Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[Higgenbotham]

America's millionaires aren't leaving the US to avoid taxes — they're trying to find the American Dream somewhere else, report says

American millionaires are moving overseas, and it's not to dodge taxes, a consultancy firm says.
They're trying to future-proof their wealth, fearing crime and instability in the US, per the analysis.
Net inflows of wealthy people into the US fell to 1,500 in 2022, down from a peak 10,800 pre-pandemic.

America is losing its millionaires.

The net inflow of high-net-worth individuals to the US plummeted 86% in 2022 from peak pre-pandemic levels, falling to just 1,500 people, according to a new wealth report by London-based consultancy Henley & Partners.

That's compared to a net inflow that fluctuated between 6,400 and 10,800 wealthy people a year from 2013 to 2019.

A key impetus for this change has been disillusioned American millionaires looking overseas for opportunities, wrote Mehdi Kadiri, the head of North America at Henley & Partners, in the report published on Wednesday.

"Americans are currently experiencing their own bleak 'winter of discontent,'" he wrote for the firm, which tracks investment migration trends.

Many have been driven away by mounting calls to tax the rich, political tensions in the US, unpredictable markets because of the war in Ukraine, rising crime rates and gun violence, and conflict over societal issues like gender equality and racism, Kadiri added.

America's rich who want more options are now migrating to countries like Portugal, Malta, Spain, Greece, and Italy, which offer golden visas and migration programs, he wrote.

But millionaires opting for a second passport isn't a matter of avoiding taxes, Jeff D. Opdyke, an investment expert who covered finance for 17 years at the Wall Street Journal, wrote in the report.

They're simply chasing the American Dream elsewhere, he wrote.

More investors, C-suite execs, and entrepreneurs are migrating to future-proof their wealth, "seeking greener pastures for investment and business growth, safer destinations to raise their families," Opdyke added.

"For more than half a century, Americans defined, lived, and exemplified the American Dream that so much of the emerging world looked to and thought: 'One day, that'll be me!'" wrote Opdyke. "But today, for many, the American Dream is on life support."

Henley & Partners said one of the measures it uses to gauge the health of a country's economy is its middle class — which has been shrinking in the US.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... 6dc916959b

[Higgenbotham]

New Medical Codes for COVID Vaccination Status Raise Concerns Among Experts

Zachary Stieber

Feb 15 2023


New medical diagnosis codes for COVID-19 immunization status have been added in the United States.

One code is for being “unvaccinated for COVID-19.”

That code “may be assigned when the patient has not received at least one dose of any COVID-19 vaccine,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which implemented the new codes in 2022, states in a document outlining the codes.

Another code is for being partially vaccinated or having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine but not having received enough doses to meet the CDC’s definition of fully vaccinated.

The goal of the codes is “to track people who are not immunized or only partially immunized,” according to the CDC.

Experts say the codes don’t fit with the International Classification of Diseases, which has diagnoses for diseases and reasons for health care visits.

“They’re treating nonvaccination as if this is a hazardous exposure that therefore merits being recorded as a medical exposure,” Dr. Harvey Risch, professor emeritus of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, told The Epoch Times. “That’s never been done to my knowledge.”

The CDC did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Proposal

The CDC proposed adding the codes to the international classification in September 2021.

“People have now been having immunizations for a number of months, and these provide protection for people who are immunized, but there has been interest expressed in being able to track people who are not immunized or who are only partially immunized,” Dr. David Berglund, a CDC medical officer, said during a meeting that went over the proposal.

“At the current time, there can be considered to be a significant modifiable risk factor for morbidity and for mortality and it can be of interest for clinical reasons, as well as being a value for public health reasons, to be able to track this.”

COVID-19 hospitalization and death rates are higher among the unvaccinated, according to data published by the CDC. The data do not take into account key factors such as age or prior infection, and other figures show the vaccinated being hospitalized or dying at higher rates in some states.

The proposal was backed by meeting participants during the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) Coordination and Maintenance Committee meeting.

“I definitely think we would support this,” Kristin Balint, a supervisor at Trinity Health, said. “We are currently seeing physicians documenting unimmunized for COVID-19 in our records.”

Jeanne Yoder, representing the Defense Health Agency, envisioned adding additional codes later to indicate if a person was not vaccinated against each successive variant.

The organizations of the people who backed the proposal either did not respond to requests for comment or declined inquiries.

Codes Added

Three codes were added to the classification system on April 1, 2022.

Z28.310 is for being unvaccinated. Z28.311 is for being partially vaccinated. Z28.39 is for “other underimmunization status.” All fell under a new sub-sub category, “Underimmunization for COVID-19 status.”

The codes are grouped with already-existing codes related to vaccination. They include “immunization not carried out because of patient refusal.”

Another code introduced during the pandemic is for counseling related to “immunization safety.”

“I think it would be a good idea to be able to indicate that, for whatever reason, the vaccine was refused,” Valeria Bica, a clinical documentation specialist at Nemours AI duPont Hospital for Children, said during the meeting that featured the code proposals.

“I know that we track that for families where they’ve refused to vaccinate their children, for one reason or another. And certainly we’ve tried to re-educate and to keep trying to find opportunities to give the vaccines,” she added.

The ICD was originally developed by the World Health Organization. U.S. authorities have their own version of the system. The COVID-19 immunization codes are not listed in the World Health Organization’s ICD.

All health care entities operating in the United States and covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act must use the U.S. version of the ICD. Coded ICD data from providers enable public health officials to “conduct many disease-related activities,” according to the CDC. The U.S. version is updated at least once a year.

The codes have multiple purposes. They let health care providers create a medical record, which can be used by future practitioners who take care of the patient. The system also facilitates billing.

Privacy Concerns

Dr. Robert Malone, who first highlighted the codes on his Substack blog, said the new codes were concerning in light of how not being vaccinated has been used during the pandemic to deny patients healthcare services, such as organ transplants.

“That information will end up in the hands of insurers, who will use it to make decisions about what you’re going to have to pay for your insurance policy, whether or not you’re going to be qualified,” Malone predicted.

Risch said the information could be used to perform analyses on groups deidentified data but questioned whether it would remain deidentified.

“Given how little we trust government agencies at this point and how stigmatizing, potentially stigmatizing this information is on individuals, nobody would rightly trust them to stay in their lane about using this in grouped information as opposed to individual,” Risch said. “What’s to stop the government from sharing this individual information with other agencies? With the FBI? With IRS? They say, ‘we don’t do that,’ and we say, ‘we don’t believe you.’

“And if they did it, what recourse would there ever be?”

‘Irrelevant’

The CDC in 2022 changed course and advised in COVID-19 guidelines that people were not to be treated differently on the basis of vaccination status “because breakthrough infections occur.” Breakthrough infections are infections that happen despite vaccination. The COVID-19 vaccines provide little to no protection against infection and transmission.

If any codes related to vaccine status were introduced, they should show whether a person was fully vaccinated because some of those people end up with vaccine injuries, Risch said.

Dr. Todd Porter, a pediatrician in Illinois, said that he uses the long-existing code for refusal to immunize only if a parent declines to get their children all the childhood vaccines. He also questioned the introduction of the new codes.

“I have a hard time clinically seeing the medical indication of using them,” Porter told The Epoch Times in an email.

He noted that there’s no codes for refusal to get the influenza vaccine, which is deadlier for children than COVID-19.

“Using these codes also disregards the contribution of natural immunity, which research evidence shows is more robust than vaccine immunity,” Porter said. Because of the lack of protection against transmission and infectivity, and the lack of data showing protection against severe disease in children, “an individual’s vaccination status would be irrelevant,” he added.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/why-exper ... 53996.html

[Higgenbotham]

In most mainstream places in the US, most people reading the above would probably conclude, "Aha! I'll bet old Higgenbotham is an anti-vaxxer! I'll bet his daughter will go unvaccinated! Shame, shame, shame."

That's not the case. My daughter was born on January 6, 2020 and so far she has received all vaccines mandated by the goofballs who are running the show as well as one optional vaccine.

My daughter's breathing noise at night has improved a lot but is still not completely normal.

We took her to the pediatrician last week to have her checked. Everything checked was normal - no infection, lungs clear, breathing rate normal, tonsils normal, etc. He said the cause of the noise is swollen adenoids but he can't see them. She continues to improve slowly.

As Paul Harvey used to say, "Now for the rest of the story."

At her 3 year check-up on January 13, my daughter got a flu vaccine. She hasn't reacted to any vaccine until this one. Two days later she got a fever, which is supposed to be a normal side effect. Then her tonsils swelled and she developed very noisy nighttime breathing with some pauses in breathing, which hadn't happened before.

We made an appointment with an ear, nose and throat doctor to see what they would have to say but we couldn't get in until February 6.

Meantime, on January 24, I took her to what you might call an energy healer. He's a licensed acupuncturist but he does a lot of other stuff. He saw her 4 times for 1.5 hours each. During the third session he told me that for sure he had narrowed her problem down to vaccines. He said things like pollen (which there is a lot of in Austin), mold, foods, etc., were only minor problems and it was primarily the vaccines that were causing this. The fourth time he treated her for flu vaccine reactions and shortly after this her breathing returned completely to normal at night - through the nose with no noise and no pauses. Her tonsils have shrunk to perhaps half the size they were after the vaccine (still slightly swollen but not enough to obstruct).

Meantime, on February 6, the ear, nose and throat doctor had told us she would require a surgery to remove her tonsils and adenoids but not right away. We could either do it now or later. That was before her tonsils had shrunk.

But the main point here is I had thought vaccines are just one more insult that kids are subjected to and I found out different in my daughter's case.

[Higgenbotham]

The below posts are related and describe how elites run the system into the ground. Bill Gates and Blackrock are undoubtedly capable operators in some ways, but there are literally thousands of operators who are more capable in other ways and have been shut out of the system.

This is to say nothing of the fortuitous circumstances that figure into every success story. In his book Success and Luck (2016), the US economist Robert Frank recounts the long-shots and coincidences that led to Bill Gates’s stellar rise as Microsoft’s founder, as well as to Frank’s own success as an academic. Luck intervenes by granting people merit, and again by furnishing circumstances in which merit can translate into success. This is not to deny the industry and talent of successful people. However, it does demonstrate that the link between merit and outcome is tenuous and indirect at best.

According to Frank, this is especially true where the success in question is great, and where the context in which it is achieved is competitive. There are certainly programmers nearly as skillful as Gates who nonetheless failed to become the richest person on Earth. In competitive contexts, many have merit, but few succeed. What separates the two is luck.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/a-be ... ad-for-you

I've called it the lottery economy.

Where does a lottery economy exist? In a globalized world.

Where does the opposite of a lottery economy exist? In an economy that is profoundly local. In my opinion, an economy that is profoundly local is more cooperative, egalitarian, compatible with human nature, and more satisfying to the majority of the people.

Not only is a lottery economy wrong and contrary to human nature, it is lethally harmful. Putting Gates at the top of the pyramid mostly due to fortuitous circumstances and then having him appoint himself as an expert on global health is dangerous. He shouldn't be there in the first place and he doesn't know what he is doing. I'd rather take a trip to my local medicine man and die of coronavirus than have Gates mandate a high tech solution that may have unknown harmful effects for generations.

Quotes from articles such as the above seem to indicate a growing change in sentiment that a globalized world may not be for the best and I'm seeing a lot of them.

I've read a lot of Gates' drivel and, while he's undoubtedly a smart guy, he lacks a lot of knowledge and depth of thinking. There are at least 10 people who have posted on this forum over time that I would personally feel more comfortable if they were to be making decisions about who to vaccinate and how.

Back to the present economic situation and how it fits in with the above.

In 2009 or so, there were lots of foreclosures and the Federal Reserve pumped hundreds of billions into the economy, putting it in the hands of select politically favored entities without allowing the market to clear. As a result, tens of thousands of rental properties got into the hands of entities like Blackrock.

Had the Federal Reserve not gotten involved in that way, and the market had been allowed to clear, those rental properties would have gone into the hands of many small business people. Literally thousands of those small business people would have greater ability to manage those properties than Blackrock, and those who had the greatest ability could have expanded their businesses, and by doing so benefited their tenants with lower rents than Blackrock now charges, healthier and more well maintained properties than Blackrock is capable of providing, better appearing neighborhoods, etc.

Addendum: The article linked below demonstrates that The 97th Percentile has no ability to manage rental properties.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/ ... et/582394/

[aeden]

The Atlas Bone was checked on my oldest boy and alighned.
All the ears nose and throat problems went away, He was under just over three years old then maybe four.
Averted the ear tubes and medical complications. Yea when he needed stitches and usual stuff, we
went to our Doc who was not a dip stick.
As for rental units no sane person would buy more in a bish controlled County. Our other Condo is let out
and another property a duplex could be back online if we decided that way. If they cannot cough up six month cash
who cares going forward. We will end up flipping more dirt if need be. Nice fact is when the ISP was sold the money
was not allowed to be put in Surety Houses as we know what happened to them. The business has its own brokerage and
CPA and the other accounts a CPA also. We flip flop CPA yearly to review the returns.

By the way the State mailed me a check since they F'ed up as I told them but they had been very pro in dealing with it.
The 2020 return was doomed from the start when they tossed in the distributed automatically, with no action required for most people
from the FED speak MMT period for the China disease phase.

Why Apple is not allowed on my property.
https://www.teamblind.com/post/Apple-la ... s-351rfqts
Rotted to the core anyways.

[Higgenbotham]

https://www.oatext.com/Pilot-comparativ ... ildren.php

Funding sources
This study was supported by grants from Generation Rescue, Inc., and the Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute, charitable organizations that support research on children’s health and safety. The funders had no role or influence on the design and conduct of the research or the preparation of reports.

Acknowledgments
The authors thank all those who contributed critical comments, suggestions and financial support for the project. We also thank the collaborating homeschool organizations and especially the mothers who participated in the survey.

Disclaimer
This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Jackson State University and completed prior to Dr. Mawson’s tenure-track appointment at Jackson State University.


This study was supposedly funded by organizations that are "anti-vax", but, according to what I have read, the tables list the conditions that would typically result some years after tonsil and adenoid surgery.

The real question in my mind is not what happens to the first one or two generations of people who receive these vaccinations (with more and more being added). It's how this will affect human health decades and centuries down the line and nobody knows the answer to that.

[Higgenbotham]

National testing data released this morning reveals severe damage inflicted on student math and reading performance, reaffirming COVID-19’s ongoing educational toll. Even as some states have shown evidence of academic recovery this year, federal officials cautioned that learning lost to the pandemic will not be easily restored.

Eighth-grade math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the “Nation’s Report Card,” fell by a jarring eight points since the test was last administered in 2019, while fourth-grade scores dropped by five points; both are the largest math declines ever recorded on the test.

https://www.wvxu.org/education/2022-10- ... grade-math

[Higgenbotham]

They'll destroy Texas and send it into a dark age. Just you watch.

California Exodus Continues: 700,000 More Left Than Moved in Over 2 Years, US Census Shows

By Jamie Joseph
February 17, 2023
Updated: February 18, 2023

California continues to grapple with the harsh reality of an ongoing migration crisis with its net migration—the difference between people moving in and those moving out—down by nearly 700,000, the most in the country, according to recently released U.S. Census data from April 2020 to July 2022.

According to Chapman Economics Professor Dr. James Doti, who has studied migration trends in California, the net losses began in 2011.

“It’s been more than 10 years, but it’s been gradually increasing,” Doti told Epoch TV’s California Insider.

Doti said people leave California for a multitude of reasons, including high taxes, the tough business environment, and hefty environmental regulations.

“Job formation outside of the state is greater,” he said. “[People are] going to areas where they could get a higher paying job, and that’s happening because businesses are leaving the state and that’s a negative.”

Among the tech companies that moved out of the state in 2021 were Uber, Airbnb, Oracle, Yelp, and Tesla.

The Hoover Institution, a think tank at Stanford, also found that in the first half of 2021, more than 70 companies headquartered in California left, with most relocating to Texas, Tennessee, and Arizona, due mostly to the state’s high property tax and costly labor laws.

Doti additionally said he conducted a statewide business survey for Chapman last year asking business CEOs what their futures looked like in California. Their answers, he said, were grim.

“Interestingly enough, it wasn’t as much on the taxation front as it was on the regulatory front,” he said. “[They said] business regulation is so extreme, it’s very difficult for us to conduct business in a way that can provide the goods and services we produce at an affordable price.”

With an income tax rate of 13.3 percent, California leads the nation. The state additionally has an 8.84 percent tax rate for businesses.

The data also showed the state’s population, which includes migration in and out as well as deaths and births, was down more than half a million people during the same time period.

However, the data found the two states that experienced the largest population growth were Texas and Florida, which added around 884,000 and 707,000 people, respectively.

In a different study evaluating data between July 2021 to July 2022 by the state’s finance department, California lost about 211,000 people, and more than half—just over 113,000—were from Los Angeles County, the state’s largest.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/californi ... bidw%3D%3D

[Higgenbotham]

POLITICS

OCTOBER 11, 2022

Trust in Federal Government Branches Continues to Falter

BY JEFFREY M. JONES

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

47% trust the judicial branch, 43% the executive, 38% the legislative
Trust in judicial branch at record low; executive near low
More trust in state, local governments

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans continue to lack faith in the federal government, with low levels of trust in all three branches. Gallup previously reported that trust in the judicial branch of the federal government has cratered in the past two years; it now sits at 47%, below the majority level for the first time in Gallup's polling history. At 43%, trust in the executive branch is just three percentage points above its record low from the Watergate era. Americans are even less trusting in the legislative branch, at 38%, but this figure has been as low as 28% in the past.

As recently as 2005, all three branches were trusted by majorities of Americans. And when Gallup first measured federal trust in 1972, no fewer than two-thirds trusted in each branch of the government.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/402737/tru ... alter.aspx

It was my opinion that the US government was broken beyond repair in 2011 when they failed to control Bernanke. What that meant to me was Donald Trump would not be able to fix it. Ross Perot could have because his bid was prior to 2011. Of course, this is the opinion of one person only and the opinion of one person is not consequential. But that was why I believed that, although it would be good to have Trump in there because that took control away from the people who ran it into the ground, Trump would not be able to fix anything, just speed up or slow down the established downtrend in different areas from where the political establishment was heading. He did a good job of that in my opinion.

Given that there is no functional national government, someone can look to the lower levels and make their decisions based on that. If a functional state government is desired, based on my observation and experience, Texas has one. If a functional state government is not desired, someone can either look to having a functional local government or no functional government at all. I would like to live where there is a functional state government, for now, and have been in Texas for 17 years. Once things go completely to hell in a handbag, I think it would be better to be in a place that has as little government as possible at the state and local level.

Given the influx from California and other states, though, Texas will not have a functional state government for long.

[aeden]

Your assessment is true.