More Smoke and Mirrors

Well the latest Obama budget will put the ole USA even further in the toilet. It goes by many names, but Economic Stimulus is the catch phrase for borrowing and spending our way to recovery.

Nobody wants to talk about the fundemental problem. For the sake of social responsibility, we unwrite leisure. Oh this leisure has many names; among them are government programs for retirement, medical care, unemployment, national security and the list goes on and on and on.
The effective majority (small groups of vocal proponents) have clamored for every form of social program, more and better smart weapons, more environmental efforts and protecting too big to fail corporations from failing.

Only one problem exists with all thes dubious efforts: nobody can afford them. There isn't now or will ever be a large enough tax base to fund these programs.

So how did this happen? Emotional pleas that prey on the fears of the voting public. It could happen to you! Can you afford to take care of your parents if ... ? NGOs ply the TV airwaves with emotional pleas to save the ..., contact your Representative, help with relief efforts in ... . You get the idea.

Throughout human history, we have worked until we died. Survival demanded it. Effective work produced food and shelter. Post WWII inflation provided the illusion of prosperity and disposable income. We became a consumer-based economic power. We buy crap that we never needed for labor-savings and recreation. We rapidly moved away from actual producive work and moved into a service-oriented philosophy where we bought crap that we couldn't fix. So we hire a repairman to fix what we never needed to begin with. More money down the toilet. Now the USA doesn't make squat. We import it.

People are afraid that they will become destitute. A bit of reality please. The typical US citizen is an idiot. Idiot, n, incapable of learning. If you can't feed yourself, you are a malignancy. Malignancies never get better with time. The bag-lady is better prepared to survive than the members of a household in the suburbs. Being destitute is not the end of the world, slavery is.
If a citizen lacks the knowledge and skills to provide for their basic needs, they are forced to swear fealty to whomever ladles the soup into their bowl. Recall the old saw, "Never bite the hand that feeds you?" I hope that bowl of soup was worth your soul and self-respect.

But you say, "I have a mortgage that's underwater and my hours were cut." You chose this path in life. You have two options. Slavery or just walk away and begin a new life without all the modern trappings. The word trapping comes from the root word; trap.

It has been my observation that people define themselves by their possessions. This takes the form of job, family, home and toys. Their identity is stuff, not self. Don't believe me? Ask someone to tell you about themselves and listen to what they say. I'm a ..., I drive a ..., I have 2 ... and a wife that's a ..., I belong to the ... . Ain't a whole lot of self in this, but a whole passel of crap about their possessions.

So is there an answer? Can people escape this trap?

In the vast number of cases, no! People fear the unknown and self-sufficiency is completely unknown. If you aren't self-sufficient enough to provide for your most basic needs, you are a dependant and a dependant is a slave to their provider. These people's provider of choice; government.

If this were just about government's ability to tax, this wouldn't be near the problem. However government can tax the future by borrowing money today and tax the future by inflating the money supply. When you can inflate the monetary supply, the true value of the money declines. Prices for goods and services goes up.

Until now, we have been fairly successful in dodging the inflation bullet by outsourcing our manufacturing overseas. But, it has caught up with us. We are up to our necks in useless crap and forgot to flush the toilet. Once this toillet over-ran, everything is ruined. So we will continue to take in one another's laundry and gleefully declare that we are happy with a job that doesn't require us to clean our own soiled linen. And our most benevolent government takes a chunk of every paycheck to feed more and more useless drones.

Our only jobs growth sector is government. Welcome to our brave new world.
I like the analogy of the good shepherd. The sheep are happy with the good shepherd. He keeps them safe from predators and keeps them fed. It is a large herd, so few notice that a bunch of the lambs disappear to the slaughterhouse. Everyone agrees that there is a cost, so a minor annual fleecing is acceptable. Everyone hopes to be put out to pasture without realizing that the pasture is pretty bleak (don't waste good pasture on the old and infirm.)

In the end, everyone dies. It is just a matter of picking your own poison. Though Social Security is three years away for me, I know I will never be able to retire. Work has never been my enemy. Government spending is. I have no social responsibility beyond live and let live. I will die soon enough. Government and their communitarian allies might expedite it. Or not.