The Fed Can Only Print Money, Not Stuff To Buy

And crap like this is why the Mrs and I are buying silver right now.

 

Still out in the sticks.  I'm amazed that picture actually loaded.

Social Security nose-diving into free-fall

Medicare sucking the hind-tit as well.  Look, this shouldn't shock anyone.  Both Medicare and Social Security were a way for the government to buy votes by robbing Peter to pay Paul, and as usual, whenever there are billions of dollars being stolen from one group, there will be the various human remoras hanging around to get a piece of the action.  Pretty soon, those remoras are getting a bigger and bigger piece of that action.

Not to mention that the whole S.S. "trust fund" is a load of crap - they've been paying benefits out of current year tax revenues ever since I can remember, and blowing any left-over cash on their social programs and other vote-buying legislation.  I'd say that money has run out, but the truth it is ran out decades ago.  They've just been borrowing and printing money ever since then.

If I could, I would destroy Social Security.  It's been nothing but a drain on my finances, and the finances of everyone my age.  It has taken 15% of my economic potential and tossed it down the shitter ever since I started working.  Imagine if I had been able to put that money into an IRA, or a mutual fund.  I'd be rich.  I'd be a damn millionaire.  Hell, even if I had just stuffed it into a savings account I'd be better off than I am now.

Social Security is nothing but a government mandated Ponzi scheme.  Bernie Madoff couldn't conceive of a swindle as big as Social Security.  Let it die.

Here are the actual numbers

Seattle's minimum wage BS has been a disaster, and the numbers back that up.  The number of hours worked fell.  Total salary fell.  Number of actual jobs?  Fell.

Forcing people who pay an arbitrary wage based on socialist pipedreams is a disaster.  Always has been, always will be.

Socialism always ends this way

Always, always, always.

“A new decree establishing that any employee in Venezuela can be effectively made to work in the country’s fields as a way to fight the current food crisis is unlawful and effectively amounts to forced labor,” Amnesty International said in a statement released on Thursday. 

President Nicolás Maduro signed a decree at the end of last week that gives powers to the labor ministry to order “all workers from the public and private sector with enough physical capabilities and technical know-how” to join a government drive aimed at increasing food production. 

They can be required to work in the agricultural sector for a 60-day period that can be extended for another 60 days “if the circumstances require it.”

I wonder if Hugo Chavez's daughter is going to be out in the fields working?

HAH!  I slay me, I really do!  She'll be on her yacht in the Gulf of Mexico enjoying her billions of dollars while the peasants starve, of course!

Reality bites Seattle in the ass

As restaurants start shutting down in advance of the $15 minimum wage.

For those who haven't worked in food service at all, lemme lay down a little knowledge for you.  In a restaurant, a 3% profit margin is GOOD.  If you start making a 5% profit margin, you might get audited because that's rather rare.

Now increase your personnel costs by 50%.  Guess what happens?  Your profit margins go into the negatives, and a negative profit margin means shutting down.  It's no surprise that restaurant owners are choosing to shut down now, rather than when they're thousands of dollars in the red.  They can see what's coming.

And while people look at the map and think the entire area around the Puget Sound is "Seattle", the truth is that there are plenty of other towns and cities all around Seattle that don't have to suffer under the kind of idiocy that Seattle does.  And guess where those businesses are going to go?

Of course, they might not go anywhere at all.  They might just leave permanently and decide that they no longer want to do business in an area run by greedy socialists who have no clue how an economy works.  That's what I would do, after all.  And I guarantee you that I'm not going to do a single bit of business within Seattle boundaries if I can help it, because the cost on me is going to skyrocket.  Why should I waste my money in Seattle when I can go thirty miles and do business in a sane area for much less cost?

The one good thing to come out of this is that people all over the country can point at Seattle and say "Well, there's the end result of what you want to do, and I for one refuse to allow you to do that to my town."

"We're 32!"

So, in a study of 34 different country's tax codes, we're number 32 in terms of competitiveness.

Anyone who's tried to open a business knows just how bad the tax situation in America is right now.  And it's going to get worse, because we don't have too many politicians with the stones to reform the tax code, even though doing so would damn near guarantee a Presidential vote later on down the line.

No, what the US Tax Code does right now is lower entrepreneurial growth, lower economic growth, and create incentives for a black market.

What, you didn't think of the black market?  If I can sell my product on the open market at $10 but taxes end up eating $5, then I can sell my product on the black market for a price greater than $5 and make more money.  $6 untaxed dollars is greater than $10 dollars that the government takes half of from me.

And not only do I keep more money in my pocket, but I starve the Liberal welfare state of tax revenue.  Double bonus.

So France Dissolved their Government

How many times is this now for France?  Five?  Six?  Not counting all the times that their government was dissolved for them by the Germans.

And amazingly, every left-wing shibboleth was tried in France.  They got more socialist.  They spent more of other people's money.  And yet....  failure.

But that won't stop the Left in America from hurling us down the same path.

Your dose of sphincter-clenching economic news

In one webpage.  Bottom Line Up Front - 91.8 million people are out of the workforce and no longer searching for work.

THAT is why the "unemployment" numbers are so low.  People have given up.  They've stopped looking for work.  And it's only going to get worse.

But the point now is to realize that when you have nearly 92 million people deserting the labor force in a country of 317 million (many of who are children too young to work), you have a catastrophic problem on your hands.

If anything, I think Roger L. Simon isn't being dire enough in his prediction.   I'm with Veeshir on this one...

Take off our bourbon approved 2% and you have somewhere  35% of Americans supporting everybody else.

That doesn’t make it any less fucking endy.

I just don’t see how that can last very long while our moral, political, economical and social betters are spending $1 trillion more a year than they’re taking in.

 The problem that the Left created is what we like to call the "Free Shit Army", or FSA for short.  The FSA is what the Democrats use to farm votes, and it's all paid for with government money to keep the slaves on the plantation.  But what happens when the money stops?  What happens when the EBT cards all flash zeroes?  We got a little taste of that last year, didn't we?

Just wait until the FSA doesn't get their monthly allotment of Free Shit, and see how long the cities go without being burned to the ground.

Stock up on ammo, folks.

If today's workers are screwed, that makes tomorrow's workers....

What, exactly?  Measured in Gold, the story of American wages is an ugly one.

The bottom line is that, in terms of gold, wages have fallen by about 87 percent. To get a stronger sense of what that means, consider that back in 1965, the minimum wage was 71 ounces of gold per year. In 2011, the senior engineer earned the equivalent of 63 ounces in gold. So, measured in gold, we see that senior engineers now earn less than what unskilled laborers earned back in 1965.

That’s right: today’s highly skilled professional is making less in real, comparative terms than yesterday’s unskilled worker.

When measured in dollars, wages and prices appear to be rising and, comparing wages to prices, we see only a small loss of purchasing power. However, prices do not tell the whole story, because they reveal nothing about costs. Costs also fell and this explains why the apparent drop in the real wages seems small.

But measured in gold—and this is crucial to understanding why we need a gold standard—we see reality with clarity. Incomes are about one tenth what they were in the 60’s. Prices are down too, but not as much.

Reminds me of something I read recently.....

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Detroit files for Bankruptcy

But don't worry.  Obama is going to make sure we're all just like Detroit soon enough.

Fucking fuckheaded fuckwit.

Detroit is what you get when the Democrat American Communist Party has full control.  Detroit is what happens with the Democrat American Communist Party implements it's plans.  Detroit is the natural result of the Democrat American Communist Party, and this country will end up just like Detroit within a few decades, if it takes that long.  We're too far gone to pull back now.  All we can do is watch the destruction, and shoot the Democrat American Communist Party members who stray too close to our compounds.

California Oyster Farmer being shut down

By the Nanny Government, who is telling the slaves and subjects what they are allowed to do.

People losing jobs?  Check.  People out of work and losing their homes?  Check.  A business that brought millions of dollars into the area being closed?  Check.

Sob, sob sob....  it's a heart-breaking article, yes, but...





THIS IS WHAT CALIFORNIA VOTED FOR.




Before you shed any tears, you need to keep that in mind.  This is what California voted for, and now they're going to get it.  How many of those farmers voted for Obama?  We-he-he-hELL now, them CHICKENS have come home to ROOST, haven't they?  Drakes Bay, right outside of Looney-ville CA, home to every leftist shibboleth that could ever exist or be dreamed of.  I don't think Mitt Romney got 25% of the vote from that area.  It's bluer-than-blue country, full of "progressives" who hate America and everything it stands for, until they demand their "right" to free healthcare and state-funded abortion held on alters where gays get married en masse. 

So to the people who are crying.  FUCK YOU, YOU VOTED FOR THIS!  To the people who are upset at losing their jobs.  FUCK YOU, YOU VOTED FOR THIS!  To the folks who are upset that the government is breaking it's pledge to the oyster farmers.  FUCK YOU, YOU VOTED FOR THIS!  People are going to lose their homes, and the economy is going to lose millions of dollars.  FUCK YOU, YOU VOTED FOR THIS!

FUCK YOU, YOU VOTED FOR THIS!!!!!  You wanted it, and NOW YOU WILL GET IT GOOD AND HARD!

NOTHING is this country is going to change until you hammer that phrase into the heads of liberals and other sycophants of the National Socialist Democrat Workers Party.  Boo-hoo, cry and whine?

FUCK YOU, YOU VOTED FOR THIS.

Education ≠ Intelligence

Or for that matter, it doesn't equal experience either.  Ever heard the phrase "Book Smart, Street Stupid"?

For my money, I agree with Bookworm:

These high earning, upper echelon people didn’t embrace Leftism because their intellectual analysis inexorably led them to it.  Instead, they embraced Leftism because their smarts mean they’ve been steeped in the Leftist stew for infinitely longer than the average American who didn’t go on to a higher degree.

These same people also remind me that academic smarts do not correlate with real life intelligence.  I have no doubt that these people are good lawyers, doctors, CEOs, ambassadors, etc.  What they’re trained to do, they do well.  Outside of their sphere of expertise, however, they’re remarkably naive and intellectually incurious.

Here’s my example for today:  In the wake of the election, I’ve heard five Obama supporters — all of whom also voted for all the California Democrats and for all the California taxes — complain that their taxes are going up next year.  The cognitive dissonance is almost painful.  All of them consistently embrace big spending — and, therefore Obama and his fellow Democrats — because they’ve been trained to believe that the spending on welfare, entitlements, and “select” businesses is a “good thing.”  This is a knee jerk belief.  They will always vote for these “good things,” and for the candidate who promises them.  And they will ignore the rhetoric about higher taxes (Obama was not shy about targeting them as the next big source of funding), and they will ignore fiscal cliffs, and they will ignore plain old common sense that says that someone must pay the piper.

 A while ago I had a raging debate with a lawyer who was also a Socialist.  Hard core, progressive Socialist, and for all his education he consistently refused to look at the historical record of socialism.  And this was while Greece was rioting and sliding further into debt, and all he could say was "Oh, that won't happen here". 

Really?  Ever been to Watts?  South Central?  Compton?

The common thread between all the Obama-bots, both rich and poor, is their economic illiteracy.  They literally cannot fathom economic reality, and so they vote according to the pipe-dreams fed to them by the National Socialist Democrat Worker's Party, who continues to buy their votes with the money of the productive half of America.

That ought to scare the hell out of you.  And it's part of the reason that I think this country is doomed.  You cannot fix an economic problem when a majority of people think the economy can be fixed with unicorn farts and money trees.

Joe Biden Lied

Religious Freedom Died.

France commits economic suicide.

All socialist.  More taxes and more spending, on an economy that can't provide the level of spending they're attempting now.

France now joins the list of countries who are destined for collapse sooner rather than later.  And when Europe gets flushed down the shitter, I don't even want to guess what's going to happen over here.

Seen this yet?

The 11 Stunning Revelations from Larry Summers'  secret economics memo to Barack Obama.

It's not just incompetence - it's sheer anti-Americanism that drives Obama.

The Joys Of Socialism

In real time.

Folks, if you want to see what the Democrat American Communist Party policies are going to bring about, all you have to do is take a look at where they've been in control for decades.  Detroit is the perfect example.  That city needs a wall built around it to contain the progressive stupidity.

Senate Democrats demand country commit suicide

And they do it unanimously!  In short, the Senate Democrat American Communist Party members have all signed a letter to John Boehner that say his bill cannot and will not pass the Senate.  Period.

These are the worthless MFCS that haven't passed a budget in two years.

These are the god-damned parasites who haven't put forth a plan that doesn't drive us over the cliff into bankruptcy.

These are the worthless Marxists who, having spent your money, your children's money, and your grandchildren's money, are now demanding that we enslave further generations so that they can get re-elected by buying people stuff with borrowed cash.

So that’s how this story ends. With the party of endless spending and entitlements unto death lecturing fiscal conservatives on how they’re leading the country into a credit downgrade. Perfecto.

Fuck the Democrats.  They are certifiably insane.  They will not listen to reason.  They will not compromise.  They only demand to spend more money, more money, more money, more money, we're trillions of dollars in debt but they want to spend MORE MORE MORE MORE OF YOUR MONEY and pass the bill on to your children. 

Right now, I say default.  Bring the entire house of cards down.  I don't think it can be fixed or taken care of while the Democrats still have control, because they have proven that they are completely incapable of working inside the confines of reality, much less resonability.

Roger Simon has an idea of why Obama will not produce his budget plan.  It doesn't matter.  We're fucked, and going down.  Let me know when the shooting starts.

What a friggin' DOUCHEBAG!

Obama has got to be the most condescending, arrogant, moronic worthless piece of shit to ever stand in front of a microphone!  From his "speech" last night, which was nothing more than an arrogant fucking asshole trying to lecture America:

Now, what makes today’s stalemate so dangerous is that it has been tied to something known as the debt ceiling – a term that most people outside of Washington have probably never heard of before.

Understand – raising the debt ceiling does not allow Congress to spend more money. It simply gives our country the ability to pay the bills that Congress has already racked up.

Hey, you fucking DOUCHEBAG!  GUESS WHAT!  Not only do I know what the debt ceiling is, I've known about it for decades, and on top of that I can remember when a certain junior senator was against raising the debt ceiling!  Remember THIS, you arrogant fucking prick?

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.

Yep.  A FAILURE of LEADERSHIP.  That's what we have here today!  A FAILURE of LEADERSHIP.  And that is because the worthless fucking douchebag in the Oval Office has never run anything that didn't get public funds.  The arrogant fucking asshole in the Oval Office has only signed the BACK of a paycheck, never the front of one.  That brainless fucking twit in the Oval Office is the biggest red-diaper-doper-baby this country has ever been forced to put up with, an idiotic loser who makes Jimmy Carter look like a fucking brilliant strategist by comparison!

Dear God, is it election time yet?  I don't know if this country will survive Obama, unless we can marginalize him into irrelevance.  Let him huddle in his office, issuing his imperial edicts and screaming at the staff, so long as he can't damage the country any further.

Obama OK without a budget?

Really?  FUCKING REALLY???????

President Barack Obama’s former deputy press secretary Bill Burton said last night on Fox News Sunday the nation is “doing OK” without a budget. How’s that? He explains: “Nothing is shutting down.”

GAH!  GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!  YOU FUCKING POLTROON!  YOU FUCKING IDIOTIC PIECE OF CRAP!  YOU EMPTY-HEADED WORTHLESS FUCKING MORON!  YOU SHIT-FOR-BRAINS PARASITE!

I have had to deal with the Democrat's complete and total abdication of responsibility, i.e. NO FUCKING BUDGET for the past NINE FUCKING MONTHS trying to operate a section and a mission while only getting a FRACTION of what my costs are because we've been operating under the Continuing Resolution Agreement, or the effects thereof, and this stupid ignorant anal wart is trying to say that we're OK without a budget?????

Well doesn't that just explain how FUCKED WE ARE as a country!  Doesn't that just explain why the Obama team thinks that unemployment, a sinking economy and a debt that will bankrupt us is just A-O-FUCKING-KAY!  Maybe if we had people in the White House who actually understood what a fucking budget was and what a fucking budget is needed for we wouldn't be sitting here faced with the prospect of this country DEFAULTING ON OUR FUCKING DEBT!  Maybe if we had people in the Oval Office who had ever done a job that WAS NOT another government paycheck we wouldn't be looking at MORE TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF DEBT!

GOOD GOD WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE PEOPLE SMOKING?!?!?!?!  WHAT THE FUCK!  WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?!?!??!  WE WOULD BE BETTER OFF WITH A DROP-OUT FROM A COMMUNITY COLLEGE SITTING IN THE WHITE HOUSE RATHER THAN THIS CURRENT CROP OF CLUSTERFUCK COMMUNISTS!

Fuck Obama with a government spreadsheet a mile wide.  Fuck Bill Burton with a Bankruptcy-boner the size of the Empire State Building, soon to be re-named "Wang's House of Imperialism" after it gets sold to pay the bills.  And fuck the entire Obama team with the economic fury of John Holmes after a three day bender of cocaine and Viagra.  Fuck them all.  Fuck them strait to their Marxist hell.

For the love of God, I don't know if the country can survive the sheer ignorance, incompetence, narcissism and greed of Obama and his cronies.