The Starbucks Effect on an Emotionally Fragile Generation

American Thinker 

Let me let you in on a little secret: leftists hate personal thrift. They believe saving money is a fool’s errand since their goal is to get you to rely on Big Brother for everything you need for life, which they define as what Big Brother thinks you are entitled to.

Those advocating for a Big Brother world present themselves as selfless protectors of the weak who are eminently pragmatic. But, in real life, they are some of the most avaricious individuals on the face of the earth. While vociferously rejecting all things material, many live entirely consumer-driven lives. Let’s take a moment and check off some of the habits of the average under-45 progressive:

• They like Starbucks, where the average spend per visit is $3-$8, with 49% of revenue from customers aged 25–40. The average Starbucks consumer spends $1,200 to $1,500 a year, with the average even higher for the 18-34 age bracket.
• They depend on cell phones, with 97% of individuals owning a smartphone paying an average of $120 and $160 a month for their plan.
• They demand internet access, with an average monthly cost between $65 and $105.
• They own cars—or at least, 74% of the under-50 crowd do. The average all-in cost of a car today is $965 a month. Notably, in 2024, 1.73 million vehicles were repossessed, the most since 2009, during the Great Recession, according to data from Cox Automotive and Experian.
• Many own houses. 55-60% of adults under 50 own a home, with only 40-45% renting. The average rent today is $1,750- $1,900 per month. For home ownership, the average cost is $3,500 to $4,000 a month (although you’re getting equity).
• They indulge themselves. The under 45 crowd frequently has its food delivered, which runs about $400-$500 a month. The subscription and digital lifestyle add another $50 to $120 a month. Fashion and personal aesthetics rack up another $200-$400 a month. Fitness and wellness memberships, apparel, and such average another $100 a month. Travel and mini-trips are de rigueur among young people, though no monetary figures are readily available.

The best available information indicates that young people under 35 spend an additional $9,200 to $24,000 a year on discretionary spending compared to what a frugal, involved, and wealth-building individual would spend.

“Discretionary” is an innocuous term that is not nearly as appreciated as it should be. Another way of looking at it is that the choices young people make keep them poor in the long run, since they don’t have savings to draw on for emergencies and lifetime planning.

The median average available cash at any given time for someone under 35 is $3,240. Surprisingly, it isn’t much better with age: the median average 75-year-old has ready access to only $9,300. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck, especially those under 45.

Under-35s have:

• Lower incomes
• Higher student loan burdens
• Higher rent burdens
• Less time for compounding
• Higher discretionary spending (travel, dining, subscriptions)

These numbers are far worse than they were 30 years ago. It’s reasonable to ask what has changed. While I don’t think K-12 ever did a very good job of preparing young people for the financial realities of life, the best available information indicates that most students still graduate without a meaningful financial education. Worse, their parents are frequently as clueless as they are. 

Why?

There’s a real answer here, and it’s not “kids these days.”

What you’re seeing is the predictable outcome of structural, economic, political, and educational forces that make it unusually hard for young adults to develop financial competence before they’re thrown into the deep end. I believe that this is by design. It’s not a big jump either to connect lack of financial competence with reasoning in general!

Today’s young adults navigate a world defined by rapid change, economic volatility, and constant digital comparison, which can delay the development of long-term confidence and resilience. Emotional maturity emerges later because the traditional stabilizers—affordable housing, predictable careers, early family formation—arrive later or not at all.

In contrast, adults in the 1970s typically entered stable roles earlier, gaining responsibility through lived experience rather than prolonged uncertainty. Younger adults today are often highly self-aware to a fault, empathetic, and expressive, but struggle with sustained stress tolerance, delayed gratification, and long-range planning. Their emotional landscape is less linear, more adaptive, and more reactive to external pressures, reflecting a world that demands flexibility rather than predictability.

It is not enough to recognize the problem; we must confront an entire system of individuals and groups, from teachers’ groups to dedicated Marxists and to the many who despise capitalism and worked for two generations to ensure Johnny can’t read and understand his history, that he becomes disassociated from other people, that he is wedded to Starbucks capitalism (that is, meaningless spending), and that he never fully matures, including embracing the most mature step of all: marriage and children. Those who foment this infantilizing lifestyle are our enemies as surely as any foreign nation that actively subverts us.

We will be unable to fix the problem so that future generations can return to the lessons, ideas, and principles that guided us for more than 200 years. The Starbucks effect must come to an end as we return to reason, sanity, patriotism, and individualism that is America.

God Bless America!

Schools Now Exist Solely to Promote Activism

 

David Strom  February 10, 2026  |  HOT AIR

Do public schools even try to educate kids anymore? Kids can't read, can't write, can't do math, but they sure know how to become transgender communists who will grow up to be communists. 

Even elite school professors are complaining that none of their students have ever read a book, and that their papers seem either awful or likely to have been written by ChatGPT. Universities that once required students to read Latin and Greek now offer remedial English and math classes. 

What schools ARE good at is being incubators for radicals, not that all students necessarily come out either radical or stupid. But to the extent they do not, you can thank their parents. 

The leftism inherent in the system is nothing new. Others and I have covered the issue many a time. What is a bit different now is that the schools have escalated from teaching leftist ideology to training teachers and students to become revolutionaries ready to take to the ramparts to fight against law enforcement and conservatives. 

Teachers and principals have been taking their kids to protests, often without parents' permission, or giving them excused absences to take to the streets to fight ICE. 

Student says professor conducted ‘ICE drill’ in class, told students to use their bodies as shields

'I immediately knew that it was very wrong... she was saying that because I am a white student, that I essentially need to act as a human shield and interfere with federal agents.'

I'm not joking about "taking to the ramparts;" kids are being trained to "put their bodies on the line" to fight ICE. 

Who DOES that? Public school teachers do. 

What we are witnessing is Mao's Cultural Revolution, American style. Young kids are being used as the shock troops for a movement that intends to wipe away the current order and replace it with something far more radical. 

Education means political indoctrination, and indoctrination is just the first step to unleashing a political force to wipe away the opposition. 

The whole point of the "Long March Through the Institutions," which is a direct reference to Mao, by the way, was to get us to this point. Marxists knew that Western countries would not fall to a proletariat-led violent revolution, so they adopted a strategy of infiltrating the cultural institutions that shape and reproduce a civilization. 

The public schools are an insidious force in our society. The younger teachers seem uninterested in academics, and most are barely competent (or worse) in their subject matter. Leading students on protests is more their speed. 

"And what AISD is doing with their students, I just met with AISD yesterday. We have a monthly meeting with them. We talked about their walkouts. They have several planned throughout this month.  So we are in coordination with them. If we have to help with traffic we'll do those things and we are in coordination with AISD as well" APD Police Chief Lisa Davis (February 5, 2026)

Everybody treats this as normal, even praiseworthy. School districts that have fewer than 30% who can read or do math at grade level are lecturing us about politics, while teachers are celebrating the assassination of people they dislike. 

NSFW:

Kids are being used as free labor for The Movement™.

It's the same phenomenon at libraries, of course. The American Library Association voted in an actual Marxist who promised to make libraries a center for socialist organizing. 

All this is being done with our tax dollars, with the intent of turning the next generation of Americans into the one that finally replaces our Republic with a Marxist state. 

Implementing school choice is only step one. Disbanding the public schools needs to be step two, and weeding out the propagandists, while it will take decades, is crucial. 

We can start with the ones who teach violence, such as Lucy Martinez and her ilk. Martinez faced no discipline for her celebration of violence, because of course she didn't. She teaches in Chicago, where the union is explicitly Marxist. 

The schools cannot be saved. There are, of course, still good teachers and good schools, but the school system itself is unsalvageable and needs to go.

AP Photo/Ron Harris

Podcast thread for Feb 10

 

Feels good to not have freezing weather.

Let ICE Do Its Job

Townhall 

The American people spoke clearly in November 2024. They elected President Trump with a mandate to restore the rule of law at our border and to carry out the largest deportation effort in our nation’s history. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is now executing that mandate – lawfully, professionally, and under intense political pressure. Nevertheless, congressional Democrats are determined to sabotage enforcement from the inside, this time by holding DHS funding hostage unless ICE fundamentally changes how it operates.

In fact, the current standoff is a conflict about whether immigration law will be enforced at all. Democrats are demanding that ICE abandon its long-standing use of administrative warrants and instead obtain judicial warrants for routine deportation arrests, a move that would paralyze enforcement in practice while preserving the illusion of legality.

Let’s be clear: administrative warrants have been the norm in immigration enforcement for almost 75 years. They are a core feature of the immigration system Congress itself designed. Immigration enforcement is a civil process, governed by the Immigration and Nationality Act (enacted in 1952, under President Harry Truman), not the criminal code. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1226 and related provisions, immigration officials are expressly authorized to issue administrative warrants for the arrest and detention of removable aliens.

Before an administrative warrant can be issued, a responsible agency official must make a determination that probable cause exists to believe that an individual has violated immigration law. This is due process at work in the civil realm.

That framework has existed for decades and has been used under Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Forcing ICE to obtain judicial warrants for every arrest would not enhance due process; it would create bottlenecks that make large-scale enforcement impossible – there are fewer than 700federal district judge positions authorized by Congress, and federal courts are already overloaded. Adding tens or hundreds of thousands of immigration warrant applications would ensure one outcome: fewer deportations, regardless of what the law says.

This is exactly what Democrats want.

Unable to repeal immigration law outright – even when they controlled the White House, the House, and the Senate as they did from 2021-2023, and, before that, from 2009-2011 – Democrats are attempting to smother it with procedure. Congress already weighed these questions when it created a civil immigration system separate from criminal law. Democrats lost that debate years ago. Now they are trying to relitigate it through the appropriations process.

The second Democrat demand is even more reckless. At a moment when federal law enforcement officers are being openly targeted, doxxed, and harassed, Democrats want to strip ICE officers of basic safety protections. They want agents to be barred from wearing masks during operations and forced to display names or easily traceable badge numbers on the outside of their clothing.

This is happening in an environment where activists have published onlineofficers’ personal information, organized harassment campaigns at their homes, and even targeted their families. News outlets have documented multiple cases in recent years of federal agents being doxxed and threatened, particularly those involved in immigration enforcement.

This is unprecedented, and so is the danger faced by ICE agents just for doing their jobs.

Allowing ICE’s officers to wear masks and conceal personal identifying information is about protecting officers and their families from intimidation and violence. Law enforcement agencies of every level take similar precautions in sensitive operations involving gangs, organized crime, or terrorism. Immigration enforcement in today’s political climate is no different, and ICE agents should be treated with no less respect and no less concern for their safety.

ICE officers operate within a defined chain of command and are subject to internal discipline, inspector general review, and congressional oversight. What Democrats are demanding is exposure. The goal is to make enforcement so personally risky that officers hesitate to do their jobs at all.

President Trump was elected on a promise to enforce the law, and he is keeping that promise. ICE is using the tools Congress gave it, under rules and procedures Congress authorized, to carry out the will of the voters as expressed in the most recent presidential election. DHS funding should not be weaponized to dismantle immigration enforcement piece by piece.

Administrative warrants must remain. Officer safety precautions must remain. And ICE must be allowed to continue doing what it has been doing – enforcing the law faithfully and without apology.

UMN professor allegedly conducted ‘ICE drill’ in class, had students shield ‘targeted’ peers: report

 

Posted on February 8, 2026

By College Fix Staff

In the required elementary ed. course ‘Culture, Power, and Education’

A University of Minnesota education professor allegedly ran an “ICE drill” in class which included having selected students “shield” peers who might be targeted by the agency.

According to a Feb. 6 report by Alpha News, student “Angela” (who wishes to remain anonymous) claimed Professor Blanca Caldas conducted the exercise in her “Culture, Power, and Education” class, a required course for those seeking a degree in elementary education.

Angela said Caldas “began by putting up an image on the screen” about specific actions to take if ICE agents appeared at the door.

“She then had us stand up and move to the farthest corner away from the door and began by acting out her own role during a specific scenario, which is to talk to the agent and attempt to gain more information,” Angela explained further.

“Then, she came back to us in the back corner and told us … that we are to use our own bodies to cover up and shield specific individuals within our classroom that appear to be targets, and then finally she ended the drill by having us look around our peers and our fellow students within the classroom and identify specifically the people that would appear to be the targets.” 

Angela said she believes there was a racial component to the exercise — that white students “essentially need to act as human shield[s] and interfere with federal agents.”

While “many others were uncomfortable” with the drill, students were “very quiet and essentially went along” with Caldas’ instructions, she added.

Prof. Blanca Caldas / U. Minnestota

Angela also noted the “Culture, Power, and Education” class page included a pyramid with examples of “overt” and “covert” white supremacy.

The latter category includes “denial of white privilege,” “Make America Great Again,” “colorblindness,” and “white silence.”

According to her faculty page, Caldas teaches courses in multilingual and elementary education. Her PhD dissertation “Performing the Advocate Bilingual Teacher: Drama-based Interventions for Future Story-making” was given the Activist Research Grant Initiative Award sponsored in part by the Social Justice Institute and the U. Texas at Austin Center for Gender and Women’s Studies.

The university told Alpha News “it is aware of the situation and is conducting a thorough review.” The UMN Dept. of Curriculum and Instruction and Prof. Caldas could not immediately be reached for comment by The College Fix.

MORE: U. Minnesota activist students chain themselves to building,

Let’s Rip Democrats Apart for Fun (and Because They’re Truly Awful)

Townhall 

What a time to be alive, and by that I mean it’s really stupid. Not the time, per se, but a whole bunch of people in it who get attention, lie like crazy to the public, and make a lot of money while doing it. They aren’t all Democrats, but most are, and all deserve a swift kick in the ass, so put on our steel toe boots and give them one, shall we?

I thought the Super Bowl sucked. The game was boring for the first three quarters, and by the time anyone started scoring it was all over. The halftime show was garbage, not because Bad Bunny sucks – I think he does, but I know that most people don’t like the music I like either (or else you would’ve heard about them and they’d be rich musicians rather than just recovering alcoholics) – but because it was stupid. It sounded like the same song for 15 minutes and the non-stop repeating of about 8 words, coupled with a bunch of people grinding crotches. Innovative! 

Watching morons like Ana Navarro almost cry on The View over watching a show with more in common with what should be flushed than applauded only cemented by opinion. “There was so much culture,” white people sobbed. I’ve never been to Puerto Rico, and don’t really care to go, but I have to assume they’ve come up with a little more than straw hats and self-hernia exams. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t really care.

The songs were stupid. Seriously, read the English translations of the lyrics and it’s like something a 13-year-old girl would write in her dream journal about her crush, only if she recently suffered a concussion. I’ve had belches with more substance. 

I watched it because A) it’s my job to talk about what’s going on in the world, B) because I could ignore it while I took down our Christmas tree (yes, I’m aware of the date, but I’ve got two kids who beg every time I mentioned putting it away and they were upstairs, indifferent to both the game and the halftime show, so I took advantage of my opportunity). 

I don’t speak Spanish, so I have no idea what the lyrics were, though I could tell they were repeated A LOT. No matter how fast the baby talk spewed from his mouth, you can’t make “I’m gonna take them all to the VIP, the VIP, hey. Say hello to auntie. Let’s take a selfie, say ‘cheese,’ hey. Let the ones I already f*cked smile. In a VIP, a VIP, hey Say hello to auntie Let’s take a selfie, say ‘cheese.’ Let those who have already forgotten about me smile,” sound anything other than stupid, no matter the language.

Speaking of stupid and language, Spanish wasn’t the only language used to convey idiocy. While they hate it because white people came up with it, Democrats still use English to communicate their dumbassery to their army of flying monkeys more than any other. And no, that’s not a commentary on the video that had Democrats pretending to be offended because it portrayed a bunch of liberal politicians as primates, including the Obamas. 

How dare anyone treat the Obamas the same way they treated George W. Bush for 8 years? Everyone must be treated the same, except some people need to be treated differently based on their skin color. 

Yeah, that’s actually what Democrats are saying, and have always said. They have never changed their objectives (power for them), only their tactics. Segregation and treating people differently out of racial hatred to hold on to power worked for them until it no longer did, now they preach segregation and treating people differently out of racial tolerance and diversity to hold on to power.

Sometimes reality is the best parody…

The Left brings this disconnect to the debate around voter ID. To them, voting is important, so sacrosanct, that any effort to ensure the integrity of that vote is forbidden. Go ahead and try to square that circle.

Of course, they claim voter fraud never happens, which is undercut by all the cases of voter fraud that are uncovered every year. That the media refuses to tie them all together, treating each as an isolated event and not part of a bigger picture, tells you everything you need to know – people not trying to hide anything don’t hide things. 

Rather than try to find the few Americans who both can’t prove who they are and want to vote and help them get a photo ID to protect the integrity of voting, Democrats would rather those people (if they exist) not be able to work, bank, travel, enter a federal building, drink or have any semblance of a normal, productive life. Such compassion, and all to avoid protecting the integrity of voting. Weird, right?

To put the cherry on top of the hypocrisy cake, Democrats are going to filibuster the SAVE Act to bring security to voting. The filibuster that Democrats repeatedly called a “relic of Jim Crow” when they were trying to get rid of it when they controlled the Senate, to block what Democrats now call “Jim Crow 2.0.” 

Of course, Democrats would know a lot about Jim Crow, since it was an invention exclusively of their design, so…

These people are awful, they truly are, and worse than anyone could ever convey. This is all in just one week; a few days, really. No matter how much contempt you hold these people in, it is not enough and never could be.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

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