It's the new
national pastime. Fuck baseball. Its consumption. The only true lasting
American value that's left.
Buying things.
Buying things.
People spending
money they don't have on things they don't need.
Money they don't have, on
things they don't need.
- George Carlin
That is one of my favorite quotes from the late, great stand up philosopher. Most people refer to him as a comedian. In his earlier days, he most certainly was one. But towards the end of his life, his routine was no longer funny. At least I stopped laughing when he started ranting about the ugly truths of our Brave New World Order.
From the macro level to the micro level, George summed up our National Past time quite correctly.
From a quick Googoliath search:
US Federal Government Tax Revenue for Fiscal Year 2011 - $2.3 trillion
US Federal Government Expenditures for Fiscal Year 2011 - $3.6 trillion
To be more precise...
The enacted 2011 budget called for $2.314 trillion in receipts and
$3.630 trillion in outlays, according to the September 1, 2011
Mid-Session Review.
How exactly was this $3.630 trillion ($1.316 trillion of which is money we don't have, and most certainly most of it spent on things we don't need,) spent? According to Winston over at the WikiMinistry of Truth:
24% or $835 billion to fund entitlement payments for the Medicare & Medicaid pyramid scheme;
20% or $725 billion to fund entitlement payments for the Social Security pyramid scheme;
19% or $700 billion to pay off the Military Industrial Complex to continually wage fiat wars on foreign shores;
19% or $646 billion on "non-defense discretionary" aka Government payoffs to corporate campaign contributors not a part of the military industrial complex - like Big Ag, Big Oil, and all the other "Big" entities;
12% or $465 billion on "Other" aka all the other government entities, programs and bureaucracies that rely on Federal Government outlays to exist;
and finally, 6% or $227 Billion on Interest.
Interest....on what? Why
the national debt, of course. We the sheeple must pay interest to the foreign T-Bill "investors." We also have to pay interest to the Federal Reserve Usury Serfdom Cartel for their invaluable fiat money creation services.
This last category is key when you consider the dialogue being recited by the actors in our current episode of the long running dramatic series
American Democracy.
Both sides have their version of "balancing the budget."
Both Jackasses and Pachyderms (henceforth to now be referred to as Jackyderms) will debate it as if it were the real solution to all our woes. They hold it up as the holy grail of maintaining the MANDATORY status quo of butter and guns aka our welfare/warfare system. This idea is what they endlessly debate on calling it "Balancing the Budget." Whether it's on a State, County or Federal Government level, all of our lying liars (politicians) pay lip service to this ideal.
The Pachyderms call for an amendment to the US Constitution that requires the Government to "balance" the budget. They claim we need to amend the Constitution and then cut taxes to balance the budget.
The Jackasses say no amendment is necessary, we just need to play with the numbers, cut defense spending and raise taxes and the budget can then be "balanced."
But the Jackyderms are all ignoring the real problem - whether we "balance" the budget or not, we are still in tremendous, ever escalating and exponentially expanding debt to foreign creditors and the the Federal Reserve Usury Serfdom Cartel (who create the fiat currency to fund the Governments deficit spending by selling T-bills to foreign creditors like China).
Balanced budget or not, the fundamental root of the problem never gets addressed - our system as set up and running since 1913, is based on the fact that all money spent by the Federal Government is debt-based and loaded with usurious interest that requires servicing in perpetuity....i.e. the debt never, ever gets paid off.
If the proposed budget is in the black (more tax receipts than budgeted outlays, as it was under Jackass Billy Bob), than the Government simply spends this surplus, sooner or later, rather than try and pay off the principle of the national debt.
If the proposed budget is in the red (as it's been since Pachyderm Dubya took office), than the Government simply keeps voting to raise the "debt ceiling." (And make no mistake, the Jackyderms always vote to raise that ceiling.)
In either case, the root cause of our debt never gets addressed...i.e. every single dollar that gets created by the Federal Reserve system is based on debt, and we the sheeple are stuck with the bill to service that debt.
Servicing the debt....this the lynchpin of our enslavement as a people.
Our system is
designed on purpose to keep we the sheeple debt enslaved for perpetuity.
Balanced or not, our budget NEVER gets around to actually paying off the debt. A balanced budget will still be focused on servicing our ever-escalating debt, not actually paying it off.
The Jackasses claim MORE BUTTER, LESS GUNS will balance the budget.
The Pachyderms claim LESS BUTTER, MORE GUNS will balance the budget.
Balanced or not, the debt remains, and the debt continues to grow via interest and the continual borrowing required to keep the whole system going.
The Jackyderms never really propose the only true solution...the only one that could ever really work in the long run:
Stop buying things we don't need, with money we don't have.
8 comments:
I agree wholeheartedly.
And on the same day that Producer Price inflation came up 1.7% from the prior month (not year), Bubble Ben Bernanke announces QE3?
The Fed has never done anything like that right in front of an election. Greenspan at least tried to look politically neutral. I can understand them trying to rationalize it in 2008 or just after 9/11 or something, but now...when stocks were already up about 15% for the year?
Insane.
Excellent!
Proposed budget is in the red/black
To emphasize, it's only the proposed budget. If we define an actual balanced budget as the national debt either staying the same as the previous year or decreasing, the budget hasn't been "balanced" for decades. (No, there was no surplus under President Billy Bob.) The Treasury's web page has the national debt to the penny going back decades. And the national debt has increased year over year, for decades. Sometimes slower, sometimes faster, but it's always gone up.
For debt visualization, there's
http://usdebt.kleptocracy.us/
On the buying stuff we don't need with money we don't have -
Keoni, have you ever read a book called, "Your Money or Your Life?" Basically it leads you through the process of seeing every purchase you make in terms of life hours you have to spend working to trade for the item. It really changed the way I looked at recreational shopping, which was never something I did much anyway and is something I don't do at all now. I'd rather have my husband at home with us than working a million hours a week for some piece of Walmart crap.
The ace-in-the-hole behind fiat money is speculation on it. The dollar today has the buying power of 7 cents in 1913 dollars. Devaluating the currency allows the manipulators to rake in huge profits because they can charge more for goods that are worth less. And the same works with wages. Prices go up and wages go down, while the middlemen pocket the difference.
What's needed is an alternative currency. Prior ro 1913, banks could print their own money provided they had tangible assets (like gold) to back it up.
Liberal Irony.
Bash consumption and quote Fight Club, while believing in Keynes and how we have to get people buying stuff again.
Lotsa trooth in that post mate.
Francis,
The Wall Street/Government leaders both encourage consumption and shame the population for 'consumerism' at the same time. The purpose behind that strategy is to make people feel guilty about spending on 'luxuries' while feeling good about paying hyperinflated prices for 'necessities'.
And naturally they tout giving to welfare and charities as virtuous. It's a subtle message to people that 'you too can end up a bum if you don't work harder'.
Love the post keoni, it is a sad truth. From speculation on oil prices-to raising inflation rates; EVERY president has been in the Fed's back pocket.
They can not get to 1600 Pennsylvannia without them!
Our sovereignty has been purchased long ago; too bad I can't look up the receipt to see who actually screwed us!
FYI. The fed is not the biggest holder of treasury paper.
Jus' Sayin'
Post a Comment