether a smaller corporate organization can support a stronger retail business.

The investment case gets stronger when lower costs produce better stores, more purchases and durable cash flow. The layoffs alone cannot prove that outcome.

Global Market News

Many citizens today, with varied sources of information, understand the highly unethical lawfare waged against President Donald Trump, as exemplified by the Russiagate hoax. By contrast, the more restricted media environment of the early 1970s made prosecutorial misconduct during Watergate harder to scrutinize. With fresh eyes now taking a closer look at the reporting and prosecution of Watergate, it is becoming clear that DOJ investigators should sanction prosecutorial misconduct and set the historical record straight on Richard Nixon’s innocence.

As a refresher, Watergate refers to a political scandal stemming from the June 17, 1972, burglary of the Democratic National Committee’s offices in the Watergate building by burglars with known CIA ties. After two years of investigations, committee inquiries, and trials, over 40 government officials were convicted or jailed, and President Richard Nixon was forced to resign from office.

Recently, former Nixon aide and historian Geoff Shepard presented his case to the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), arguing that the proceedings against Richard Nixon amounted to dishonest, partisan “lawfare” enabled by prosecutorial and Congressional misconduct. Hopefully, the OPR will follow up with a vigorous investigation and clear the record of this unfairly maligned former president.

Modern Watergate critics are familiar with Shepard’s excellent work, The Real Watergate Scandal. In this book, Shepard details what he describes as serious ethical lapses by the Watergate Special Prosecutor in pursuing Nixon and his aides. More importantly, he argues that the evidence strongly suggests Nixon was innocent of the long-alleged “cover-up.”

In addition to Shepard’s tour de force, several key revisionist works have been published in recent years, including Secret Agenda (Jim Hougan), Silent Coup (Colodny and Gettlin), and my book, Postgate. Additionally, White House Call Girl (Phil Stanford) covers a minor but convincing set of lurid background facts showing the motivation for the burglary.

Oddly, Watergate: A New History (Garrett Graff), while conventionally anti-Nixon in tone and intent, confirms the earth-shaking revelations of James Rosen’s book, The Strong Man, showing a lack of approval by John Mitchell or the Oval Office for the Watergate burglary.

These works, together with Shepard’s detailed documentation of corrupt insider framing of Nixon, are proof not only of Nixon’s lack of guilt but also of the massive unethical cover-up of the true story by those we are asked to believe without question: the Special Prosecutor, the Democrat-led Senate Watergate Committee and the mainstream media, specifically the Washington Post.

Why, fifty years later, should we investigate any flaws in Nixon’s prosecution? Because key questions remain: 1) was the prosecution of Nixon and aides (with Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator) so clearly unethical that the OPR should conclude formally that the prosecution was fatally and unethically flawed; and 2) were the Senate investigation and Majority Watergate Report false in material particulars, constituting a willfully false official Report to the public? In light of the attempted replay of Watergate and the Russiagate hoax, these questions are existential.

To understand both scandals, we should first note the prosecution’s duty to provide the defense with all exculpatory evidence and all summaries and recordings of witness statements; the related prosecution should be dismissed.

We present here the crucial information deliberately concealed by Watergate Special Prosecutors, by the Congressional committees investigating Nixon, and also hidden by the Post.

1. Former Attorney General John Mitchell did not order the Watergate break-ins.

John Mitchell did not order the Watergate break-ins, either as Attorney General or later as Director of the Nixon reelection campaign (CRP), as aide Jeb Magruder falsely testified. The Oval Office had no connection to the burglary and could not cover up what it did not know.

Shepard’s book is invaluable in showing that Magruder, eager to avoid jail, constantly changed his story to prosecutors and contradicted himself and others on more than forty aspects of his statements. But the Special Prosecutor never, it appears, disclosed to the defense the facts showing Magruder’s constantly changing story, its memos reflecting his changing statements, or those memos in which prosecutors cast serious doubt on his story as inconsistent with other facts. In addition, prosecutors put on the stand this internally known perjurer.

Shepard’s treatment alone suggests the prosecution violated its duty of disclosure to the defense and put a perjuring witness on the stand, both grounds for overturning a conviction.

Graff’s work strongly shows that John Mitchell did not order the break-in, although he oddly argues that the question of who actually ordered the burglary should not be pursued, given the passage of time. Interestingly, Len Downie, editor emeritus of the Washington Post, echoed Graff’s findings.

Graff’s conclusion that John Mitchell did not order the break-in is not new. Both reporter James Rosen in The Strong Man and I in Postgate concluded similarly.

2. The Watergate burglary was primarily a CIA operation, not a Nixon campaign operation, as the prosecution and Senate have claimed.

The prosecution and the Senate had ample evidence that Watergate was primarily a CIA operation designed to gain ostensible authority for its prostitute-taping program. Howard Hunt was an undercover CIA agent who, in his criminal Watergate trial, was prepared to offer a “CIA defense,” which he pursued until pleading guilty at the urging of John Dean, Nixon’s White House Counsel, who turned state’s evidence.

The prosecutors were well aware of this defense, while another CIA operative, burglary leader James McCord, told his Metropolitan Police friend on the morning of the burglary that this had been a CIA operation.

Republican Senator Howard Baker published a detailed, persuasive 43-page, unpublicized minority report on July 2, 1974, detailing CIA participation in the burglary, but the Washington Post’s reporting of it concealed its findings, and the highly publicized 1,250-page Watergate Committee Report (also known as the Ervin Report), prepared by the Democrat majority, ignored this key evidence.

3. The burglary targets were the wiretapping and documentation of prostitutes and their johns.

While the prosecution and congressional investigations premised the break-in as a campaign operation gone wrong, it was, beyond a doubt, about wiretapping prostitutes and their visiting Democrat johns.

The Washington Post has been overheated in its rhetoric denying this incontrovertible fact, but this strenuous denial only shows its guilt for this gross concealment.

4. The “key” to the burglary was likely undisclosed to Nixon and his aides.

Upon arrest, Eugenio Martinez, an active CIA agent, was wrestled to the ground as he tried to rid himself of an object in his pocket—a desk key of the secretary arranging the prostitution calls overheard.

The DOJ should therefore investigate and report that this key was the true key to Presidential innocence. Nixon was not concerned with prostitution, nor was his campaign.

5. The smoking gun White House tape was misrepresented as a cover-up of criminality.

Shepard and Dean both concur on Nixon’s innocence relating to the “smoking gun” White House tape of June 23, 1972, which ultimately forced his resignation when disclosed in July 1974. It was on this tape that Nixon plotted to ask the CIA to call the FBI off the “Mexican Money Trail” investigation.

To this day, most think that Nixon was attempting to shut down the FBI’s Watergate investigation. But in fact, he simply did not wish to expose the names of key Democrat campaign donors, including Dwayne Andreas of ADM, for fear of their embarrassment for contributing to a Republican.

With all these surrounding false depictions of the scandal, most notably by false Post reports, this tape, to be sure, incorrectly seemed like a material cover-up.

The OPR should then apply the same framework it uses to examine Watergate to the prosecutorial practices surrounding Russiagate. False history should be corrected, and this is a good start.

About John D. O’Connor

John D. O’Connor is a former federal prosecutor and the San Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt during his revelation as Deep Throat in 2005. O’Connor is the author of the books Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate and Began Today’s Partisan Advocacy Journalism and The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened. O’Connor and Mark Felt also collaborated on the 2006 book, A G-Man’s Life.

Many polls are designed to make Republicans feel there is no reason to vote. Do not fall for the left’s propaganda attack via polls.

Anyone can conduct a poll solely to obtain specific results and have it picked up by supposedly reliable sources. In the summer, a previously unknown organization called Median Strategies put out bogus poll results that were picked up and promoted in our frenzied 24/7 news cycles. In an admission to the Los Angeles Times, the organization admitted that its poll “was created as a short-term social experiment examining how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification.”

That was a doublespeak way of saying, “we lied.”

We hear the word “poll” and assume they are all conducted in a similar manner. However, some are “push polls,” specifically designed to lead people toward a desired result. Even supposedly reputable polling companies often have some push poll objectives. FormPlus explains how push polls work:

Leading Questions: Instead of phrasing questions neutrally like “Do you support Candidate A?”, a push poll would ask, “Would you support Candidate A if you knew they increased tuition fee by 250%, making tertiary education unaffordable?” 

False or Misleading Claims: Some push polls not only steer opinions but also include outright lies (e.g., “Did you know Candidate B embezzled funds while serving as governor?”)—even if there is no evidence that suggests the candidate did it.

Emotional Manipulation: Some push polls also frame their questions to provoke fear or outrage (e.g., “How concerned are you that building a factory will contaminate the rural water supply?”

Poor Sampling: Because these “polls” are not research-driven, they often contact large numbers of people rapidly, disregarding proper sampling methods to maximize the spread of their misleading message. 

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich believes that “fake polling” favoring Democrats is to keep Republicans depressed so that they don’t vote. He posted on X:

Don’t believe the polls. There will be no blue wave. Once again, fake polling, designed, not to inform but to persuade & suppress turnout, are misleading voters. I know what I’m talking about. As a twice elected Dem governor and 3-time elected Dem Congressman, I never lost an election.”

Let’s be naïve and assume that much of the polling is an honest assessment of voter intent. The fact is that throughout history “reliable” polls have been wrong many times:

• In 1936, The Literary Digest predicted that Republican Alf Landon would beat Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR won “bigly” with Landon only winning two states.
• In 1948, pollsters predicted that Republican Thomas Dewey would win the presidential election against incumbent Democrat Harry Truman. The famous photo of Truman holding the Chicago Daily Tribune with the headline: “Dewey Defeats Truman.”
• On October 18, 2016, the New York Times published a poll that showed Hillary Rodham Clinton having a 91 percent chance of winning the election. How many Trump supporters didn’t bother to vote that year because they erroneously assumed he had no chance of winning?
• The following “reputable” polling services all showed Clinton ahead in 2016: Monmouth University, Rasmussen, CBS News, UPI/CVoter, Politico/Morning Consult, ABC News/Washington Post, NBC News/Wall Street Journal, GWU/Battleground, Fox News, and Insights West. (Note: the week before Rasmussen had Trump up by 2 points.)
• On November 4, 2016, the New York Times offered its final poll before Election Day: Clinton had an 84 percent chance of winning the presidency. At this point, all the polling services listed above had Clinton ahead, with three showing a tie.

We are skipping 2020 because every honest person knows there was fraud in several states. For instance, President Trump was leading in Georgia by 160,000 votes, and then suddenly a water pipe broke, and some suitcases came out before the windows were covered. We won’t relive the full scenario, but Joe Biden got 81 million votes the way Kamala Harris is an eloquent speaker!

In 2024, multiple polls showed the presidential election would be close, with the popular vote going to Democrat Kamala Harris. Polls were wrong, wrong, and wrong! Trump won the electoral college 312 to 226 AND the popular vote by three million votes. Plus, Trump won all seven swing states! The final national New York Times/Siena poll of likely voters (October 20-23) showed a tie (48% to 48%). Do the results sound like a tie to you?

For Democrats to retake Congress, they need “fence-sitting” Republicans to sit home. That is their goal. In some ways, the midterm elections will succeed or fail based on Christian turnout. Glenn Beck made it very clear in a September 22, 2026 “X” post what Christians of faith must do or else we are giving our country to the progressive/Islamist cabal:

“Earlier this summer, CAIR launched a massive get-out-the-vote operation targeting 3 million Muslim voters. They are camping out at mosques in crucial swing states after Friday prayers to register voters and drive them to the polls.

“Now, all of this is completely legal. I’m not claiming anything nefarious. But my question is this: Christian pastors, what are YOU doing about it?

“There are 32 million Christians who go to church every single Sunday and don’t vote. CAIR is hunting for 3 million, and we have 32 million sitting in our own pews staying home!

“Pastors, stop hiding behind the Johnson Amendment. The law has never stopped you from putting a registration table in the lobby or preaching on biblical principles. If you preach that the culture is collapsing 52 Sundays a year, but you never once tell your congregation to get out of the pew and go vote, you’re not a shepherd. You’re a weatherman. Put a table in the lobby this Sunday. One volunteer, one clipboard, one laptop. Load up the church van and drive people to the polls. Stop complaining and start showing up.”

Seth Dillon, CEO of the Babylon Bee, recently said:

“32 MILLION church-going Christians are ‘unlikely’ to vote in this election. The last contest was decided by thousands of votes, not millions. This election is ours if Christians will do their duty and vote to restrain evil.”

Every vote counts! Look at the Lindsay Clancy trial where one juror holdout stopped the insanity of allowing a mother who murdered her three young children to be found not guilty.

Here are a several recent examples where Republicans barely eked out a win:

2020 — Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District — Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks defeated Democrat Rita Hart by six votes out of more than 393,000 total votes cast.

2000 — U.S. Presidential Election — Republican George W. Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore in Florida by 537 votes, securing the state’s electoral votes and the presidency after a Supreme Court ruling.

2024 — South Carolina 4th Congressional District Primary — Constitution Party Mark Hackett defeated Michael Chandler 8 to 5 in a Constitution Party primary with only 13 total votes cast.

2022 — Alaska House of Representatives 13th District — Republican Kathy Henslee defeated Democrat Andrew Josephson by one vote.

2024 — Maine House of Representatives 141st District — Republican Lucas Lanigan defeated Democrat Patricia Kidder by one vote.

2024 –cColorado House of Representatives 16th District – Republican Rebecca Keltie defeated Democrat Stephanie Vigil by three votes.

Everyone can do something! Get involved by contacting a local Republican organization and/or your county GOP. GOP Events lets you click on your state to find out what is happening and how you can participate with training, voter contact events, election integrity opportunities, and grassroots organizing events in your area.

Most of all, do not fall for the left’s propaganda attack via polls. Every person of faith (and this includes Americans of all faiths) who believes in the United States of America as a constitutional republic must vote Republican in the 2026 midterm elections. We must also encourage our family, friends, and neighbors to do the same.

The country we save will be our own.

Robin M. Itzler is a regular contributor to American Thinker. She is the founder and editor of Patriot Neighbors, a free weekly national newsletter. Robin can be reached at RobinItzler@yahoo.com.

Reverend Timothy Broglio, Archbishop for the Military Services USA, has issued a statement calling on Catholics in the U.S. Armed Forces to not participate in the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan for his 2009 shooting spree that killed more than a dozen people in 2009 at a U.S. Army base in Fort Hood, Texas.

Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist who reached the rank of Major, came to oppose U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and grew more radical upon learning he was slated for deployment sometime in 2009. On May 9 of that year, he entered Fort Hood with two handguns and went on a shooting spree, killing 13 and wounding at least 31, until he was stopped by a police bullet that left him paralyzed. 

He reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the rampage, and it later came out he was a practitioner of Sharia law, had attended a Virginia mosque led by pro-terrorism imam Anwar al-Awlaki, and had previously advocated Muslims “ris(ing) up against the U.S. military.”

Hasan was convicted in August 2013 and sentenced to death less than a week later. Last week, the Army set his execution date for December 3 at Fort Hood, following approval by President Donald Trump. It will be the Army’s first firing squad execution since World War II. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced plans to livestream the execution, sparking controversy even among supporters of capital punishment. President Donald Trump is reportedly considering canceling the livestream.

In his October 12 statement, Broglio expressed sympathy for the families of Hasan’s victims before “repeat(ing) the opposition of the Catholic Church to capital punishment,” asserting the “dignity of the human person is again at stake.”

“Thirdly, do we really want to imitate the terrorists of this world and make a public spectacle of barbarically killing our adversaries?” the archbishop asked. “The crime committed by Nidal Malik Hasan was heinous, but does exposing the public to his execution serve any purpose? Has the potential moral injury, which the members of the firing squad might experience, been considered? Will the exposure of a live-stream to the young and impressionable during the 250th anniversary year of our independence be able to be repaired? The U.S. military generally enjoys a good reputation in the world. Is there really a value to throwing them in the same boat with terrorists by broadcasting the image of the execution of a man in a wheel chair to the whole world? Does this decision reflect the dignity of the human person?”

Broglio urged those in power to, “at the very least, do what is possible to keep the exposure to the live-streaming of the proposed execution from the vision of the young and impressionable” He closed by declaring, “I oblige any Catholics assigned to the firing squad to request to be excused from this action contrary to the teaching of the Church,” falsely likening it to a “procured abortion.”

Broglio’s statement compounds an ongoing debate over what the Catholic Church really teaches on the issue.

In 2018, the late Pope Francis complicated the discourse about the religious permissibility of capital punishment when he issued a papal decree revising n. 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to declare that a “new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state,” and therefore “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” It also declared that the Church “works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”

The passage previously read that authorities should limit themselves to “non-lethal means (…) to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor” and “cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity ‘are very rare, if not practically nonexistent,’” but granted that “traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty” when absolutely necessary.

Pope Leo XIV has doubled down on Francis’s direction, repeatedly describing the death penalty as “inadmissible.” Christian supporters of capital punishment point to Genesis 9:6 which states: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image.” Other popes throughout history, such as Pope Leo X, Pope Pius XII, and St. John Paul II, have affirmed the legitimacy of capital punishment in at least some circumstances.

Capital punishment is one of the most contentious issues in modern politics, with ambivalence often crossing the usual partisan lines. Proponents argue it a necessary deterrent, that it is a key tool in pushing violent offenders to plead guilty in order to evade it, and that nothing less than death can adequately register societal condemnation for humanity’s worst crimes. Opponents argue death is irreversible in cases of wrongful convictions, that its implementation often constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment,” and that society should draw a hard line against taking any life when not strictly necessary to defend one’s self or others from danger (a standard liberal opponents do not apply to their support of abortion-on-demand).

As for the administration’s proposal to broadcast it, public execution used to be commonplace in past centuries, with gallows erected in town squares for public hangings of criminals. But as execution methods became more sophisticated and societal mores changed, so too did the normalcy of displaying state-sanctioned killings. Today, members of the public and press may attend executions, but the last public execution in the United States was of convicted murderer Roscoe ​“Red” Jackson in 1937.

Calvin Freiburger, Lifesite News

There have been people who didn’t. Enoch was Noah’s grandfather, God found him too pleasing, so He just took him up, without his dying. Elijah was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot, without dying.

So it is not absolutely 100.00% certain that you’re going to die. The angel Gabriel told Mary, mother of Jesus, about the pregnancy of John the Baptist by Mary’s elderly cousin Elisabeth, wife of Zachariah, saying that no word is impossible to God, in other words, that nothing is impossible to God.

Now rather than get right back to harsh reality from such foolish talk, let’s work up through a kind of oddsmaking excercise, asking if your parents died, and so, how likely is it that you will too? Maybe one or both are still alive. Then, go up a generation, to your four grandparents, or to your eight great-grandparents. Certainly by your sixteen great-great-grandparents, they virtually all died. And that’s a kind of genetic inheritence, that makes it rather quite likely that you will too.

What’s the point of all this ridiculousness? It’s to diffuse the morbid fear of death. I’ll tell a story in the first comment about an acquaintance of mine who actually has a serious, morbid fear of death. What it involves is that certain subjects, like funerals, morgues and even hospitals, cause paralyzing fear in certain people.

But that is a direct result of simple unfamiliarity. People who are approaching their life end, have a lot of time as they slow down, then start getting sick, to think about death a lot. So it becomes less and less frightful.

What’s all this getting at? It’s by way of diffusing the fact, that because of our war, and the fact that we’re undergoing a fall quite parallel to what Britain experienced after World War II, it is a virtual certainty that there will be food shortages.

It’s all in the Wall Street Journal.

That evokes INSTANT TERROR, equivalent to all these ideas of fear of death that I’ve been feinting toward, faking at.

The similarity with gradually accepting that death is going to come, is that, with a little time to think it out, the paralysis of terror of no food, can be overcome.

Then you can plan.

And, actually, AVOID the worst happening to you.

Because you have a lot of freedom of action, if you will just THINK!

There is still food in the stores, even if it’s getting quite expensive. Those with big belts, will have to tighen up to buy it; those with lean belts may have to default on loans, or worse. But nothing’s more important than eating, than drinking water and breathing. So eating is basically, Mandatory.

So if the fear is starting to recede now, then, things get much brighter, if only gradually.

What if…

What if we could actually PLAN for severe food shortages, including empty store shelves. What would be our rational course of action.

We wouldn’t have to go to extremes like Burt Gummer in Tremors (A**blasters), stocking up fantatically on Meals Ready to Eat that last 20 years, as though there would be 20 years if we got into a civil war.

More scary talk. Just kidding.

What would you do if you could actually, think about what you’d do, without having to run off to the bathroom right away as soon as the thought “Meal Plan” crossed your mind.

What would it consist of? You’d chart out an expected lenght of time when there wouldn’t be any diesel to deliver the food to stores. So, how long would you guess. (Please comment, how long?)

For me, I’m guessing 90 days, but for a margin of safety, I’m going for 105 days of severe food shortages.

“The Sky is Falling!”, said Chicken Little.

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” said President Roosevelt, when radio allowed his voice to enter nearly every home, and you could be encouraged by his confident tone.

But, BUT … how would you actually DO a food plan?

Ready dot gov has a reasonable model, for those still so terrified of the thought that they just can’t think.

For those who have gulped down the bullet and decided to calm down, take off the training wheels and think a bit, in essence a food plan consists in stocking up on staples that, while they might be disgusting after a while, will keep you alive. That’s a remote stretch, unless you’ve been through a natural disaster and have some experience with what works and what Definitely doesn’t.

A “nearer” approach, one with the virtue of familiarity, is starting out with making a list of what you already eat, bridging over to the staples and the available supplies, then going between (interpolating) to structure your food plan on familiar food that has to be stretched or bridged over to disaster food supplies.

So, I got potato flakes and giant cans of dried onions at a Latter Day Saints (LDS) Bishop’s Storehouse. (Just use those terms.) They have dried carrots, giant cans of dried beans that aren’t fundamentally different than bulk beans from the self-serve bins especially at markets that serve Latinos.

If you will just face up to facts, you might be very glad that you didn’t let FRIGHT cause you the considerable, beyond embarrassment, the desperation of running out, for yourself, and, far worse, of seeing your family go hungry and possibly get quite sick, or worse.

Buck Up, Bucko.

Charles Oconnell, Dissident News

Raman has campaigned on grievance and gain at the expense of those who work for their money or own property.

Last year, I told New Yorkers to vote for Republican Guardian Angel (and perennial candidate) Curt Sliwa, but prepare for the worst.

Democratic Socialist Mamdani was the favorite from May to November 2025, with polling consistently giving him the edge. Former governor Andrew Cuomo, forever corrupt and incompetent and glorying in self-aggrandizement, was the last person who should have been mayor.

Democrats and Republicans who didn’t want a crazy commie taking over their city glided toward Cuomo. Mamdani had the momentum, though; he had the outsider star power (the fact that he never held down a real job made that edge even easier), and he offered a bold set of ideas … at least to anyone ignorant of history, which describes the vast majority of the educated chattering classes in New York City Upper East or Lower West or anywhere else.

The communists won, and New Yorkers are getting what they voted for. They wanted government grocery stores? They will get lines of people waiting for bread when across the country the bread waits in line for us. They wanted potholes filled? Good luck keeping the police officers on the force, as well. They wanted cheaper housing? They’re getting rent control, less housing, higher prices, and a feeling that they are better than the suburbs.

New York City is on its last legs, and the voters deserve what’s coming.

A silver lining shines out, though. Democrats to the left of Hochul are failing in New York City. How about electing a governor to the right? Bruce Blakeman is gaining on the incumbent governor, and Democratic celebrities are lining up behind a Republican to keep the Empire State from turning into a rump, failed state.

What about Los Angeles?

The same dynamic is taking flight on the West Coast. Another deep blue city is looking at voting between bad and worse, dumb and dumber, and corrupt and more corrupt as its final choices for next mayor of Los Angeles.

During the June primary, Los Angeles voters had a chance to elect common sense, results, and accountability: Spencer Pratt. A victim of the Palisades fires, which devoured multiple homes while Mayor Karen Bass was celebrating the inauguration of Ghana’s next president, Pratt demanded a city that would work for everyone. His campaign? Lock up the criminals, clean up the streets, protect the businesses, and allow everyone to enjoy a better quality of life.

Voters also had the choice of repeat failure, politician-for-life incumbent Karen Bass, or Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-aligned city councilwoman Nithya Raman.

Raman had won her city council reelection outright in 2024, despite residents and business owners complaining about the neglected, dilapidated state of her district, which stretches from Silver Lake to Encino, with Sherman Oaks and Studio City thrown in for good measure. A richer, higher echelon of voters still chose the least of all candidates. Homelessness has gotten so bad that residents staged their homeless sit-in protest outside her home! How do you like it, Nithya? The stunts, the anger, the despair spilling onto the City of Angeles might not matter if the polling proves accurate, since all of them point to a Raman victory over incumbent Bass come November.

The Democratic Socialists of America will have realized their greatest feat yet: control over the two largest cities in the country. From there, they can build on their big donor base and run one of their own for president and more U.S. Senate seats.

Raman, an immigrant from India, educated at Harvard and MIT, blessed with all the goodness that is America, has campaigned on grievance and gain at the expense of those who work for their money or own their property. She hates the West, the wise, the good, and the common-sensical. What Democratic Party apparatchiks have promised for decades, she will deliver: votes for non-citizens, single-payer healthcare, abolition of law enforcement, etc.

California election law does not permit a write-in at the general election for mayor, so the voters are stuck between a rock and a prison. Indie journalist Daniel Guss urges LA voters to vote for both to spoil the county and tally their outrage and opposition, but one of them will still win.

The winner is looking more and more like Raman.

And the voters of Los Angeles deserve everything that happens to them.

Can’t they get their act together and vote for someone worthwhile? Decent? Not evil?

Los Angeles hasn’t had a Republican mayor since philanthropist Richard Riordan, who brought class and competence to city government during his tenure. Despite his endorsement of President Bill Clinton in 1996, Riordan did well by the city. Democratic successors demonstrated some competence of their own, as well as controversy. With the rise of the DSA in the last five years and its en masse takeover of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, Los Angeles County and the city of Los Angeles have witnessed a sharp veer to the political Left.

Land acknowledgements, defunding of the police, LGBT celebrations everywhere, ethnic months and nonprofit pandering, reparations boards, protests against Israel, and more attacks on churches and Jewish communities have erupted across every level of government in the wake of the socialist spread.

And now the mayor’s race will broaden the bad.

Bass is desperate for support, touting endorsements of local leaders in a recent spate of commercials. She expected a walk in the park as the first female (and first black female) mayor in the city’s history. She’s getting walked and will likely get put out to pasture. Identity politics aren’t getting her across the finish line this time. The LA-area progressive left has gone full commie, and it wants its workers’ revolution NOW! They can out-organize the establishment, overcoming the institutional inertia of the labor unions, big business, and the many lobbyists who made Downtown Los Angeles their second home.

Nithya Raman is the face of the rising socialist uprising, and Los Angeles should get ready for the Bolshevik takeover.

The one silver lining in all of this is that Karen Bass deserves to go. She’s a political climber from state assembly to assembly speaker to Congress, who had a shot at Joe Biden’s VP slot, and now LA mayor. To see her political career crash and burn will be fun.

The one question that Raman needs to consider is this: Is she ready for them when they turn on her, just as the DSA Left has taken Mamdani to task for not moving fast enough to enact their demented agenda? Silly DSA politicians, they never learn: the Revolution always eats its own, especially its enthusiastic thought leaders who fail (because they can’t succeed) to live up to and enact their utopian aspirations.

Finally, here’s my question to the Los Angeles electorate: will four years of DSA madness at the helm of your angelic city awaken you from your regressive leftist woke slumbers to vote for common sense? Perhaps you will vote for Spencer Pratt in four years, perhaps even for a Republican? Or are you prepared for the full demonic DSA possession of your city? Are you prepared to pay for the political exorcism once the city breathes its last?

Arthur Schaper, American Greatness

Not really.

But I still prefer this situation to the alternative which (on our present course) will be the case in 3-5 years:

“President AOC did it. She nationalized private industry. Everything is now run and owned by the federal government. She confiscated guns. She shut down all government-deemed hate speech. She replaced all state and local police with social workers. Unless it’s criticism of the government–we will immediately imprison or execute for that. She outlawed fossil fuels for everyone except the politically connected. She rations health care and, when needed, food. The grocery stores are now all government-run. Do you feel better now? Do you feel like your life is improved in any significant way?”

Yes, indeed. Donald Trump sure beats the alternative.

Am I personally better off because President Trump won’t permit men who feel they’re women to compete in women’s sports (where there’s federal funding)?

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

A substantial fraction of the ground troops in the French street riots are genuine students, not just members of the Red-Green alliance.

Sure, in the great Venn Diagram of life, there is a lot of overlap in the three groups, but there is actually a grain, or more than a grain, of truth in the complaints that young people are making about the economy of France, the state of public education, and their poor prospects for having a life as good as or better than their parents’.

Several things can be true at once:

* that the riots are being promoted or instigated by outside forces in the Communist/Islamist alliance,

* that the students have some genuine gripes that in a better world would be taken seriously and addressed, and

* that the “solutions” the students and their allies would only make things worse.

Welcome to reality, where there are black, white, and many shades of gray. And, in this case, lots of orange and yellow from all the crap burning in the streets.

If you have been following my writing (and my colleagues’), you know that we have been following the riots from the very beginning. Not because they are timely, but because what is happening in France and across the European continent indicates, and in some cases previews, conflicts and problems we face here at home.

It’s fun to point at France and make fun of their propensity to riot at the drop of a hat, or shake our heads at the civilizational suicide of mass migration, and wonder at the disaster that it’s regulatory states and the EU regime have created, but we are just a few years behind them in many of these regards.

We would probably be much closer, but for Trump’s fighting back against the transnationalists.

The protests themselves would probably have burned out already (yes, pun intended) because riots tend to be cathartic, and even when the sense of grievance remains, a well-functioning state can generally suppress riots when they go on day after day. There may be flare-ups for a while, but relentless pressure usually comes from outside agitators — in this case, the Red-Green alliance. I wrote about that earlier, so I won’t rehash the evidence here.

Underneath the riots, though, are the genuine gripes, and as Niall Ferguson points out, none of the rioters seem to understand why things have gone so far off the rails in Europe in general, and France in particular.

But the reasons are pretty obvious, if you look at the situation clearly, as almost nobody does. And why people don’t is that the reasons are uncomfortable to look at. The French welfare state is incredibly generous, unsustainable, and stacked against the people who are going to be working for decades to prop up a failing system. Even mass migration is driven by the fact that the birth rate is so low that without new workers to keep that welfare state going, the system is on the verge of collapse.

The fact that young people are setting wheelie bins on fire is in some ways a distraction from the root causes of all this political instability. For, despite the echoes of 1789, 1830, 1848, 1871, and 1968, when youthful revolutionaries challenged Europe’s established order, the generational politics of 2026 is very different. Today, by historical standards, the young are an endangered species. They are dimly aware that they are being screwed, but they don’t appear to understand who’s doing the screwing.

A clue for the European young: It’s not Donald Trump or Benjamin Netanyahu or whoever else you want to burn in effigy. Mais, non: It’s your grandparents.

Hint: don’t follow the advice of the Left and burn anything at all, and most certainly not your grandparents.

Niall has a point. The French love their time off, their early retirement, their generous welfare state, and to look down their noses at Americans who work like draft horses, but the fact is that with all our ridiculous fraud and financial instability, America is far more productive than Europe, and that the recompense for work is much greater here.

America may look like a gerontocracy, and in many ways it is, but compared to France, we are positively vital, and our economy is much sounder. In a bizarre way, even during the flaccid Biden years, Potatus was right to say that, compared to our peers, we were an economic giant. Not because we were humming along well, but because they were much worse off.

As is well known, Europe has relatively generous welfare systems, which do more taxing and redistributing than their U.S. equivalents. It’s just that these systems were designed for 2.5 children per family and an average life expectancy of 62, not 1.25 and 79. With a few exceptions, the various European models are in the early phase of a nosedive into insolvency.

To be sure, aging isn’t the sole driver of rising public debt. It explains about two-fifths of the increase since 2000. The rest is due to debt-financed spending in response to the financial crisis, Covid-19, and other crises; tax cuts and discretionary spending; and the rising cost of paying interest on the debt. And the aging problem varies from country to country. No European country is aging as fast, nor reducing fertility as much, as Japan and South Korea.

This aging trend is not about to stop. Across the OECD, the dependency ratio is forecast to rise from 32.6 seniors per 100 people of working age in 2024 to 55.2 in 2054—a 69 percent increase. The working-age population will decline by 13 percent over the next four decades across the OECD. (In Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland the decline will exceed 35 percent.)

This is not primarily a problem of public pensions—the original government welfare program, introduced by the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1889. The OECD’s latest projections have average public pension spending rising from 8.8 percent of GDP in 2023–2024 to 10 percent in 2050—not a crippling increase. This is because most countries (not all) have acted in various ways to cap the costs of public pensions, either by reducing benefits, restricting coverage, or raising retirement ages.

The real problem is the cost of elderly healthcare. The European Commission’s 2024 Ageing Report estimated that total age-related expenditure—pensions, healthcare, long-term care, and some other age-related items—would rise by about 1.2 percentage points of GDP between 2022 and 2070 in its baseline scenario, reaching 25.6 percent of GDP by 2070. However, under less rosy assumptions about healthcare and long-term care, the increase could be three times higher (roughly 3.9 percentage points).

In essence, politicians on both sides of the English Channel have gotten into the very bad habit of bribing seniors based on the observation that they are increasingly numerous and have relatively high turnout rates in elections. Spending on the over-65s has risen in Britain by 2.5 percentage points of GDP since 2000; the French figure is close to 3 percent. In both France and Britain, median incomes, adjusted for inflation, have risen almost half as much again for over-64s as for 18 to 64s. In other words, it has paid better in both countries to be retired than to be employed.

Compounding these financial problems is the fact that youth unemployment is remarkably high compared to the United States, and I suspect the problem will get worse, not better, as American men shift from college education to trades that are actually productive.

And unlike Europe, except for groups like Muslims, integration works relatively well here, and if we squeeze welfare fraud out of the system as much as possible, productivity growth will remain much higher here than over there. American youth, despite all their flaws, still tend to expect to work for a living, and that expectation will likely grow if we can move more kids off the higher-ed track and into productive jobs with good pay.

Unfortunately, the French Fifth Republic is ill-equipped to meet the challenge.

European politics rules out the sentence: “We need to reform seniors’ entitlements so that we don’t go bankrupt.” Instead, the left offers socialism and the right serves up national socialism. The left lays the blame on billionaires, whom they will tax to pay for yet more benefits. The right lays the blame on immigrants, whom they will deport as if that will help matters.

Apart from that difference, there is a horseshoe forming in Western politics: At the extremes, socialism and national socialism are converging on economic issues (industrial policy, public ownership, rent controls), not to mention foreign policy (blame Israel for everything). Of course, these tired old ideas bear almost no relation to economic reality.

So what happens? I think young Europeans have been so successfully indoctrinated in school and college that they’ll blame almost anyone for their dissatisfaction, except the people who are actually responsible: namely seniors and the politicians who rely on their votes. So instead of voting for (if such a thing existed) a European version of Argentina’s Javier Milei—who campaigned for radical fiscal reform precisely to create better opportunities for the young—they’ll try the old, been-there-done-that solutions, and the results will be a weaker euro, more inflation, downgrades by the rating agencies, and even higher interest rates.

As a result, despite their fine pledges to spend more on national security, few European governments will modernize their air defenses in the way they clearly need to as the Russian drone menace extends beyond Ukraine. A shocking amount of European defense spending goes to—you guessed it—the pensions of retired military personnel.

Unfortunately for France, the “right wing” alternative to the transnationalists is not Javier Milei, but Marine Le Pen. American conservatives see in her a kindred spirit because she, too, is a nationalist, but we tend to miss that she is also a socialist who has promised a MORE generous welfare state for the elderly and non-elderly, with retirement ages as low as 60 for people who started work before age 20.

That won’t work, and it is a horrendous idea. It will just mean that a bunch of still-relatively-vital Parisians will sit at cafés, drinking cappuccinos and eating croissants as they watch their cities burn, and Muslims harassing French girls for not wearing hijabs.

Today’s situation is the product of massive mistakes made in an earlier age: depopulation agendas, the expansion of welfare states, early retirement, mass unassimilated migration, and a regulatory state that has strangled productivity.

The youth on the streets feel the effects, but their diagnosis of the problem is 180 degrees off from reality. They don’t need more money spent by the state; what they need is a president wielding a chainsaw and a Parliament ready to help him chop the welfare state down.

Is there any chance such a political movement will rise? Well, anything is possible, but I would put the likelihood as asymptotically approaching zero. It is much easier to sell people a future of free everything and unlimited leisure time than a few years of fiscal austerity, fewer vacation days, and fewer retirement years than their parents and grandparents had.

That way lies a better, happier future once the adjustments are made, but that’s like telling a fat person that a couple of hours in the gym would make them much healthier and happier. A few people will take the lesson to heart, but more of them will join a fat liberation movement to express their outrage at being disadvantaged by their adipose tissue.

Especially when people are egging them on to do so. Sure, you can be “healthy at any size!” Fat liberation!

Is there a European Javier Milei? Frankly, I don’t know. It seems unlikely, but stranger things have happened. Argentina was an economic mess for decades.

More likely, though, is a future of economic decline, hopefully with fewer, not more riots.

David Strom, Hotair

With estimates of the annual toll on taxpayers for welfare fraud now estimated to exceed $250 billion, an outraged President Trump is demanding that “Congress enact a law mandating prison sentences for individuals who are stealing this money from hard working Americans. I think if you steal from the American people, you should go to prison and for a long period of time. And the more you steal, the longer you’ll stay in that prison.”

“In addition, if a state or local politician knows about fraud and has the ability to stop it, but does nothing about it, they should be held personally liable for the full loss of the American taxpayers’ money that they should have stopped and they should have saved,” Trump added.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif) called Trump’s proposed new law “excessively harsh. Many of the recently discovered perpetrators of this fraud are foreign-born immigrants who are unfamiliar with American laws and customs. Further, as non-citizens they didn’t have any say in electing the people who make the laws some Republicans now insist they must obey. Neither should state officials like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and myself be scapegoated merely for being in office when this tidal wave of fraud hit the country. I doubt the new Democrat majority that will take over in January will look favorably upon Trump’s demands. More likely, Trump will be impeached for discriminating against these immigrants and maligning the public servants who were left holding the bag when the fraud was uncovered.”

John Semmens

This idea of the Universal Basic Income ( UBI ) has been talked about pretty extensively for years and there have been pilot programs in a number of cities, all of them attempting to build a case for a larger rollout of the idea.

One of the things that drives me crazy about this topic is the way that it’s usually covered by the left-leaning media. UBI is supposed to result in an improved life for people who receive it but the real world results have been mixed at best. Often, progressives do their best to cloud the issue by promoting the few positive outcomes that can be measured, such as personal happiness.

I think it should be taken as a given that giving people free money will make them happy. If that’s the best UBI can do then it’s probably not worth the money being spent on it.

The NY Times sent a couple of reporters out to track the lives of three individuals who were selected for a UBI program in California. They would receive $1,300 a month for one year. Though of course we have no idea if these outcomes have been cherry-picked in some way the results are interesting.

From the Times:

Ms. Weeks was homeless in 2023, living in a tent with her boyfriend at the time while struggling with drug addiction. “I was waiting for something to save me or kill me,” she said.

Then it came — she became pregnant with her son, Sky…

The first trip she made after receiving the initial payment was to Target, where she filled her cart with organic banana baby snacks ($2.69) for Sky, then 14 months old, and a push bike ($61.99) to take him around the neighborhood. She loaded up on diapers that were softer for his sensitive skin than the ones she normally got for free at a food bank.

Her sister and mother were living in a house owned by her grandfather in Tennessee. When the grandfather died, the house was foreclosed on and the mother and sister agreed to relocate to California to live with Weeks.

By April 2025, they were all living together in Ms. Weeks’s two-bedroom apartment…

“It feels like I’ve been given a head start,” Ms. Weeks said to her mother. Her ultimate goal was to be financially independent so she could give Sky opportunities that she never had.

But, in a recurring theme, she didn’t wind up saving as much of the money as she’d hoped. Instead, she wound up spending some of it on her mother and sister who were also living on assistance (but not UBI). She wound up fighting with her mother over parenting issues and as the program was ending she relapsed.

With one month to go until the payments ended, Ms. Weeks briefly relapsed into drugs. In November, sitting on her bed next to Sky’s giraffe stuffed animal, she told her mother that she needed to drop out of community college to focus on her health.

But after the program ended, she got a slightly better job at a hotel, re-enrolled in community college and moved out into her own apartment. Her life seems to have improved somewhat though it’s not clear how much of that is the result of the money and how much would have happened anyway.

Another person whose account is told in the story is KaMesha Staples, who was working as a drug-addiction counselor in California when she was selected for the same UBI pilot program.

When she received the first $1,000 payment that month, she set a goal: Get a higher-paying job in education, a field she was passionate about. That September, with her daughters back in school and extra cushion from the payments, she enrolled in community college…

In October 2024, Ms. Staples joined her community college’s “job club,” which helped her make a new résumé and a LinkedIn profile and practice mock interviews. She applied for jobs to be a coordinator or teaching assistant at nearby schools. She also applied for Vera to attend nearby charter schools for middle school.

Again, Staples was not able to save as much as she hoped to during the year she received the free money and she misjudged the end of the program by a month which caused her to miss a car payment. She started driving for DoorDash to make up some of the missing money. But things did improve.

Just as things seemed to worsen, Ms. Staples got an offer in August 2025 to be an after-school coordinator making $30 an hour, $5 more than her last job. The same week, Vera was accepted to a charter school…

“Less helpless is how I feel now,” she said.

In this case, Staples at least tried to use the year of extra money to set longer term goals which did ultimately pay off and help improve her situation even after the money was cut off. So it seems like this story makes the case for the value of a temporary UBI to people who are living near the edge of poverty. But again, we don’t know how common this was.

Did everyone in the program have the same motivation to improve their situation and use the temporary help to boost themselves into a better life? We don’t know. Were there people who didn’t make plans and just spent the money foolishly? We don’t know.

UBI, as the name suggests, is universal. So if only 25 percent of the recipients did something smart with the money that’s a good outcome for them but a bad use of money overall. On the other hand, if 75 percent of them made an effort like this which had some payoff in the long term, that would make a much better case for extending this to people in a similar situation.

I also think the nature of these pilot programs, lasting a year, is very different from a permanent grant of money. Knowing you have one year to take advantage of this is very different from knowing you’ll get it for life. I imagine the response would be very different as well. In other words, I’m not sure this experiment, even if you wanted to cite it as a success, tells us anything about the kind of UBI which is just a permanent entitlement.

John Sexton, Hotair