Submitted by subwo
My take is that those in charge conspire to ensure the working classhas really nothing at the end of their lives. Inflation has eaten away the value of hard assets. Taxation has taken savings. Savings does not keep up with inflation. Now with the power of the pen congress has taken the last vehicle for middle class to pass wealth on to children and grandchildren. The (in)secure act took away the ability of passing on a Roth IRA and letting heirs take lifetime withdrawals. Now they must take the funds within 10 years. With a regular IRA the government estimates 16 Billion dollars increase in tax revenue within the next 10 years. This amount is a rounding error based on the speed in which the Government spends money.
Guest Post by Charles Hugh Smith
When will the American wage-earner finally tire of the skims, scams, fraud and lies that are now the foundations of everyday life?
You’d think that with the Federal Reserve printing trillions of dollars since 2008, we’d all be able to afford nice things. But you’d be wrong: after 11 years of Fed money-printing, nice things are even more out of reach for all but the favored few who’ve received the Fed’s bounty of freshly created currency.
The Fed’s trillions were supposed to trickle down into the real economy, but they never did. All those trillions boosted asset prices and the wealth of the $100 million yachts and private jets elite.
Instead costs have soared while wages have stagnated. If this widening gap between wages and costs were accurately presented, there would a political revolt against the Fed and those few who have benefited so immensely from Fed money-printing: the banks, financiers, corporations buying back their own shares, the owners of high-frequency trading computers, etc.
Despite the best efforts of the government’s “suppress all evidence of runaway cost inflation” functionaries, a few facts have slipped through. Let’s start with income from 1980 to the present, as per the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Note that this is all pre-government-transfer (Social Security, food stamps, etc.) income, both earned (wages) and unearned (investment income).
The top households have done very, very well in the past 20 years of Fed largesse, while the incomes of the bottom 80% have gone nowhere.
Meanwhile, big-ticket costs of living such as rent have skyrocketed: so how do we buy nice things if our wages are stagnant but the cost of essentials is rising? We borrow more money.
Exhibit A for borrowing trillions of dollars to afford nice things is student loan debt. A college degree has long been worshiped as the ultimate Nice Thing everyone who aspires to middle class Nice Things must have, and thanks to cartels and financialization, student debt-serfs now labor under a crushing load of debt:
Healthcare is also a Nice Thing that is no longer affordable. Wages nudge up a few pennies while healthcare costs continue soaring.
A new vehicle is another Nice Thing that’s increasingly out of reach unless you borrow a small fortune. My colleague Bill Rice Jr. did the grunt work of comparing apples to apples on the least expensive autos and discovered a massive divergence between “official inflation” and real-world inflation: according to the BLS, inflation in the category of “New Vehicles” has been practically non-existent for decades, while the real-world cost of new autos has risen by over 200%. No, Autos Are Not “Cheaper Now” (June 28, 2019)
Yes, autos are safer, but are they “better”? Just wait until the electronic motherboard of your Nice Thing vehicle goes out and the repair bill totals thousands of dollars. There goes your “rainy day fund” if you have one, and few do.
The real-world costs are masked or buried until The Moment of Truth: the co-pays of your healthcare are arcane and obscure until the soul-crushing bill arrives, and then your next stop is bankruptcy court.
Meanwhile, the financial assets of the Fed’s Favored Few have grown to the point that they now dominate the economic and political order. Corporations can borrow billions to buy back their own shares, further enriching the already-rich, while in the real world we watch other shoppers returning items to the supermarket shelves–they’re no longer affordable and so the customer has to put the Nice Thing back on the shelf.
While Apple stock soars to new heights, those outside the the Fed’s Favored Few are happy to get a 5-year old hand-me-down iPhone since their old iPhone or Windows OS phone died.
While Mr. Softee (Microsoft) stock soars to new heights, tens of millions of their customers with Windows 7 computers received a notice that Microsoft will no longer support Windows 7, and Mr. Softee “recommends” buying a new computer with Windows 10. Windows 7 is a perfectly adequate operating system, but like the rest of America’s tottering economy, “growth” comes only as a result of planned obsolescence, not actual improvements.
When will the American wage-earner finally tire of the skims, scams, fraud and lies that are now the foundations of everyday life? Probably never, until the toll is paid in failed health and breakdown. Tax donkeys and debt-serfs can be whipped to continue for only so long, and then they break down and cannot go on any longer. The trickle of tax donkeys and debt-serfs who can no longer go on will swell to a flood, and the Fed’s Favored Few will finally face the life-changing consequences of the Fed’s lopsided giveaway to the super-wealthy.
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Anyone that made his fortune in finance, banking, etc should be strip mined for everything they own but $1 million dollars. Then all that bogus paper pushing should be rendered obsolete by killing off the source of this flimflam, the Federal Reserve.
There’s a reset coming. TPTsB will try some new scheme that allows for creating ‘money’ out of nothing with them in control. That should be prevented at all cost. Gold & silver should once again be used as money so that it can’t be conjured up at whim.
Gov’ts of every description from school boards to the Fed Gov should be prevented from borrowing; period. That would start putting back some semblance of rationality into the system.
All interesting idea’s but these people will never relinquish the power gained by legalized theft. Even if the dollar were to be backed again by real money(gold & silver) they would not be convertible simply because they do not have it and it would prevent printing which is how these banksters got their power in the first place. I hope these cocksuckers and the motherfuckers who sold us out all die a horrible death.
After the SHTF moment, all it will take is one gov’t to back their script, even partially, with gold and/or silver and we’re off to the races for who can announce a currency with MORE backing. It will be a race to the top.
The Chinese are rumored to hold 20,000 tons of gold. The US claims 8,000 but those are probably gold plated tungsten if they exist at all. Once the currency printing press has to have something other than ink backing it up, all the US military bullshit comes to a screeching halt.
Since making war is what’s holding the economy up and transferring wealth to the scum of the earth, there will be no choice but to compete in the PM backing game unless the US wants to eliminate all imports and exports to become the new hermit kingdom.
I am aware of China’s holdings and the US gov lack of. One thought I would like to throw in the idea of competing gold backed currencies is that this would assume that all governments are sovereign and not all (or mostly) owned by the same bankers. My crystal ball is not very good so I would not throw your idea out but it does not seem very probable. It would be nice if it did happen.
Just in case you think the GOP is in any way the champion of the working man, back when they controlled both houses under Bush, they decided to “get rid” of the capital gains tax at death. They did this by passing a bill that got rid of it over the course of 10 years. Conveniently, those ten years included the likely deaths of MOST of the Greatest Generation, who made lots of gains in real estate purchases (and the inflation that ballooned their value), the stock market gains of the 1980s, and so much more. And after 1 year of being gone, the provisions of the law put it all back in place again. Greedy fucking bastards, just like the bastards who just passed this bill. Heaven forbid government CUT spending for a change. Because it hasn’t been said enough – Government is the GREATEST EVIL ever created by man.
What lawful Government would look like:
Advertisements everywhere of power and glory if you work for gov/military. Government employment offices in every locale that consist of two rooms, the application room where applicants fill out employment applications and the ‘interview room’. Everyone who fills out an application for power and glory gets admitted to the ‘interview room’ which is an empty room that once the interviewee enters the room the door locks and out of a speaker a voice says “your guilty plea of admitting to wanting to rob, extort, steal and levy war on your neighbors has been recorded and your termination is to commence now”. The floor opens up and the tyrant falls into a crematorium.
THAT is what lawful government that protects the people’s rights would look like, a government if only crematorium employment offices that ensures every tyrant is eliminated before their intent to injure is fulfilled. They want red flag pre-crime? Let’s take it to the obvious conclusion that will most protect life liberty and pursuit of happiness of those it is intended to serve.
Throwing the bums out only means they have to switch sides, the one giving you the cock-meat sandwich now gets to drill your ass.
The change of incomes of the 90% was not Justice in the slightest; it was significantly slanted in favor of the groups listed in the 1964 Civil Riots Act, and against White Males. That is another issue that will be addressed in the coming Reset.
Starve the bastards
https://www.csindy.com/coloradosprings/how-courts-and-guardians-exploit-the-elderly-and-their-estates-and-get-away-with-it/Content?oid=21038322
Another way that the crooked judicial system (and various other slimy players) make sure that well off elderly who have the misfortune of stepping into their trap never leave and are quickly drained of their assets.
Written by one of the best (and few remaining) investigative reporters in the Rocky Mountain Region.
After telling my kids to “not” touch the screen, they come out with windows 10. Sadly Insurance is one of the things making a future retirement harder. I even consider getting rid of my vehicles. I always looked forward to my vehicle tags getting cheaper each year and now the state of AZ has decided that teachers need more money and doubled their cost. funny, the teachers make more than me and get several months off each summer. Younger folks often complain to me that they see no future since their wages don’t come close to the cost of living.
In South Florida, 1966, the house my parents bought was a solid middle-class 3/1 home in Miami. The MORTGAGE was $88/month. $88!!!!
Thanks Federal Reserve.