America Needs Jobs; Not Rebates:
Good Morning
On the surface, this may appear to be good news, but once I took my investigators shovel and dug just below the surface, a couple of minor questions came to sight. The first question is “Who is going to send out checks next month?” It certainly doesn’t appear to be
Ask and you will receive it seems, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has suggested that the government should consider yet another round of rebates.
I did say that I had a “couple” of questions. The other was, “Where is the government going to get the money to send out?” Neither King George nor the Lady Pelosi has responded to the latter inquiry.
Ya see, the government doesn’t have any money. Actually, our government is in far greater trouble than those who are receiving the rebate checks. This is due to their having to get the money back from the same people who they sent it to; plus interest.
In other words, they are borrowing the money from the Chinese who want interest on the loan. And since the governments only source of income is the ability to tax; what we really have here is a loan with interest that you didn’t have to apply for. How convenient.
The Lady Pelosi seems to have embraced this system as the means of funding the world’s greatest consumers; money in the mail if you would. This type of behavior is somewhat normal inside the beltway, where the rarified air (appa
The truth is that the prices of nearly everything we purchase are rising at such extreme levels that the $600 that some taxpayers are going to receive, won’t get them back to even, let alone spur the economy. Let’s tell it like it really is.
The whole grand scam of this rebate and the possibility of yet a second rebate coming, is to put off the inevitable collapse of our broken economy until such time that our leaders and their rich friends can think of a way to get out with all of the money and continue their privileged lifestyle.
If our leaders had any viable ideas up their sleeves, rather than a giant welfare plan, they would produce jobs for the unemployed and raise wages for the under-employed to a level that would allow them to continue making their house payments and retain their cur
But then, that became impossible when William Jefferson Clinton put pen to paper on both NAFTA and the World Trade Organization agreements.
Not one of our cur
Tomorrow, I want to talk about where I see all of this leading, and you won’t need your winter gear when we get there.
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The Inflation Tax I referenced yesterday, pretty much sums up your thoughts for today, Mike. The candidates don’t use terms like that, because they are for the most part, mis-speakers. Noe, like in , not one of the candidates will discussed in depth, the mess we are in, or how we can free ourselves forever from this kind of mess in the future; partly because they are not aware, due to living a much different life style with guaranteed benefits and wages, no matter what happens to the economy. Partly, because they have figured out that if they were to tell the truth, the American population is too uninformed to digest it and the present state of laziness will dictate, every time to go with the candidate slogans, “more jobs for everyone, yeah, yeah,yeah”. And mostly because even these elected officials do not know how our economy is supposed ot operate within the bounds of our constitution; and they don’t care.
Now electing anyone of the three absolutely unqualified candiates in the running at this time is not going to make a lot of difference in which direction our country travels or what happens with our economy for that matter; I beleive this was pointed out by one of your readers in yesterdays comments. Even if Ron Paul were elected; and he seems to be the only informed candidate in the entire mix, it would make little or no difference in our economy, since we have a nation full of uninformed, non-participants.
Having someone in office as president, who is informed and could help educate our nation (instead of figuring more ways to get into our pockets) would be a great leg up, but anyone who is enlighthened at the most elementary level, they are aware that none of the 3 candidates running for president fit this bill.
That leaves only us, the American people, to inform ourselves and in mass, contact our elected representatives on a regular basis. They do not want to lost that HIGH DOLLAR position they are in; and if we were to respond intelligently with a lrge portion of our population, they would do the right thing.
If we leave it up to to them; if we keep beleiving their mis-speakings; if we coose to remain uninformed. We can bank on things (economy) getting MUCH WORSE.
It appears to be a fairly easy choice; but have you seen the laziness, frustraton and gullibility we are shrouded in? -bb
In better times, which is to say any time in the past, they used to have a saying, “As goes GM, so goes the country”.. Have you checked GM lately..?? W…
The rebate was a harebrained idea to simulate the economy when it was first talked about…but leave it to our government to make sure a harebrained idea isn’t even executed well.
When the government first started talking about a rebate in December. I said by the time they get around to sending it out, Prices will have gone up so much that it wont even put a dent in the sagging economy. Now even King George is saying that it will help with rising gas and food prices. To bad that we wont have enough left over to boost the chinese economy as was originally planned.
It should also be noted that many families will be getting back more “rebate” than they paid in taxes to begin with. In fact, since the child tax credit (which is also misleadingly titled) was enacted, I know families who make a nice profit on their taxes each year. In my opinion this is barely more dignified than living on the dole, and should I ever find myself getting back more on my tax return than I paid into the system, I’ll be doing my part to fight inflation by cooking burgers with the balance–by which I mean I’ll be using cash instead of briquettes as a source of fuel.
Anyway, the real reason I decided to chime in here is because I loved your summary of the stimulus tax rebate–an unsolicited loan with interest. Brilliant! Backed by the Chinese, no less.
These are strange and disturbing times to be alive and awake. Fortunately for the masses, sentience is rare and ignorance is bliss.
Thanks for all of the good comments.
And yes, I have have checked out GM and Ford and Chrysler, the Big Three could easily become the bankrupt three.
As far as being too lazy to become informed and involved; absolutely. Many people that I try and talk with simply change the subject to something more important…like, “Do you believe what Brittney Spears just did?”
I believe that government has become such a large part of our lives that we accept that intrusion without question. In fact, a large potion of the Americans would rather have government run their lives…as long as things are going good.
And I agree, these are certainly strange and disturbing times.
By the way, we will have to pay income tax on the rebate loans next year.
Many people in the U.S. (nearly 50%) now pay no federal income tax due to falling under the threshold of poverty.
How much longer can we exist before the debt collapses the entire house of cards?
Jaybird said
” I know families who make a nice profit on their taxes each year. In my opinion this is barely more dignified than living on the dole, ”
I use to believe this myself. The fact of the matter is that everyone in America is on the dole one way or another and the richer you are the more you get from the dole. The government has been pumping of the Markets by keeping interest rates for low for years. This keeps the markets up becuase it is wiser to spend or invest in the stock market commodities than it is to put your money in the bank. Speaking of banks we go back to the FDIC and such. But who pays for this, everyone with the deflated dollar.
Then there are the middle class entitlements such as Social Security and Medicaid. Also the 2nd largest employer in the US is the federal government, add state and local government and I bet the goverment is now the largest employer in the US. Thats a lot of people on the dole. We call ourself a free market but I havent seen any proof of a free market in this country. Does capitalism really work without government intervion. I would like to find out.
Rod,
I speak at length to the effects of Capitalism in my book, or more correctly, unchecked capitalism.
I wrote a piece not long ago that used the game of Monopoly as a accelerated version of what eventually occurs with unchecked gorilla capitalism. One person soon ends up with all the money.
So would capitalism work if there were no laws to create checks and balances? Not a chance.
I should add something here regarding taxes and who pays those taxes.
The rich do in fact pay most of the taxes…because they have most of the money. This should not be confused with the fact that our government collects far more taxes than necessary.
However, a rich man who makes $10 million per year and pays $4 million in taxes, still has $6 million to get by on.
A person making $15,000, per year and who pays no taxes, has nothing left after basic necessity costs and at todays costs, is probably not even eating properly.
The game of Monopoly in the U.S. is reaching the end. The bottom 90% of the population own less than 30% of the total wealth.
“Hair of the dog” is how I would characterize the rebates. Borrowing more money to solve the problem caused by borrowing too much money is like taking a drink to cure a hangover. It works briefly but at the expense of a worse hangover later on.
When I hear some of my friends complain about our economy, I usually attempt to bring up some ways that could help. I attempt to identify why we are in this mess (short form) and some of the things we can do to help recover.
What happens almost immediately is, a very changed expression on my friend’s faces; a drained look. Then either they change the topic immediately or suddenly have something pressing to attend to. They do not under any circumstances want to know what the truth may bear. Has anyone else noticed this?
There are a few recently who have come by and actually asked me to help them do some research however; so maybe it just takes time? Do we really have enough time? -bb
Hey Mike, The really sad part about the “rebates” is that depending on what you spend them on(presuming that you will spend them) the money will be going back overseas to the countries that manufactuer all of our goods or produce our energy. Kind of like a dog chasing it’s tail. If we accomplish the task what have we got? Our tail? Or maybe it is a case of grabbing the bull by the tail and facing the situation! Anyway you look at it we are in deep stuff. Where do we start with this mess. Merely starting in on one spot will probably not achieve anything since we have multi-fronts to attack and must do so in sync. Obviously it will take a reasonable amount of intelligence which leaves out lawyers, politicians, and CEO’s. Arrgh! Have yourself a good one Mike!
When I do my live program in front of various groups, the older people shake their heads yes in agreement, the middle aged people assume the deer in the headlight glare, and the younger people always ask me how they can get out of this mess without giving up anything.
The older people recognize the symptoms of a recession/depression. The Middle Age don’t want to recognize the signs of a recession and the younger people don’t know what a recession is.
As stated by most of you, we can’t borrow our way out of this thing and we have to face it head on, before it overtakes us from behind.
Be sure and tune in tomorrow, I want your opinions on some of my predictions included in tomorrows article.
Thanks, Mike
Mike, It looks like a crooked game of monopoly now and the government is just trying to get the wealth in the hands of the rich sooner. When our government goes in total default who is gonna pay the payments? We dont have enough wealth in this country to pay what we owe.
The US middle class lifestyle is not sustainable in a WTO style global economy. Of course when the US consumer cant spend anymore who is gonna pick up the slack? Maybe the chinese workers making $150 a month with be able to get the credit to buy Big screen Tvs, 4000 square foot houses and SUV. Nah everything is gonna fall hard.
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/
Some lessons on how it can be. -bb
Rod,
You analysis is spot on. The U.S. debt repayment was put on the cuff for years and up until 1974, everything remained within balance. Today, that debt is impossible to pay under any circumstances.
Once we went off the gold standard (1974)…it was Katy bar the door. No limitation existed for printing and stealing money. Every politicians brother-in-law was in the chips.
It appears that the plan is to reduce the Middle Class to a working poor while retaining the wealthy as a ruling class. Nothing new about that idea.