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Social Security is Not Broke
I’ve heard that Social Security is out of money. The Cold War was completely financed by the money withheld between 1946 and 1986. Trillions of dollars were taken from the general fund for spending on the military.
By not isolating Social Security deductions from hundreds of millions of paychecks our elected leaders had all the money they needed to do whatever they wanted. If there was never a separate account – IT CAN’T BE BROKE! The beneficiaries of this spending were stockholders and upper management of the defense industry.
Had this not happened, there would be a surplus so large it would pay larger checks with complete medical coverage and prescriptions for generations to come.
So what can we say about people that knew they were ruining our country while they passed their midnight acts where no could see what was going on? For that matter why doesn’t the government make sure their spending is below their income like we have to do all our lives. If they over-spend, all they do is ask the Federal Reserve to print a few billion and then agree to pay 13% interest. Wouldn’t it be smarter to not over-spend? I’d go without a lot before I would borrow at 13%.
The corruption that builds up over 200 years is so entrenched that another constitutional convention is called for. It could take quite some time to develop an alternative to the current system but it would be well worth the effort. Something extreme needs to happen or America will end up looking like a fourth world country indebted to the world.
By Lloyd H. Frye
Op-Ed Columnist
The Hot Joints
FSBO XI
Seventeen weeks into the sale of the house and not so much as a low ball offer. When the president of Wells Fargo Bank says publicly that these are the worst times for real estate since the Great Depression, he isn’t kidding. In fact, there’s nothing funny about what’s going on.
If this is some kind of pyramid scheme where a person buys their spot on the pyramid board and waits patiently for the blocks to fill in until they get their money back, we’re just waiting for our turn. If prices fall to twenty year ago levels almost all of our retirement money will have disappeared in a single year. And we’ll go from occasional volunteering at the local mission serving the homeless to standing in those lines on a permanent basis. Is this the future the New World Order has in mind for all of us with personal estates under $10,000,000?
We never had that much in life, going without things is the way we got by. Unfortunately if you’re laid off at 55 years of age with seven years until the reduced social security checks, you’ll find the savings so painfully put away each year will fly out the door in a single month. Thirty years of savings will only get you 30 months plus whatever interest the funds had accumulated. NAFTA is one of the direct proofs that our government has declared war on Americans by making moving production offshore so lucrative that companies have no rational choice but to do so. Corporations were the masters that ordered our “elected leaders” to draft the act originally so it isn’t exactly a shock it makes big profits a cake walk, which they are allowed to defer the taxes on these profits.
So it’s not so much our government that is the enemy of the American people it’s the corporations of this country who answer to the demanding greed of the investor class. These people demand 10-40 % return on their investments in a 3-5% inflation world. Unfortunately to get these outrageously high returns someone has to pay the price, that would be every hard working American that has to pay high rents, watch their wages get swallowed by millions of competitors swarming into our country, and still expected to spend every penny they have so the retail sector can stay healthy and prosperous.
When is enough, enough? If the top 1% of the population has fortunes so massive that their descendents can’t spend it all no matter how wastefully they live, isn’t it time to show some self control? Does America have to resemble some depressing sci-fi movie with masses wandering the earth in squalor, while the few live like kings of old? It’s Christmas Day and an excellent point to begin the process of giving some of that extreme wealth back to the faceless masses it was taken from. With 90% of all wealth in their possession, they are the only people that can make life in America any better.
By Lloyd H. Frye
Op-Ed Columnist
The Hot Joints
Made In China
During the eighties I’d read articles in the Wall Street Journal about jobs being sent to China. I was in management in the sales arena of electronic components, even then I knew that wasn’t good news for America. This trend continued through the nineties when off shoring became the battle cry of America’s industrial might being handed the communist country. Now that I lost my job to a Mexican in Renosa for a tenth of what I was making it has become perfectly clear that manufacturing is essentially gone.
I went out to buy a desk lamp for a table I planned to do some doodle art (the only pastime I can afford these days) when I was told every lamp in the store was made in China, regardless of whether the company was Canadian, American or European. I asked the sales person if there was a store in town that might have exception to this reality. I drove across town and found a German halogen for $377.95 which I passed on. Then after a couple of second hand stores I found a lamp made in Taiwan for $39.00 and bought it on the spot, claiming victory after spending all day looking.
After the lead paint found in much of the Chinese made products with the direct knowledge of American executives fiasco this Christmas, I had driven my personal stake in the ground – no more “Made in China” products. I wasn’t sure why corporate CEOs were knowingly trying to kill off our young, but I suspected it had to do with being traitors to our people by giving our enemies our jobs and now working with the enemy to kill our children. We’re still in the cold war only now the communists have powerful friends in Washington and board rooms all over our country.
I don’t care how many things I go without until I die. I still won’t kill my granddaughter off for corporate profits and the exploding wealth of the investor class in our country no matter what.
By Lloyd H. Frye
Op-Ed Columnist
The Hot Joints
Prayer in High Office
God has also been said to be on the side that demolishes other people in His name sake. “God, help us do thy will” was part of the prayer said on both sides of the line in the Civil War. God reportedly has directed Islamic warriors to “Kill the Infidel.” The Israelites were convinced God wanted them to have the land of Canaan (Palestine). Pretty much when ever ambitious men decide to take land from another they evoke the will of God somehow to cleanse what they are about to do. How many Protestants died for blasphemy in the dark ages, 50 million or so?
The founding fathers were so concerned that the Church of England not become as powerful in the colonies as it was in England, they put the separation between church and state phrase into the Constitution. This basically said there couldn’t be an official religion for the country. It did not say one in high office couldn’t have a personal belief system just that he couldn’t elevate that religion to being the official one for his constituents.
Recently the governor of Georgia held prayer services off state grounds to pray for rain. This act has caused some serious concern in various circles. I don’t see the problem. He has that right as a citizen to pray to his God. The fact that he did so at a announced place and time is unfortunate, but still his right to do so. The time to get really concerned is the day a national Sunday law is passed where all citizens are required to worship on Sunday, that they will not be able to buy or sell on that day and people are urged to report any and all violations. That’s the kind of thing the founding fathers were greatly concerned about, not whether some governor of a drought plagued state offers up a prayer.
The fact that over an inch of rain fell the next day is beside the point.
By Lloyd H. Frye
Op-Ed Columnist
The Hot Joints
The Perfect Financial Storm? Worries of a seller in a housing slump
When I was a boy all I ever heard was how great America was, how lucky I was to be born here, and how lucky for the world America was there for it in WWII. This self worship still can be found in many if not most places in our country. Don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t live anywhere else. But I’m afraid we’re about to get our “comeupins”.
Many things had to happen before the US would be vulnerable enough to get really hurt bad in the next few years.
1) Since WWII Americans have had the good life, first from being the only factories standing after most of the world had been blown to bits, then by borrowing money and spending it as if there’s no tomorrow. Now we’re upside down on many of our homes and into the credit cards in a big way.
2) In an attempt to mine the human wealth of Asia, US companies as well as European ones has devoted enough capital, plant and equipment, and management to revive our countries twice over to build up a producer/consumer block so powerful as to dictate the US foreign and fiscal policy for decades to come.
3) A refusal of the petroleum industry for the last 40 years to build more refinery plants in spite of increasing demand then say at this point they can’t reduce prices, it’s a demand problem of emerging nations needing more oil.
4) The formation of the Euro, the first mega currency capable of providing world liquidity if called on to do so. The Europeans are super savers compared to the US and therefore a tight fisted approach works well for a steady currency. One point to remember is their CEOs don’t make 100 to 1000 times an average employee.
5) A cold war/ arms race that ended up destroying the Soviet Union, we ended up a debtor nation by the way in the same war.
It used to be not that long ago that “if
Dropping my asking price for my house each month in response to others dropping their price, I wonder what will this all come to. Since 70% of our economy is American consumers, what would happen if we can’t borrow on the equity in our homes? What spending will I do if I can’t sell the thing for more than I owe, forget having a down for another place?
If
By Lloyd H. Frye
Op-Ed Columnist
The Hot Joints
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