A universal truth of life is that pressure reveals character. This is not only true in individuals, but it is also true in societies. When times are easy, all sorts of undesirable things can be overlooked. The petty corruption in government is not a big deal in a booming economy. Inequality is ignored, maybe even celebrated when times are good, because people think their time will come. It is when things turn down that all of a sudden, those issues rise up and take up people’s attention.
For the American economy, the good times have been rolling for such a long time now that it feels like the natural state of affairs. There was the very minor recession in the early 1990’s, but that was a blip. The dot-com bust at the end of the 1990’s and the mortgage crisis in 2008 were serious, but they did not impact most people. The stock markets went down, but they recovered. Some people suffered for sure, but the system seemed to right itself and for most people it was a non-event.
In fact, the two big economic crises of the last forty years are a proof that the system and the people running are just fine. This was why many middle-class people were angry at the lock downs initially. They thought it would harm the economy. When the Fed flew in on its magic carpet, showering the economy with magic fairy dust, those people relaxed and trusted the system. Those initial protests that popped up all around the country faded away in a fog of economic stimulus.
Good times do not last forever, even in an honest economy. The signs are everywhere now that this economy is headed for some tough times. Food prices are jumping like we have not seen since the 1970’s. There are strange shortages of products like beer and plastic goods. There is plenty of beer. The issue is the containers. Aluminum shortages and problems in the supply chain mean certain brands are not on the shelf. This leads to greater sales of other brands until they run low.
Inflation is one of those things that everyone feels. Even if you are a rich guy, you notice that steak is more expensive. The money is meaningless to you, but the price hike does not go unnoticed. Poor people, of course, feel it straight away. As a result, everyone starts to notice things in the market, like the shrinkflation, for example. A pint of ice cream is 14-ounces now. The potato chip bag is much larger, but there are fewer chips inside the bag. This stuff gets more obvious in bad times.
The thing is, prices going up because of demand or shortages is an honest result that people may not like, but they can accept. Changing the shape of containers to make it look bigger, but reducing the contents is dishonest. It is a fraud. Inflation will bring new scrutiny to this practice that has become common. This sort of institutional fraud is everywhere, but it has gone unnoticed for decades. With inflation, people will start noticing and they will not like it.
The institutional fraud is not just a retail phenomenon. It is everywhere. The hot new scam on Wall Street is the SPAC. This is where a company wants to go public, but their financials are not good enough for an IPO. A group of insiders then creates a shell company for the purpose of making acquisitions. It raises a bunch of money, then it goes public and soon after buys the company that wished to go public. It is how we end up with $100m sandwich shops in New Jersey.
Of course, the elephant in the room for close to a generation now is the gross inequality we see in modern America. The gap between the rich and the middle has never been larger, and it is growing quickly. Unlike the robber barons of the industrial age, these new oligarchs operate like pirates. They steal everything. Worse yet, they have unleashed a well-funded army of radical harpies to hound decent people in their work, their entertainments, and their private lives.
In good times, no one cares about billionaires. If your life is good and getting better, why should you care if some other guy is doing better? That flips around quickly when your life is suddenly under economic strain. The Democrats can yack about taxing the rich and the Republicans can lecture about class envy, but class consciousness is always a result of tough economic times. Everyone starts feeling working class in bad times, even when they are well-equipped to weather the storm.
The point is a lot of bad things have crept into the system over the last forty years of relatively stable times. As long as material concerns were met, people overlooked the fraud, the corruption, and the inequality. That long run of good times has meant the stock of these things is higher than ever. When bad times come, those problems will come roaring to the front of people’s minds. In other words, the sticker shock we are experiencing can quickly give way to a culture shock.
There is one other item to consider. The middle-class is older than ever. Those Baby Boomers on fixed incomes, checking the stock market every day are not going to take inflation very well. They will not handle the necessary correction in the stock market to ring out the fraud. Inflation and what is required to tame it will bring with it the wrath of the angry Boomer. The generational divide that has been nursed by the usual suspects will suddenly get very real if the economy goes south this summer.
Similarly, the political class is old now too. Will those angry Boomers passively accept the leadership of Joe Biden in a crisis? Can a generation of politicians selected for their mendacity and obsequiousness gain the trust of the public in a crisis? If the economy tanks this summer, the incompetence and corruption in Washington will become the only thing that matters in politics. In other words, bad times will bring all of these problems to the front in a time of dwindling tolerance for it.
The American empire is old now and that means a lot of bad habits have been normalized over the years. Shrinkflation, SPACs, media mendacity, inequality and political corruption are all troublesome alone. Over the decades, we have an abundance of all of them. They remain in the background as long as the markets are up, and we have cheap goods on the shelves. The pressure of bad times, however, will inevitably reveal the character of the empire. It will not end well.
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🤷♀️
I tried just posting that single emoji but the comment rules won’t let me. But honestly, that’s all there is. That’s the comment. I expect the economy to crash, I expect a hot war. I’ve been expecting it since 2008. But it won’t be in my lifetime (I’m 52). I know we can all feel the floor crumbling. And crumble it must. Our energy is best spent organizing whatever it is we think a future sane society will need after the zombie apocalypse. I’ve been saying the same thing about The Church. (There’s only one.) What we know to have once been America, what we know to be the Catholic Church, are done. The question now is how best to help the future remnant of Wester Civilization rebuild. We are just a blip in time. No one will remember us. But that remnant, we can help them. But how? At a minimum, 1) bury your best books in something that will withstand the test of time, 2) encourage monks to set up shop in the desert, 3) teach your kids how to fight and die with honor. Those are my best ideas.🤷♀️
Prediction: this will be White Guys Shoot Back Summer. Of course, the feds will move to protect their dusky pet criminals but if the economic pressure mounts they, too, will be in grave danger. I have changed my mind, despite the Summer of St. George and Covid responses, that this is going hot. I don’t write that with any joy, to put it mildly. The only reason it hasn’t yet has been cheap potato chips and gasoline.
Upvoted on WIPIPO response despite no evidence.
If WIPIPO do respond FFS no 911 calls, no pics, in fact leave cell phone elsewhere.
Of course this is not just a unicorn its a Killah Unicorn, riding a flying unicycle.
But hey, we can dream.
I agreed up until a few days ago. Maybe it was the potato chip prices.
“Markets” mean nothing without “Price Discovery” and/or “Creative Destruction.” Remind me of the last time we had either?
Don’t keep us in suspense. Tell us when about the time that we got closest to laisse faire libertarian utopia.
Holy Cow, Bill Gates’s new old squeeze is even moar hideously revoltingly medusal than was Melinda:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Ann+Winblad
If Physiognomy is Destiny, then Ann + Bill == the very worst of unitardian moralism and misanthropy and eugenicism; something akin to {Margaret Sanger} x {Georgia Guidestones}.
There’s so much overt evil in those two physiognomies that I can easily see them plotting to eradicate 15/16ths of the world’s population.
Bill Gates is a billionaire solely due to a massive stroke of good luck. He never wanted to have anything to do with operating systems. All he wanted to do was write applications. Lucky for him, the day the guys from IBM went to license CP/M from Digital Research the owner was away and his wife answered the door. She wouldn’t give them the time of day. So the IBM guys went to Gates with whom they already had a business relationship. Gates went out and bought DOS (a working but less popular near clone of CP/M) lock, stock and source code from some schlub who likely thought he’d made a killing. If things had been just a tad different, Gary Kildall would likely be a billionaire now and Gates would (entirely rightfully) be a nobody. Talk about “for want of a nail” . . .
“It was a monstrous and ironic fact that the very men who had created the world in which every value was false and theatrical saw themselves, not as creatures tranced by fatal illusions, but rather as the most knowing, practical, and hard-headed men alive. They did not think of themselves as gamblers, obsessed by their own fictions of speculation, but as brilliant executives of great affairs who at every moment of the day ‘had their fingers on the pulse of the nation.’ So when they looked about them and saw everywhere nothing but the myriad shapes of privilege, dishonesty, and self-interest, they were convinced that this was inevitably ‘the way things are.'” – Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again
Falcone mentioned that “America is all about working til you drop.” That’s a bridge too far. America is about working until you drop for almost everyone but the very top, the very bottom (dregs, drug addicts, the homeless, etc.), and submissive collaborators who arranged lucrative, lengthy retirements, often at the expense of young workers. Our way of life is not surprising given Columbia’s origins at about the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and during a time when the power and wealth of merchants and financiers were increasing spectacularly.
It’s an open secret that Columbia is the spawn of planters, land speculators, merchants, financial guys, and lawyers. Those people are oily secularists by nature, whatever they may claim to believe in about Being. So, true to their character, about 11 years after the Declaration of Independence (itself a bundle including half-truths, unfounded assumptions, and brazen lies), an influential clique in the USA arranged the publication of one of the biggest Big Lies in human history.
The secession from Great Britain had been a class rebellion against the old regime, which had privileged two ancient classes (priesthood and nobility) above merchants, finance capital, and so on. The latter comprise a natural third class, and we are learning the hard way that it is right and proper to keep them that way by force if necessary. Back in 1787, however, they had the leverage to undercut further the memory of and attachment to the old regime. So the clique declared in effect that absolutely everyone has authority to rule the new imperial system. That clever move thwarted the rise of a replacement system modeled on the ancient concept which privileged an unsecular priesthood.
It should be clear to everyone now why secular communists are happy to roll logs with the go-getter class. The secular commie, too, seethes with resentment about the ancient class system, however flawed, which was intended to keep sensualists in their place and to oppress them vigorously. This is ironic given the commies’ hollering about “working families” and the proletariat. The old regime had channels for the fourth class to influence the first class and the second class. The new regime of the sensualists proclaimed a nominal liberty of the fourth class, but it sets up the fourth class’s members to become replaceable farm animals with no representation at all once the first two classes have been eliminated.
Well, centuries passed, and the new custom of those high-functioning sensualists became deeply rooted. Now a long habit of thinking nothing wrong with rule by the third class elicits great outcries in defense of the Big Lie that “We the People…do ordain and establish this Constitution”. That lie we must discredit totally in order to arrest the ugly transformation of humanity which was set in motion centuries ago. Conservatives (whether or not they call theirselves that) are, therefore, mortal enemies who deserve contempt, mockery, and abuse.
Totally agree
We made colossal mistake in letting the merchants run things
They have their skill sets, of course, but letting them run a society, along with lawyers of all people, is a recipe for disaster.
Well, we can now chalk it up to experience. But getting out of this mess is going to be fugly
Getting out of this mess? We’re barely in.
This is nothing.
To worship money is the root of slavery, and this is why all Americans are slaves or slavers already.
Getting out of this? LOL. You could lose your job!
Game over, Masters win by default.
Getting out of this mess means creating a separate nation.
And what is going to magically happen to create separate nation?
Other then the Mexicans carving out a buffer state in the SW not from irredentistism but self defense?
Fugly, yes, but I sense ways to make life into a great ordeal for reactionaries, for people who will resist a major course correction for the better throughout this world. It’s no secret that their way of life leaves lots of folks burned out, disillusioned, and disgusted by their thirties. It can be a struggle for any such person to figure out what to do next in life. The long, winding path of awakening is traveled alone, more or less, and those on the path often begin to feel isolated from siblings, spouse, children, extended family, friends, acquaintances, coworkers, and peers. I speak from personal experience now as someone who, years ago, worked in business development and product management and who has become totally estranged from my own family, former friends, and professional contacts.
There are, I’m sure, hundreds of thousands of people all over the world who can be found on the path at any given moment. Some will be willing to walk the whole path according to a shared understanding of existence against which the secularists will find no effective argument. These on the path will bear the risks and the wounds as they go. It’s an ancient phenomenon, really. Augustine, Gotama, and others became famous for their disgust with and reaction against secularism, and they have provided role models followed by millions and millions of people during the past 25 centuries.
It just so happens that many of those people now at various locations on the path or soon to set foot upon it are well educated in the ways and means of the third class. For example, they have studied at length topics such as contract law, property law, con law, accounting, finance, sales, marketing, public relations, project management, maths, physics, engineering, and other important subjects. A few have martial skills or knowledge of ontology. That’s a wonderful pool of knowledge and skills among people who are looking for a transcendant project to give new meaning and purpose to their short, fleeting lives.
Most human beings arise, live, and pass away without comprehending much of the big picture of existence or their place in it. Some people, however, can see far enough ahead that they become sickened by the thought of drawing their last breath in a state of great ignorance and vulgarity. One of our tasks must be to show them that they needn’t fear the dangerous path, and that there are viable alternatives to religions of egocentricity and slave morality, e.g. “Progressivism”.
Another problem for reactionary conservatives in N. America and Europe is that they have nearly cleared the field of those who would have belonged to the natural first class. Yet another problem is that the ruling class which appears to be the natural second class is mostly just a subset of the third class. Vacuums have formed, and we know the old cliché about a vacuum. The reactionaries’ world is a precarious house of cards, and the formation of a lawful first class would herald the formation of a second class comprised of people whose reason for living contradicts the existence of that flimsy house.
Skimmed your comments. Good stuff.
“The secession from Great Britain had been a class rebellion against the old regime,”
Absolutely not. What was the “old regime” anyway? The Revolutionary War, as it has been called in the US, was merely a continuation of the War of the Three Kingdoms, another battle in the fight against human normality instigated by the Puritans of of New England. The other colonies went along for the ride for the chance to get their share of the loot.
Mumbly Joe’s handlers likely will gin up Summer of Floyd II, Electric Boogaloo, to concentrate boomer’s minds wonderfully. They won’t care about eating dog food to survive, when J’Qarius and LaTreen and some rando White anti-fa child molester come into their place and give them a beat down Reginald Denny style before the FBI hauls them off to Manzanar. That certainly seems to be the plan.
But hey, the Army has its FIRST all gay helicopter crew. The Delta Force guys must be pleased, the helicopters all redecorated in mauve.
Thats the Navy.
And when you get owned by fags…
If the parentheses people running the regime were smart, they’d open a Pacific conflict by hitting China’s food and petroleum terminals, power plants, and the Three Gorges Dam, then sitting back and enjoying the lolz.
They aren’t, so they will sail a couple carrier battle groups with diverse crews into the Taiwan Strait to show everyone what big balls Kamala has.
Those carrier groups will wind up on the sea bottom within20 minutes of the war’s opening salvo, all hands lost.
Then again, that could actually improve the combat efficiency of today’s Navy.
Back in the 90s I recall reading accounts by sailors of how the carriers are basically giant nuclear powered armored frat houses. Some huge percentage of the female crews get pregnant at sea and then get honorably discharged with nice Navy bennies to start them off on a new life on land making more welfare babies with Quantavious. I didn’t think much about it at the time but it does seem to fit with all the tranny and gay stuff the Navy seems to have gotten into later.
As for Taiwan, I wonder if the Chinese are going to pull a Dunkirk style feint with their “invasion” fleet actually being just a lure to get the stupid American leadership to send all their ships into what then becomes a killbox.
Do a search for “The Pink Swastika” which documents how the Nazi leadership was dominated by a hardcore group of violent homosexuals, led by Ernst Roehm, head of the SA.
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Quite a few moons ago, I watched a WWII documentary that was composed of mostly recollections and experiences of the everyday Americans at home during the war years. Many were children or older teenagers at the time and spoke wistfully about the duties and efforts made at home to support the troops, sailors and marines overseas.
What was striking was the language these Heritage Americans used. Our “Boys” fighting over there, as well as describing how everyone supported the efforts with rationing and donating materials like stockings and cans to make equipment and planes. The unity and shared belief that it was our people, our countrymen that needed support and morale was astonishing.
As Zman points out, that unity is almost completely abolished now. How well will this country react to inflation and shortages? Will it pull together, or descend into a Mad Max wasteland? Only time will tell.
I am picturing something more akin to The Purge meets Blade Runner.
Minus the hot replicants.
In a related note, Stacy Abrams is re-releasing three romance novels that she. wrote some 20 years ago.
The title of the first one is Fabio Meets the Tank.
Stacy abrams and romance – what are three words that don’t go together…
Millions of copies sure to sell.
Puked
Never underestimate the enemy. Stacey Abrams is also a lawyer and a member of the CFR.
Imagine thinking you’d be allowed to smoke in a public building in LA, 2019.
LOL.
Blade Runner was wrong. The future dystopia they imagined had too much class. Idiocracy was on point.
Demolition Man made a few good points, too. Mister BigCorp programming a violent (and coincidentally Person Of Color) Wesley Snipes into doing false flags supporting his globalist Utopian visions until he loses control of his little golem could not be a more timely metaphor.
If only Simon Phoenix’s name had been Floyd….
There is an element of mythology in that observation. While large numbers of young men who had grown up during the depression voluntarily enlisted, this patriotism, if that’s what ii was, wasn’t universal. Genuine combat veterans returned to the States, if they hadn’t been buried in Europe, permanently wounded both physically and mentally. A number of years went by before they resumed civilized behavior.
The children of those veterans were among the first to question the legitimacy of the US government’s conduct over the previous 50 years and many of the veterans could see their point. Few of the pleb class wished to see their male offspring sacrificed for the interests of the industrial/war machine.
The idea that there was once a period of “unity” in the US is very much erroneous. There have always been major divisions in social class and regional affiliations. If anything, the country is more homogenized now than it’s ever been.
Well stated, Nailheadtom.
Some rock song (Nine Inch Nails?) says asks why it’s always the poor they send to war. Who does the sending? The rich, the old, the powerful of course. It’s been mentioned in these pages, and many times before, that it’s also the healthiest, young men that fight, die or return wrecked mentally, physically or both.
B.Y.O.B by System of a Down? Those were my early highschool days…
Generally speaking, the Greatest Generation despised their children’s attitudes, not the least of which was their anti-Americanism. And the vast majority of GG’s remained patriotic till they went to their graves.
The notion that “America” is more homogeneous now than ever is daft. If nothing else, multi-culti has put paid, once and for all, to any homogeneity. We are so balkanized that we’re a nation of foreigners, literally and figuratively.
Before WWII it was the Spics vs. the Wops vs. the Polaks vs. the Joggers vs. the (((Kichs)) vs. the Slopes vs. the Hicks vs. the City Slickers, etc., etc. You stay in your neighborhood and i will stay in mine.
It was the forced(for the most part)integration by the Armed Forces that helped “unite” Americans somewhat.
Post WWII then came Multiculturalism sparked somewhat by many returning GI’s who had gained familiarity with foreign countries and their peoples(i.e. married the natives).
Those pre-WWII divisions–if you can even call them that–were ethnic rather than racial, and there was a huge amount fraternization–and even intermarriage–between the Polacks, the Krauts, the Micks, the Kikes, etc. Moreover, most immigrants–maybe the Wops and Slavs especially–made every effort to shed their Old World identity and assimilate to an American norm.
Fast forward to the present where the difference is racial rather than ethnic, every non-white group is encouraged to retain its culture and revile white civilization, and the “nation” is merely a strip mall to loot, and you have a country that is so riven by antagonism that it is about to capsize.
You beat me to it.
There is no discernible country left in what once was the United States. The Empire probably will slink back to these shores to try to put down rebellions, but the divorces have started. It will be nasty but it is overdue.
The notion of homogeneous America is a myth, always was. It is utterly a creation of the postwar media consensus ala 1945-1968 at latest. The Americans did not believe it before and it dissipated when the 60s happened.
Wonder Bread couldn’t take elite brats draft riots Or uppity Negro frontmen for a tiny number of Js in either Blackface or the Flag of “dissent “.
Conversely the common RW fallacy of Separate American nations also an utter falsehood.
It would have happened in the 19th century if ever, ever possible. As was discovered it was not and is not- the geography mandates ocean to ocean. This would have been true had the CW ended in stalemate- that would have been pause for reset and wars of unification.
Even Germany was only “separate nations “ from 1813 to 1871.
It was always going to be either Prussia or Austria that won.
In our case its even more ridiculous to consider either the Unitary power now being attempted that will fail or separate nations lol. Australia has a better chance of separate nations- they have actual geography that would support that.
But to cut the nonsense- you don’t want separate nations, you want to avoid fighting for whats yours. Separation is the dream of frankly safe white flighty- NO. No, No.
No. Earn it.
Or perish.
Not possible anyway. Nor should it be. Fight or go extinct.
My observation on the WW2 documentary was not a lament on a mythical society where everyone held hands and sang kumbaya in our country. That was not, nor ever has been the case in America going back historically to the founding.
It was definitely not the case with the warring tribes who are now described as originally being at one with nature and peaceful to all until the horrible white colonists arrived.
Interesting how this narrative treatment is only applied to the American story. No mentions regarding the Japanese colonies in Korea, or the multiple African kingdoms who slaughtered and sacrificed like the Dahomey in their zeal for land and conquest.
No, what I was referring to was how the participants in the WW2 show described the events with a collective sense of togetherness. Some skin in the game and shared investment. Looking through the lens of the 21st century optional military conflicts, this was interesting to see. For most Americans in the modern age, the worst sacrifice was spending $4.99 on a cheap, Chinese-made “Support the Troops” vehicle decal.
The discussion on the particulars of whether or not the US should have entered the conflict at all is an entirely different discussion. The only remarks to that subject, is that my progeny will not be fed into the machine for a country that openly shows indifference and outright scorn for them due solely to their ancestry and melanin content.
As to the belief that the country is more homogenized today, that statement is only valid at a superficial level. In the case of restaurants, stores, electronic equipment and other choices for mass consumption, sure. In the consumer market and what is called mainstream culture that is pushed on the populace, the end goal ironically appears to be the destruction of any diversity in thoughts, beliefs, and of objective truth.
Yup, good, yup yup. But then, “the country is more homogenized now than its ever been”???
You must mean heterogenized?
It was always heterogeneous.
Just different flavors of White.
This is the conflict now.
The race war is between whites with the violent retarded clown golems called Negroes once again as the pretext. Example- the actual Congress of the USA isn’t at the Capitol- its in the Dirksen building. The only Dark skins there are in livery, including the soldiers (and Dirksen is the priority by numbers aka massed force).
Honestly Known by Enemies is true- and if your enemies are Noggers well 😂😂
They’re not.
That’s like regarding a pack of wolves or hyenas as the enemy of a rancher. No, just vermin to be run off. But if you’re faced down by Noggers..well…
You won’t be missed.
How many fly overs would give a crap if the muz perpetrated another 9/11 event?
As horrific as 9/11 was, that is a very good question. I can promise you one thing–if 9/11 was reprised you sure wouldn’t see a profusion of American flags as you saw after the original 9/11.
…and if you did see American flags waved – those doing the waving would be the first ones the CIA, FBI, et al would root out as the terrorists (assuming they’re white).
Think bigger.
We’re getting the Russian suitcase nuke false flag at the Statue of Liberty this Fourth of July.
Good point. To go further: how many fly overs would celebrate if 9/11 were surprised? I suspect quite a few openly and many quietly.
Federal Judge just did a perfectly timed rug pull on the CDC eviction moratorium:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/federal-judge-overturns-cdcs-eviction-moratorium
Anyone that can’t see this obvious op is beyond help.
Gonna be a long summer…prep accordingly…
Am I the only one who noticed the only “moratorium” was on renters paying landlords not for people paying mortgages? Funny how the banksters never get hurt in any of the Democrats’ schemes. The people trying to live on the rental proceeds including paying mortgages on those properties still had to meet their mortgage payments. Any landlords who found themselves foreclosed upon were just collateral damage, I suppose. Somehow the banksters always make out like the bandits they are. Think.about it. What is a bank’s “raw material”? Money – which they charge their suppliers for holding. What is a bank’s “product”? Money – which they charge their customers for using! They charge both their suppliers AND their customers. How the hell can they NOT make a profit? I once asked a friend who worked at a bank that same question. He laughed and said the only way under such a system that any company could fail to turn a profit was not merely mismanagement but GROSS mismanagement! Then he reminded me that banks do fail. Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?
What I noticed is that this article felt it necessary to point out the category of landlords with the highest number of non-White owners. Because that’s all that matters anymore in this God forsaken country.
The first thing you notice in that opinion is avoidance of the taking issue. The United States always has been more lawless than advertised, but the Ruling Class previously had a very vested interest in the 5th and 14th Amendments to prevent their stuff from being grabbed. Now that we are truly lawless, the Ruling Class can take and not fear the same happening to them.
This moratorium was a far, far bigger moment than emphasized (of course). It marked the Administrative State’s full takeover of the kabuki Congress and Executive and, despite this decision, the judiciary. An illegal taking was done without any consultation with the supposed government. So far it has held.
The target here, of course, are Mom and Pop rental properties. The Ruling Class want these. Most of the property management corporations have received ample bail-outs that the Mom and Pops have not.
The bottom line is by the end of the year, housing prices could have doubled or imploded. There really is no middle ground. The first batch to hit the market, if this moratorium truly lifts, will be the Mom and Pops. The Fed, which obviously serves certain interests, will hike the interest rate before it allows Mom and Pops to be snatched by Chads and Beckys.
If you get a new class of homeless, and you will, the looters will vastly accelerate and split. This will be grotesque.
Zman this made me think for a lot of Baby Boomer Whites who were Middle Class, being made poor now by Biden and his policies will cause some different ways of thinking? The Oligarchs who fund the Megan Squires, and Jared Holts will have to figure out a way to keep people happy. It will not end up well for them to keep this up. I wonder what they will try to do?
“The gap between the rich and the middle has never been larger, and it is growing quickly. ”
This is quite true, at least in theory. However, from what I can tell, most wealth is illusory, at least in modern America. For example, people who own bitcoin might have a portfolio of several hundred bitcoin whose nominal price is $57k ea. and are millionaires in theory. But if they tried to cash out entirely all at once, they would get far less than 57k per coin because of flooding the market with supply. A lot of wealth is thus assets valued at market value instead of liquidation value, and while there are good reasons for valuing assets that way, it’s not actually a measure of how much honest-to-God cash you get if you had to liquidate for whatever reason. Incidentally, this is why the government won’t be taking on billionaire tax-avoiders: if they had to liquidate positions to pay taxes, the market would crash.
It’s illusory because interest rates, the price of money, have been on the floor for years. In 1980, at those high interest rates, the wealth wasn’t illusory. It was quite real. Like a frog boiling in the pot, over decades, we don’t even know what real wealth looks like.
I would argue that real wealth can be used while fake wealth can only be traded. Land, metals, machines and equipment are real wealth because they can be used to grow or make things, and can be liquidated if necessary. A stock or bond can only be traded.
Drew. Real vs “traded”. I like that thought.
They can also be traded. For example, some my TP for some of your beer – though as you say, those are real things, that in this example, can provide a buzz and hygiene.
A more nuanced distinction needs to be made. There’s a huge difference between holding a share of Tesla in the hope that some future rube will pay even more for it (the greater fool scenario that plagues a host of growth stocks) and holding a share of a solid business that distributes a portion of its excess cash flow as a dividend. That situation is no different than a landlord collecting rent for a piece of property. Buy the business, not the hype. The consumer staples sector is filled with large cap companies that make money come rain or shine. They rarely hit home runs or triples, but they reliably get on base. OK, I’ve mixed enough metaphors; you get the idea.
Years ago some writer speaking about FED manipulation, interest rates are other factors, said the FED had done the the fiscal equivalent of putting a penny in the fuse box. I think that’s a good metaphor for many situations where the old standards have been discarded. This cheap solution did make the pesky problem of the blowing fuses go away. The light stay on, but now they’re starting to Flicker and there’s a funny smell of burning plastic.
Yes, this. Paper asset appreciation and low interest rates make middling look rich.
This is why I’m not too bummed about getting in on crypto.
The derivatives I screw around with are liquid and I can easily harvest them to fiat and turn fiat into stuff….for now…
But they will take on real wealth-holders, like farmers and other property owners.
Only for a time, at best. The way the game is played, at least as my financial advisor explained it, is that you never cash out your investments but borrow against the value of the portfolio, with the portfolio as surety. This is doable as long as you have enough cash flow to service the debt. If you don’t, the debt gets called and you liquidate your assets to repay it. The unraveling is easy to work out from here. Thus, they still have limits to how much they can do. Moreover, no farmer or property owner is forced to be bought out at an inflated price. They’re as greedy as the rich, just dumber.
You’re not factoring in Anarcho-Tyranny and a deliberate rigging of the system to target them.
Anything that can be bought and sold freely will fall in price if everyone wants to sell at the same time, not just bitcoin. I can never understand this argument that bitcoin will rise to a certain point then everyone will want to sell at that exact price. The market cap of bitcoin is now over 1 trillion dollars so someone selling 5 – 10 million worth will have no problem at all and it would barely move the market. Tesla sold a couple of hundred million worth and it didn’t do squat.
The 2008 crisis was only averted through massive balance sheet transfers to the Fed and the Federal Government. I remember it clearly and it truly was a narrow aversion of systemic failure. They used everything available, from TARP to quantitive easing. The self congratulation among all the bankers/economists/politicians was shameful. Too big to fail banks should have been seized by the FDIC and methodically unwound and sold off. Regional banks would have become the new big banks. The oligarchy won that day. And today we have giant, woke, zombie monoliths. I fully expect them to attempt to run the same exact playbook, only on a larger scale in the next crisis, because that’s what they do. And they’ll even add overt buying of stock index funds, MMT etc. The big question is, will it work? If they could barely digest the 2008 problems, I don’t see it working. I see them blowing up the currency itself in an attempt to do this.
“The big question is, will it work? If they could barely digest the 2008 problems, I don’t see it working.”
If you don’t see it working, you have been asleep for at least the past 12 months. A lot has changed since 2008, innit? TARP was a cool trillion and at the time that was an unthinkable expenditure in ’emergency’ federal spending because we still had at least one foot in that thing called objective reality.
Today? It’s Clown World baby! It’s Honklers all the way down and just on this Covid Sham we’ve already spent between Trump and Biden what -=$4 trillion=-? (Trump CARES act + Biden Covid Relief Bill) So what if we need another 2-3 trillion here or there to bail out (((bankers))) and all their corpse carving goy buddies like Mittens Romney, etc.
It is all monopoly money at this point what with MMT. They don’t even try to pretend anymore that there is anything resembling fiscal responsibility. It is the Ragin’ 20s brah dontcha know! Get with the times… Free gibs for all including billionaires and banks, social justice & sail foams for the people!
It was better when they were trying to pretend, that’s what made it work. You can replicate dollars all day long, but you can never replicate the purchasing power within those dollars, it an only be divided. Only productivity increases can increase purchasing power, and that’s not happening. So, sure they can be successful in propping up the system, but only at the expense of the underlying value of the currency.
Paulson, Geithner, Summers, et al are members of the CFR, which has been sponsored and directed by those same “big banks” since its inception. Geithner is currently a CFR director. Most of the Fed chairmen have been CFR members.
It was a pipe dream to think that the outcome of 2008 would have been any different, but it still screwed us, and we’ll see just how badly in the next few years.
The Fed, the SEC, Wall Street, and Congress all have each others’ backs. Biden’s SEC Chairman chose a lawyer known for defending the Banksters as chief LEO? LOL. They just rub our noses in it now. It’s a heist being conducted right under our noses.
The excesses and luxuries of diversity, 80 genders and blacketty black will mostly surge in a market crash. The religiosity of a dying empire tends to explode during the end times. This coming excess may swallow us all. Be prepared.
One of the big problems we have is that money no longer has a reference point. In the old days it was the gold standard. This standard was highly imperfect, but money was tied to a certain value over many years. I personally think a petroleum standard would work better. In an era in which interest rates have been on the floor for years, the price of money loses its relevance. Sure, pay $600k for that tract house in a forgettable mid-tier city. The price of assets becomes relative, with insane values being met with a shoulder shrug. Family formation, working class living standards, all take a back seat to the asset speculation. The social ills are fuel for all kinds of ideologies. About 1/3 of millennials are communists. And why shouldn’t they be? What other lever to these not so bright kids have to pull? They sure as hell know that Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell don’t give an F about therm. So we get into a death spiral where a Federal government, which will soon owe trillions in interest payments alone, declares free day care to be a fundamental right. I strongly believe that God created this country and this era to be a lesson to all of humanity for the ages. Our downfall, unlike previous empires, will be seen in crystal clear HD.
I’d liken the current state of affairs to new home construction. When I was growing up in the 1980’s, homes were still made from real bricks with nice wood surrounding them. Today, I live in a neighborhood with new homes valued in the ten millions that are constructed from Tyvek, fake panel brick, 2x4s and plywood just like their lower-valued counterparts. The home buyer is paying for extra space – air really — in which to store more things than a lesser class person. Nothing is quality anymore, including education, that former ticket upwards, and yet home prices, and the perception of wealth they inculcate are ridiculously divorced from genuine value. That’s the paradigm.
Potemkin villages for all.
Such a great point. I call it the Texas style. Cheap masonite on three sides with a cheap brick facia on the front, and a giant archway above the front door to make the house look as big as possible. The glow of a 100″ TV in the living room window. Of course this is everywhere now, but I remember it most distinctly on my trips to TX. And this is America. A formaldehyde laden box full of Amazon shit. This actually started in the early 80’s. The “bonus room” at the top of the stairs was meant for your desk with the TI-99 connected to a TV. The room eventually filling up with all kinds of shit. We went on from there.
Okay. Throw in an arch window over the front door and 10ft ceilings and you – sorta – have my home. But I replaced the garbage (masonite is just compressed garbage) with James Hardey fiber cement siding and a metal roof that mimics asphalt tiles (restrictive covenant forced me to get the look-alike) and added aluminum backing to the inside of the roof and an extra 4″ of fiberglass batts and I have a place I can live in that is energy efficient (had it built with 6″ walls and insulation) and weather proof. Hopefully when my wife dies the kids will make a buck or two. Built this house to grow old and die in. Plan to move out permanently riding a gurney and wearing a toe tag. Last month I completed the last mod to make it senior friendly – replaced all the door knobs with handles. Perfect for old weak, arthritic hands.
To compound the irony, consider that what many would consider more traditional workmanship, of most of a century ago (or more), is typically only found in America’s old cities, those not “urban renewed” over the decades. Long ago, back in the days when as jsut mentioned, the home was likely made of brick and stone. The floors were of genuine hardwoods. The walls were most likely plaster and lath. The electrical wiring, well let’s not think about that 😀 At least the electric, water and HVAC can be retrofitted pretty well. But the point is that long ago the standards of craftsmanship were higher. The irony? Simple. It is, or at least seems, that of these ancient homes that haven’t fallen into ruins, and continue to be occupied, split into two groups. The urban poor, who rent what is most likely a tenement in a dangerous neighborhood. Or else the upper class, gentrified neighborhoods with values high enough to keep out the riffraff. Washington DC is a perfect example of this. Who’s missing? For the most part, the middle class. They were (literally) driven out of town by interstate highways, new suburbs, and most importantly, by the loss of freedom of association in housing and school districts.
To be fair, the main value of old homes is that they were generally built timber frame style. Lathe and plaster us awful in so many ways, and worse than drywall in all ways except in resistance to damage. A lot of high quality modern stuff is as durable or more so, assuming its properly installed. Plus, there’s always the issue of survivorship bias in this sort of analysis.
Truth, truth. That’s why I try and fix everything, refinish all the wood my older home is made of. It was made of the last of the old growth forests, and the difference between it and the ‘wood’ sold today for exorbitant prices, a feature of Bidenworld, is remarkable.
Well, we do need things to do inside, don’t we? It’s too hot or too cold outside. And the mosquitoes!
Stickball, hide & go seek, and jump rope? “Come home when the street lights come on.”
What, don’t you know sunshine causes skin cancer? Germs! No bicycle helmets?!
Hanging with neighbors on the front step? Archaic! We have Facebook, man!
The government of the USA might have been created by God s an example for mankind. Sometimes, your purpose is to be an example to others of what NOT to do.
Around here you’ve still got lots of bugman types who will talk about some crapshack house on 1/4 acre being “only” $600,000 or so. I think the real estate valuations will stay at this level right up to the point where even some of the bugs are starting to think “what would I do if some rich guy actually gave me $600,000 *actual* dollars?” Would I really go pay cash for this nondescript box in a “good schools” neighborhood where the property taxes are already high and could go high enough that I’d need to sell at a loss if I lost my bug-job?
I also keep thinking about that guy I met in the summer of ’19 at the RV show. He had paid about $35,000 cash for a very nice and spacious tow-behind trailer RV. Of course the big Dodge Ram he was towing it with was probably at least $50,000 on top of that but then… for less than $100k he had a very nice place to live that also could just be driven away if the locals turned vibrant or the local government turned crazy. Out of that hypothetical $600k he would still have over half a million too.
The locals haven’t gone too vibrant around here yet but the Oregon state government has sure gone Covid crazy. I wonder if that guy is still in Oregon. Probably not. I’m guessing he’s sitting around an RV park in some Red state, brazenly not wearing a mask and not giving a shit about diversity.
But the media told me inflation is due to our red hot economy, so that must be the case.
“…Unlike the robber barons of the industrial age, these new oligarchs operate like pirates… Worse yet, they have unleashed a well-funded army of radical harpies to hound decent people…”
Consider this short list of billionaires. These are some of the power players in the globalist Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) which controls the “Biden admin”:
Larry Fink (BlackRock)
David Rubenstein (Carlyle)
Marc Benioff (Salesforce, TimeInc)
Lloyd Blankfein (Goldman)
Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan)
Eric Schmidt (Google)
Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook)
Michael Bloomberg (Bloomberg)
Laurene Powell-Jobs (Atlantic)
David Bradley (Atlantic)
Lynn F. de Rothschild (Economist)
George Soros (OpenSociety)
Penny Pritzker (Carnegie)
Len Blavatnik (Warner)
Edgar Bronfman (Warner)
William Lauder (Lauder)
Henry Kravis (KKR)
Nearly every player on the “Biden team” is a CFR member, including the secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, Commerce, Homeland Security and CIA. Also Jen Psaki, Susan Rice, Jake Sullivan, etc.
just look at all those white supremacists
So much furious hand-rubbing potential they could start traveling backwards through time…
Next you should complain about the list of Nobel Price winners in Sciences and medicine: they have the same problem of too many Jews as prize recipients.
Yep, small hats love themselves some science.
Here’s a trustworthy small hat who funds science:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO2clDz4CGQ
I’m certain those fabulous scientific discoveries paid by the saint jeff are legit!
bill gates associating himself with science patron saint jeff guarantees pfizer vaccine is a top notch safe product.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUA1lm7UwAEU7fy.jpg
Like, say, vaccines- as an unmitigated good.
I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something else similar about most of those names….
Which came first, the Banksters or the CFR? It’s almost impossible to tease out the truth. During Dimon’s tenure at $JPM they’ve pleaded guilty to five or so criminal felony counts, paid tens of billions in fines, and their own Board as well as the SEC just yawns as Dimon has amassed more personal wealth than some countries.
The Banksters were first. They installed the Fed and the income tax in 1913, then launched the CFR in 1921. Paul Warburg of Kuhn Loeb, the “architect of the Fed”, was also a founding director of the CFR.
Everything points to a rough decade ahead for most investors and the economy in general. The bond market – which is generally the smart guys – is indicating that annual GDP growth will be ~1% to 2% real – at best.
The 10-Year Treasury is ~1.5%, while the 10-Year TIP is -0.8%. Those are both huge warning signs that growth and inflation will be muted over that time period since bond rates generally follow a combo of GDP growth, inflation and wage inflation. That rates only rose around one percentage point over the past year shows the bond market doesn’t believe the economy is poised to take off long term nor that inflation will be sustain (in part due to sluggish growth).
Of course, the bond market could be wrong and inflation could take off. But regardless, low growth will not sustain a very expensive stock market and a very leveraged economy. Virtually every valuation metric shows the S&P to be expensive. Some of that is justified by low interest rates, which is fine, but it still says that real returns will be low because corporate profits won’t increase much in a sluggish economy.
Overall debt to GDP is at an all-time high of 4 to 1, making the economy extremely sensitive to interest rate hikes. Regardless, the country needs solid economic growth to handle that level of debt, even at these low interest rates. Without good growth, the debt burden will be an anchor around the consumers and the government.
The economy and investors are screwed. If you have inflation, rates will have to rise, tanking both the stock market and borrowers, which will tank the economy. If rates stay low, that means growth and inflation are low, which means low returns on stocks and borrowing being swallowed by their debt.
Either way, investors should expect low returns over the next decade.
why all of a sudden everyone is pushing for the huge minimum wage increase
That will be the mop that soaks up all the new new money and this way they can keep printing it, keep rates low, and pretty soon a gallon of gas its $10 but no biggie b/c it’s all relative to wages
As to money printing, remember the key is who prints the money and where it goes.
Banks print most of the money and their money goes into the real economy, i.e. people and small businesses. The Fed money printing goes to financial institutions.
Now, if the Fed starts financing – either directly or indirectly – government borrowing (which is kind of happening now), all bets are off. Then, you have the Fed sending money directly into the real economy. That’s a very different game.
The other reason for that is many union contracts set their wages as some multiple of the minimum wage.
The Fed has been buying TIPS over the past year. They’ve bought $175 Billion in TIPS over the past year. Why would they do that? They need a negative or flat TIPS yield so no one piles in there. They chained that exit. They don’t want any sudden herd movements towards a potential safer plateau. This is the problem when you have a committee of men and ugly women controlling the price of money. If what I think is going to happen happens over the next five years, they could end up being hunted down in the streets like animals.
The big problem with our debt is that no amount of growth can pay it off. That ship sailed at least 10 years ago. Not to mention that debt levels about 95% of GDP cause serious headwinds to growth itself, so it’s a vicious cycle until the debt is dealt with. A lot of inflation and rolling it into 100 year bonds (they’ll do that). I know it sounds absurd.
In 1980 you could purchase 10 year bonds at 16%. People who timed that right made a pretty good return for the decade.
Timing is going to be tough though. The only way that works is if someone eventually takes away the punch bowl of infinite money to tap down inflation.
I don’t see any Paul Volcker (German descent) wanna-be’s waiting in the wings though.
Going to be a huge shift in investment strategies with laddering bonds instead of the casino stock market.
All other investments play off of the treasury. If you’re expected return on treasuries is negative, that pulls down the expected return on all assets, at least American assets.
I’m not predicting a crash, just that the simple math of bonds and stocks valuations say returns will be low. Unless corporate profits somehow explode, which would require a booming economy, there’s no way around it.
Citizen;
Mr. 401k better hope for some exploding profits. S & P 500 Price/Earnings Ratio was 44 yesterday, IIRC. Normal (2 sigma – 95%0 range _? 12 low and ~27 high.
And the natural reaction will be anger, and that is typically followed by large scale public protests (see Yellow Vests in France as an example). And the ensuing wailing & gnashing of teeth will likely scare the political class into more acts of fiscal stupidity in an attempt to appease the protesters with alms of more worthless fiat currency. And the vicious cycle will continue until something gives. And during the fog of this chaos, the oldest & most corrupt of the grifters will leave town early to avoid any retribution, thereby leaving the new grifters to face the music.
But what if instead of getting angry & diffusing that anger with useless protests, the plebs first went dark and then went hunting?
To answer your question, they’d probably spend their time writing inane things on someone else’s blog.
What if we went “hunting” with our spotlights focused on the string pullers instead of their puppets? The protests are useless because they are easily diverted away from the actual target.
It’s always better to focus on the root of the disease (pathogen) rather than treat the symptoms.
Tom,
In reply to the comment below about the house and the daughter (he he, sounds like a parable).
And maybe it is
But I see your side, of course I do. But I also know my daughter well and know of the people in my family she is best able to not let things go to her head and to take care of an asset of mine. So she lives there, but my name is on title, so she is basically tending to an asset while also finishing school. And, yes, she will end up getting it when done as well, but there is a second house on the property for my wife and I should we ever need it. And since she was going to be in school, she needed a place to live, so way better buying than renting.
And it give me entry into the central Florida area, a place I can use as a home base while looking for some land to maybe one day develop for myself. If Italy doesn’t call me first, or the Blue Ridge Mountains.
It was a forward-thinking move all around.
And now my parents get to have their precious grand-daughter close by, so that makes them ecstatic.
Falcone did good here. It is a win win for everyone.
And I get to write the thing off. Which makes me happy knowing I get to starve the tax beast
BTW the second house on the property needs fixing up. But when it is fixed up, I say we throw a party !!!
Sorry to have misinterpreted your comment below. I now see the wisdom in your actions and do not disagree. I have a close friend who spoiled one of their sons by buying him an expensive home and it did not end well. The parents thought they were doing the right thing in their generosity, but in this new world of immediate gratification, the easy road led to drug addiction and worse. I intended my comment as a caution against this folly and perhaps should have included more in the original post.
I always remember in one of Bukowski’s last books, he talked about going to the horse track at the tail end of the Depression versus in the early 90s. He said that even in the Depression there was a “to hell with it” attitude toward the hard times and financial strain, and a feeling that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. You see this in some of the songs about the period that maintain a sense of humor through the hardship. “We ain’t got no money honey, but we got rain.” America in the midst of Bush Sr.’s smoke and mirrors victory in Iraq, though, was a very different place, and the people at the track were angry, desperate, quiet, and mostly kept to themselves. You can weather hardship if you’re tough, but even in the prosperous but pointless time we’ve lived through, filled with all kinds of blandishments, entertainment, and drugs, people were enervated and miserable. Add poverty to that and who knows what it’s a recipe for.
Joey;
We won the campaign but lost the war because end goal was a stupid one. Restoring the status quo anti can never work because once there’s a war the status quo is no longer available.
But we sure sold a lot of ‘stuff’ to the rich arabs for a while.
One of the more disappointing aspects of “the loss of innocence” for me as I got into adulthood was realizing how money really does influence everything to the detriment of everything else. I grew up a very “working class” person but didn’t notice how awful that fate is until later in life seeing how much money other people have by comparison. Ultimately, I hated my parents for being such losers and leaving me with nothing. There is very little help if your family doesn’t already have money.
99% of the people can’t think THAT far ahead, say generationally.
When I bought my daughter a house everyone of boomer age was like “WTF, why would he do that?”
The idea of wanting to set your kids up in life is almost a crime to them. I was really struck by it.
But they see no problem in blowing $250,000 on education… Why not have the kid go to a state school and get her a house for the same amount? Plus it’s an investment and a write-off.
But that’s a form of logic that simply doesn’t register with them.
One of the positives of the scamdemic is that it has definitively revealed the higher ed grift.
Imagine being a straight white male paying 20k per year for a meme arts degree – ONLINE – you don’t even get to bang art hoes.
i assume that white male will blow his brains out after the age of 30 while still believing in the values of feminism
I got redpilled in college when it ended up being the racist (but very tall and muscular) redneck who was sleeping with all the girls in the dorm. He also called them “slut” and “whore” behind their backs while talking to us. He was also one of the few white people that the blacks actually got along with (which was interesting).
Me the nice (and at the time colourblind) guy wasn’t getting any. Just another Boomer lie exposed. Judging from how our generation is doing these days though most people never learned this lesson.
The redneck got along with the bleghs because they instinctively respect strength.
Banging art hoes lol. You sure that’s a good idea?
Maybe if you like body hair, HPV, and staring into the abyss.
And the lesson that you taught your daughter was that she didn’t have to work in order to support herself in life, but rather wait around for some generous benefactor to step in and do it for her. IOW, you have taught her to become a dependent parasite rather than a self-reliant producer. I call that child abuse. Loaning her the money and requiring to work would have been a better win-win option.
My kids are solid
Stop projecting
I’m not casting aspersions against your kids, and I’m glad to hear that they are solid. But I stand by my comment. I don’t think it’s a good thing to buy your kid a $250,000 house. I’m OK with helping them getting started with their first home, i.e. loaning them the money for a down payment as an example, but not an outright full purchase. That’s not helping them to become self sufficient adults. Yes, it’s hard work to pay off a mortgage, and there is great value in proving to yourself that you have what it takes to do it.
We have too damn many people in this country demanding that someone else pay their way in life, be it parent or government.
another way of looking at it is that he taught her family is the most important thing and that she could depend on her family to help her and should behave the same way.
Look, if your kid gets cancer and needs help to get healthy, yes family should step in to help as necessary. That is what family is for. But being a helicopter parent that is forever stepping in to shield their children against hardship & challenge in life is just denying them the opportunity to exercise their self-reliance muscles and earn self worth through personal achievement. Your not doing you kid a favor by buying him or her a ticket on the easy train in life.
Buying a daughter a house might be ok. As a guy, I would live in a mud hut before I let my parents buy me a 250k house.
And here’s the boomer right on cue.
Every single time.
I had a friend whose father was like that. Thought the most important thing in life was to teach his kids economics lessons and how to survive without any assistance. “I’m not gonna’ be around forever,” he’d tell my friend.
They stopped talking when my friend was in his early 20s and never spoke again. Funny thing is, my friend died of cancer in his late 40s after decades of struggling financially (without any family to help him), and his father is still alive, with all his money.
Just move to where the jobs are and buy a 5 million dollar house in Los Angeles, bro. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps.
There are hundreds of small towns in the rural Midwest with nice 3 bedroom houses for sale in good neighborhoods for under $50,000. If you’re not skilled, you may have to do farm work for a living (typically $50-60k/yr), but it’s honest work and the quality of life is very good (they still have Little League baseball for example). Fuck Los Angeles.
There are decent but modest homes for one tenth that cost in LA. Not in the West Hills, of course, but more modest areas. I’ve visited a relative who rents (alas, doesn’t own) such a “bungalow.” Modest is a relative term; that is still probably 4-5x what a similar home would cost in a smaller, more rational part of the country.
Buying your daughter a house is child abuse? Do you have any idea of how unhinged you sound?
I stand by what I wrote. If you shield your child from every opportunity to prove themselves, then you wind up with a Hunter Biden on your hands.
Lol. My parents did that to me. I haven’t spoken to them in five years. I learned plenty of lessons from them, to be sure, just not the ones they thought they were teaching.
I’m genuinely sorry to hear that. It could have been done better, but none of us got to pick our parents. And you still have to play the hand you’ve been dealt in life, no matter how shitty it may have been.
I wish my parents abused me more.
Falcone – Our older son had the opportunity to begin college at a very young age. He chose not to, both then and later. His innate intellect combined with primarily private education is easily superior to almost any college graduate of the past 15 years, but lack of a magic degree has limited job opportunities (not just because he’s clever, but also a heterosexual Christian White male).
Long term, we still see more value in financially helping him establish his new family than in acquiring an overpriced and ultimately worthless credential. This accords with biblical wisdom (from
https://younggospelminister.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-devil-corrupts-with-free-trade-how.html):
As Christians we should trade and use our finances in ways that honour God, honour our nation, preserve the interests of our family, and even extended family, and we must consider the poor. We are not free to do as we want.
5.2 Disconnect from Babylon’s system as much as you can. Grow, trade, build, according to your ability. We need to stop structuring our lives like the pagans. Chasing things like the pagans.
5.3 Resist splitting and fracturing your family, as much as possible, just to chase prosperity or wealth. A humble life with lots of family is better than a rich life alone. Free movement of peoples has accelerated the death of Christian society, because those who would pass on the culture to our kids were either too busy, or too far away, to do so. So, we left it to the public schools, low and behold, here we are, a pagan nation again.
Exactly how I see it, 3g4me
I want what is best for my kids. In this day and age, helping them form families and not be crushed with debt is the best I can do.
Yes, there is a selfish motivation here in play as well. I want grandkids, and I have a much better chance at getting them if my daughter isn’t working til she’s 30 or 40 trying to buy a house to raise them.
Plus she’s a solid kid and is doing lots of work to the place WHILE finishing college. I wouldn’t have bought the place, also an investment for me, if my kid was a screw up.
That’s largely due to a kid’s college attendance being a form of social status marker for the parents. No one has a sticker on their car that reads “Proud parent of a kid with no debt” or certainly not “Proud parent of a plumber” but there’s plenty of “(whatever Ivy league) Parent” stickers here in Lib-topia.
“My child and my money goes to shit-lib university”
Uh, congrats?
I fear we are being inflated out of the economy. The huge megacity of diverse enrichment where I live, not even $400k would get you a decent place.
real estate is in a very peculiar place right now, because there are almost no properties on offer. I just sold my house in social; had 5x offers in 3 days and sold for $25k over asking. at the time it was on the market there were maybe 2 or 3 other houses for sale, in a development of several thousand homes. it was my house or an apartment that week.
there are so few transactions that it is almost like there is no real estate market at all. banks do not even require an appraisal now, to get a loan, because you will never get a sale completed if you do.
of course, this is going to change once interest rates go up, the mortgage moratorium ends, etc. what’s interesting to me is just how fast things have deteriorated since president cabbage head took office; like someone flipped a switch.
One corrective that I see as necessary because of the severe corruption and incompetence is to use the death penalty for these crimes. For example, the people responsible for any fraud greater than 1 million dollars should hang. Do it quickly and do it publicly. Set up gallows on Wall Street and leave the bodies hanging for a few days. If corporate executives shrink packaging and charge the same price, changing a pound of bacon from 16 oz to 12 oz for example, hang them too for fraud.
The simple fact is that what could have been corrected with fines and public shaming a few years ago now requires severe penalties to restore public confidence and to ensure justice.
If you don’t like the noose, sortez la guillotine
A few years back the Vietnamese government shot a few bankers that were found guilty of major fraud.
that’s why vietnam is asia’s top performing economy
A perfectly sound idea. However, when the corporations and the political class are joined at the hip, the government will do nothing to rein in the pirates. A brutal peasant revolt is the only means of doing what needs to be done.
“However, when the corporations and the political class are joined at the hip”
C’mon, man. It’s never been any other way. The corporation is a creature of the state, which is the ruling institution of the political class. In fact, the earliest corporations were declared by royal charter.
The relationship was never anywhere nearly as incestuous as it is now. There was always graft, but nowadays there’s a community of culture and ideology that goes far beyond mere economic gain. The government and the corporate pirates have agreed upon who the good people are, and who are the people who must be destroyed. And they are working reciprocally to make that happen. Right now Silicon Valley is the epicenter of burgeoning “American” fascism.
I’ve always thought that “diversity” can only work in a wealthy country, with a booming economy. People might not be too happy about their new neighbours, but better to put their head down and get that promotion. Plus they own a cottage and a boat to escape the diversity every weekend anyways.
I could see things getting tense real fast when jobs, money, and status are no longer attainable, especially for white men due to affirmative action. And not just whites, but all races will be fighting for the remaining gibs and jobs. The West is totally broke and is just printing off fake money. Who knows when it will really crash, though.
This has kind of already happened and alot of white people seem to be content living as a junkie bum in a tent instead of fighting for their share of the pie, so who knows if whites would even wake up during an economic crash.
Yes, Wokesterism can only exist in a society of immense material excess.
There is no time or energy to waste on Wokeness in a subsistence economy.
Z talks about the Great Divide as one of ideology but honestly, the real divide has always been between what you might call pragmatic and ideological societies. All pre-industrial societies were pragmatic ones by necessity and those that got too focused on ideology didn’t last long. The US remained a pragmatic society well into the 20th century but has now gone full-time into the business of pompous moralistic and ideological navel gazing. *Creating* and *doing* (male focused) projects have faded and been replaced by those focused on “becoming” – insert your favorite Xrrl yoga instructor jabbering about self-actualization here.
The real problem, more concretely, is that while average and even stupid people can be taught to make useful things or perform useful tasks, few are capable of self-analysis and “self-creation” activities. The shallow and stupid become clownish narcissists or dangerous fanatics, while many intelligent people look into themselves and see only the abyss of eons of meaningless time and purposeless existence.
Best to just learn how to make a good cabinet or play the mandolin…
Yeah, I don’t do tents, but pulled up stakes and bought a van 13 months ago and have been in nomad land ever since.
all the ladies I see in camper vans are lesbos, so I am guessing you are not getting much sugar out there…
The Federal Reserve totally agrees with you. Your Bank of Canada apparently does not, best I can tell. I agree with you.
I think this will be Summer White Man Shoots Back. Of course, this will get ugly as the federal and many state law enforcement agencies cast their lot with their pet dusky violent criminals, but people in economic distress do act differently. The Summer of St. George would have been a different affair with higher fuel and food prices.
I just got a new job with a big raise and seriously wonder if I’ll have anything to show for it after inflation and all the new taxes coming. Driving around town I see ‘help wanted’ signs everywhere because unemployment pays too well. This morning in business news, more cryptocurrencies have made instant millionaires of people who have added absolutely no value to the economy.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/ethereum-dogecoin-hit-records
The economy has a real off-the-rails and headed for the ravine feel to it.
If you can translate that nice new income into something lasting, such as buying property in cash, then don’t hesitate.
I know there are a lot of smart people who say “but you never really own the property, try not paying taxes and see how much you own it.”
Yes, true true.
BUT, and it’s a big BUT, property taxes are a fraction of rent or a mortgage. Not perfect, and not “right” that we can never truly own a property, but it’s the best scenario on offer. Might as well ride the wave while you can.
That is the plan. Try to judge the peak of the market and sell our house in NJ to a fleeing New Yorker, rent in PA for a while, and find a spread to ride out the crash.
My plan too
Dump the L.A. house and get the hell out
I’m looking toward westerly areas of Virginia
My wife absolutely loves Harrisonburg, but VA is turning into California.
VA State government has gone nuts though and is doing some very nasty gun control stuff which they will try to turn into a way to flush out rightists in general. We’re leaving Oregon and heading a bit south and west of VA – TN. Of course western VA and TN are quite similar in climate and people so maybe the VA side is tolerable at least there.
you already missed the peak.
Excuse me. Escrow (property tax + insurance) is damned near 40% of my monthly mortgage payment. Of course I do live in a Democrat run city and county.
Egad
In my case the mortgage is only $4500 a year and in Los Angeles, as long as Prop 13 is in effect….
In Florida it’s like $3,000
So those numbers were my head when I was commenting
meant say taxes are only $4500 a year….
and if you pay off the mortgage taxes would be 100% of your monthly cost. give us a number, not a percentage. the above commenter was correct, in spite of your particular situation being different.
Drake – One of the reasons I never returned to work after our sons were grown was because I would have had to earn at least 6 figures to net any real financial gain. Any lower income combined with what my husband earns would just result in more tax gibs for Jaquarious than income for us. The amount my husband paid last year is truly astonishing. We’re doing our best to become more anti-fragile and help establish our kids before Biden lets loose all hell.
I figured out one year — and not my peak year — that my total tax burden was enough to support a family of five above the poverty level.
That was part of my journey, realizing what bullcrap it all was.
I said to myself, “Just assign me a family of five that I have to support instead. At least then I get to see how they’re wasting my money.”
Had the same experience at the University when the kids were attending. Every year the legislature and the Board of Regents would be at loggerheads wrt tuition raise. The compromise was always to allow a raise, but reserve a portion to supplement “disadvantaged” minority “scholarships”.
Well, the last year I kept track, the reserve kept was over 40% of every dollar! Which basically meant that a White family putting two kids through University, were putting a non-White through as well.
Same here, buddy.
Vizzini – Excellent point. My daughter-in-law, upon hearing what we paid merely in federal taxes last year, exclaimed “That’s more than I MADE last year!” If we could have specified that our tax burden benefited our children, or even just a rural White family, it wouldn’t be so infuriating. And again, this is just federal taxes.
Our property taxes (here in TX there is no income tax so they keep increasing the purported value of our home and heavily taxing it to distribute it to all the poorer non-White school districts) are almost double what Falcone said his are in LA. And our house is not a custom home but a glorified tract home, more than 25 years old and in need of a great deal of updating. Yet another way to feel we’re getting screwed all the time.
the latin version of “Texas” is “taxus”
Inflation will help the boomers.
They’re assets will inflate in value.
Their SS will increase with COLAs
Their medical costs are covered by Medicare / Medicaid
They consume other goods and services at a much lower rate than younger cohorts.
In fact, this inflation will be one last fuck you from boomers to those that follow them.
Yeah the rotten bastards sticking it to you by not turning down the SS payment Cola increases and not getting rid of assets they took their whole life to acquire. The final fist pump is not being a bugman and spending like young bugmen.
You didn’t even mention the Tribe on this one. Come on, try harder.
Truth hurts, eh?
What truth, been blessed, stayed focused and have a family that sometimes I don’t believe I deserve. Not a bitter one among them, you should emulate.
It’s weird…you’re both right.
As Will Munny said, “We all got it coming, kid.”
DLS: It is weird, you’re absolutely correct, but they both make good points. Far too many boomers/late silents brag about their vacations and second homes and spend all their spare time at the doctor, while their children and/or grandchildren struggle to live a middle-class lifestyle.
I know it’s never all about me, but just to give a slightly different personal example. My husband and I are both later boomers. His parents were modestly middle class and what little they had, they divided evenly among their three sons. My parents were able to save quite a bit more, but my mother has already handed huge chunks of it over to my two siblings. I doubt I’ll get much (if anything) when she finally goes. In the meantime, we get no SS or Medicare or senior discounts and my husband just assumes he’ll have to keep working until he dies – not so much for us right now, but for our sons and future grandchildren. Otherwise, what’s the point of it all?
Truth is, that in today´s West you see more and more White families were the boomer grandparents are (lower end) millionaires or at least comfortably upper class while the children are struggling lower middle class childless people who had zero real opportunities for upward mobility and are doing their best to survive The Jungle without loosing their lives or their sanity while doing so and maybe even make a few White babies so that their lineage doesn’t go extinct.
Because “muh bootstraps”.
No other serious or semi-serious community behaves like this, not the Jews, not the Chinese, not the Persians, not even the Latinos. Only the monkeys and us, do.
The Usual Suspects don´t apply that rugged individualism bullshit to their progeny, but they´ll make that damn sure that we do.
If only the Boomers understood one day that what got, most, not all, of their asses out of poverty wasn´t their “talent” (Rofl) and “hard work” but riding the biggest wave of prosperity and surplus that humankind has ever known. A wave that won´t repeat any time soon.
In the old days, a family, a clan, would prosper and thrive and expand the bloodline for one century and half just by riding and expanding on the coattails of one lucky/gifted predecessor. Now, not so much, now is the era of “dying broke”, “reverse mortgages”, and a sad etc.
And before anybody tries to make this personal: I´m rich.
Downvote away.
Huzzah, cheers! That’s why I’m buying Dad’s house for my older brother, the PhD holder.
And my other properties are roofs over family, clan, kinfolk, or friend’s heads.
There are no guarantees of success. Especially not now, no matter what path you take.
Forgive me, that sounds hi-falutin’.
Bottom of the barrel stuff. Raw land, trailers, old houses, a travel trailer or three, or even old vehicles- priority #1 is a place out of the rain and out of some parking lot.
I’m from the level where real homelessness and joblessness is a constant and looming possibility.
A base is job one, then we go from there.
Truth is, that in today´s West you see more and more White families were the boomer grandparents are (lower end) millionaires or at least comfortably upper class while the children are struggling lower middle class childless people who had zero real opportunities for upward mobility and are doing their best to survive The Jungle without loosing their lives or their sanity while doing so and maybe even make a few White babies so that their lineage doesn’t go extinct.
Because “muh bootstraps”.
No other serious or semi-serious community behaves like this, not the Je.ws, not the Chinese, not the Persians, not even the Latinos. Only the mon.keys and us, do.
The Usual Suspects don´t apply that rugged individualism bullshit to their progeny, but they´ll make that damn sure that we do.
If only the Boomers understood one day that what got, most, not all, of their asses out of poverty wasn´t their “talent” (Rofl) and “hard work” but riding the biggest wave of prosperity and surplus that humankind has ever known. A wave that won´t repeat any time soon.
In the old days, a family, a clan, would prosper and thrive and expand the bloodline for one century and half just by riding and expanding on the coattails of one lucky/gifted predecessor. Now, not so much, now is the era of “dying broke”, “reverse mortgages”, and a sad etc.
And before anybody tries to make this personal: I´m rich.
Downvote away.
Which this last January amounted to – total, between the wife and I – less than $30/month. My health precludes me.working these days but even with her driving her Prius back and forth to the Bus Barn it barely covered gas increases. And the soaring cost of some (most?) foods is causing some interesting choices. No dog food yet but more meatless meals. I only have meat or eggs (never both) at breakfast twice a week. Tortillas are cheap so I eat a lot of bean and cheese breakfast tacos. Some days I have potato and egg tacos. Even make my own fresh salsa. Comes in around $5/gallon.
Except being old we have to see more specialists. My Medicare advantage plan charges me $40 to see one of those. Got a condition sends me to the specialist every 4 weeks. That’s over half a grand there per year. Then there’re the meds. I get mine through the VA so no Medicare part D out of my SS. Wife loses part of her SS to part D PLUS she has co-pays. Trust me, young man, if nationalized medicine is anything like Medicare and the VA, you DO NOT want it. It’s hell getting old.
All my closest buddies from High School were dead by the time I turned 25. Sometimes I think THEY were the lucky ones.
I know plenty of hard working people who simply can’t afford to pay premiums and deductibles for health insurance and still pay the bills and eat. (I believe this to be by design, FWIW.) My parents never worried about such things and we were working class.
I still have no insurance. Dammit, another looming cost to plan for. Thanks, though, for the heads up.
hey doofus, we are all in the same boat, but some of us have better seat is all.
Can’t believe that Z thinks Mumbly Joe won’t be able to navigate us out of a wrecked economy with inflation skyrocketing. Plus he’s got the cocoa sidekick to help him figure it all out. Let me just say, Wow.
I worry that Joe isn’t diverse enough.
The Occupy Wall Street protests were about 10 years ago. Where is that movement now? Why not now, more than ever? Recently, maybe in Sailer’s blog, I saw where about the time of those protests, you can see through a search that the NYT suddenly flooded the paper with the topic of race.
About the time the OWS crowd was organizing bus trips to show where the financial raiders lived was when, mysteriously, the subversion started to seep into the organization. The disappointing thing is the right sees that the Tea Party was actively subverted and is still (rightfully) kinda cheesed about it, but there’s not enough of an actual “left” left to care about the subversion of their cause.
OWS was Astro turf all along.
It was always an astroturf effort designed as a weapon against Mitt Romney (he was the big bad boogeyman in 2012).
An actual Left as opposed to the one that is wrecking white civilization? What, pray tell, is the difference?
The was a piece at University that made a convincing argument the megacorps embraced wokeness to co-opt OWS.
I agree with it because it seems to have worked.
All the woksters are raging FOR the machine these days.
University = Unz
I really need to get my autocorrect squared away.
If we ever have to refer to Unz in code, University would work. Kind of like ((())).
DamnAutocorrect! is really a fun site.
It’s plausible that OWS provided a fillip to corporate’s leftward lurch, but corporate was already moving in that direction. In fact, it began moving that direction probably sometime in the mid-70s.
guess you never read Atlas Shrugged
The left has a professional agitator class. People who want to make a mess, not solve problems. OWS was pure astroturf.
Ten years on, they’re all over the country, working in HR departments, NGOs, holding corporate and political office. Teaching. They’re AOC.
This is another one of those “At 81 why should I worry.?” moments. And I know I’m not a good person but if Brad Boomer winds up shipwrecked, well Brad, can’t say you weren’t warned.
You better worry about yourself and your progeny if you have any.
Blame ain’t going to help ride the coming rough waves ahead.
I’m not sure you really comprehend the amount of “no fucks” being 81 gives you.
I’m only 70 and I’m careful about dipping into my store of f***s to give. Definitely don’t waste them on young crybabies hating on boomers. Shit happens, junior. Deal with it!
It’s amazing how this runaway train is still on the rails. There is so much that is wrong, not only in our society, but the entire west, it boggles the mind.
We’ve been moderately prepping over the last few years – just accumulating various things here and there. Sometimes I find myself looking at it and wondering what the hell are we doing – wasting money, wasting space – nothing bad is ever going to happen, right?
But somehow I just can’t shake the feeling that yeah, something bad is going to happen – just don’t know when or what’ll precipitate it, but it’s coming.
It used to be that we needed America to hold the world together but now America is actually the problem with all its Woke stuff and degeneracy. Insofar as my personal concern is with the West and not so much who is its standard-bearer.
And it does seem that things are stirring in Europe where they want to get back to being European and be done with this multi-cultural garbage and Africanization that America forces on them. A dying America might just be what we all need to to save ourselves.
How the tables have turned.
If Europe actually got their borders under control, I’d be moving over there in a heartbeat. As it stands right now, they’re just North America 2.0 with nogs more densely packed in, and no guns.
Even Russia is in question once Putin moves on in 10-20 years.
I hear ya, but Europe will save itself
They always do
Their problem right now is the American gorilla hanging on their backs
I myself a torn between Italy and a country place somewhere in the blue ridge mountains. My mom is the main issue since she will go berserk if I leave for Italy like my brother did. And not saying that Italy has tons of promise, but that’s not the point. It’s just that I like it there and I’m at home there, my blood pressure lowers the moment I smell that air, and at this point in my life what else is there? America is all about working til you drop. I am getting more and more tired of this shit with every passing day.
take your mom on a “vacation” to Italy 🙂
Europe’s demographics and political culture are far from perfect, but are a damn sight better than NA. And Putin will appoint a dynastic successor to carry forward his policies. That’s no guarantee of success, but I wouldn’t go a-bear–so to speak–of Putin.
I dont know about the origins and engine of wokie being an export of the States. Germans have been cucked a long time (nationalism bad). France has had their dual class ethnocentric gambit a long time.
My first experience of people claiming to be “citizens of the world” was off the lips of my Euro friends.
I spent many years working with Europeans and traveling to Europe. Obviously limited to the sample size of my experience, but the message was consistent from my Euro brothers: America is for everybody! Americans are a mere matter of paperwork. Immigrating to USA is a human right, just ask the UN!
I don’t recall them lamenting being “forced” into the EU by the USA either. Even as a visitor it struck me as a sad and bland evolution.
And many western European nations were well ahead of the US in the importation of their own post-colonial labor arbitrage. We have taco shops, euro has kebabs.
Of course collecting data on race and ethnicity is illegal in France so who knows anymore. So you would have to be racist to notice that many Euro fist cities are globo bazaars.
Europeans were always well versed in the Howard Zinn version of US history. So any sniff of “racisms”, ethnocentrism, nationalism, patriotism, or gasp! Xenophobia and I would be reminded that the States are racist and must open up to the global future. All us “rich” Americans owed the world our fruit and our future. Sure, you got mostly garbage instead. Thank the “brokers” for that.
I get lot of animosity is well deserved in response to our evil empire, military adventures, economic abuse, and export of garbage kulture.
But had we gone against the global utopia one world brown female future, closed our borders to street shitters and mexican invaders, the entire world would be still be wetting themselves over us becoming Nazi 2.0. White, Christian USA does not exist and effectively never has in t he eyes of Euro patriots.
I remember all my Euro friends celebrating Trumps victory, for it meant a push back against globohomo. Lol.
Average man in the street here and there likely has a lot in common, but its not a fair shake to be disappointed that the USA became exactly what most around the world were demanding of her.
I get your point, but the Woke stuff and Africanization went into hyperdrive with America.
Instead of just admitting we messed up by not sending the blacks back to their home continent, we tried to make “lemonade out of lemons” and went off the rails with it. And we came up with convoluted moral scheme and reasoning to cover up the mistake and the mess.
But yes, Germany is a bit weird in all of this and sort of America’s junior partner along with England in chasing the multi-cultural Woke dream. But that said, I do believe that Germany would naturally revert back to its own ethnic pride without the weight of America on it. Not so sure about England, they always seem eager to live up to and please their big brother. I understand that. But it’s also not good for them.
AINO is now the Evil Empire and Russia the paladin of the West. Turned tables, indeed.
A couple of big-enough Hedge Funds go tits-up and it’s “That’s All Folks.”
Literary analogy: In the novel (and movie version) of “Atlas Shrugged,” as the system is gradually falling apart, and the rails have been nationalized by less than competent folk, a decision is made to ignore the unreliable rail signals and send a passenger express headlong into a freight loaded with munitions, deep in the only serviceable tunnel under the mountains…to unhappy effect…
Our law books are littered with “blue sky laws”, which are in place (in theory) to protect investors (large and small) and provide an orderly marketplace.
The whole point of the SEC and the large stock exchanges is so that pig in a poke scammers don’t issue pieces of paper on unsuspecting widows and orphans.
When you purchase shares in the railroad/ power company/ paper mill, you have faith the company actually exists and the NYSE and SEC are (in theory) the gatekeepers.
Sure: an Enron, Global Crossings and Madoff can get through, but what do we do when your stock ETF is 10% (20%? 40?) “SPAC”?
The paleos were largely correct about anarcho-tyranny. I think what they missed was that both sides of it the result of the market mentality. If all that matters is profit, however measured, the seller and buy have no cultural connection. They are free to try and rog one another. This is why markets must be regulated. When this mentality pervades the state, then the result is anarcho-tyranny. In other words, it is not the result of managerialism, but of the unfettered marketplace mentality.
I’ve always thought of anarcho-tyranny as a particular form of selective law enforcement, which travelers and expats know is the normal state of affairs in any Third World/developing country.
“Rog.” from WordHippo.
Verb
(transitive, obsolete) To shake.
Noun
(slang) Intoxication through freebasing
In this case, perhaps the noun is more descriptive of what is to come this summer or sometime in the near future. What to do…what to do.
At least I’m not saddled with voting in the CA recall election….I’ll be freebasing thank you.
I am guessing “rog” is short for “roger” which is brit slang for “fuck”; e.g. “I rogered your wife”. so it can also be used to mean “fuck over” or “cheat”.
I’ll add that to my existing list of male names to not use in English-speaking nations (ex-USA). Previously it had Willy and Randy. 😀
There was a time when I would have agreed with “all that matters is profit”. Now I believe value is more important. As I stated below, I see people making gigantic profits and becoming millionaires while adding no value to the economy or society.
Not only value but values. And by the latter, I mean anti-white racist values. Those values matter more to the Power Structure than all of the value and profits combined.
“This is why markets must be regulated.”
Who regulates our regulators?
A new class of “Megaregulators” known as Trillionaires!
A higher sort of moral person, in theory
Why they always said that for America to survive it would need a strong Christian morality and its leaders the exemplars of it
As went morality, went the system
I fear some of you may have a too rosy view of how morals were centuries ago, presumably when nations had better “Christian” morals, values, etc. I’ve a passing familiarity with some of the monumental scams and crashes of bygone eras (e.g. the Tulip craze of 17th century, South Sea bubble of 18th century, ah, several to choose from in 19th, how about railroads?, for the (early) 20th we have the manic speculation of the 20s, a hidebound time (relative to today’s morals, anyway).
My point: cupidity and all the other human vices are always operative to some degree.
I do concur that our current time is probably the sine qua non, the Mother , of all speculative bubbles and fairy castles in the air, paid for with pretend money issued by government-backed FHA mortgages. And yes, the decadence, the unraveling of traditional values, is certainly part of the bargain. Hard to say what is cause or effect.
I’d ascribe that primarily to the unprecedented ability to communicate (internet) as well as powerful government we have in the present age. Oh yes. Funny money. Don’t forget loose credit. That is usually present in all the periods of excess.