Anybody care to answer how long you can afford to pay for oil with gold-backed paper?

This was a reply to Dave Jr. I have no idea how it got posted to isalcordo. My apologies.

"Shouldn't this program go down and the FICA proceeds be put to more efficient use?"

Yep Dave, it should. But those of us who got bilked out of somewhere near 7% of our income for our entire working life are saying to ourselves "hey! I paid for that! I want it!" and that's where the problem comes from.

I never planned to get anything back from SS. Even as a kid I could see it was a scam, but that doesn't stop me from being seriously PO'd. It's the old Polynesian Monkey Trap. You've heard about that one? The way it works is you take a coconut, cut a hole in it just big enough for a hand to fit in. You cut another hole in it just big enough to run a rope through, but not big enough to pass a knot that you've tied in the rope. You pass the rope through the coconut until the knot bottoms out. You tie the rope around the base of a tree. Then you fill the coconut with rice.

A monkey comes along and sees the coconut full of rice. You're hiding in the bushes. The monkey goes up, sticks his hand in the coconut and grabs the rice. You run up and kill the monkey because HE JUST WON'T LET GO OF THAT RICE.

Then you eat the monkey. That's Social Security in a nutshell.

Suppose Oil countries demand gold as payment for their oil?

How will quaint theories about gold perform in such a trade?

I apologize, Dave, Jr., but you were generalizing about the FICA and your comment did not quote bluebird as background to put it on the correct perspective. It was misleading and it misled me. Sorry.

Isa

Solution:

Justice Defined: We are all free to profit or suffer and learn (adapt to excellence) by facing the consequences of our OWN choices. Injustice is to be forced to suffer the consequences of choices of unaccountable (irresponsible) others..

So, those who made (and profited by) fraudulent promises should be stripped of the "proceeds of crime" and, those who lent to poor credit risks (deadbeat states) using OUR SERVITUDE as collateral (compulsion EQUALS SERVITUDE) based on the fraudulent claim of ability to enforce laws that do not and cannot legally (keep the peace, balance of power, equality rights, smite predators) exist.

Time reveals the truth of all matters. It is showdown time. Predators wielding OUR guns against us, backed into a corner by their lies, threatened by the blowback of the consequences of their own predatory actions, whose survival (according to their forcefully defined reality) depends on increasing the tribute (something for nothing apart from "obey or else") demanded of the productive, a nearly extinct class because it has become "crime does pay" (until the seed corn is eaten) and "being productive, is a survival risk", making the productive CHOOSE to be otherwise.

JD has and excellent idea. Go fishing and, fight to the death any who demand a cut of "your catch" while simultaneously teach any who may be willing "how to fish" (and the neccesity of defending "their catch" and the catches of others.

Peace, prosperity and civilization is a matter of predator control. ZERO other survival choice:

Click to view link

Those who step up to the plate and take personal responsibility for their own lives and affairs have the best chance of survival.

The fools who futilely beg "Please sir, can I have some more" are enslaving themselves for a false hope that the answer can ever be yes and, in actual fact must be less, on a trajectory to zero.

Be prepared. YOU are the cupboard and, it is bare. Soon, it will be personnally dangerous to admit pervious affiliations with the apparaus of state, because, at a minimum, such persons, in one way or another are in "possession of stolen property", be it pensions or whatever, living by "proceeds of (forcefully coercing, initiating aggression) crime" by reason of Machiavaillian "neccessity" which has been refuted by reality (action inevitably leads to consequences DIFFERENT than liars posit).

Hey isalcordo, if you had read the post that I commented on, you would see I wasn't talking about grandpa and grandma. I'll quote it below to save you the trouble.

"My husband had a worthless brother (he has died of an overdose) who drew SS as a young man. The reason? He stayed drunk all the time. I have a cousin drawing it in her 40's. why? Depression. My daughter just divorced a worthless man. Got married when they were 18, both working. He quit work shorly afterward. Some kook got him on SS (at 20 years old!) because he was tired (lazy) all the time with the idea he will draw it for the rest of his life. He sat at home playing video games, waiting for my daughter to come home from work (even as late as 11:00 PM) to fix him (and their son) something to eat! Would not even make a sandwich! Several local judges retired to get their SS started, then went back to the bench, earning $100G a year. This is what is killing the host! Fix it. Stop the wars. Allow people to save for their retirement as they choose and the problems will fix themselves and the truely poor Grandmas won't starve."

Hey, Dave Jr.:

Wasn't grandpa and grandma productive from age 18 to 65 years old to feed you and to send you to school while saving for their old age through their Social Security contributions? And now you call them "leach" (leech) in their old age?? People "with no self-esteem" . . . "able to tap into the free ride." Shame on you!

"Should I go produce some wealth to feed the beast and help it rule over me, or go fishing today?"

Fish. We'll need you when this is over.

No need to raise the debt ceiling nor suffer - Ron Paul knows how to PAINLESSLY end the debt ceiling crisis and strike a huge blow for MONETARY SANITY in America at the same time.
Click to view link

Excerpt:
And as Paul himself commented recently: "We owe, like, $1.6 trillion because the Federal Reserve bought that debt, so we have to work hard to pay the interest to the Federal Reserve," Paul said. "We don't, I mean, they're nobody; why do we have to pay them off?"

In fact, last month, Paul told CNN that the world's investors would likely regain confidence in the U.S. were it to wipe out the debt owed to the Fed: "They'll say, 'Hey, they've just reduced the deficit by over a trillion dollars, now they can handle it. They can go back to meeting their other obligations,'" Paul said. "It might give some reassurance to the market."

Please read the article on WND and then contact Obama, Biden, your representative in the House and your Senators here:
Click to view link

Please also forward the WND article to your entire list and ask them to contact their Congressmen also. We can DO this America!

Exactly.

"You need to pay more and get less in return."

"And by the way, we OWN you."

Just to reiterate:

Look at the projected level of debt in the future under any plan so far presented, compare to the level today.

Each and every one lays a huge increase in unpayable debt on our heads. Every single one! Numbers so large they are impossible to visualize. The attempt boggles the mind. Each trillion is a thousand billion, which is a thousand times one thousand million. Government borrows and prints 41% of every dollar it spends, and they are fighting over how much to INCREASE that!

Every single proposal so far accelerates spending far in excess of our ability to ever catch up!

Every time they say "cut", they are LYING.

Every time they say "compromise", they mean to gut the economy some more and blame it on greedy businessmen, dealing yet more punishment to the productive.

It's not about feeding Grandma. It's not about paying creditors. It's not about creating jobs. It's not even about killing tribesmen, nor making the world safe for democracy by blowing up primitive people.

It's about a boot, stamping on a face, forever. It's about laying an obligation on the serfs that they can never escape, with huge helpings of unearned guilt for dessert. THAT is what they are negotiating. Should you be tossed down a well that is $25 Trillion deep, or only $22 Trillion deep? A reasonable compromise must surely be $23.5 Trillion deep, right?

If there is a choice, the only sane choice can be: No More Debt.

Now, see, you've made me exceed my exclamation point allowance for the month. The MSM piffle has a way of making me do that.

DB -- "Let the wise men lead."

Interestingly, the elite-backed Economist states, "The absence of leadership in the West is frightening-and also rather familiar (reference to Japan)." See: Click to view link

The government structure and intrusion in private affairs is not the issue, they seem to say. We just better equipped "wise men" who will do the right thing.

Of course the Economist's solution is simple (for them). Democrats need to cut entitlements (austerity) and Republicans accept higher taxes (austerity). This solution is vaguely familiar... the IMF solutions come to mind.

"which is what many seem to want to do"

Not so. That is a threat by the President in order to stampede the herd into accepting perpetual debt servitude.

The promises made to the people who are dependent on SS can be kept, nobody has to be cut off, and the system can be reformed and phased out, if we choose to do so.

If we let Obama scare us with this threat, the whole system is going to crash. Then, not only will Grandma be left to die, but the rest of us will not have the means to even help out our own family and neighbors.

"I don't know whether they were offered a "reasonable" choice or not"

Let me illustrate the context as I see it.

A "Cut" of X trillion over ten years, is not a cut. It is less increase. That means government grows, the debt increases.

Those people were elected on a promise to downsize government. Not grow it. NOTHING presented so far is a CUT. They are quibbling about how much to increase the debt, and whether 'less increase' needs to be 'paid for' with tax increases.

There is nothing reasonable in any of it. Nothing.

If government 'defaults' on current debt or cuts Grandma off her SS check, it's because government has decided to spend the $200+ billion per month it collects off us on bureaucrats and make-work jobs instead. The bureaucrats are sacred and Grandma is not, not when she can be used as a weapon to bludgeon the opposition. It is a cold-blooded threat to throw Grandma into the street and try to blame it on those who were sent there to restore sanity.

But the Tea Party representatives don't care if they are re-elected. They know they were sent there with a specific mandate. Arm-twisting is not going to win them over. And they don't have to do anything. They don't have to negotiate. They don't have to try to get a bill passed. All they have to do is look at any bills that come up, and if they increase the spending and bureaucracy, vote no. The debt limit proposals are all, each and every one, based on the premise that our future sweat is theirs to dispose of. I hope they stick to their guns and make government live within its means.

Nobody mourns when a small business goes under because the government/banking system has skewed the economy to the point where it can no longer compete. Nobody mourns the fact that government regulations, labor laws, taxes and inflation drove steelmaking, auto parts suppliers, and general manufacturing offshore. We just had to deal with it. Now, all these tax pigs who live off the production of everyone else are suddenly in jeopardy. Too bad. I feel as sorry for them as they did for us as entire towns were gutted. Our president talks of Shared Sacrifice. But guess what-it's never the tax pigs sacrificing anything. Only the productive are ever the sacrificial animal.

All that debt is predicated on making investors rich by having the government take my earnings at the point of a gun. That's a toxic principle, and it's bad debt. They might be pretending it's all good, but it's not. Because it's not my debt. And I'm not going to pay it!

Let them pretend compromise on basic moral principles is 'reasonable'. Let them pour hatred on the people who feed them, whose effort buys EVERYTHING they stuff through their alimentary canals. Let them call for the destruction of anyone more successful than they are so they can hide their feelings of inadequacy behind some fake 'justice', calling us 'privileged', or 'more fortunate'. They are revealing what they really are, what their values are. They are destroyers, monsters. Their work is almost finished.

If, instead of a lone man standing up against the insanity, there are now 25 or 40, we will have worked a miracle of sorts. I hope they never give in.

But Bluebird, you masterfully laid out the pattern. You are a testimony and first hand witness to how the SS program has enabled the behavior of people all around you who are causing your misery. Yet you defend it. I am unable to understand. Shouldn't this program go down and the FICA proceeds be put to more efficient use? Better yet, without the program, all the leach type loved ones around you would have no choice to be productive. The addicts died because they had no self esteem. More than likely that would not have happened if they were not able to tap into the free ride. People need to feel worthy. If everyone around you were productive, would there really be any worry for Grandma?

I am sorry. I forgot to add end the Fed and central banking, downsize the government and stop foreign aid, plus all the other world organizations we support. All I ask is not to take a hatchet to SS FIRST, which is what many seem to want to do.

John, I thank you for this reply. But I have some issues. First, I just wanted to know if the elderly will just be left to die. What is to become of the ones who are feeble and get about $700. a month to live on?

I am not working now because I have a sick son and had no debts. But my husband does and I did previously. We do not miss the small amount taken out of the pay for SS. I think this is overblown. Yes, if things are left as is and the "boomers" all retire it would get hairy.

My husband had a worthless brother (he has died of an overdose) who drew SS as a young man. The reason? He stayed drunk all the time. I have a cousin drawing it in her 40's. why? Depression. My daughter just divorced a worthless man. Got married when they were 18, both working. He quit work shorly afterward. Some kook got him on SS (at 20 years old!) because he was tired (lazy) all the time with the idea he will draw it for the rest of his life. He sat at home playing video games, waiting for my daughter to come home from work (even as late as 11:00 PM) to fix him (and their son) something to eat! Would not even make a sandwich! Several local judges retired to get their SS started, then went back to the bench, earning $100G a year. This is what is killing the host! Fix it. Stop the wars. Allow people to save for their retirement as they choose and the problems will fix themselves and the truely poor Grandmas won't starve.

John, your last post and this one are excellent! Thanks.

It is very sad that the only people who are principled in this whole "fight" are being successfully labeled as "looney toones". Those who "compromise" are the true "stateesmen". I feel as though I am among the "losers" in this public relations battle--and I'm not a magnaminous loser. I'm pretty mad, but not sure whether some of that anger should be at tea partiers. I hate to admit that. I don't know whether they were offered a "reasonable" choice or not. Can't depend on the media whores or other politicians to tell us that.

Thank goodness for the friends here at DB. I'd really be in a snit otherwise. I see this as a victory for the PTB and their minions. Republicans are not perfect, but they are in myu view better than the alternative. More Dems will go in. Obama may even get re-elected because of his "willingness to compromise".

Well. Anyway. Thanks for your posts and especially these two thir morning.

Take the hibachi with you in the boat.