Poor Man Survival
Self Reliance tools for independent minded people…
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Tonight’s the annual propaganda speech made by Obama AKA: The State of
the Disunion. He’ll not be able to
justify his failures to accomplish anything meaningful and he’ll defend his
rape of the Constitution via the NSA, the un-Patriot Act, the PRISM program,
etc. while blaming every ill the nation has on the Republicans. Shifting blame
is a political art form, political propaganda at its finest and the unwashed
masses and gullible swallow it every time!
Because of their contempt of
its citizens, the Bill of Rights and the childlike mentality of so many US
politicians, our nation is self destructing.
The Washington-Wall Street Cartel will continue to ruin every aspect of
our lives while denigrating the Constitution and our Bill of Rights or as our
founders said “Moral & astute men are necessary for America to survive.”
"The big thieves hang
the little ones."
-- Czech Proverb
Have You Ever Thought To
Yourself, "It's ALL Bullcrap!” Or, How Much Does it Cost to be a Slave?
Nickel and Dimed in America…the war on the middle class:
For decades, Americans have been taught to: "Be
patriotic... be a good law-abiding citizen... go to college... get a good
job... climb the corporate ladder... mortgage debt is 'good' debt... your
credit score is very important... pay your taxes... trust authority
figures..."
But where has playing by
those "rules" gotten you? There is a war being waged on Middle Class
Americans…by the Washington-Wall Street Cartel.
The
government (and corporate America) nickel and dime us to death with hidden
fees, surcharges and taxes – in fact, I can’t think of much we’re not taxed on.
In Washington, in your state government and for local
bureau- rats, fat-cat CEOs of Corporate America, a powerful few are always
finding ways to win at your expense.
Look at all the fees (taxes) on your cell phone bill, cable bill,
utility bills to see you are being financially raped.
Why Everything the
Government Touches Becomes More Expensive
Less Government Equals More Freedom
Many of you know I recently moved back to MI
because of family obligations. I’ve been
forced to stay because of health and other challenges. We keep experiencing sticker-shock from local and state governments, meaning
everything in MI costs more.
Michigan
is surrounded by water. It has the
largest repository of fresh water on the entire planet, yet our water bill, run
by the city, is now 100% more than what I pay in the desert of Arizona. We just had an unannounced rate hike and
they’re predicting another.
Water
in our little town is delivered from Detroit, a city well known for its greed,
incompetence, and crooked politicians.
We’ve
cut our water usage to the bone here. We
have no livestock to water. We stopped
washing our car. We’ve installed water
miser taps. We drink bottled water, but
its cost continues to rise with no end in sight.
At
our little cabin hideaway, we’re forced to pay $140 annually for
trash service that we don’t use or want.
We figure someone’s brother-in-law is getting paid off for some
political favors. But then again, we’ve
learned the township is run by a communist politburo which dictates everything
about your property but doesn’t tell you about it until after the fact (they
don’t have a website explaining their rules, we’re just supposed to know).
Our
auto insurance is 110% more in Michigan and we only brought one vehicle with
us.
The
government here likes to ‘double-dip’ in order to extract more cash from
its slaves. Purchases of donated, used
goods in MI are taxed again at thrift stores (Not so in AZ) and no matter how
many times a used car is sold, it’s taxed again. Even if you lease a vehicle (it’s not a
purchase) you still pay a ‘sales’ tax. I
hear they do this in other states too.
These
high costs represent a fraction of how the cost of living is higher here due to
government greed and incompetence and a microcosm of how the little guy
throughout the country is getting screwed.
The Washington-Wall Street
Cartel has been driving down private sector middle class jobs and benefits for
more than 20 years. My studies have shown most Americans haven't had a real
raise in more than 25 years while the cost of living (government figures do not
reflect inflation since it fails to account for key areas such as energy,
health and food costs) has risen. Government, for instance, now nickel and
dimes everyone with added fees and costs yet delivers poorer service (think
lack of road maintenance as an example).
Politicians never met a tax
or surcharge they didn’t like.
Think
back to when politicians told everyone that mandatory no-fault auto insurance
would lower premiums. Costs went up.
Think
about when mandatory seat-belt use became law.
Politicians told us it was for our own good, think of the children. We had no choice in the matter and fines
quickly jumped from an average of $25 to $65.
In reality, it was just another way for politicians to extract money
from citizens.
Scroll to the bottom of this article to
get a small sampling of all the taxes extracted from citizens:
Hell,
look at what we pay in fuel taxes per gallon, around 42 cents a gallon is the
average…more than a gallon of gas cost when I was in college and they still
can’t maintain the roads.
Not
long ago, we dumped all of our land lines and contract cell phones in favor of
pre-paid cell phones. That saved us
about $400 annually in ‘government fees and taxes.’
Americans
are nickel and dimed by their government on almost everything. The worst examples include so-called
‘sin-taxes.’ Nearly 40% of the cost of a
bottle of liquor goes to feed the tax man (we nearly had another Revolution
over alcohol taxes during the Whiskey Rebellion).
Meanwhile,
Americans shell out money for hidden taxes every year…airport ticket
taxes, hotel and car rental fees, animal license fees, bike taxes, sales taxes,
entertainment/event and ticket fees, and the list continues on, and on, and on.
Not many years ago all the states got
together with a group of legal eagles to sue Big Tobacco. The public was promised the proceeds would
benefit children’s education. After all
the greed and finger-pointing was finished, most of the lawyers became millionaires
and retired.
Only
one state lived up to its promise of helping the children. All 49 of the other states took the legal
ransom cash and put it in the general fund or other pet project and all the
millions were gone in a heartbeat proving once again that old adage of White
Man Speaks with Forked Tongue.
Even
though this writer and many others had forewarned the public, we’re all getting
hit with another government mandated bill that is already costing everyone more
money than promised – Obamacare!
In
the last decade we’ve lost about 10% of our middle class thanks to policies and
tax schemes created by the Washington-Wall Street Cartel. By the mid-1980s, General Electric led the
way in the practice of off-shoring US jobs while nearly all of corporate
American began cutting wages, benefits, pensions AND corporations pay less
taxes than in the 50s and 60s, leaving it up to the Middle Class to shoulder a
larger portion of federal revenues.
I
warned America back then in my syndicated business column that Burger
flippers can’t afford $40K cars. When
the Wall Street Journal printed that piece, I got letters telling me I was
nuts, it was good for America!
The
one area of employment that continued to pay better than average wages and
benefits were government and/or related jobs (teachers, firemen, police,
municipal workers) but now there are fewer private sector jobs left to pay the
taxes which supports these occupations.
(Why
do you think politicians continue running so often for any political office
that is open – the benefits and perks are simply astounding compared to the
private sector).
Government is a mirror of consumer products today…get less, pay more. Your dollar is worth less due to another form
of government theft – inflation.
So
in the final analysis, it’s become a vicious cycle. As fewer US jobs support government workers,
governments find new ways to gouge the public and as the rest of us have
learned, government is a racket and the ‘G’ in government stands for that: Gouge
the Public!
Wall Street adviser:
Actual unemployment is 37.2%, 'misery index' worst in 40 years
Don't
believe the happy talk coming out of the White House, Federal
Reserve and Treasury Department when it comes to the real unemployment
rate and the true “Misery Index.” Because, according to an influential Wall
Street advisor, the figures are a fraud.
In a memo to clients provided to Secrets, David John Marotta calculates the
actual unemployment rate of those not working at a sky-high 37.2 percent, not
the 6.7 percent advertised by the Fed, and the Misery Index at over 14, not the
8 claimed by the government.
Marotta,
who recently advised those worried about an imploding economy to get a gun, said that the government isn't being honest in how it calculates those
out of the workforce or inflation, the two numbers used to get the Misery Index
figure.
Look at some of the facts and figures:
- In 2001, the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United
States accounted for 31.8% of all global economic activity. Today, it's only
22%.
- In 1988, the Economist determined the United
States was the No. 1 place to be born. Today, the U.S. is tied for 16th!
- The U.S. government borrows more than half of
every dollar it spends.
- Over 46 million Americans are on food stamps — and
one out of four are children.
- Nearly HALF of all Americans live in a home that
receives direct benefits from the federal government.
- The value of the U.S. dollar has declined 96% since the
Federal Reserve was created.
- One in four U.S. workers makes less than $10.00 per
hour.
- The suicide rate in the U.S. has more than doubled
since 2000 — and there are twice as many suicides as homicides.
- More than 33% of Americans are obese.
- The use of antidepressants has increased 400% in the
last two decades alone!
You don't need a degree from Harvard or Yale to know what
this Fourth Turning feels like.
It doesn't matter if you're in the boardroom... the
workroom... or the bathroom... you can easily feel what this crisis has done.
And you know America is in trouble — at least for
the time being.
Even if you couldn't put your finger on what's wrong, you
know this crisis is bigger than an ailing economy.
It's bigger than Washington's out-of-control spending and
the Federal Reserve's insistence on printing new money to cover up the debt
addiction.
It's bigger than fat cat Fortune
500 executives and their bailout buddies in Congress.
And it's even bigger than greedy Wall Street bankers that
nearly burned our financial system to the ground.
The Working Poor
U.S. personal wealth is at a record high. But so is the
number of those with jobs that still struggle to make ends meet.
We've already seen mass protests by fast food workers.
And we've seen the beginnings of a populist response to raise the minimum wage.
This will all continue.
And it's not just unskilled workers who are at risk.
With companies increasingly using contract work to avoid
providing retirement, health, and other benefits... increasing costs and debt
making it virtually impossible to save... and recent college graduates unable
to find the work they studied for...
Millions of people are increasingly moving to the
“underemployed” category.
Indeed, nearly half the requests for emergency assistance
to stave off hunger and homelessness come from people with full-time jobs.
Despite high
unemployment rates, 141 million Americans shopped on Black Friday – nearly half
of our population! The average
amount spent was $407, putting each of them $4,878 in deeper credit card
debt. Our nation’s out-of-control
spending will shackle our children with debt and adults don’t seem to know
better or do not care. We seem to be
stupid and blind to the fact that we are turning ourselves into future debt
slaves.
Funny Money.
We now finance much of our own debt. We (or I should say the non-government group
called the Fed, made up of bankers holding America hostage) print trillions of
dollars to finance our addiction to spending which is why inflation will get
even worse and our dollar will become worthless!
How
much longer will we be able to keep our nation on life support?
Middle Class Still Being Squeezed
This has been the mainstay of reporting by
the Poor Man Survivor since 1999…
Despite Obama's focus on the middle class,
the improvement so far has largely benefited corporations and the ultra-rich.
Whether you blame Obama or a dysfunctional
Congress, either way the recovery is hardly a middle-class success story.
1. Workers are taking home their
smallest slice of U.S. income on record: At around
$15.8 trillion a year, the United States produces more in annual economic
output than ever before, but it's not the worker that's benefiting. Instead,
corporate profits now account for their largest slice of that pie on record,
whereas the slice for workers has been steadily declining.
2. Inequality has widened: The recovery has been good to families
earning more than $394,000 a year, but the other 99% of Americans have barely
felt it. The richest 1% of American families have captured 95% of the income
gains in the recovery period spanning 2009 to 2012, according to economists at
the forefront of income inequality research, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez.
Meanwhile, income for the median American
family has barely budged in recent years.
3. The job market still faces a
gaping hole: From the
job market's peak in early 2008 to its bottom in 2010, the U.S. economy lost 8.7 million jobs – More at:
Find a state which
has no income tax…
The End is Near and It’s Going to be a Scream!
America going broke and defaulting may be the best thing
that has ever happened.
Armchair Preppers and others may actually wake up and
realize all of the problems that our corrupt Washington-Wall Street Cartel have
caused and may do something about it.
We don’t need
another election, We need another revolution!
SIDEBAR:
Increasingly, and
openly, ordinary Americans are committing a legal act that some police
nonetheless regard as among the most heinous of all offences: it's called
contempt of cop. It's otherwise known as asserting your constitutional rights.
Citizens, feeling empowered, are pointing smartphones, rather than just an
accusing finger, at abusive...
COMMENT: Most taxes we pay today did not
exist 100 years ago and our nation was the most prosperous in the world, had
absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world and Mom
stayed home to raise the kids. What
the hell happened?
Not one of the Wall Street
pirates who crashed the economy in 2008 has gone to jail…yet, our system throws
little guys in prison all the time for petty ‘crimes.’
Everyone should watch the old 1976 TV movie Network or
V for Vendetta because we’re ALL Mad as Hell and We Shouldn’t Take it Anymore!
The Poor Man has been educating Americans about the systematic
plundering of their resources and way of life and what they can do about it
since 1999.
Encourage your fellow Americans to wake up
and smell the country. Share our resources!
DON’T THINK, DON’T QUESTION,
JUST OBEY
…from our series:
America’s War on the Little Guy
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