Confessions of an Economics News Junky

I admit I'm a junky for economic news. My perception of reality is based upon simplicity.

Survival of any and every organism is a balancing of effort against reward. It costs energy to hunt, fish, garden or gather. Spend too much labor for too little gain and you lose. Labor is energy plain and simple.

An efficient organism expends little effort for maximum gain and then saves the surplus for leaner times. Surplus is wealth.

Wealth is the key element for gaining leisure. A full belly permits the organism to relax and ponder possibilities. Surplus guarantees a full belly for days, weeks or months. Efficiency is the only mechanism that will gain an organism a large surplus.

Fast forward to the new and improved existence. Society decides inefficiency is just a minor problem and taxing surplus, redistribution and feel-good enlightenment is the moral thing to do. Everyone deserves. Nobody left behind. We are in this together.

Every day I hear about some new program, scheme or cooperative agreement intended to level the playing field. Those enlightened people who trot out this nonsense have no idea of the economic mess they are making.

Money has become the preferred storage mechanism for surplus labor credits. Some can accumulate surplus, but the vast percentage of people can't and/or won't save. Large numbers of people lack the basic capacity to gain the basic neccessities in life. They are failed organisms who's continued existence is completely dependant upon redistribution of wealth.

The problem becomes one of not enough surplus to tax. Enter debt. On an individual basis once debt reaches a certain level, the organism fails. But if we enter into debt, we can postpone the inevitable until maybe something happens. The liberals have a solution; we enter into a collective debt. Everyone has a duty to society. Well folks, duty is debt.

Many will proclaim that we have a social responsibility. Try as I may, I can't find any logical argument for this idea. Social responsibility is socialism. The body will be maintained at the expense of the limbs. We eat ourselves. The efficient get taxed into poverty because we are all in this together.

If this isn't bad enough, society has a brain called government, social planning groups and banks. Just as in the individual organism, the brain consumes energy but produces nothing. Economics is all about production; nothing else. Once we move consumption in excess of production, we begin a decline to death. Society has chosen this path and the outcome in inevitable.

There is no escape from debt other than paying it off. Debt is death to positive economic outcomes. When society decides to enter into collective debt, all participants are caught in the spider's web.

Every day, I read about the spider and just who is on the menu. Society's brain decides who shall be sacrificed to preserve the brain. Just like the human brain, society's brain is a major depository of fat. Don't get me wrong, fat is good for the organism. Society is NOT an organism but rather a parasitic growth. Society preys on the individual's economic success. Just like a tapeworm, society has no idea of the individual's capacity to succede as a viable organism.

I read the economic news for some bit of hope that this trend will run out of steam. It hasn't and won't. Society won't let it. Everyone deserves. Everyone is precious. We owe them because we are successful. Bullshit! Productivity is the determinant. Produce or die.

In the coming months or few years, the debt will become so overwhelming that entire portions of our economy will fail. We put all our economic eggs in one basket and the basket has a whole in it. We are borrowing and spending the future earnings of our grand-children and conning ourselves into believing it is for their own good.

Government step in and force major redistributions of foodstuffs. People will become trapped in the cities and completely dependant upon the distributions. Corporate farms carry tremendous debt and will have no choice but to surrender their production to the government. Cities can only survive by importing vast quantities of food, materials and wealth from other districts outside the city. Once these supplies run out, the city dies. Chaos will reign, government will attempt to contain the problem and fail. The problem is systemic and malignant.

Can we contain it? The only option we have is complete and total elimination of entitlements. We must stop all redistributions for every supposed good and just cause. I say supposed because that is all it is. These supposed causes are artificial and are directly counter-productive. Just is simple; we are born, we live and we die. Our individual actions determine the economics of our existence unless we permit others to make economic decisions for us.

The news isn't good and I know it will get worse. Economics has been redefined by economists and our politicians either lack the mental facilities to recognize bullshit or they lack the will to do what must be done. I tend to think it is a mixture of both.

As I read the economic news, I see that the individual lacks basic economic knowledge. They elect an idiot that proclaims a magic potion for solving the problem. And barring a major screw-up, the masses re-elect the same idiot because "better the devil we know."

I have met our economic enemy and it is us. We vote ourselves money that can only come from increased debt. TANSTAAFL