EssayJuly 15, 2022

The Always Right Rob Provides the Real Meaning of Everything

By Rob Smith·July 15, 2022

“If you don’t read the newspapers, you are uninformed. If you read them, you are misinformed.” Mark Twain.

Our political class and their flunkies in the media bombard us with slick sounding words and phrases. Each phrase has a subliminal message directed to influence your thinking in the manner the author wants. Dear Reader, I was not voted Smartest Man In America for the past 16 years because I am some mindless dolt. Don’t accept their words or their premise. Take the Rob Is Right Critical Thinking Challenge. With everything you read or hear, ask what motivation is behind the message. Don’t believe anything you read or hear unless it of course comes from me, also voted the Most Honest Man In America. To help you “see the light,” I am publishing the Rob Is Right Dictionary to give you the true meaning of common terms in our political and economic vernacular. It should be out in time for Christmas. Here are a few excerpts.

Let’s start with how Congress names its bills:

The Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) drove the price of health care up 100%. A better name would be “The We Want You to Die and Go Broke Act.”

The 2020 Cares Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act). I would rename this “The Because We CARE So Much, We Are Going To Shut Down Your Business And Keep You In Chains So You Can’t Feed Your Family Act.”

Build Back Better Bill. Renamed: “The Drunken Sailor Spending Act,” aka, the “Let’s Make Our Democrat Friends Rich Bill.”

The Rob Is Right Dictionary will help you understand economic terms lazily tossed about by the silly sophists of our slow-witted political class. These wizard words don’t mean what you think they mean.

Gross Domestic Product. This is a term used by overly educated economists who couldn’t get a job at Chucky Cheese. Read John Tamny’s excellent article on the subject. Government spending, a drag on the economy, is actually counted in GDP as if it is truly output. Moreover, GDP attempts to measure domestic output, but we live in a world economy, where goods, services and capital flow effortlessly across our borders and become components of our “output.” If one pours a gallon of Canadian water into a bucket holding a gallon of American water, one can’t segregate the two, it becomes two gallons of “world water.” The same principle applies with our domestic output.

Recession. The Pinhead PHDs of the Potomac state that two successive quarters of negative GDP is a recession. But as noted above, GDP is a dopey definition for dimwitted D.C. dullards ( ok, I like alliteration, so what?). Besides, does anyone really need a government apparatchik to tell them that the economy sucks? By the way, the economy sucks.

Federal Reserve. A group of revered philosophers (on sabbatical from reality) that believes that GDP is a real thing and then decides to help us by making us poorer because GDP told them to.

Unemployment Rate. Talk about screwy math. As the percentage of people employed gets worse, the unemployment rate gets better. If one gives up looking for a job, then according to the Labor Department, that person is not unemployed. The Unemployment Rate is a Gordian’s Knot Rubric Cube of Government Gobbledygook.

Investment. When politicians use this word it means government spending on “feel goodisms” that don’t work.

Let’s move on to other matters:

Reproductive Health Services, the new term for abortion. The new cry is we can’t prevent women from having “reproductive health services.” This is much more pleasant sounding than women need to have access to clinics where “doctors” can kill their babies by crushing their skulls and ripping off their limbs (which are then sold to the highest bidder).

Hate Crimes. If you rob an Irishman, and in the process, call him a Mick or a Mackerel Snapper, you have committed a horrible hate crime, but if you keep your mouth shut and merely slit Paddy O’Toole’s throat, that’s not a hate crime.

Climate Change. The climate is always changing. The climate needs to change for the earth to function and cleanse itself as it does. Since the climate is always changing, left wing nut jobs who want to take away your property and make you their slaves can always blame anything they don’t like on climate change. For example, Johnny is broke because he spent his paycheck on rotgut whiskey and worthless lottery tickets. That damned climate change!

Transgender. A made-up term to make it seem that unhappy, confused, mentally disturbed people with deep emotional problems are normal.

Disinformation. This is a term leveled against people who expose the lies and corruption of the Left.

Disproportionality. If Race A commits 10 times the violent crime of Race B and is only incarcerated at 7 times the rate of Race B, then since Race A is being incarcerated at 7 times the rate of Race B, mindless spoiled punks get to tear down statues and burn cities to the ground.

Assault Rifles. The same rifle as the Winchester .351 that Sears Roebuck sold to 12 year olds via the mail in 1907, but not quite as powerful. The only exception is when liberals see the less powerful AR-15s, it scares them and they have to go hide under their beds.

U.S. News and World Report College Rankings. A system where colleges spend billions of dollars obsequiously catering to a magazine no one reads and ignores the actual consumers of their product.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. It means whatever radical Marxists administrators want it to mean and is used to guarantee equality of outcomes and to punish anybody walking across campus that does not have a pony tail and fanny pack.

CDC: Think Cash, Drugs and Corruption.

NIH: Think No Idea about Health.

The Rob Is Right Dictionary is the perfect Christmas gift. It is Naugahyde bound with cheap gold leaf gilding. It has a centerfold of George Washington crossing the Delaware hand painted by Charles Willson Peale VI, multiple great grandson of the famous painter. In the back are hundreds of dollars of S and H Green Stamps! The introduction is written by and signed by Noah Webster (my neighbor’s 11 year old, he’s smart as a whip). It is an unbelievable value, and can be bought on lay away with 4 easy installments. Email me for details.

First published at realclearmarkets.com.