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This blog post was triggered by my theories on how the tyranny of taking care of elders will encroach upon every expense the state adds to the taxpayer, even our transport. TLDRWe just witnessed history's largest social experiment — and it bombed spectacularly. For millennia, families cared for their own. Then we outsourced elder care to the state, promising freedom from obligation. The result? 28% of seniors now die alone, birth rates have crashed to 1.6 kids per woman, and a shadow economy of private equity, venture capital, and hedge fund vultures and Wall Street pension raiders extracts trillions while providing worse care than your grandmother would have gotten in 1950. Meanwhile, retirees are fleeing high-tax states for Florida and Texas, breaking the whole Ponzi scheme. Europe already solved this math with 20%+ VAT taxes on everything — that's our future. We dismantled the most fundamental human bond and replaced it with extraction industries that profit from misery. No civilization has ever done this and thrived. We won't be the exception. Sources: Tax Foundation, Bankrate More than 175 countries worldwide levy a Value Added Tax, including all major European countries. EU VAT rates range from 17% in Luxembourg to 27% in Hungary, with an average around 21%. Meanwhile, in the United States, combined state and local sales tax rates averaged only 7.5% in 2024. Three times higher. That's not a coincidence — that's the price of demographic collapse. The Tax You Cannot EscapeSee, when your birth rate crashes and your dependency ratios invert, income taxes stop working.  You can't extract enough from a shrinking base of workers to pay for an exploding population of dependents.  So what do you do? You tax consumption....everything..... at every stage of production.... whether people like it or not. The Europeans didn't choose VAT because they're socialism-loving bureaucrats (though they are). They chose it because it's the only tax system that works when your society is dying. My friend Adam Townsend writes a great blog post summation on VAT taxes here. We both follow Adam Michel's writing and tweets as well, he's a pro at this stuff. Blog here.  The Coming VAT RealityWe're going to have a federal VAT within the next decade or two. Has to happen. The dependency ratios are moving in one direction, the interstate arbitrage is accelerating, and the pension obligations aren't getting smaller. The Math That Forces Their HandYou think Social Security and Medicare can survive when the fertility rate is 1.599 and still falling? When 43% of women over 75 live alone with no children to supplement their care? When every retiree can pack up and move to Texas the moment they stop working? The states will demand it first — probably Illinois or California, whichever goes broke first. They'll call it a "consumption tax" or a "transaction fee" or some other euphemism designed to fool people who think sales taxes and VATs are somehow different. Before it arrives, you'll see weird taxes and tolls show up for everything the broke states can get its hands on.  15% Minimum — Just Like EuropeMy bet is that they'll start at 3%, promise it's temporary, and within five years it'll be at European levels. The EU minimum VAT rate is 15%. That's where we're headed. The retirees moving to Florida today think they're beating the system. Really, they're just ensuring that when the VAT comes — and it's coming — it'll hit everyone, everywhere, on everything they buy. No more state shopping. No more arbitrage. Just a federal tax that follows you wherever you go, embedded in every price, extracted from every transaction. The Civilizational QuestionHere's what nobody wants to say out loud: we conducted the largest social experiment in human history. We took the most fundamental human obligation — caring for those who cared for us — and we outsourced it. The Deal We MadeWe told three generations that they didn't need to worry about their parents, that they were free to pursue their careers and dreams and authentic selves. And what did we get? We got a society where 43% of women over 75 live alone, where private equity firms kill 20,000 nursing home residents for profit, where pension officials hide billions in Wall Street fees from the very workers whose retirement they're supposed to protect. We got a birth rate that guarantees our own extinction as a people. We got extraction industries feeding off human misery while calling it compassion. The Numbers HurtThe fertility rate isn't recovering. It's still falling. The nursing home costs aren't stabilizing. They're rising 7-9% annually. The pension fees? They were never disclosed in the first place. And the human cost? Sixteen million Americans aging in solitude, their children visiting at Christmas if they remember, their grandchildren strangers, their last years managed by shift workers who speak their name from a computer screen. The Verdict. This is the civilization we built. This is the deal we made. History offers no examples of societies that voluntarily dismantled private intergenerational support and then thrived. We won't be the exception. Tactical Advice for the YoungLook, if you're reading this and you're between 22-35, here's the uncomfortable truth: you need to get real about your position in this chess game, and you need to get real fast. The window is closing, and the rules are changing faster than anyone wants to admit. Rule #1: Location Is EverythingFirst: Location, Location, Location. You MUST spend a portion of your life after college living in a center of GDP — NYC, SF, or London — and build network and relationships and trust as a currency. I don't care if your rent is $3,000 a month for a closet in Brooklyn. I don't care if you're eating ramen and sleeping on an air mattress. These places are where decisions get made, where deals get struck, where the people who matter actually live and work. Your career compounds exponentially when you're in proximity to other ambitious people who give a shit. Rule #2: Wealth Must CompoundSecond: Wealth Must Compound. Your twenties and early thirties are not about lifestyle optimization — they're about building the foundation for everything that comes after. You need to learn to live cheap and be frugal. Not because poverty is virtuous, but because every dollar you don't spend on stupid shit in your twenties becomes ten dollars in your forties. The math is unforgiving, and time is the only resource you can't buy back. Rule #3: Financial Literacy Is Non-NegotiableThird: Financial Literacy is Non-Negotiable. There's no excuse to be financially or tax system illiterate in 2024. None. The information is free, the resources are everywhere, and the stakes are too high to plead ignorance. You need to understand compound interest, tax optimization, asset allocation, and debt management. Not because you're going to become a day trader, but because the system is designed to extract wealth from the financially naive, and you refuse to be a mark. Rule #4: Build Your TribeFourth: Build Your Tribe. The atomization I've been describing doesn't have to be your fate. You need to actively, deliberately build networks of mutual obligation and support. Not just professional networks — though those matter too — but actual relationships with people who have covenant and posterity. The state may have replaced family for previous generations, but you can't count on a good tribe being there for you. Rule #5: Avoid Financial CancerFinally: Avoid Unproductive Bank Debt. Credit cards for consumption, student loans for degrees that don't pay, car loans for depreciating assets — all of it is financial cancer that will metastasize and kill your ability to build wealth. The only good debt is debt that generates income or appreciates in value. Everything else is a chain around your ankle in a system that's already rigged against you. You're in Control and You've read this blog postThe demographic cliff is real. The extraction systems are real. The civilizational brittleness is real. But none of it has to be fatal if you're smart, if you're prepared, and if you refuse to sleepwalk into the future they've planned for you.  Personal Side Note: What first caught my attention wasn't the economics or demographics — it was watching this civilizational unraveling manifest itself in the physical scientific atomic world of materials energy balance mathematics. For the first time in human history, we're actively moving against natural human behavior patterns: abandoning higher energy return on investment, accepting increased grid stress, embracing larger geological-chemical-industrial process footprints. The EV and renewables invasion aren't driven by engineering optimization or thermodynamic reality — it's montauk trustwad kicking the can down the road-engineering masquerading as environmental progress. When a society starts choosing lower EROI systems while simultaneously destroying its demographic foundation, it's a sign something structurally deep is breaking. The same financial extraction mechanisms hollowing out nursing homes and pension funds are now infiltrating our energy infrastructure, and the engineering reality is getting steamrolled by the same spreadsheet logic that convinced us we could outsource love. I made solid returns on $POWL, $UAN, and $FCG by understanding the bastardization of natural human behavior and energy.