Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal wrung from the trauma of the 1930s a lasting legacy of economic and social reform, including the Social Security Act, new banking and financial laws, regulatory legislation, and new opportunities for organized labor. Taken together, these reforms gave a measure of security to millions of Americans who had never had much of it, and with it, a fresh sense of having a stake in their country.
From the dust jacket description of Freedom From Fear, The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, David M. Kennedy, Oxford University Press, (1999)
When one man’s security becomes another man’s chain gang.
Guest Post by Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic
2/17/18
The above paragraph concisely sums up conclusions about the New Deal that can be found in thousands of textbooks, histories, and articles. You can guess that the tome (it’s 858 pages, SLL has not read it) reflects the reigning academic ideology, an impression furthered by its Pulitzer Prize. Pulitzers are awarded to fans of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New deal, not critics. If the latter stood a chance, Amity Shlae’s fine critical analysis, The Forgotten Man, A New History Of The Great Depression, might have received one.
Putting food on the table has a large place in human history. So too do governments. More often than not, they’ve worked at cross-purposes. Governments don’t produce, they take. Whatever they take means less food, and everything else, for those from whom they take it.
One man’s government-bestowed security is another’s government-bestowed insecurity. There weren’t enough plutocrats to fund the New Deal. It reached into the pockets of people who were only an economic rung or two above its beneficiaries. The money taken from a taxpayer might have meant deferred truck maintenance or no trip to the doctor for his sick daughter.
Someone always pays, either present taxpayers or, when the government borrows the money and doesn’t default, future ones. During the New Deal many Americans wouldn’t accept assistance from private charities, but would from the government. Voluntary charity was rejected but the proceeds of involuntary forced taking were not.
The “measure of security” created an insecurity among those who funded it that went far deeper than the knowledge that the government now had first claim on their income and wealth. Income and wealth are products of how one spends one’s time and effort, of how one lives one’s life.
Roosevelt reversed America’s fundamental premise, never fully realized, that one’s life is one’s own. It was never explicitly stated, but implicitly each American’s life became state property. That is the fundamental premise of socialism and the true price of that “measure of security.” Freedom from fear for some necessarily means fear of the government for many.
Where has the idea that we are each owned by the government, our lives to be disposed of as it pleases, taken us? President Eisenhower warned of the military-intelligence complex (MIC). What he didn’t foresee, or at least didn’t warn of, was the redistributive complex.
It’s true that Eisenhower’s complex, to which we’ll add the intelligence agencies, accounts for spending of around $1 trillion and runs a global empire. However, that’s only about one-fourth of the federal budget. The redistributive complex spends most of the other three-fourths. Also keep in mind that a substantial, but hard to quantify, portion of MIC spending is nothing more than redistribution to military and intelligence personnel and contractors that neither defends the US nor projects its power.
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are the three largest programs in the federal budget and account for just under half of total spending. Perhaps because its trust funds are mislabeled, many people believe that Social Security is set up like a private pension fund (Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund) or a private insurance fund (Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund).
Nothing could be further from the truth. Private pension and insurance funds take in contributions and invest them. If their contributions and investment returns are sufficient, they can pay their obligations. The Social Security Trust Funds are strictly pay as you go: this year’s taxes fund this year’s payments. Taxes in excess of obligations go into general government funds in exchange for interest-bearing government IOUs. Without changes in existing law, payments are projected to exceed taxes in fiscal year 2020.
Taxpayers do not “earn” their Social Security benefits any more than they “earn” a refund towards the end of their life on their income taxes. Legally, Social Security taxes are indistinguishable from income taxes. They both fund the government, are not invested to earn a return, and are certainly not kept in trust for the benefit of the taxpayer.
The Supreme Court has ruled that Social Security benefits are a revocable promise from the government, not a contract like a pension or insurance policy. (Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603 (1960)). Contracts are a hallmark of freedom. Reciprocal obligations would put a crimp in the government’s ownership of your life. Slaves don’t get contracts.
Slave might be a distasteful term for some, so they may use serf. However, medieval serfs usually only had to turn over about a quarter of what they produced. Local, state, and the federal government income, property, sales, and inheritance taxes take far more than that from many of the nation’s most well-compensated and wealthiest taxpayers.
One can quibble over actual percentages, but that obscures the most important point: the government can take 100 percent if it wants. Presumably at that point most people would call it slavery. Even with first call on the nation’s income, the government is still over $20 trillion in debt.
Nothing says state property like putting people’s health and lives at the mercy of the government. Socialized medicine gives the government life or death power. The “single payer” calls the shots. Doctors and nurses become government functionaries, practicing “medicine” in accordance with bureaucratic decree. These procedures will be followed, these vaccines administered, these treatments allowed, and these drugs prescribed. These surgeries are “necessary” and will be performed when we can schedule one of our overworked surgeons. These surgeries are “elective,” go to the back of the line. These surgeries are “cosmetic,” you’re shit out of luck. And so on…
No surprise that socialized medicine is the Holy Grail for the redistributive sect or anyone bent on bankrupting the country (there’s quite a bit of overlap). Need justifies theft, the proceeds of which are redistributed to the government and its voter beneficiaries. The producers who complain, resist, or stop producing are greedy. The politicians and bureaucrats are altruists. The beneficiaries are blameless victims. When it all falls apart, nobody saw it coming.
Here’s an eleven-word summary of the thousand-plus pages of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: collectivism and the morality of coercive altruism are destroying the world. Rejecting that morality is the necessary first step for reversing the trend. Each individual’s life is his or her own property, not the state’s. Establishing that right means intellectual and physical battles that are quintessentially self-defensive: defending the inviolable right to one’s own soul, mind, body, and productive effort—a defense of self.
Don’t fight those battles and some day there might be another class of surgery: mandatory surgery. As you’re wheeled into the operating room, just before the anesthetic kicks in, you’re told that your vital organs are being harvested for transplantation. You’re getting on in years, there’s a shortage of transplantable organs, and yours will save the life of someone who can make a greater contribution to the collective good. If you bought into the collectivists’ morality, you have no right to complain or resist. Someone else needs your organs, after all, and it’s your duty to accept your fate.
SoSo Security is just another income tax, like medicare, and the now defunct 0 Care penalty. They are secondary income taxes added to the primary income tax you triggered when you accepted (aka forced fraudulently) the payment of your wages in bank credit also known as federal reserve notes.
Yes SS is taken from your income. The monthly payout to people is about equal so it is: an income tax, an erstwhile disability income insurance policy, a retirement Ponzi Scheme, a socialist transfer payment system, and a driver of the National Debt. It is an Entitlement paid for by payroll deductions and it is not Welfare, and should not be cut unless Welfare is cut the first and most!!!
I like Social Security. Most people do. Imagine the premise, if you are an American and you work your whole life, you will not starve in your old age or be out on the street. Works for me. I’ve been to third world countries. I don’t want to live in one.
Star – people should save their own damn money and quit passing the bill to younger generations. That is what Social Security does. Of course people love free shit. Social security is free shit, with people getting much more than they pay in off the backs of the young.
Fuck that shit. Take care of yourself, and I will take care of me. Anything that transfers property from one person to another is theft, and SS does exactly that.
Social security has been turned into a general welfare program. That’s why it’s so expensive. The amount of money it offers up to retirees is peanuts compared to even a small-time private pension system. But it gives the elderly dignity, and a roof over their head, and keeps them from starving. I like a civilized society. I’ve seen old people abandoned and starving on the side of the road overseas. I go down to Homestead on business quite often. I hate it. The reason I hate it is because the latins abandon their dogs on the side of the road. On your way in, you see dogs that 24 hours earlier were somebody’s little house pet, a lapso apso or a dachshund whatever. On the way back out, it’s squished dead on the road. I see that almost every time I go down there. I could never live there because I wouldn’t want to watch that every day. I feel the same way about people. Social Security, taking some chicken shit out of a worker’s paycheck, serves a vital purpose in building the civilized society. We’re going to disagree on this one. I don’t think the world has to be that tough. The wealthy live well in third world countries, but they still have to look at all the suffering around them. I don’t want to do that. And luckily, I don’t have to do anything. We already have it set up. I just don’t see any reason to cry about it.
Star – the tax does not cover the outlay. And so it becomes theft from one generation to the next.
It is not my or my kid’s fucking problem to take care of your or someone else’s grandpa and grandma. That would be your problem, or their problem. I do not want your, or anyone else’s shit and irresponsibility and bad luck and repercussions of poor decision making passed on to me and mine, or to the future generations in general.
Here is an idea – you keep what you earn, and I keep what I earn. I will take care of my family, and everyone else takes care of theirs. Because what is happening now is unsustainable and will result in an economic and social collapse. It is killing the family unit and is strangling the economy, and the debt pile is insurmountable.
The trillion a year in fed debt is going toward those that have not prepared for the future, or who are not taking care of themselves now. Fuck that.
The number one moral obligation of any society, in my opinion, is not to heap shit on future generations. Social security and other welfare payments are a steaming pile of shit that future generations are going to have to shivel. That is evil in my book.
You say above: “Imagine the premise, if you are an American and you work your whole life”. How the fuck can it be reasonable that someone works their whole lives but saves nothing and passes the cost of their retirement onto the young? Either they save, their families take care of them, private charity kicks in, or they starve. I am happy with any of the four. I and mine were not placed on this earth to be slaves to the irresponsible. It starts and ends with personal responsibility and family structures.
Evil in my book is having plenty and watching another man starve. I’ve been around the block long enough to know the best laid plans of mice and men don’t always result in success. There’s always a fair amount of luck involved. If you’re lucky, count your blessings. I certainly do. I know I’m blessed. But money only buys two things. Security and lifestyle. I understand coming from your background your threshold for security would be much higher than mine. I understand that. I admire what you’ve done. It’s hard to jump one class in life, damn near impossible to jump two or three. You beat some really big odds, my friend, and I admire that. But I don’t see life the same way you do in terms of winners and losers. I’m no socialist. I advocate hard work on this form all the time. I didn’t have any family advantages coming up. But I didn’t have any real disadvantages either. So I was still born lucky, and I know it. My worst day is probably better than lots of other people’s best day, and I know it. And I’m grateful for that. A little kindness for your fellow man goes a long way.
Star – that is why private charity has its place. At the moment, why would anyone give to private charity given 70% of taxes go to charity? Private charity also has the advantage of being able to discern the worthy from the not. I do not want my money going to addicts and alcoholics, for instance. I would happily let them starve. Why am I forced at the barrel of a gun to support those folks?
If my taxes were reduced by 70%, I would donate to charity. But now all I support are animal causes, mostly for the care of dogs.
You want to force on me, and everyone, your moral code. And by force I mean at the barrel of a gun. You believe that it is evil for one with more than enough to allow another to starve. Fair enough. But to be able to force someone to comply with your beliefs? What gives you, or anyone, the right to force your morality onto me, or onto anyone else? Where does it end? Who decides what I can be forced to do? My freedom is at stake. Don’t believe in guns? I lose my guns. Don’t believe in free speech? I lose that.
No one should be able to impose such morality by force.
If I am not hurting anyone, then I have the right to be left alone and to enjoy the fruits of my labor as I see fit. If I fail to care for myself, I have no right to demand others take care of me. Without that basic tenant, people cannot be free.
LLPOH and Star,
Here is a real world example of how the government is fucked up.
My father is 80, worked his whole life, never so much as claim unemployment, owned 2 businesses, blue collar his whole life, raised 5 kids 2 were adopted, wife never worked, always owned his own home, always had full coverage family health care, private school for all 5 kids, still works full-time as a school bus driver (had a heart attack 2 months ago and went back to work 2 weeks later), his social security is taxed and he pays $600 a month for health insurance. Now contrast that to my 57 Year old brother.
My brother is 57, hasn’t worked since he was 42, has had free health care and housing for about 10 years worth of free housing. He’s had a hip replacement free of charge, a hernia operation free of charge, smokes 2 packs of cigarettes a day, gets a check every month of $800, I think he has an Obama phone but I’m not sure.
Thoughts?
WIP, Llpoh and I have reached this position many times over the years. I point out he chooses to live in first world countries, enjoying the benefits and civility that brings him, he points out that he has paid more than his share of the upkeep of that civilization. It’s a dead end for us, we both know it, and we both know it’s there any time we want to fight it. Which bores us both. The family issues you point out highlight that exact problem. Llpoh is not nearly as meatheaded as he plays on TV, he is (rightfully) outraged by freeloading and irresponsibilty. I’ve said before, he tends to overstate his case, but there’s a lot there. All is well. Here’s an interesting clip, it’s long, the point in it of interest is at the 31 minute mark. https://youtu.be/J8lSlWHEJQI. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin makes many of the same points Llpoh generally does. And Trump hits him back with the same sorts of things that I look at. It’s probably a draw, for much the same reasons. the answers to everything aren’t always clearly visible. There are pluses and minuses to most positions.
WIP – your father sounds like a man to be greatly admired.
I do not know your brother, but given the amount he has sucked out of the productive workers and system, he is a net loss on the economy. His welfare should be a family matter or a private charity matter, and not a cost to be foisted onto others by force.
Star’s system is simply unaffordable, as can be seen world-wide at the moment. Every economy and every society that has tried the govt welfare scenario is rapidly headed down the gurgler. That system destroys the future generations in the name of compassion.
It sounds great, but does not work. And the more diverse the society, the more it does not work. It has sent the US bankrupt, and it is now irreversible. What cannot be paid will not be paid. Then some semblance of my scenario will again be implemented.
The problem with socialism is that you run out of other people’s money. Star is not a dyed in the wool socialist, but the biggest cost of socialism is welfare, which he advocates (as he is a compassionate soul) in at least certain circumstances. It cannot and will not be afforded in the end.
“…the biggest cost of socialism is welfare, which he advocates (as he is a compassionate soul) in at least certain circumstances. It cannot and will not be afforded in the end.”
The biggest cost to technological advances, monopolistic practices and unfettered corporatism is job loss on a massive scale and eventual social unrest. This is why I am of the opinion that you are both right.
Show me a blue collar worker who could match my father in this modern time. You can’t. Hell, you’d be hard pressed to find a household with 2 working parents that can even do that. Maybe if they both work for the government. I know many homes with 2 white collar career workers who cannot duplicate my father’s life.
Kindness is a great thing, but it is voluntary…The taxes to fund SS are not voluntary. If my SS contributions had been placed 50-50 in the stock and bond markets, rather than being used to fund wars, I would be getting 3x more than I am receiving now from Uncle Sam…But in any event, the retirement problems of those who do not save are not, in any way, my problem–unless I choose to voluntarily provide assistance.
I have just this morning been able to read this post, having delayed the reading of RG’s very well written and thoughtful essay and discussion. I find myself thankful I have the time to read and think about things more these days.
I have several thoughts about the article, which I will reserve for my own comment to Robert below, later, when I have formed an opinion worth sharing.
But, I want to congratulate Robert for inspiring one of the best examples of an intellectual discussion of moral and ethical issues at a level you will see no where else but on TBP. And those of use with a front row seat these past years are glad to be here for the encore from time to time.
Llpoh, wip, strfckr, pyrr, others… interesting discussion and interaction. Would that all our discussions be so civil…
And, cue the nasty banter…
Thank you, that’s what I’m here for.
Both of you are right….damn, now that’s a mindfuck ain’t it?
Both are right, I think is right.
Llpoh’s argument cannot rationally be argued with, and the same can be said for Star’s compassion.
One thing that bothers me is the actual rules for SS are so fucked up, proving the fact that government can’t do anything right, efficient or whatever.
I’m retired and receive SS. I did well enough in my working life that I could live without it if necessary, but why would I not take it after paying the tax for over 40 years?
In a relatively small community, I have friends that get less than $600 month, and of necessity live very frugally, and others who are multi-millionaires and still collect $2800/month in SS benefits that they don’t need. WTF!
BTW, we drink Keystone Light at one place, and Knob Creek bourbon at the other; you figure out where.
Both are not right. Forced takings, theft whatever the form, is criminal. Not compassionate. Not civilized. Not social.
You wouldn’t take it ntrop because you know its being stolen from other people. Because you know it’s a ponzi scam.
Well llpoh, don’t you hate that you are forced to pay various u.s. taxes in Oz? I am well aware of the credits, etc, but even after leaving the country you are obligated to file unless you ever become a non u.s. Citizen. Pain in the ass, I know, living in kiwi land.
Didius – slaves to the end.
Between you and your employer’s contribution, it is 12.4%. Half of that COULD be more money from your employer in pay, ALL of it could be going into your OWN retirement account that you could then WILL to your heirs or leave to your spouse for her retirement (or just living expenses), etc. By that same token, everyone who works could have that money available to them to do with as THEY SEE FIT. Why should the GOVERNMENT DECIDE? If there is a need for REAL CHARITY, then let’s be honest about the need and fill that need with PRIVATE CHARITY. SS is nothing more than a wealth-transfer scheme with a bunch of worthless government bureaucrats getting a paycheck to boot.
There sure are a lot of collectivists on this site…whodathunkit?
Push the right buttons and they all come out of hiding. Sad. A lack of principles is how we got to where we are in this country. And NO, charity and helping your fellow man is NOT the same as giving government the go-ahead to STEAL on behalf of your guilt or “generosity.”
Not an argument…
Social security income is taxed.
My father, who is 80, pays for Medicare plus medigap which is $600 per month.
He drives a school bus full-time.
Taxation with representation to double taxation with representation to treble, quadruple, quintuple, etc taxation all with representation. Tax me once, shame on you. tax me 2-3-4-5∞ times, well, you know.
The American people cannot take care of themselves when everything is so rigged against us. Just sayin’. John
There is a fairly “new” redistribution schema ongoing in the recently disconnected from service veteran world. I’ve mentioned some of the VA excesses I’ve seen here from time to time, but I am seeking statistics regarding disability pensions awarded for service-connected injuries resulting in military separation (a whole new category of service-connected disabled veteran — one who will become dependent upon the government stipend for noble reasons), thus making his family’s dependency something the taxpayer must pay as a debt of honor to the soldier.
I am not ashamed to say I looked into the process to see if my becoming 100% disabled due to service-connected cause would pay my son’s college tuition under some affiliated program and guess what? It WOULD, but it would have been a bit of a stretch to convince any but the worst doctor I’m completely disabled. I didn’t get my ducks in line before I separated. If I’d seen a mental health counselor at least to complain about depression over losing my ovary… oh, that story is below. Anyway, if I had a toehold to get a valid diagnosis for depression CAUSED by service-connected injury or trauma, I could probably parlay that into a complete disability with mental health benefits to boot. But, llpoh will be glad I didn’t want to go that route and so the root of dependency never grabbed hold. I can only imagine that, by now, 2o something years later, I would probably be quite disabled from all the years trying to convince the VA they should keep paying me to be disabled. And my son, who paid for a full year of his tuition with savings from tips from customers for bagging and loading groceries at the AFB Commissary for two years, would never have had to work a single day because he would have been the dependent of a disabled Vet, qualified for a whole new category of education assistance for someone who can play the game. Good thing for him I didn’t grab that root. That is one nasty weed: dependency.
Anyway, I do not disparage our poor soldiers returning from foreign soil with arms, legs and souls torn apart. But I am here to tell you there is not only a new breed of soldier in the field; there is a new breed of veteran coming home who is traumatized by what he has seen and done. He needs some therapy and in order to get it, he has to be diagnosed. A diagnosis of combat-related PTSD is gold to a VA disability seeking veteran, no matter how long they were on active duty. A grant of 30% service connection guarantees a monthly disability compensation (unfunded liability deluxe) for the rest of one’s life. How many of those diagnoses do you think exist?
Here’s a concrete example from my own business and go ahead and toss stones… I live in an oak log home:
I receive about 90 dollars monthly for an ovary lost as a result of poor postnatal care in the USAF. It is compensation for the loss of a reproductive organ and while it is zero percent disabling, it has a monetary value I am compensated for because I lost it as a result of military service. I “lost” that ovary at age 32 (am 56 now), separated at age 33, applied for veterans benefits for college and discovered the loophole in the VA system as a chance happening. I volunteered to work at the VA Hospital office sorting records salvaged from the Murrah Building bombing. Over the months helping there, I learned a lot about how things really work in the VA system. While I’m delighted it paid for my college (a sweet deal that is also available to service connected vets… you would not believe the type of stuff the VA pays for as “school supplies” for their veterans), I have to wonder how many of these injured vets are in the same program now. All unfunded but promised liabilities. I know it seems very tacky of me to have benefitted from a loophole that I’m suggesting needs to be closed, but I see the potential for a neverending obligation to pay for neverending victims of military injury. This is one bud that probably needs nipping.
It has to be an enormous amount… I bet hundreds of billions if not trillions.
Let me see. 90 dollars a month since I was about 32. Oh, and since there was emergency surgery involved, I got three months of 100% retro compensation in a lump sum check for about $7,000. I remember I got the brown envelope in the mail and saw it was a VA check… I assumed it was the $85 or so that came each month since I’d started my post AF college days and stay at home momhood. It was my fun money and I didn’t even think about it. When I opened that envelope and saw the amount, I thought there must be a mistake and hid it in a drawer. I was a bit of a rube.
Anyway, the way the VA worked, at least then, was a check arrived via US Mail, then a letter of explanation followed. It was a few days before I got the letter and discovered that the ovary was worth not only 90 bucks spending money each month, but we could go ahead and get that new car. So, let’s see. 7,000 plus 90 dollars x 12 months x 24 years (25,920) and I’ve probably got another 25 years or so in me, so that ovary of mine turned out to be about a 50,000 PLUS unfunded liability. How many of those do you think are out there in one form or another?
I revised this comment so it makes sense. I hope someone sees and comments. EC? Did you sustain any injury while on active duty? Is it in your service record?
I’m going to try ONE MORE TIME to get someone with some insight into VA disability to read my anecdote and comment and tell me if they have any idea what kind of numbers I’m looking at. Oh and I hope Stucky sees this to realize I not only get Tramadol for my dog with a simple pop into the Vet’s office, I also get paid for a ruptured ovary with his tax dollars. See? I am CHILDISH
I believe that if the purchasing power of a dollar would remain the same throughout the forgotten man’s productive years then the vast majority of the feelgood social programs would be unnecessary.
Just to attempt to make ends meet, nevermind saving for a retirement, we have gone from intact families with head of household able to support entire family to homes with both spouses forced to work or broken homes with either no one working or one adult working with a whole plethora of government programs to help the broken home.
And all this is on purpose and by design.
And if banking was honest – meaning that if banks ONLY had to lend (where they make money) what people chose to save, they would be FORCED to compete with higher interest rates to attract the money. By that same token, the more people saved, the less they would have to pay to savers, but also the lower the interest rates would be for borrowers, thus sending the PROPER signal to long-term project developers that plenty of savings will be available when your project is compete. With the CRIMINAL Federal Reserve, artificially manipulating interest rates and lending money to banks at 0% with an endless supply, there is NO need to pay savers SHIT, and so nobody saves. The long-term projects still progress because interest rates are low….and there is no savings to pay for them once complete. Indeed, a criminal banking system also contributes to a lack of savings that SHOULD be growing while in the safe hands of the banking system. Instead everyone has to chase after Wall Street and its risky investments…and sometimes loses.
Hmm, that puts a little wrench in the gears of those who lament others that do not save. Save and get no return and still be fucked at retirement or chase yield in the wall street casino and still get fucked.
What to do, what to do?
Oh, I know, you’re supposed to get a degree in the few areas of study that make a good salary hoping it won’t get saturated or offshored or work for poppa daddy government or marry rich or…
Come on man…everyone’s supposed to be a successful entrepreneur. Didn’t ya know?
Best time to plant timber was a long time ago. (If you were born lucky, your great\grand\father planted it, kept it going.) Second best time to plant timber is…when?
Currency value has been under assault, eroding, since long before any of us were born. Interest rates, all the other frauds & manipulations – ditto; those things are perennial, perpetual, forever. It’s what fathers who found – clear-cutters, the lot — as opposed planting timber, do.
The machinery is still running. It changes, but it never stops running. So the wrench, & the gears it’s thrown into, are both your own. Which is not an indictment. Just descriptive.
So ‘what to do?’ What’s done is done. Hand – including how each plays it – is dealt. Like Wallace\Gibson said to his warrior-poet pals, “just be yourselves.” It’s not like you can be\do otherwise.
Till someone comes along to take my place
With a different name and a different face
(dunno who took Cocker’s place, but somebody surely has….)
Yer sittin on the doctrinaire of the liberal bay there, Ahab.
All those that disagree with you, they are not going to be forced to receive SS or Medicare when they get old, but I’ll damn well bet they will apply for and demand it when they get there (if they already haven’t done it yet).
They ain’t no better n’ us. So we don’t need to be any better than we are. Free lunch, all around…we who are about to die, salute you…see our middle fingers, dontcha’?
Not welfare?
Then explain to me why a person that has never, ever worked a single day in their entire life can collect SS at government defined retirement age?
Also, why is Medicaid / Medicare paid via the department of welfare (human services)?
Hmmm?
If a married woman raises children and stays at home to take care of them, and never works at a regular job her entire life, do you believe she should receive Social Security retirement money if her husband is also receiving it?
My question is not about Social Security in general but whether the woman’s contribution is considered covered under the Social Security taxes of her husband. This is a moral, political question, not a question of current fact.
You are correct; it is a moral, political question.
I am not sure that I have the answers for those. Least ways, not the answers that most people want to hear.
I can, however, tell you what I do. It’s all in the Bible.
Political cancels moral.
In most cases, a spouse contributed to her husband’s earnings by enabling his home life and inspiring him to do great things. So, yes, the wife is more than deserving. However, that isn’t your question, is it?
I can’t imagine anyone I know able to draw the check who would turn down the check or even thought about NOT drawing it.
Hmmm…what about the mistress? I’ve never had a wife, but there have been a number of muses. Do they all deserve a cut? Of someone else’s wallet? Well, of that great homogenized wallet in the sky? Of course, you don’t know me. His & hers, black & “white”:
So, a person makes a decision for personal reasons not to work, and that confers on the rest of society the obligation to support them in perpetuity. Ummmm. No. Just stop it. That is ridiculous. And that somehow the contributions of one should cover another is equally absurd.
Social security is broke. The money has been spent. It needs to be buried. Keeping the walking dead alive makes no sense. And it went broke by covering non-contributors and by paying out far more than the individuals contributed.
“I can’t imagine anyone I know able to draw the check who would turn down the check or even thought about NOT drawing it.”
Therein lies the problem.
You know what, rdawg? I think you are right. For instance, my own little dilemma about that ovary that died whilst I was pregnant and the doctor missed it? Well, I always assumed it was a stroke of luck that it was a disabling condition but had no real degree of disablement. Luck that it qualified me for a small stipend and a “foot in the door” for VA medical treatment should further problems arise with the ovary. (They did, years later, but that is another story I’ve probably told).
I assumed that the little compensation for the ovary would end when its useful function was really not a detriment to me. But, it turns out that even though the other ruptured a few years later, another partially regenerated, causing a second full hysterectomy… EGAD, well apparently I will be compensated for the loss of that reproductive organ until I die or the Treasury runs out of your money. As a honorable (says so on my discharge!) military service-connected (Desert Storm decorated… almost combat related) disabled veteran (see how that category slips right on when needed for “identity comparison?”), I will be drawing this 90 dollars as a priority payee on the list yet not one dime of my “pension” was funded. Almost all disabled Veterans are unfunded liabilities, I bet. Who can tell me? Hmmmmm.
Well, it is a political bombshell. Ka Boom.
I think that’s ridiculous and if I could figure out how to stop getting the 90 bucks without turning off the VA’s medical obligation I would consider it, but record keeping and sharing is not one of the government’s best skills. (I don’t use them, but COULD, if necessary). Since the Veteran’s Choice option (mentioned by Trump for good reason) has developed into a working option for rural military retirees, I made use of it recently with cataract surgery. So far, so good.
Yes. 30 pieces of silver.
But the narrative (nurture colluding with nature), pumped in via meat needle, “convinces” it’s not a payoff in a division of spoils scheme.
Chemicals, incl magic words, in the blood, tissues, are so tightly bound up with identity that there’s no gainsaying the proposition, “this is me, the real me.”
When, for example, Prozac first hit, that sentiment was expressed widely: finally, a drug that lets out me, the real me. It ain’t true. But true up against “tastes great – less filling” rarely stands a chance. Feeling’ good is good enough for me & Bobby McGee.
Meat Injectors
And of course, nobody, or hardly anybody, thinks they’re bad people. Not even the worst people lack for narrative that makes them shine. If it feels good, that’s me, & I am good, to boot. A good, shiny, boot…on your neck, forever.
That line from Frey’s “Smuggler’s Blues”: the lure of easy money has a very strong appeal.
But easy money, net & overall, is the *hardest* money there is; blowback, counterproductive, ‘unintended consequences.’ Shortcuts are death by a 1000 cuts.
And the reality of humanity, in too much of the general level – from pinto to Pluto – is a spherical blade, flying thru space & time, cutting up everybody. It’s all pinto gas tanks; all that varies is the size of the tank – and thus the magnitude of the rear end collision explosions; cap in yer ass indeed. Or, even if your ass is capless, the roads are thronged with IED’s on wheels. Gauntlet. Only Clint & what’s-her-face make it. (Sondra Locke – golddigger or woman wronged? Eastwood may have more than a little inner Munny, Callahan in him.)
On the one hand, the slice & dice is self inflicted. On the other hand, it’s a design feature, not a bug, & cannot be transcended. Or recalled by Ford. Or run out of town by Nader. Individuals who get past it in themselves, relatively, to whatever extent, are still more than surrounded by individuals who haven’t gotten past it, & won’t. Most want safety – not liberty – while being unsafe at any speed.
Catch-22 is real. Revolutioning in place. Doppelgangering back\forth, doc Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. And this inborn venality – get evenality, get overnality – is heart of zero sum gaming, prisoner’s dilemma. Perversity.
The original premise of Social Security was not bad. However, whatever government controls quickly becomes corrupt and inefficient and horribly expensive, SS being an excellent example. Just the very loose definition of “disability” allows millions of able-bodied people to collect money they do not deserve, often for decades. Hey, why not take advantage of a system that will make your life a little rosier? I know people who fit this category and probably so do you.
A middle class person of this era can certainly plan and save enough for a comfortable retirement. However, it requires sacrifices that are counter cultural that many are not willing to make.
“A middle class person of this era can certainly plan and save enough for a comfortable retirement. However, it requires sacrifices that are counter cultural that many are not willing to make.”
Amen. 100% true for sure. I have seen it first hand.
Countercultural, as in i cain’t counter culture, is the twinky defense, in drag.
Saw a flick about Cesar Chavez recently. Not in the flick, but cc said one of the best things ever: no such thing as means & ends. everything you do is an end in itself. Of course, that mucho disregards joining ‘em to “beat ‘em.”
And the huge “cultural” fly in the buttermilk with that gang was the catholic cultural pavlov’d response to have 10 kids while migrant crop picking, thereby locking most of the pickers into generational migrant crop picking under thumb of racist, venal, patriarchal\authoritarian assholes – which describes the priests as well as the growers. It’s got a good beat & those people, lead & follow, had to dance to it. cuz the twinkys.
But cc is good example of above avg that gets marked below avg for his skin color – by below avgasbags with ‘above avg’ skin color.
Counter cultural as in
Don’t have kids to raise because they will require your retirement savings
If you do have kids, they have to live in a funky neighborhood with poor schools because a good neighborhood would require use of your retirement savings
Also forget braces, music lessons and team sports for the kids – too much money taken from retirement funding
Forget making happy memories with the kids on vacations because the vacation money must be used to save for retirement
Shop at thrift stores to clothe everybody. Sometimes WalMart
Get along with flip phones and your Tracfone plan
Buy inexpensive crap food to fill everyone’s bellies
Can’t save for kids’ education either. They will just have to go into debt
All doable – and what most middle class families reject.
TPTB are killing the Golden Goose. They want the middle class to save/invest to help Wall Street, they want them to pay high taxes to fund a bloated, disgusting government, and they want them to buy a lot of stuff to keep the economy rolling.
The turnips need a blood transfusion.
Yeah. The pluto’s got the midas touch. Right up until it turns into the sadim touch. But it’s not just them, that gang, doing this deed. The too small to succeed gang is just as in on it. The runts of the litter still copy, emulate, to furthest extent possible, those they love to hate. Symbiosis underlies the status quo halitosis.
Starting at “middle class families” does not start at the beginning. Substitute “dodge demon,” that $100K hotrod I clipped the other day, for “mcf.” If you can’t pay for it, & afford it after paying for it, you should reject the purchase. Does that even need to be said? And yet, emulating runts will go into debt (which means more than just money debt), finance & lease the damn thing anyway, if someone will give them enough rope.
I had quite a few low pay la migra gigs starting out. No way to not “reject” middleclass livin’. I couldn’t pay for it. Substitute kids for mc, that’s the migrant pickers scenario. But I still was able to live small & bank surplus, generate capital accumulations over time. As, I gotta’, assume did some migrant pickers.
I also had one good paying gig that applies the same lens-lesson of reality. It was a factory setting, & it ran, with 4 shifts, 24\7. Robots came in, more & more. Offshore competitive pressure, more & more. Union came in twice for a vote – lost both times. But despite the writing on the walls, which was plain to see to by everyone working there, & talked about all the time, most of them spent like tomorrow, already in face, would never come. They bought houses. Cars. Harleys. Vacations. Wives. And kids. And when the factory was shuttered, a few years after I left, a lot of those people were completely upside down.
Despite knowing the screw was coming for them, they kept on, anyway. On my way out, one guy congratulated me, saying “at least somebody was getting out of there.” Nobody was keeping him there – except him.
You’re not middleclass unless you can pay the freight. If you pretend to be middleclass while someone else pays the freight, you are, in fact, low class. And that goes extra for the color of law, rent extracting plutos. They are as fake as the day is long. But shake & bake’s comin’, just as it did at that factory, for minnows & plutos alike.
I forget, sometimes I almost grasp what you mean.
Ah, but a wo\man’s reach should exceed grasp, or what’s heaven for?
I saw what you did there. Well played. 101 right here. I’ll be watching you now too.
Indeed, my mother in law referred to “widows and orphans” when she would talk about Social Security. She was born in the 20s and was old enough to be hit with the lies and propaganda when it was adopted in 1934. She still believed those lies till the day she died. If all we need to cover is “widows and orphans,” we could easily do it for a few million a year and not generate what is now estimated to be nearly $17,000,000,000,000 in unfunded liabilities to date for the program.
The original – & still the best! – premise is the money you make is not yours.
All of the people who say to me “how in the world were you able to retire so young” get the same answer: I knew who to do without. Now, I get to do WITH.
(It was not the 90 dollar stipend for the ovary. Although I did invest some of it in JNJ early on, thinking diapers were big business (and they are!!!! imagine when they convince the turd world they need disposable diapers!), but Nick sold that long ago.)
Haha… I knew “how” to do without, but in a way, “who” works as well.
How has a lot to do with who.
Howton hears a Who – doomporntoon vs “a person’s a person, no matter how small”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIQFTBsGccA
Trial & error, American Woman, I prefer the guess (tho Lenny Kravitz covers good, too):
I would imagine Mr. Geisel told us how to manage a lot of things, didn’t he? What was that lorax’s problem?
“The Lorax: Which way does a tree fall?
The Once-ler: Uh, down?
The Lorax: A tree falls the way it leans. Be careful which way you lean.”
“I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.”
― Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
Of timber planters & clear cutters. Short time preference pragmatism cuz in the long run we’re all dead. Which justifies climbing over bodies in the short run. And cuz it’ll never happen to me. I’m a climber. Not a body.
Indeed. Nobody. The Oxbow lynchers (I think I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree. With a noose hanging from a limb.): yes we have no bodies, having slipped on that borg\matrix\nationalist banana peel. It’ll never happen to me. There is no me.
Such elegance. And people accuse me of jibberjabber.
The Lovers of the Poor by Gwendolyn Brooks
The Ladies from the Ladies’ Betterment
League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall.
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their love, so barbarously fair.
Whose mothers taught: You’d better not be cruel!
You had better not throw stones upon the wrens!
Herein they kiss and coddle and assault
Anew and dearly in the innocence
With which they baffle nature. Who are full,
Sleek, tender-clad, fit, fiftyish, a-glow, all
Sweetly abortive, hinting at fat fruit,
Judge it high time that fiftyish fingers felt
Beneath the lovelier planes of enterprise.
To resurrect. To moisten with milky chill.
To be a random hitching post or plush.
To be, for wet eyes, random and handy hem.
Their guild is giving money to the poor.
The worthy poor. The very very worthy
And beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy?
Perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim
Nor–passionate. In truth, what they could wish
Is–something less than derelict or dull.
Not staunch enough to stab, though, gaze for gaze!
God shield them sharply from the beggar-bold!
The noxious needy ones whose battle’s bald
Nonetheless for being voiceless, hits one down.
But it’s all so bad! and entirely too much for them.
The stench; the urine, cabbage, and dead beans,
Dead porridges of assorted dusty grains,
The old smoke, heavy diapers, and, they’re told,
Something called chitterlings. The darkness. Drawn
Darkness, or dirty light. The soil that stirs.
The soil that looks the soil of centuries.
And for that matter the general oldness. Old
Wood. Old marble. Old tile. Old old old.
Note homekind Oldness! Not Lake Forest, Glencoe.
Nothing is sturdy, nothing is majestic,
There is no quiet drama, no rubbed glaze, no
Unkillable infirmity of such
A tasteful turn as lately they have left,
Glencoe, Lake Forest, and to which their cars
Must presently restore them. When they’re done
With dullards and distortions of this fistic
Patience of the poor and put-upon.
They’ve never seen such a make-do-ness as
Newspaper rugs before! In this, this “flat,”
Their hostess is gathering up the oozed, the rich
Rugs of the morning (tattered! the bespattered . . . ),
Readies to spread clean rugs for afternoon.
Here is a scene for you. The Ladies look,
In horror, behind a substantial citizeness
Whose trains clank out across her swollen heart.
Who, arms akimbo, almost fills a door.
All tumbling children, quilts dragged to the floor
And tortured thereover, potato peelings, soft-
Eyed kitten, hunched-up, haggard, to-be-hurt.
Their League is allotting largesse to the Lost.
But to put their clean, their pretty money, to put
Their money collected from delicate rose-fingers
Tipped with their hundred flawless rose-nails seems . . .
They own Spode, Lowestoft, candelabra,
Mantels, and hostess gowns, and sunburst clocks,
Turtle soup, Chippendale, red satin “hangings,”
Aubussons and Hattie Carnegie. They Winter
In Palm Beach; cross the Water in June; attend,
When suitable, the nice Art Institute;
Buy the right books in the best bindings; saunter
On Michigan, Easter mornings, in sun or wind.
Oh Squalor! This sick four-story hulk, this fibre
With fissures everywhere! Why, what are bringings
Of loathe-love largesse? What shall peril hungers
So old old, what shall flatter the desolate?
Tin can, blocked fire escape and chitterling
And swaggering seeking youth and the puzzled wreckage
Of the middle passage, and urine and stale shames
And, again, the porridges of the underslung
And children children children. Heavens! That
Was a rat, surely, off there, in the shadows? Long
And long-tailed? Gray? The Ladies from the Ladies’
Betterment League agree it will be better
To achieve the outer air that rights and steadies,
To hie to a house that does not holler, to ring
Bells elsetime, better presently to cater
To no more Possibilities, to get
Away. Perhaps the money can be posted.
Perhaps they two may choose another Slum!
Some serious sooty half-unhappy home!–
Where loathe-lover likelier may be invested.
Keeping their scented bodies in the center
Of the hall as they walk down the hysterical hall,
They allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall,
Are off at what they manage of a canter,
And, resuming all the clues of what they were,
Try to avoid inhaling the laden air.
No word games on this one… just a favored poem from a long ago class. I added paragraph returns for pauses.
That’s excellent. Going to save it. She more than gives that Dickens lad(d)y a run for the money. I think the African-American Woman is much more psychologically astute. Even tho he prolly made more $. Wonder what he’d say about it. And she’s another example of a baby the bathwater throwers would disregard. Uti•lit•arians.
Urinary tract infections can make a person crazy. Lit•erally as any 1 or 2d literature can make crazy…or cloak pre-existing crazy. Those infections, often via catheter, are a big chunk of the carnage that is held in old people warehouses. And those are more than metaphor for the warehouses called countries; Siamese synonyms.
Also has me flashing on Horace’s “To save a man’s life against his will is the same as killing him.” Hurting people via political process, color of law, & then tending, a bit, to the wounds inflicted – that may be the same as killing them twice.
That recent Cesar Chavez movie treatment. One of the main adversaries was a Croatian immigrant, table grape grower. Played by Malkovich – who says he may be Croat, paternal side – looks down on these other immigrants as children, who needs be helped, firmly. Spare the rod & all that jazz. & the rod included baton wielding cops (who always work for, take orders from, state\color o’ law wielders), insecticide dousing of strikers, shooting them, & Ronald Reagan, weighing in that the boycott tactics were immoral. RR could a’ been an actor, but he wasn’t that good, so he wound up there.
Medicaid is not Medicare. They are two different programs.
Isn’t the driver of the National Debt the ‘Federal Reserve Note’?
E/O 11,110 established the ‘United States Note’ and eliminated interest payments to private interests for the creation of money.
From prior reading, that E/O has never been rescinded.
But the man who put it in place….JFK….was rescinded so to speak (and as likely for that as everything else he did to piss off the globalists that murdered him).
My compliments to Mr. Gore on this extremely well-written piece.
And, I liked that he included the words ‘and doesn’t default’, that most leave out:
“Someone always pays, either present taxpayers or, when the government borrows the money and doesn’t default, future ones.”
Cuz default is the normal course – where we are headed unless a sizeable asteroid strikes earth.
Proving once again how slavery is rooted in economics.
A very astute piece, Robert, complete with a dystopian twist at the end that makes your point quite poignantly.
A quote for the ages right here:
That describes everything: The road, the final destination, and the underlying intentions.
This piece will not go over well in India. Too many sacred cows slain.
Thank you, Uncola. Many of my pieces do not go over well in a lot of places. I have my critics here on TBP. If I don’t piss off someone I’m not doing my job.
I see what you did there.
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The government abolished cattle slavery and replaced it with taxSlavery.
The progressive “error”planted the seeds for the bad deal. Read Murray Rothbard.
Meme•et the new gamete dealer, same as the old spermovum whale.
The purpose of natstate gov is to collateralize it’s captives, aka citizens. Before Roosevelt, after Roosevelt, all the same.
Particular persons, or particular times – leaves of weeds – are scaped, the root is left intact, the mandscape doesn’t change. Fundamental attribution errors hiding…what? Cui bono.
Mic *is* part of the redistributive complex. & those jaggeroffs can’t get no satisfaction.
Authoritarianism, cowardice, venality serially ‘destroy the world.’ But not in that order.
The Hannibal colLecterive good. Plus some fava beans, chianti. Create collective to “fight” collective. Unionize, Cesar Chavez. Beat them by becoming them.
Us. Them. & the edge of that wooden nickel. Ménage à (de)troi(t)s.
This ain’t polyamory. It’s polycowardly.
& polly wanna cracker. Somebody else’s cracker.
Crack spreads, cracked heads, crack ‘caine, whatever it takes. Jim crack corn I don’t care.
Periodically the strawberries “disappear,” the Caine cracks, mutinies, & Bogart the Queeg plays with his balls, looking for bearings. But just about everybody onboard is up to their eyeballs in Queequegery & hoist on their own harpoons.
Promotions, demotions, wheel…of…fortune…revolutions. Miss American pie-spinner – Vanna’s her name – smiles. The gerbils gibber. And buy vowels. With OPM. To complete the magic words that “pay.” And are gobsmacked each time, every time, they cut their own towline.
Ishmael walks this way, the whale swims that way, & the Pequotidians go down. Way down. Drowntown.
Mobius strippers just spin-spin-spin that pole, collect dollar bills in their g(ov)-strings, & social diseases behind that. And they call it civilization. Sounds better than syphilisation.
i-forget’s comments must be very entertaining to some Lithuanian reading it through Google translate.
Yep, it’s quite a skill to write like that.
Writin’ like that got me invited to the hard scrabble farm. But he may have been teasin’. ☻
Dunno ‘bout Lithuanians, but they’re sure entertaining to me, daddysteve.
Met a Hungarian recently. Zoltan. He joined the circus at 17. Wound up in Vegas. The Cirque Du Soleil trapeze act. When he got into his 40’s, too old for flying, he switched to rigging. Eventually he was downsized. Moved to the mountains. He told me the good-sounding things I’ve heard about Hungary, eastern Europe generally, are all crap. Just as corrupt & screwed up as most places. His extended family remains there, but he’s never going back.
Also said he drives everywhere, won’t be subjected to the socially securitized tsa goons at airports. But no way to avoid & evade the ss goons that lien on his paychecks.
I always thought i forget had had a few too many bourbons whilst surfing.
Now I realize it is more of William S. Burroughs type of heroin stream of consciousness vomit.
Of time & the river, torpedo. That’s digestion you see, rather than vomit. Maybe you’d benefit by adding HCL supplementation to your diet. Old stomachs don’t make the acid younger ones did. Malnutrition ensues. And that begets malinvestments, such as believing in things you don’t understand….
No, Jimmy, that was by James Joyce. Although I prefer James Jones who wrote From Here to Eternity, not Jim Jones who went To Hell for Eternity. It is more free-association but with a purpose. Not that Robin Williams bullshit. Anyway, if it was a stream of consciousness as you claim, well it isn’t so fuck you.
You’re a good man, FR. And I had a high opinion of Robin Williams, esp in his prime, too. I see counterpunchers as poets, dancers, more well put together than the Marquess of Queensberry ruled sluggers – which is most of the ring of life. Oscar lost to the brute, but so do we all.
Didn’t read any Jones. Saw the flickering version of Eternity. Wracked my slipping memory to no avail. I forget. But the ww2 novel that mostly escapes memory had a main character, sergeant class or thereabouts, who in PTSD nightmares screamed “they got us bracketed!” A reference to mortar fire. And he, or quite possibly another character, lost his wife to a man who “kisses me down there; so you see why I won’t be giving him up,” & jumped off troopship mid ocean.
Oral-verbal is magical, sexy, indeed. I think I’ve mentioned that, a time or two. Damn cunning linguists.
I think my reply to Stuck on Muck’s article disappeared for lack of subtlety such as yours. It was too in your face or vice versa.
Saw a ban. Didn’t know posts were circumcised here.
Nothing like that. I think the re-numbering of Muck’s article may have affected the original. There are gremlins that tell you your posting too fast or they steal your whole comment, so that it doesn’t surprise me if his re-numbering killed the entire previous thread. No biggie, my entire comment was the equivalent of a penis doodle which I thought Stuck might like – the comment, I mean.
I liked his comment today which was in the same gutter vein; it was about his ex’s hairy…
I wonder if she was Moozie? That would explain the “a moose tried to gore me” dream.
There’s some interesting imagery in this.
It makes me wonder.
So, having gone back and read it and given it some critical review, I’ve come up with a few ideas. But mostly, I have got to tell you that the reference to other people’s money strikes a chord. OPM. Opium. That, i forget, is a phonetic connect I had yet to detect.
And about the “synchronicty” of MOIA. Missing ovaries in action.
That is indeed a good connect. I hadn’t noticed it. OPM of the masses.
OPM has potential.
The New Deal never really worked under Roosevelt. It took WW2 to hoover up the Hoovervilles and the American military victory to give the US the financial and economic power to fund New Deal programs for the first 20 postwar years. During this time unions were powerful and could restrain management compensation and by doing so offer workers rising wages. Land was cheap just outside our big cities so affordable housing could be built and workers could use the new highways to commute to their city jobs in the cars they buy with their wages. The US produced its own cheap oil too and immigration was limited mostly to GI’s bringing wives home from Europe.
Things began to go sideways when LBJ expanded social programs with his Great Society. Negroes were subsidized and the cost of this forced Nixon to abandon the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates in 1971. Still the system held together for a few more decades because of A. The baby boom generation was so much larger than the retiring ‘Silent Generation’ and could pay the pensions and medicare costs of that smaller cohort and B. The boost in productivity from the IT and PC revolution.
Now those ancient programs of FDR and LBJ are falling apart under the strains of massive immigration of poor, low skilled mestizos and deteriorating worker to beneficiary ratios for Social Security and Medicare. Debt is building up and debt service costs will force cutbacks in government spending. There is no way out of the corner we have painted ourselves into.
The government can’t give anybody anything unless it steals that thing from someone else first.
And you are right that it was Roosevelt that changed the way America thought, but it was Wilson who pioneered the way:
“…Every man’s life is at the call of the nation and so must be every man’s property…. The state is all; the individual is of importance only as he contributes to the welfare of the state. His property is his only as the state does not need it. He must hold his life and possessions at the call of the state…” — Bernard Baruch, head of the Wilson War Industries Board, August 1918
FDR’s own cabinet knew wealth redistribution was counterproductive. You won’t read this quote in any history books in our government schools:
“…We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before, and it does not work… I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started — and an enormous debt to boot.” — Henry Morgenthau (FDR’s Treasury Secretary)
The more things change, the more they stay the same…
Steve C.
I should have hat tipped Wilson. He got us going with the income tax and the Federal Reserve, both enablers of the welfare state. That’s a good quote from Baruch and a good, and indeed mostly ignored quote by Henry Morgenthau. (I think I read it in either Amity Shlae’s book or John T. Flynn’s book, The Roosevelt Myth, another fine book.)
Mr. Gore, the federal reserve and the income tax on bank credit are inextricably linked. The 16th amendment is a separate flavor of income tax. The former is the most intrusive as far as wages are concerned and effect on every day Americans, the latter not at all on wages and only minor on everyday Americans.
Brian,
Please, call me Robert or Bob. 60 is just around the corner and I’m feeling old enough as it is.
How close is the corner, just for truth?
May this year.
Copy that Bob!
One other point…Executive’s get paid mostly in stock/options/etc. Wages are a small part of their compensation, some have been paid officially $1. Income taxation of stock or options is governed by the 16th amendment. Is it any wonder why they always are lobbying for lower capital gains rates?….and they usually get it.
Meanwhile the poor schlub working 40++ hours a week is paying north of 20-50% when ALL income taxes are figured into the pot (dependent on the state and total wage income they receive of course). Fed/State/SSA/Medi income taxes…now throw property tax and everything else and you can see why the natives are pissed.
Money was supposed to be produced as a function of government and used/distributed for the benefit of the people in the USA. Gov cannot tax a governmental function by normal legal maxims. By letting the banks produce and distribute funny money they circumvent that rule.
Most illegally IMO.
I’ve never heard that before. Interesting.
Anchors away older than that. America, the compartment as many’d have it be, is a false bottom (the actual bottom goes way deeper & back). None of the bandied faces\names began anything. The can preceded them. They came. They saw. They kicked. The can. Not the habit. Veni, vedi, leechi.
“These ideas of planning [by dictators and would-be dictators] go back to Plato’s {nay, it goes back further still, than this} treatise on the form of the commonwealth. Plato was very outspoken. He planned a system ruled exclusively by philosophers. He wanted to eliminate all individual rights and decisions. Nobody should go anywhere, rest, sleep, eat, drink, wash, unless he was told to do so. Plato wanted to reduce persons to the status of pawns in his plan. What is needed is a dictator who appoints a philosopher as a kind of prime minister or president of the central board of production management. The program of all such consistent socialists—Plato and Hitler, for instance—planned also for the production of future socialists, the breeding and education of future members of society.
During the 2300 years since Plato, very little opposition has been registered to his ideas. Not even by Kant. The psychological bias in favor of socialism must be taken into consideration in discussing Marxian ideas. This is not limited to those who call themselves Marxian.”
• Ludwig von Mises (1952, 2006) Marxism Unmasked: From Delusion to Destruction (Foundation for Economic Education, ISBN 1-57246-210-8
“Only one sweeter end can readily be recalled—the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato’s honey head, and sweetly perished there?”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
forgetful, Bob Dylan mentioned this book in his Nobel prize speech. Why? He ranked it right up there with the Odyssey and All Quiet on the Western Front. I would have thought The Art of the Deal would make a better selection for today’s Keeping Up with the Kardashians material-minded audience.
I wonder if Trump’s next book will be titled, The Art of the Affair. Inquiring minds want to know. Funny how the publisher of The Enquirer thought inquiring minds wouldn’t want to know about his playmate. Pecker now has more power over the president than the FBI. Hoover must be rolling over in his grave; he collected plenty of dirt on JFK and MLK.
FR, Melville’s a fave. And not just for his work, which was genius, masterful wordsmithing of the first order. He’s also a posterboy for the fickleness of fate, the luck component. Despite his gorgeous, densely, lushly, erudite, writing, he could not pay the bills with it. Other people, after he was dead, made most of the money off his creations.
There’s all kinds of talent, genius, & lifetimes of hard-hard work, in the world that nobody ever heard of, will never hear of, because that’s just the way the cards get\got dealt. And that deals the decisive blow to self-made mannery…but not to whatever’s yours is yours, even if it’s a pure random chance lotto ticket that hits.
Whatever obama was referring to, ‘you didn’t build that’ does point to the truthfulness of letting the steam out & replacing it with humility. It ain’t linear out there. There is no recipe. Kaleidoscopic randomness prevails. And nobody is owed shelter from this storm.
Dispensations – buy your own, if you can, but the expectation that somebody else should supply them if you can’t is Ahab & the whale. The former is his – & the crewmind behind him – own worst enemy; pogo with a pegleg. The latter is his, & their, self-destructive excuse. Moby is twinky (defense). Moby made we do it.
I’ve seen Melville in Dylan. Here’s that Nobel speech you brought to table:
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2016/dylan-lecture.html
“Whatever obama was referring to, ‘you didn’t build that’ does point to the truthfulness of letting the steam out & replacing it with humility. It ain’t linear out there. There is no recipe. Kaleidoscopic randomness prevails. And nobody is owed shelter from this storm. ”
That is so very cynical, it makes me think you believe that no one is getting out of this alive.
Life’s a hard business. Very hard. Kat Hepburn put it, “Life is hard. After all, it kills you.” Not actually cynical, is it?
Pouring coffee this morning, saw thru the kitchen window a baby deer eating the needles off a baby pine tree. Snow everywhere. Sustenance scarce. I let the pine sacrifice some for the deer. Then I refereed for the pine.
There used to be a baby peach tree in that same raised bed. A bull elk, who would not be refereed, ate that peach to death a couple winters back. Maybe if I’d blasted my “eat a peach” album at him….but Duane would tell ya’ allman, & every other living thing, has to ride that motorcycle.
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This one got hit when my barn was being built. I burned it on that spot so it would not be eaten as carrion. I felt guilty because I’d brought construction to its habitat.
Oh well. Life goes one.
Since contractual agreements for retirement are basicly considered unsecured debt . The strong arm tactics of government are needed to safe guard elderly so they would not end up eating dog food , avoiding health care and waisting away till death . Oh that’s still happening because social security is just anothe tax on productive people with no promise of anything . So as corporate pirates pull the WR Grace bankruptcy or the Bain’s Capitol Shuffle and the Federal government reps do the tap dance working Americans get fucked up the poop shoot . BUT IF YOU WORKED IN GOVERNMENT YOU EARNED YOUR RETIREMENT regardless who gets fucked in the end . That too is ending because Mr & Mrs Average America have become a dry hole !
Oh such a good point Mr. Boat.
It is, and if you read my discussion/amble with an earlier discussion on this post regarding veterans benefits being a greatly unfunded liability. Sure, the Health Care and Veterans pensions are funded, but what about service-connected disabilities turning otherwise working age young men into life-long unfunded liabilities. How many do you think there are?
Recommended: “America’s Great Depression” by Murray Rothbard.
The American Revolution was sold out by the coup ‘d etat “Constitutional Convention”. Many of the Anti-Federalists foresaw the US Constitution leading to tyranny.
Here is an example of FDR “helping” the country:
“It’s hard to guess what FDR knew, or if he even cared. Consider this quote, and the documented origin:
“We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started and an enormous debt to boot.’’
I have never found that quote in researching Morgenthau’s appearance before the committee in May ’39 and I personally doubt he said it publicly at the committee.
However, the Morgenthau Diaries (Book 189, Pages 39-61) reveal a very similar quote during his private meeting on May 9, 1939, with committee members Robert Doughton and Jere Cooper. Morgenthau and his Under-Secretary John Hanes at the time were trying to push through tax reforms to encourage private industrial investment in the economy. They believed fervently that corporations had held back from capital investment throughout the Depression largely because the ballooning debt created uncertainty, which dissuaded industrialists from borrowing money to buy equipment.
The Morgenthau-Hanes program would have increased revenue to reduce the debt, thereby encouraging industry rather than public works programs to create employment. The tax reforms were deeply unpopular with the New Dealers, and the media reported that FDR himself had browbeaten Morgenthau about them. Downcast and frustrated, Morgenthau and Hanes met the Congressmen, both of whom sympathized with his efforts.
“Now, gentlemen, we have tried spending money,’’ exclaimed Morgenthau to them. “We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong, as far as I am concerned, somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to
eat. We have never made good on our promises. We have never taken care of them.
. . ’’ As was his wont, Morgenthau then rambled on for a few minutes and at the end he said: “I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started.’’
To which, Doughton added: “And an enormous debt to boot!’’
From:
Roosevelt’s debt ceiling battle actually began right after Pearl Harbor. The nation needed a revenue boost to wage and win the war.
FDR and his New Dealers wanted to finance the war “equitably”, with stiff tax rates on high incomes.
FDR proposed a 100 percent top tax rate. At a time of “grave national danger”, Roosevelt told Congress in April 1942, “no American citizen ought to have a net income, after he has paid his taxes, of more than $25,000 a year.” That would be about $380,000 in today’s dollars.
FDR “settled” for a marginal tax rate of 94%.
Of course, the ‘Progressives’ might say that makes today’s wealthy seem pretty whiny and greedy.
The Federal government is the greedy (thieving) one.
“When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.”
― Benjamin Franklin
Franklin & cabal did exactly that. They were head of the color of law free shit queue. But since there is no free shit, in reality, “stolen shit” is accurate.
Ol’ Ben was based AF. Since we’re heading for mandatory surgery, I suggest harvesting nigger organs. It’s about time we turned a net drain into a net surplus.
Robert,
Great article as usual. My own artivle on ‘rights’ paralles it.
http://hirocker.com/rights/i-got-my-rights.html
I went and read your article regarding exclusionary rights versus affirmative rights. An interesting concept and discussion, but I felt there was something lacking regarding a conclusion. What sort of hard decisions would have to be made to distinguish entitlement waste from earned compensation? While setting up workhouses to produce goods sounds extreme, in times of yore (1960s and 1970s) every little town in this region had a hat factory or a shoe factory or a shirt factory or a ad infinitum. Now, one has to drive all the way north to Perryville, hundred miles round trip for many, many laborers there, desperate to make the wage paid there and at the few other industrial sites along Interstate 55.
So, since I suggest there is a great community need for having productive labor for young hands and minds to perform rather than making meth, what hard decisions would be required to separate the wheat (earned and needed) from the chaff (earned, perhaps, but not needed).
Llpoh continues to tell us that the total US manufacturing remains the same but is done using robotics instead of people but I am telling you that within a few hours, I could visit, by car, many to sites where factories making everything from shoes to cardboard boxes when I was young are either shuttered against meth-heads seeking cooking space, have been torn down or are falling into ruin, having been abandoned for twenty years or more. But, what llpoh isn’t factoring in (and why would a business owner factor a societal good into his business model? Ah, for a tax break from a state or city in order to provide not only jobs for the local labor market, but to provide a deliverable good the community may call its own. Do you think the Wisconsin Cheese Heads always wanted to be cheeseheads?
So, I guess I see that workhouses, as long as they are not slave camps… uh oh? Do I see fema over there?
There’s a fare. But left hand should factor right’s doings. Would it were less rare such factoring gets done.
“Societal good” is an emergent property. Starting with societal good models doesn’t just put the cart ahead of the horse, it “Earl Gray, hot”’s both the cart & the horse. Shazam. It’s a kind of magic. Alchemy.
The closest cheese would be Swiss. All those holes. Even if you’re not a Green Bay Packer yourself, you’re still surrounded by them. The concussions accumulate, & synergize, and the gray matter becomes suffused with wormholes. And life is gotten out of sooner, & badly, than otherwise…possibly.
When I was bizzing I dreamed, literally, of robotic ways to dispense with people. Thought experimented & researched it, too. When people are their own worst enemies, & they work in your business, guess what? Dante obviously wasn’t a bizman, else the hell levels would have been different.
We are all our own worst enemies. The only real cross to bear – that’s it. Some small fraction is wired with whittling knives & spend the allotment shaving that dead cellulose down. But all the while are being beaten about the head & shoulders by hordes of proud cross-wielders. Concussions ensue. They got us bracketed, even if we manage to unbracket ourselves. Drain the brackish? Never.
I cannot do with my person what I wish unless the government say’s its ok.
I cannot do with my property what I wish unless the government say’s its ok.
I cannot do with my income what I wish unless the government say’s its ok.
Government at all levels STEALS over 50% of my income to spend on what THEY wish to spend it on.
If I do not hand over my money, attempt to use my property in ways they do not like, or attempt to do with my body or put into it things the government does not like, I will be thrown in a cage or worse.
WE ARE ALL THE DE-FACTO PROPERTY OF THE GOVERNMENT….and BOTH worthless major political parties have brought us to this point.
Excellent article, Robert…..one of your best. Succinct and to the point. I will be memorizing parts of it as bullet point talking points to be dispensed to Lo-Fo’s where appropriate.
A few comments about Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. Social Security was always a ponzi scheme, and IMHO was intended to be from the outset. When it was new, there were something like eight workers paying in for every beneficiary, compared to about 2 or 2.5 paying in for each beneficiary now. And most SS beneficiaries died by age 67 or 68, so they only collected benefits for two or three years. Today, beneficiaries collect for decades. As payments have always gone into the general fund, Uncle Sam got to keep all the excess and spend it, which he always did.
Were it not intended as a new revenue source, and truly intended as a trust fund for the elderly, it would have either been turned over to the insurance companies to run, or else set up and administered in exactly the same way that insurance companies administer simple annuities, with the same safeguards and reserve requirements. That it was not set up in such a way tells you all you need to know about original intent.
I began collecting SS last year. I still work, and will continue to work for the foreseeable future as it would be difficult to live on SS by itself. Nevertheless, I am glad to have it, as it does make life a little easier. But I would far rather have been presented with an actual trust fund in my name, that had been accruing compound interest for the last 46 years. Even at a modest interest rate of 2-3% per year, today it would be a substantial sum of money, which could continue to earn dividends, and which I would own, and the unused portion of which I could leave to my heirs. And had the government actually kept and managed my contributions over my lifetime and not spent them, the government would not now have to tax all of you under the age of 66 in order to pay me back. And the tragedy of the situation is that it did not have to be this way. If I live long enough, I will almost certainly collect a lot more than I ever put in. But I also fully expect that my payments will some day be seriously reduced or ended altogether, which is one of the reasons I continue to work.
As for Medicare, it suffers from the same problem as under age 65 health insurance does. That is, a free market in health care does not currently exist in this country. If such were allowed to exist, prices for medical care would collapse by 80% across the board. As a result, CMS’s outlay for Medicare beneficiaries would also be reduced by 80%. Only two things would be required to make this happen. First, a law requiring health care providers to quote exact prices in advance for everything – from office visits, to surgeries, therapies, and hospital stays. Second, government begins rigorously enforcing black letter federal anti-trust laws (Sherman Act, Clayton Act) that have been on the books for a hundred years, and have been applied to every industry except health care. This is the real problem with Medicare, and it is the reason that Medicare will bankrupt us long before even Social Security does.
As for Medicaid and Social Security Disability, these programs are more rife with fraud than most people can imagine. In my own experience, 75-80% of people I have met who were collecting SSDI were absolutely NOT disabled. And the majority of people I have met over the years who were on Medicaid were collecting a host of other benefits as well, allowing them to live a reasonably comfortable lower middle class lifestyle without having to work. In other words, they CHOOSE to be ‘poor’ because they are lazy and it is an easier life than working. And the majority that I have come in contact with are drug users as well. These programs are supporting a significant subset of people in our population who have no desire or intent to work. They wish only to be financially subsidized in their chosen way of life. These programs need to be drastically scaled back, and only the truly deserving poor retained.
You sound a bit judgmental there with your “deserving poor” comment.
The problem with socialism, & all other euphemisms for criminalism, is, well, the criminals. Even if & no matter how much “most” of the criminals “like” their ill gotten gain.
Color of law, democratic tallying of ayes & nays, etc etc etc does not alchemize crime into not crime. & word magic catechisms are a religious – zealously religious – belief system. An addiction. Besotted inebriation.
Ss hasn’t “been turned into” anything. It is a tax. Tax is theft. That’s it & that’s all. And criminals who deny their thieving is thieving, but that bank robbers, say, thieving is thieving are even less honest than bank robbers. There isn’t, has never been, will never be anything “dignified” about that. Or civilized. Criminalism, any of them, is purely anti-social.
“Workers,” comrades, can, should – or not, their life & I couldn’t care less what they do with their money – take some “chicken shit” out of their own paychecks. If they don’t, then grasshopper winter is appropriate, Aesop. The ant is not the grasshopper’s keeper.
Luck is involved. Damn right. But ‘best laid plans of mice & men’ that go awry is no argument for equality of outcome, including some baseline outcome. Rights are negative. Not positive. Nobody has a positive right to subsidy, forced at gunpoint, from 3rd parties – no matter how many yammer that they do have such rights. Those criminal takings in no way represent “kindness” or “compassion.” Nor a “moral code,” either.
Needs. Everybody has ‘em. Despite Maslow’s bs. But my needs are no valid claim on your life, & vice versa.
Am getting accustomed to your writing style, I think.
When they are standing outside the gates, shoeless and dirty, pointing at your modest accumulation from a life lived well and sensibly, they will be screaming that it is not fair that you HAVE while they HAVE NAUGHT. What will you tell them?
I like to smile a certain way in such situations. It seems to unnerve the verbalists some times. Body language, both reading & writing, is enjoyable.
But if I do speak, it might be to say that life is fare. After fare. After fare. And that trying to steal my fares will likely not fare thee well.
Fare ‘nuf.
Forgetful
I agree with you that tax is theft. I been paying the evil fuckin taxes since the late ’60’s.
Just curious, do you pay your federal taxes, and SS and Medicare? Or are you a tax protester that walks the walk, not just talks the talk?
Are you old enough to collect SS payments, and if not, will you collect when you are?
I do collect SS, and also agree it is a Ponzi. I also have kids and grandkids, and know they are being fucked by this Ponzi.
I also would guess that 98% or more of TBP followers that are eligible collect SS or similar gov bennies.
Are you contributing to the theft and crime, or are you just blowin smoke?
The latter may affect your writing, just sayin’.
Nobody pays a thief, ntroP. Mine’s been took, same as yours. Not to mention the remoras & pilot fish takings – accountants & lawyers. Born on the plantation, same as you.
TP’s that walk do it in much smaller cells, with bars on the window, if there is a window. Plus, they gotta’ TPwipe with no privacy at all.
Sayin’ a spades a spade requires no corroborating perambulation. No books or seminars, either: the Schiff shiv.
Not old enough. And never will be. I can’t stop the reign, but don’t gotta’ piss in my own ear & say it’s rainin’ Lincoln pennies from heaven either. My conscience ain’t gonna be urine soaked, & I’ll not partake of Antoinette’s urinal cake.
Only Barnes can kill Barnes. And he is. That’s a schadenfreude show I’m enjoying.
For you, others honest enough to cop (as opposed the many who refuse to own up, by asserting they own it, cuz they “paid”), this scene works, & some compassion is prolly warranted. “look what they make you give…” – there are victims & I don’t want to blame them:
To be succinct.
Tax is Theft!
“Good night America”
Nuff said…Mic drop
These horrible policies introduced socialism and began the inexorable march toward full blown Marxism and the loss of our constitution and freedom.
100!!!
91, but I bet you looked.
Robert, I’ll edit this one for comments in a bit.
Oops, didn’t make it back.
100!!
Final shot at the mark.
Ugh. Ignorance isn’t that common, but this author displays an uncommonly large degree.
Government was created actually to grow food. Yes, the great agricultural projects in the Middle East are due to government, because individuals simply can’t get their act together enough to work on multi-year projects which benefit everyone.
As for Social Security – again, more ignorance. Social Security actually makes money right now. Laws were passed in order to handle the “baby boomer” contingent – effectively increasing the Social Security tax in order to prepare for the Boomer Bulge. Unfortunately, any pot is subject to plunder, and both Republican and Democrat administrations have been taking those Social Security surpluses and spending them.
The author’s belief in private sector pensions is touching but yet another example of studied ignorance. Private sector pensions are just as bad as the public sector – worse actually because the private companies make profit from plundering their own pension schemes while the public sector uses it to plug deficit spending.
“Unfortunately, any pot is subject to plunder…”
Any plunder is subject to diversion to different plunderers, you mean?
c1ue
What “great agricultural projects in the Middle East?” For centuries families and tribes have grown food in the Middle East, because while “individuals simply can’t get their act together enough to work on multi-year projects which benefit everyone,” they usually can get their act together working individually or in small groups to engage in small-scale agricultural, raising livestock, and trade to put food on the table. Way back when, much of what they produced was taken to feed the slaves building pyramids, monuments, and the like. If you are talking about the present, inform this ignorant author what great agricultural projects in the Middle East you are referring to that feed those multitudes who can’t get their act together.
“Social Security makes money right now.” In the sense that taxes exceed payments it certainly does, and I said so in my article. “Taxes in excess of obligations go into general government funds in exchange for interest-bearing government IOUs. Without changes in existing law, payments are projected to exceed taxes in fiscal year 2020.” That second sentence certainly implies that until fiscal year 2020, taxes exceed payments. Looks like you missed that.
I never said I believe in private pensions, or that they couldn’t be subject to plunder, so I don’t know where your derived my touching belief in them. What I did say is that they “take in contributions and invest them.” That, legally, is how private pensions have to be set up. I said “If their contributions and investment returns are sufficient, they can pay their own obligations.” I contrasted their structure with Social Security, which is pay as you go, and that’s all I said about private pensions. One point I didn’t make in that comparison that I’ll make here: if those running a private pension plunder the pension, they can be subject to civil and criminal liability. Nobody’s going to be held liable when Social Security goes broke.
As a commenter, you display “an uncommonly large degree” of ignorance about what I actually wrote. Next time you comment, perhaps you can read more carefully whatever it is that you are commenting on.
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Ignore Assinonymous.
Maybe he is talking about all the ARAMCO oil seeds that were planted by governments or perhaps the poppy fields guarded by soldiers? Don’t be a dunce… the ragheads have been feeding little ragheads for centuries.
Now, is that offensive enough for you Anon?
To cu1e, Cap, clap, clap!
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Okay, Robert… you should be glad I postpone reading your posts for so long. I do so anticipating some good points I might see developed, as we saw llpoh and others do early, followed by a couple good discussions and then, iforget wowed us all with some jibberjabber that seemed to almost make sense. So, again, my comments will close your post off the featured position, but this one had a very good “run” overall and I am interested to see if a few of the commenters continue to read here and comment.
And EC, that was not an invitation and let me remind you my neighbor has a killing field behind his home. Those are two coyotes there and they ain’t posing.
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