This article from the Daily Bell is a very realistic apprasial of the “Fiscal Cliff”. Click on the links for further explinations of various words/memes not found in the main stream media (MSM). Of special interest is Regularty Democracy linked as democracy in the last sentence.
Fiscal Cliff Austerity: Just Another Meme Designed to Steal What is Yours
“Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word.” – Charles De Gaulle
In my home country, the United States, we are watching the German and EU austerity demands destroy economies, social structures and entire nations all to protect the leading banking elites and their profits. In 2013 the false meme of austerity is also coming to the United States. Leading GOP politicians are now announcing plans to break their No Tax pledges just as we warned they would. After all, the word and honor of all but a very few senators and house members means nothing once election season ends.
Of course, common sense tells us that all governments need to spend and borrow less but they never will. After all, the long running recession/depression of the West means less tax revenue to governments because the taxable income of individual citizens is down dramatically.
The austerity meme is the false crisis solution being propagandized by the power elite in order to build public support for benefit cuts and wealth confiscation. This fake austerity solution sounds reasonable but it isn’t because governments will continue to spend and borrow. They plan to make up the difference by cutting government services and programs and increasing taxes to draconian confiscatory levels.
Equal Opportunity For Once
While the top echelons of government bureaucrats just like the privileged big business corporate elites will be exempt except for minor personal tax increases, the burden will as always fall on the poor and middle classes.
The only good news is throughout the West many low- and middle-level government employees and bureaucrats will finally get a bitter taste of what they have been dishing out to those of us in the productive private sector for decades. There are few new jobs available in the private sector and private industry will seldom hire ex-government employees, for obvious reasons.
This means those on the government dole, whether working, on welfare programs or in unions, will do anything to keep their checks coming. Therefore, as part of the “necessary” austerity measures their generous healthcare and retirement plans can be cut, as well as salaries, as most of these wards of the state will still vote for the big government parties. They have no other alternatives. Thus, their core constituency status will remain while they now take their turn being screwed.
Simply watch what is happening to benefits, healthcare and retirement benefits in Greece, Italy and Spain and you’ll see the future in the United States.
Benefit Theft
Many in the US will find themselves increasingly “means tested” out of their promised and guaranteed Social Security benefits and forced back into permanent life-long contributions.
Austerity is just another word for nothing left to lose to the government. It will end when your wealth, benefits and assets are gone. This false meme will be replaced with another once all of the available wealth, income and gold can be taken and your promised benefits cut to whatever degree possible short of generating violence and revolution.
Therefore, any supposed credibility in the success of politically enforced austerity is just another excuse to get more of your hard earned dollars. Like democracy, global warming and Keynesian economics, this is just another scam meme to con you out of personal wealth and liberties.
TeresaE says:
Thanks for sharing this Roy. I don’t get the chance to visit the Daily Bell very often and they present lots of “look behind the curtain” articles.
Of course austerity is nothing more than an excuse to roll back some of the fiscally-impossible promises that have made to the public sector and unions. And, of course, “draconian” taxes are meant to wipe out and wealth and assets of the productive class.
Having been through over a decade of “downturn” in Michigan, I can tell you that most underestimate the ruling class’s ability to suck their public and private unions’ asses. Over the past two years, as property tax revenue continued to drop and small biz continued to close shop, our city workers received raises. You see, these raises were “promised” five years ago when the union made (bullshit) concessions – to great angst and fanfare – and as such, they HAD to be paid.
By all accounts, Greece austerity (and Spain, Italy, etc) hasn’t actually happened. Tax increases (and non-compliance, us peasants will only take so much until we cheat, hence the black market in drugs, I digress) WILL happen, which only hurts the little guys that either can’t cheat (lots of plastic sales, sales to the gov), or won’t (ethics, there still are some) cheat. As for the austerity, what I’ve read is that the cuts to the poor & elderly have happened (along with increased taxes) BUT the unions, while losing some members, still have the bulk of “what they are due.”
Without a huge black swan – solar flare (NASA and other scientists think its coming), magnetic pole (known to be shifting, unknown as to the climate consequences), nuclear disaster (there is still a new, worse, disaster awaiting at Fukishima, the US has dozens and dozens of future Fukishimas possible), one of the bigger debt countries saying “FU EU” and walking, thus triggering bankster defaults worldwide (Lehmans is contained), to name but a few – this is going to be a long, drawn out, slow-moving disaster.
At this point it no longer matters what we are “promised,” what we are demanded, how far we are squeezed. The government(s) have backed themselves into a corner, and without inflation (lots of inflation) these debts simply will not, can not, be met.
So, inflation (and mainly hidden inflation, as the rise in insurance, milk, gas isn’t counted) will rage and rage and rage to pay for it all. Throw in the reality of a contracting productive base – as more and more small businesses close their doors/shrink – those lucky remaining will have to ante up to close the local, state, federal revenue gap produced by those closing.
What most are missing is that it happens nearly undetectably. Most peasants won’t notice a percent here, a percent there, as their wages stagnate (or reduce). Their bosses, however, do know, well, they do if they want to stay in business. Which will then put a further reduction on current and future employment.
What a freaking mess this world finds itself in when the only real “solution” to our problems is making our currency, thus our very efforts, worth-less. Until the day they all become worthless. Then the real MadMax starts.
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1st December 2012 at 10:24 am
MuckAbout says:
Oh my… You’re off to a happy Saturday morning, aren’t you, TE??? 1st of December too – with a whole three weeks of happy cheery holiday shopping ahead of you?
My sweetie and I had to buy some staples this morning and went to Walmart – at 0730 – to do it. Damn we thought we were smart but there were a whole lot of otherwise perfectly normal people doing the same early-bird thing! Next time, maybe 0530….
I think I’ll read your post again and go find some clorox and ammonia to gargle with..
MA
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1st December 2012 at 10:50 am
sangell says:
Austerity like Fiscal Cliff are agenda driven terms used to imply there are other, less unpalatable choices available when there really aren’t. For example, Greece has no choice. It can no longer borrow money and it can only print additional money with the permission of the EU/ECB. It has come to the end of the road and can no longer live beyond its means. The only thing that keeps it afloat now is credit provided by other nations. It has none of its own. If Germany et. al. do not give Greece loans it will have no choice but to cut government spending to the level of tax revenues it can generate. Not in the medium term, not next year but tomorrow!
What put Greece in this vise was rising interest rates. Greece could not control the interest rate it paid to finance its debt. So far, the US, UK and Japan, have been able to keep interest rates low on our public debt through ‘financial repression’ as all three nations have their own central banks that can create new money to purchase the debt issued by their governments. But as long as that debt exists the risk remains that, at some point, in order to maintain the value of the dollar, yen or pound, those central banks will have to raise interest rates to a level that make those government bonds attractive investments. That is when those governments get put in the vise because interest has to be paid out of current revenues and the higher the interest rate the more revenue must be spent to pay the interest. This point is the Greek moment.
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1st December 2012 at 11:04 am
Stucky says:
“Austerity” is a politician’s way of saying; “Go fuck yourselves.”
You can take that to the bank.
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1st December 2012 at 11:21 am
TeresaE says:
Holiday cheer, good one Muck!
I once used to manage – and work myself – kiosks in malls at Christmas. One year I had 13 mall I oversaw, plus two I directly manned and managed. Amazingly, watching the sheep beat each other up and scream at their kids while “sharing the joy” warped me a bit.
Opened my eyes to the stupidity of what this holiday has become. Makes me long for the Christmas back during the Carter years where my dad had lost his job and Santa only brought me a knock-off Barbie (made in Asia, the real ones were still made here) and an orange. Mom & I spent the day baking and decorating cookies and then I ended the day playing football in the snow with my dad and little siblings. Dad never usually played with us, and that day, though kids today would think it was the Worst.Christmas.EVER!, is still a comfortable, loving memory I cling to.
Besides, I have no pressure with the holidays, I through that off my back years ago. I give to my family all year long, the only difference at Christmas is that they get my gifts wrapped with a bow.
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1st December 2012 at 12:14 pm
IndenturedServant says:
“Austerity” is a politician’s way of saying; “Go fuck yourselves.”
If you really think about it, austerity is actually the way things *should* be. As far as I’m concerned, the politicians already said “go fuck yourselves” to people like us who have long known that living beyond ones means is not possible.
I_S
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1st December 2012 at 2:48 pm
todd says:
Christmas was better in Carters years because our economy, recently off the gold standard, was just getting up to speed. It was still possible to look out the windows of the train and see the country side passing out the windows, now the train is going so fast that all you see out the windows is a blur all the while…with great hope…wondering if the person laying down the track was a good hard working human being and not a FSA guy on some government work program.
My best memories of Christmas are the families all getting together having a large potluck dinner and spending hours together just being together. Talking, laughing, sneaking away drinking a beer or two(grew up in a very religious family)…did you know you couldn’t buy beer in NM on Christmas day…store clerk actually said “go home, it’s a day of being with family.” Not a shit load of gifts other than just time together, most of that was organized by my grandparents though. As they passed on one by one the traditional Christmas just became less family and more secular, fell into disrepair as people tired of working 4 months or so out of the year for obligation to the “social contract” only to give another month working to give away “gifts” to everyone on your friends list. Fuck it. Social and moral decay. I’ve boycotted Christmas for several year but now what pisses me off is they have moved onto Thanksgiving. That was the last true family get together left that didn’t have capitalistic shit stuck to it.
A couple of interesting article taken in succession.
The Cashless Society is Almost Here – And With Some Very Sinister Implications
“A dollar or euro crash could be the perfect storm for the introduction of a major global digital currencies, and this will do nothing but fast-track our entry into the new cashless society.”
“The darker aspect of a cashless society, is one which few are debating or discussing, but is actually the most pivotal in terms of social engineering and transforming communities and societies. In London, the electronic touch payment Oyster Card was introduced in 2003, initially for public transport, and since that time the card has been co-opted to be used for other functions, as the UK beta tests the idea of an all-in-one cashless lifestyle solution.”
“Ironically, it’s the United States, supposedly the birthplace of modern capitalism, who is beta testing its own socialist technocracy. As the ranks of the poor and unemployed grow and dollar inflation rises in America, more and more people are dependent on traditional ‘Food Stamp’ entitlements in order to feed their families. The US has now introduced its own socialist ‘Oyster’ to replace the old Food Stamp program. It’s called the ‘EBT’, which stands for “Electronic Benefit Transfer“, as a means of transferring money from the central government to people living below the poverty line.”
“Adams has pointed out the endgame here. Where collectivist technocrats are concerned, a global digital currency is not only a means for a centrally controlled economy, but also a centrally controlled society. And as Adams also pointed out, they can even control what you eat.”
“There has been a lot made about the ‘cashless society’ in media, but this cannot fully happen until there is a cashless currency.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cashless-society-is-almost-here-and-with-some-very-sinister-implications/5313515
Then you read this article. Dollar-Less Iranians Discover Virtual Currency
“The bottom line: Iranians are resorting to virtual currency to move money into and out of the country in a way that Western authorities find hard to detect.”
“Since Bitcoin does not have a centralized authority, law enforcement faces difficulties detecting suspicious activity, identifying users, and obtaining transaction records—problems that might attract malicious actors to Bitcoin,”
Summed up in the first article . “Don’t believe for a second that these digital parallel currencies are not being watched over and even steered by the money masters”
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1st December 2012 at 9:58 am
todd says:
second article oops
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-29/dollar-less-iranians-discover-virtual-currency#r=hp-ls
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1st December 2012 at 9:59 am
Dc.sunsets says:
The main means by which wealth is now being transferred is credit-creation monetization of government debt. According to Richard Cantillon, such inflation benefits those with first access to the new money, before it washes through the economy and inevitably causes rising prices.
Politicians and those at the Fed’s discount window are the main 1st recipients of this highway robbery.
IIRC, the current rate of unpacked credit emission is ~12%, compounding annually. This means we should expect average prices to double every 6 years, with price escalation highest on the things for which the FedGov (in the USA) is the dominant payer: medical services, weapons of warfare, energy (the DoD is the world’s largest consumer of petroleum), higher education via naive borrowers, and increasingly, FOOD.
I don’t know the future, but I do notice that no trend runs forever. I doubt the central bank counterfeiting scheme is a perpetual motion machine. Sooner or later the limit will be reached and rising interest rates should begin to extinguish the purchasing power of existing debt faster than the Fed, in cahoots with politicians, can create more of it.
I’d bet that when the current high rate of inflation breaks down, first will come a credit collapse and wild frenzy to acquire hard cash dollars, and once that spasm of deflation is over, the clowns who rule will print actual currency to the point of hyperinflation.
For now, all we can do is weep as we’re robbed blind, deaf, and dumb by the public’s willingness to go along with this universal scam.
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1st December 2012 at 5:04 pm