Reparations: A new and pointless scam. I said the quiet part out loud.
I just had an interesting read. Check out this article.
What Happened When One Illinois Town Passed Reparations
Is Evanston a model for the rest of the nation? Or a cautionary tale? A story of idealism meeting reality.
Any type of reparations that take the form of property or cash or goods or favor would be an unmitigated disaster. The popular number being bandied about in DC is $1.2 million per person affected. It cannot work, and should not be tried for a number of reasons.
It’s an abuse of governance.
First, the same thing would occur in our economy as does with the minimum wage (outlined here in the last segment). From the first day such funds would be turned loose on the economy, that same economy would begin to float to a point commensurate with the wealth of the total population equal to where it was before the reparations.
In other words, you would have inflation. In this case we’d be talking about a $10 trillion hit. That would be a lot of inflation. The recipients would become titular millionaires. But not for long.
The rest of the population, having no increase in their wealth, would weather the inflation foisted upon them. This is seen as a good thing by many people. But those people are ignorant. You don’t fix a past injustice with a new one, as much as many want that to be so. Creating injustice is not the job of ANY government.
The government, especially our federal pig, have done lots of stupid things pitting citizens against each other. They’re constantly taking from one to give to another. That doesn’t make doing it again right, especially on this scale.
Have you learned nothing of corruption?
The other immediate result from such a silly idea would be abuse on a scale never seen before in this country or any other. Not only would black people who are not entitled to the money apply for the money, but so would the Chinese, Romanian, Russian, Ukrainian, American (etc, etc, etc) hackers would apply for and RECEIVE the money long before Uncle Stinky figures out he’s being flimflammed. It happens in the tens of billions of dollars every year in every government program and is considered part of doing business. In this case, because SO MANY people would be questionable in terms of entitlement, the nation take a multi-trillion dollar bath.
And speaking of that…
Who would be the beneficiaries of all this benevolence? And who gets to pick? If you’re talking Jim Crowe, no one whose family came here after 1964 would be entitled to anything. If the issue is slavery, no one from the islands or whose family reached these shores since reconstruction would be entitled to anything.
I would argue that ANYTHING that happened to ANYONE ELSE entitles you to absolutely NOTHING! But you see the point.
Further, what of the black people who built successful lives for themselves and are now richer than god already? Don’t they give lie to the group grievance? Or should they also get the same money a single mother living in West Philly gets?
Should a citizen of African descent, living in Atlanta, whose father moved them here from Bermuda 20 years ago be snubbed while his neighbors all get a windfall?
And what do we tell Native Americans? What of the Japanese? The Chinese? People they don’t know, who look like them, suffered at the hands of history. What is their cut?
Then, there is the general pointlessness of the exercise.
No matter how it all shakes out, people will still be people. There will be exceptions to what I am about to say, but they will be painfully few.
Also, if you have never learned how to budget and don’t know how to handle large sums of money, then what I am about to say would happen even faster to YOU.
The lottery story is fraught with people who win big and go broke within a couple of years. And we are talking tens of millions of dollars. So there will be a percentage of the reparation recipients, maybe a sizable one, who will go belly up real quick.
Within 3 or 4 years, 90% of all the money doled out will be in the hands of the same people who own 90% of all the money right now. They are already in a position to earn that money from you as a matter of course.
This is not a racial thing.
The average person in this country, regardless of race and usually because of their own poor decision making, doesn’t have enough money to survive 60 days if their money is cut off. Those people would have to go on the government dole immediately after a loss of income. VERY few have money set aside for retirement, despite how easy the government makes it to do so. In too many cases we are talking about people who make really good money.
This is because we are, for the moment, an irresponsible consumption based economy. In the early 70’s we started to see mostly two income households. Did the adults in those families suddenly have a commensurate increase in savings?
No. They had a commensurate increase in spending. Suddenly, a twin or a row home was beneath their respectability. It had to be a 3 bed, 2 bath single family home! Two cars went from a luxury to a requirement. Free TV entertainment (oh, yeah, you HAD to have a nice TV already) became cable, then subscriptions.
Don’t even mention what daycare costs became.
So, with new wealth, sometimes considerable increases, we saw no increase in fiscal responsibility; only an increase in consumption.
Apple, Microsoft, Disney, Exxon, Ford…and on and on…all know this. I’d be surprised if it took them even 3 years to relieve the vast majority of reparations recipients of their “found” money.
Let’s expound on the pointlessness.
Expensive houses carry high taxes. There are exceptions, but most of the country would have to move to low tax areas. The gulf coast is GREAT for this. But then with the migration, those areas would be come high tax areas. And housing is just one example of the long-term calamity this idea portends.
So, sticking to the idea that people would USUALLY continue to be who they are, housing would become a problem pretty quickly. We’ll say recipient A moves out of where they live and use a huge chunk of their income to buy a house outright. The idea would be to move up in quality or out of an area they don’t like. Such a house would not come cheap. And you would need an income large enough to keep up with maintenance and taxes. If A relies on what is left of the “found” money, they will be handing it to companies or the government at a pretty rapid rate.
Recipient B might decide to bank most of the money and put some money down on a house. That would be how I’d go. But I live small intentionally. The 2008 housing bubble and everything we’ve done since show us that MOST people still buy right up to what the bank says they can.
Sure, the lender will say, with your job and the distributions from your reparations, you can put so many thousands down and make a payment of this much. So very quickly people would be living for the nice new house they bought. And all that found money would be pouring into the bank’s coffers.
In both cases the average recipient A and the average recipient B would find themselves in a new house and living the same way the lived before reparations. Few would suddenly find they could live in that house and join the country club their neighbors go to. They won’t be able to afford it. If they pretend and do it anyway, their money will run out even faster.
But, what if I’m wrong?
Let’s say the vast majority of recipients defy history and bank the cash. They max out their 401k every year and live small. Well, that creates a new set of issues.
First, as we said, we are already going to trigger an inflation problem just by increasing the money supply by the $10 trillion Uncle Stinky had to borrow or print to give you the “found” money. So while you are planning your future with your “found” money, your middle class neighbors are getting slammed with the price of everything.
The stock market would take a big crap because there would be no place to digest so much money so quickly and still provide a return on the investments. Bonds would be a dime a dozen. So after a period of inflation, your sudden fiscal responsibility would cause economic growth to slow. You would be earning less than you planned when you set up your nest egg.
Without doubt, the government would then step in to “help”. Their goal would be to restart the consumption machine. And they would spend more of your tax dollars to do it, resulting in more inflation and the illusion of growth. In other words, it would be a wash. Your $1.2M reparation bonanza would be worth FAR less than when Uncle Stinky cut the check. And you would either watch the parade go by, sitting on your savings, or you’d join in and spend right up to or over the limits of your new ability.
And…90% of all that money, IF NOT MORE, will be in the hands of whoever owns 90% of the money right now, whether it is on their balance sheets in their portfolios or in their personal pockets as profit.
And what of those who fail as good stewards?
If recipient C takes his money to the track or to Vegas odds are almost certain he will lose it. Does the nation now owe him an income again? Why?
If recipient D buys too much house and too much car, do we now have to step in and save his 3 bed, single family dwelling in Swarthmore? Some will get overextended. And I am 100% sure we’ll then be told we need to “help” these poor unfortunate people. I am equally certain that protesting such help will be called “racist”.
But it will all be utterly unfair to everyone else, including the recipients who were responsible.
Reparations, like minimum wage blather and talk of captured space aliens is a subject that raises it’s childish head every few years and makes a nice wedge issue for low-rent politicians. But nothing pleases such phony do-gooders more than a stupid idea. Don’t let this idea take root.
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So what about that money supply and growth, etc.?
Here, in the text below the audio line, I’ve attached a short and interesting video from Zeihan. He talks about our present doings regarding the ChiComms. He says we should have taken these steps years ago. I have always argued we never should have given China entree into the world market and most favored nation status while the nutbag Communists were still sitting in the cat bird seat. Thanks, BJ Bill. Thanks, W.
The video is loaded with all good info. But what I want you to notice is the graph. Our line is blue. I want you to look at the progression of that line. Despite the loony things we’ve done regarding the money supply, spending and the the Fed’s sleight of hand, the line grows on a very steady rate over the last 50 years. I’m amazed you can’t even see 2008-2015 as significant.
Now look at the line since Biden. All the spending that has occurred over the last three years (and this isn’t new) has been designed to move trillions of dollars of YOUR wealth into the hands of crony banks, investors, the donor class and Union leaders. PERIOD.
A great example of the money shuffling away from YOU and to THEM is illustrated in the next segment below the video. What the graph illustrates beyond anything I’ve seen in years, is the wild, irresponsible damage Biden has done. There has always been corruption. But Biden’s puppeteers are now walking naked in the streets. They are robbing you blind while you sit on your couch and watch.
Double click, then click once.
BOGUS BUS COMPANY
Tinker toys like EV’s of all types should not have ever hit the market. They are only there because the government has created a phony demand among credulous people and well-to-do virtue signalers. But they have not earned their place on the market. The EV is still experimental. It is not a viable product.
By the time an EV hits the showroom floor, their carbon footprint is so large that they will have to run almost 100,000 miles just to match the carbon footprint of its internal combustion counterparts. How much it surpasses the counterpart later does not justify the cost.
Now consider how many people will by an EV with 80k miles on the original batteries. The new batteries WILL NOT be subsidized. So nobody is going to pay more than a few hundred dollars for a car that will need the equivalent of a drive train replacement in about 20k to 30k miles. And what will we do to all those old batteries still inside perfectly viable cars that no one wants - because of the batteries?
The big electric trucks, intended to replace tractor trailers on our highways, are the scam of scams. With their 250 mile range and 52 hour charging time, along with the pace of techonolgy and the shrinking availability of raw materials, we won’t be ready for such monstrosities for many decades, if ever.
The electric busses, the subject of this segment, are just as big a joke. They perform badly in the cold, like to catch fire (because our understanding of the batteries is still rudimentary) and cost many times what a diesel bus does in both price and maintenance. They often don’t work at all and also take an inordinate amount of time to charge.
But your government is pissing YOUR money away on companies to make and sell these things. Why? They don’t work. The manufacturers knew they wouldn’t when they built and sold them.
Here’s why. The donor class, government cronies and the very officials shoving this nonsense down your throats are making money, piles of it. It matters not whether these things work or even sell. The cronies and the donor class divide the investment bonanza that comes from announced “subsidies”. When they’ve all had their fill at the trough, if there is any money left, then oh boy, lets make some worthless cars! Because the government will THEN subsidize the purchase of cars no normal people would buy otherwise.
The electric bus is the poster child of this process. The company called Proterra proposed to make electric busses. In the “Inflation Reduction” Act, they were chosen as one of the winners of the government lottery. Knowing where the money was about to flow, members of YOUR government, their donors and cronies invested HUGE in Proterra, even when the fundamentals ran contrary.
Administration snakes like Elizabeth Grandholm, (secretary of energy), members of Congress and cronies pushed schools and municipalities to order these things. Media fluffers helped push the con. More of your tax dollars were provided to tempt the schools and cities to buy the stupid busses. Then when the cake was baked, probably before the first delivery, the scammers cashed out their holdings. They all knew this was a very bad idea. None of the promise of these vehicles ever came about for the purchasers.
This is classic pump and dump. But it’s made worse because the con was financed with your tax dollars. Corrupt officials like Grandholm knew when to bail out and made millions. The tell-tale was the heavy use of futures contracts over stock, or in conjunction with it.
So, the company soldiered on for a while despite the loss of investment capitol. They made their terrible busses, sold them to disappointed customers, wrecked the transportation programs of school systems, broke out the golden parachutes and took the last of YOUR money with them.
Always remember this: Climate change alarmism is the master scam. EV’s, “green” foreign aid schemes, windmills, solar farms, and countless other “green” cons, are the scams built off of the master scam. They all exist for the political and financial benefit of the permanent governing class, cronies like Black Rock and Vanguard, and pump and dump “activists” like Al Gore.
Then there are hangers on like Greta Thunburg getting the leftovers with speaking fees and advances for books that nobody wants to actually read. Still good work if you can get it.
None of it will ever, EVER bring about a benefit to you. None of it will EVER remove a known, measurable amount of CO2 from the atmosphere. And we have no clue what it will do to temperatures, good or bad. We don’t even know what the optimum temperature of the earth is. If anyone ever says they know, they’re lying.
This just in…well, yesterday actually (a week ago by the time this podcast drops…oh…just go with it).
The Judge in Delaware dismissed tax charges against Hunter Biden. If you can’t see the filth at work here, you are beyond hope. If this doesn’t get you voting conservative, or at least GOP from now on, you deserve every misfortune these criminals can visit upon you.
There is no logical line between a plea deal falling apart and the primary charge in question being dropped. If anything, the perp, the crackhead was at a disadvantage and CERTAIN to suffer the consequences of his tax evasion.
BUT!!!…They couldn’t make any of that a part of the court record because 1. It leads to FARA violations and 2. FARA violations can not be used to pressure a REAL plea deal. The courtroom in Delaware is populated by friends and beneficiaries of the Biden’s.
The legal slam dunk of the century was cast away in the name of corruption.
YOU SUCKERS!
Golf clap.
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Why do I defend this guy?
Just a quick update. Trump was on Kudlow saying inflation was caused by energy. It was a nonsensical statement, but I know what he was trying to say. He was saying it was the spike in prices was caused by the cost of oil and natural gas. He was, meh, kind of right. Certainly the price of everything is affected by the price of fuel. But when gas prices fell after Biden STUPIDLY opened the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), the price of everything else continued to rise.
That just means, along with all the other bullshit, we suffered an inflationary spike in the energy sector due to a lack of oil and natural gas. If that were the only cause prices would have run up and down current with gas prices.
No, we are suffering from a state of inflation caused by irresponsible government spending and the Fed printing money to fuel the irresponsibility. Our inflation is a constant state. In the past 3 years, we’ve seen that increase substantially. But it ONLY exists because of the government. Only the government can create a constant state of inflation, whether it is 2% or 18%. The government can, and DOES, exacerbate the damage by killing chickens and cows and making farmers miserable by regulating fertilizer practically into extinction. They can aggravate it further by killing the oil drilling sector (not the same thing as Exxon or BP). They’ve done that too.
But the real driver of our across-the-board inflation is government spending and onerous regulation. Period.
So DJT was sort of correct.
Fentanyl! Thanks, Joe Duh!
Fentanyl has moved to the top of the mortality list for 18-45 year olds in the United States. That’s according to the Maine Policy Institute. Stated another way, Biden’s puppeteers, who actually run the administration along with their friends in the Mexican cartels, are actively and knowingly killing more young adults in this country than any other cause.
Funny, when charting the death rates from overdose, the NIH doesn’t talk about Fentanyl. They make a point of saying all opioids or prescribed opioids. They don’t want to say the F word. It draws attention to the root cause. What fentanyl? LOOK THE OTHER WAY!
The problem started, of course, with the elimination of the border, by the Left, intended to create millions of future voters. Some vote illegally already. Among the illegals invading the country at the behest of the Regime, the drugs roll in with the tide.
So, kids get killed. So what?! We have a new docile class of low-skilled labor, along with a few new drug dealers, rapists and terrorists per day. All a small price to pay for the benefits reaped by the Left. For now.
You see, the modern Leftist politician doesn’t care a lick about the damage they do or who comes after them, not even on the Left. They will dance while the sun shines and let the next sucker, Dem or GOP deal with the long-term consequences.
One ironic result of all this inhumanity heaped on us by the Regime, is that “sanctuary’ cities and states are now swimming in the excrement of the unemployed illegals and the drug addicts. Only a few on the Left, I’d say all of the Obama holdovers running the Executive Branch right now, probably knew all of this would happen. But the schmucks in the cities thought they were just virtue signalling with their sanctuary bullshit. The illegal hoards would never inconvenience them. I think they were caught flat-footed. Now they just look stupid. Suckers.
Barry O is laughing at these mayors and governors even more than he laughs at the kids who OD every damn day.
A cool pile of quick hits and a video!