Dirty Rotten Bastards

In an effort to engage people in more substantive debate about our current American economic situation, its causes and its repercussions, I have over the years tried to come up with analogies to better explain the issues. This one is for those who have owned homes; more specifically, those who have signed loan documents chaining them to a monthly payment for the next 30 years, or so. Those who have not may think they get it, but they really don't. They have not stayed awake at night thinking about all of the wonderful, and dreadful, things that could come of this gamble, the implications for the future of their children, the fact that it could all be taken away in an instant due to bad decisions; The attention one suddenly pays to goings-on in the neighborhood; The fact that, over the term of the loan, you will actually pay about THREE TIMES the amount of the loan in interest! You really just don’t get it unless you have signed those loan docs. Buying a car is similar but infinitely simpler.

So, what if you needed to paint your house, but didn't have the money? Well, you could borrow money, using the current equity of your property or expected future increase in the value of your property as collateral. This is called a second mortgage and it is a GAMBLE, every time. Don't think otherwise. Now, if you are gambling with your own money or your own expectation of increases in future earnings, then that's ok with me. I'm a Libertarian after all, and while I will tell you that it's unhealthy and unwise, I will make no law against it. BUT, the minute you are doing it with someone else's money you will have a big problem with people like me. And even worse, what if you were doing it with your own children’s money? What if you did it with the knowledge that if things went wrong, your kids will have to work harder in the future to pick up the tab? And what if you were so stupid that you made a bet that meant that even your GRANDCHILDREN would have to pay with their blood, sweat and tears? Ok, here's the clincher: What if it wasn't even a bet? What if you KNEW, in advance, that you were borrowing money, to spend now, that generations of your children will have to repay? And maybe it all started with necessary things, like a new roof or windows, but it degenerated to an orgy of spending on crap like new drapes and some Jet Ski's. And you told yourselves at the time, “Well, we'll make more money next year to pay it off" and "we'll all be better off in the long run." And, “we need this now so the kids will be better off later."

This is what's happening here in America. It's called Keynesian Economics and it's based on the notion that a man with money in his pocket is unpredictable and selfish, but a man with a payment to make is stable and can be used as a base for a monetary system that is more useful to social manipulators than a gold standard. The basic flaw in this is that Keynesians believe people are pawns to be used to further the lofty goals of enlightened intellectuals like him. A man working hard to keep a roof over his wife and kids' head is something durable to them and they will ride him like a bunch of ticks on a dog.

Are you, everything you are, your wants and desires, dreams, ambitions, talents, and abilities just some "asset" for someone else to use as they see fit? And are your children and grandchildren to be used as such and are their lives something to be collateralized by people who want to spend their future prosperity on the equivalent of drapes and Jet Skis? No, they are not! And yet they try to make us feel guilty because if we don't want to keep paying it, our grandparents will lose their Social Security and Medicare. But those programs were faulty from the start and it was known (but only Conservatives were alarmed by it) that the programs would have to rely on future generations to pay for it. This is inter-generational SLAVERY!

Social Security was invented in 1935 as a basic insurance scheme where people would pay “premiums,” deducted out of each paycheck, into a fund where it would collect interest and by the time you were ready to retire, there would be a sizable chunk of money waiting for you. Sounds great, right? Kinda like a forced savings account. The rationale at the time was that if people were forced to save, they wouldn’t have to be taken care of by their kids or the government when they got too old to care for themselves. But this divorces the charitable from the recipient of charity (the topic of my next manifesto. Coming Soon to a mobile Internet device near you!). My problem is that the voting public at the time didn’t read the fine print, or read between the lines, because they should have known that the government is not to be trusted with that much money… EVER! They almost immediately began “borrowing” it to pay for pet projects, stimulus projects (another topic to be discussed, soon) during the depression, welfare and other forms of wealth re-distribution, etc. Pretty soon, the fund was full of IOU’s and the whole system was dependent on the contributions of current workers to pay for the retired ones. And once the retired people outnumber the workers, what then? See, what they did was DOOM their children and grandchildren to a world where they must either pay much more in taxes or their grandparents will starve. Nice, eh? And by “much more” I mean, like TWO OR THREE TIMES as much! Right now, I pay $600 a month in taxes. When Social Security crashes, and it will happen soon, I will have to pay $1200 or more in taxes per month. I can’t do that… I just can’t. Neither can you. So what will we do? They have us by the short-and-curlies. And they will be laughing about it, too! “Better get a second job or grandma will starve! HAHAHAHAH!” All the while collecting fat bonuses and getting bailed out when they mismanage. So the only thing to do will be to REVOLT! First at the ballot box, and when (not if) that doesn’t work, with guns and Molotov cocktails. It will truly be time to water the tree of Liberty with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants!

This is the message of the Tea Party: Watch out! We are coming! And Hell is coming with us!

Steve Casas

Sept 9, 2010

Points to ponder and remember:

• Any time someone else is able to do something to you “for your own good,” they own you. Now think about seat-belt and helmet laws and laws forcing you to buy insurance and tell me if anyone owns you.
• Whenever Congress passes laws that they, themselves, are exempt from, you should KNOW it’s a rotten deal. They exempted themselves from Social Security from day one, until Reagan changed it in 1984. They tried to exempt themselves from ObamaCare. What does that tell you?
• Insurance is ALWAYS a bad bet. It is a scheme where some bunch of bastards created a need for it, then were able to bribe the government to force everyone to buy into it so now we can’t live without it. Then, when its inherent flaws are unable to be contained any longer, the government must bail them out with our kids’ money. If it wasn’t for insurance, we wouldn’t need insurance and that is EXACTLY how they intended it to be.
• If you can’t pay for it in your lifetime, you don’t need it. Even better: if you can’t pay for it in 10 years, you don’t need it!
• Why does government only grow? How many of us have had to cut back in this recession? Not just the small things, like taking the family to Jamba Juice whenever you drive by it, but on things like cable TV and Christmas gifts and vacations? What about those of us that have had to cut EVERYTHING and shop at the MaxiFoods instead of Albertsons and stay home for 4 days waiting for a check because you only have enough gas to get to the bank? Well, the Government NEVER has to do that. In fact, during times like these, they get to spend even more money than usual. Look it up. Obama is on track to spend more money in his first term than EVERY PRESIDENT from Washington to Reagan combined! Why do they never have to cut back? Because we have never forced them to.
• Interesting Amish Social Security history lesson: http://www.amishnews.com/amisharticles/amishss.htm