Wednesday Potpourri

First, chances are that you do not spend too much time mulling over what is happening in Germany. And yet, that once-great country has suffered a series of bad political decisions, to the point where it feels more like a failure than like the engine of European growth.

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry explains:

Objectively speaking every single major policy/collective choice by Germany in my adult life has been astonishingly stupid: -

Giving their manufacturing technology to China -

Destroying Eurozone growth -

The Energiewende -

Letting in millions of Middle Eastern migrants -

Allowing themselves to become dependent on Russian gas -

Not investing in their own defense

Literally every single one of those choices was obviously retarded at the time it was being made and almost every intelligent person said so at the time and each time the Germans smugly and autistically refused to listen.

Second, New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is a gift that keeps on giving. As journalists scour his record they discover horrors.

Among the discoveries, from Elisha Baker:

This is insane. 13 days after Hamas killed, raped, and kidnapped thousands of innocent Israelis, @ZohranKMamdani led a protest accusing Israel of “genocide” and demanding a ceasefire.

Third, if you are no longer very young, you might want to pass some of your time making fun of Gen Z workers. The products of an educational system that has become infested with therapy, they are unsuited and unfit for work.

John Sexton reports, sharing this from the San Francisco Standard via Maggie’s Farm:

They want to be promoted after only a few months, treat the office like their bedroom, show up in sweats or skimpy office-siren fits, FaceTime friends from their desks, and ghost their managers.

This is the gist of employer complaints about Gen Z workers, who seem to be having a uniquely hard time getting along in the office — much worse, managers say, than the generations before them. In a December 2024 survey of 1,000 employers by Intelligent.com, 12.5% said a Gen Z candidate had brought Mom or Dad to a job interview. The bosses are fed up…

Rosalinda Randall, a Marin-based etiquette coach, said inquiries have risen 50% over the last two months…

She tailors her presentations toward clients’ biggest complaints. One Bay Area tech firm asked her to address personal hygiene, because two new hires did not shower or change their shirts for weeks. “They didn’t want to deal with it, so they hired me,” said Randall. She made her presentation to all new hires and added slides to hammer home the hygiene point.

Business Insider reports:

They are chronically disgruntled. I work hard to be fair, compassionate, and supportive while also maintaining the high standard of performance common to our company. But members of this group always seem to be grumbling about how they are treated unfairly. I have been accused of “humiliating” someone by asking a routine follow-up question to a report they gave to a meeting. They have a group chat where they complain about myself and my higher-ups being cruel and inhumane because we ask them to arrive at the office by 8 a.m. (a standard expectation in our field), correct their mistakes, and suggest that they take on new challenges. I’m “mean” because I ask them to redo work that is below par. They talk constantly of quitting.

Sometimes they complain to management, but more often they complain to each other, and the venting turns into an echo chamber of toxicity that drags morale. We are paid very well for our industry, but they frequently complain they aren’t being paid enough. Because I have no power to give them money, I often ask what else I can do to make their jobs more fulfilling and help them to do their jobs well. They don’t know.

If you are on the outside looking in, you will find this amusing. If you are tasked with managing an office full of Gen Zers you will not.

Fourth, I have rarely said very much about tariff policy, because I do not understand tariff policy. I am fully aware of the fact that most serious economists have asserted with complete self-confidence that Trump has been wrong on tariffs. Could all of those economists have been wrong?

The New York Post reports on one economist who has changed his mind. It is worth noting:

A prominent Wall Street economist who had slammed President Trump’s tariffs earlier this year now says that the president may have “outsmarted all of us” with his controversial trade policies.

Torsten Sløk, chief economist at investment giant Apollo Global Management, said that while the uncertainty surrounding trade policy has already started to weigh on the economy, Trump could lower tariffs on most of the US trading partners while using the levies to boost federal revenue.

Sløk suggested in a recently posted analysis that the administration’s approach may be more strategic than previously thought.

The optimistic outlook stands in stark contrast to his earlier position.

In April, Sløk warned that Trump’s tariffs could trigger a recession by summer, particularly harming American small businesses and potentially halting the flow of goods from China to the US, leading to layoffs and a broader economic slowdown.

Fifth, the Mamdani candidacy is setting off action in the New York real estate market. Keep in mind, if you live in New York City for less than six months in a year, you are exempted from local taxes.

As everyone knows, if you tax the rich, the rich pick up and leave.

Newsweek has the story:

Zohran Mamdani's surprise victory at New York City's Democratic mayoral primary last week has stunned the metropolis's wealthy buyers, and some are now looking to buy properties in other, more favorable locations—especially in Florida.

"Within a day of the primary results, we had serious inquiries from buyers in Manhattan and Connecticut," Isaac Toledano, CEO & Co-founder of BH Group, one of South Florida's most active luxury developers, told Newsweek. "One asked about the Ritz-Carlton Residences in West Palm Beach, the other about the West Pompano Beach Hotel & Residences," he said.

For many wealthy buyers looking into relocating from New York City to Florida, the idea of leaving the Big Apple is more than a Plan B in case Mamdani wins the mayoral election later this year. It is a strategic investment they are doing right now.

"A few weeks ago, we sold two penthouses at the Ritz-Carlton Residences in Hammock Dunes near St. Augustine for a combined $20 million, which set records for Palm Coast and all of Flagler County," Toledano said.

Mamdani says that he will pay for it all by taxing the rich. He is either delusional or stupid-- take your pick.

At the Glastonbury musical festival in England this weekend Bobby Vylan – a British-born rapper of African heritage – led the crowd in a chant of “Death, death, to the IDF”. It was a potent reminder of a dispiriting trend: the growing hostility among those of African heritage in the United States towards Israel and even to Judaism itself. One notable development seen during the bitter battle over Gaza and the recent strike on Iran has been broad embrace by African-American celebrities of anti-Israel and sometimes openly anti-Semitic memes.

Sixth, people are going to find it hard to believe, but black Americans have become virulent foes of Israel-- that is, they have become anti-Semites. Considering that Jewish Americans fought alongside blacks for civil rights, this counts as a monumental betrayal.

Dare we mention that embracing Jeremiah Wright’s protege, making him president of this nation, legitimizes anti-Semitism.

Joel Kotkin makes the case:

At the Glastonbury musical festival in England this weekend Bobby Vylan – a British-born rapper of African heritage – led the crowd in a chant of “Death, death, to the IDF”. It was a potent reminder of a dispiriting trend: the growing hostility among those of African heritage in the United States towards Israel and even to Judaism itself. One notable development seen during the bitter battle over Gaza and the recent strike on Iran has been broad embrace by African-American celebrities of anti-Israel and sometimes openly anti-Semitic memes.

He provides the analysis:

Blacks are arguably – along with extreme leftists, Muslims, and the usual far right racists – the most anti-Israel constituency in the country. A New York Times Sienna poll found that a third of all blacks favored the Palestinians in the current conflict, roughly twice the level for whites. In October, the predominately minority Richmond City Council passed a controversial resolution that recognized the suffering of Palestinians and accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid.” Oakland’s resolution for an immediate ceasefire passed with no mention of Hamas’ atrocities, which some advocates argued was a plot by the Israel Defense forces.

And also,

Like the tragic children of Gaza, minority children are being groomed to hate Israel – as well as the people who predominate there. In Oakland a teacher held an unauthorized teach-in, reports the New York Times, including a coloring book for elementary students with a Palestinian character who says, “A group of bullies called Zionists wanted our land so they stole it by force and hurt many people.”

It’s straight-up very bad news:

For now the black anti-Semites have the wind to their backs. Many young blacks deny the Holocaust and some even favor eliminating Israel and giving it to Hamas. Jewish authors, and Israelis, are being banned from literary events, much as occurred in the early days of Nazi Germany, even as the intelligentsia applaud Ta-Nehisi Coates – who is so anti-Israel that he even wonders if he would have participated in the October 7th pogrom. Even worse, a National Book Award was recently bestowed on W. Paul Coates, a publisher of rabidly anti-Semitic texts like The Jewish Onslaught.