JHK’s Three-Act Play
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#314 David Stockman is the author of the new book, Peak Trump: the Undrainable Swamp and the Fantasy of Mega. David represented Michigan’s Fourth Congressional District for three terms and served as Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan — the youngest cabinet member in history. He was previously the author of The Great Deformation, a comprehensive history of crony capitalism. His excellent daily blog appears at: www.davidstockmanscontracorner.com.
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Listening to this podcast, I found myself wondering how the heck it all has degraded to where it is today. Think about this Jim. In this world of pleasures, indulgences, exorbitant lifestyles and the collection of stuff, what it takes to play at the highest levels of debauchery is to be able to collect sufficient piles of counterfeited fiat currency, (or collecting enough digital zeros) to take what you want. The general population has long ditched any higher authority for higher income, yet the shit they worship is basically falsely created and technically worthless crap. Still the common folk will cut each other’s throats to get more of the worthless shit or beg on their knees at the feet of their mega wealthy overlords for scraps, and in the end they will always be beggars and losers. Yet they remain completely and totally controlled and owned, seemingly of their own volition. How can there possibly be any hope whatsoever for anything to ever improve when so many are so stupid?
I remember 2008 well. I had been renting a shithole for $350 a month while I paid off my student loans, paid off my car, and built a large sum of money to use as a down payment for a house.
In the summer of 2008 I had finally dug myself out of my debt hole and managed to save $50k. I was amazed at how much a newer house cost in northern Ohio. The housing stock was either old 100 year old crap or new over priced poorly built shit boxes. Nothing made sense to me. How is it these houses were so mis-priced? That is when I found a website called patrick.net and got a large dose of contrarian information about the nation wide housing bubble.
Things just did not seem right and I thought that there would be a blow up like 2001’s dotcom bubble. It did not take long to see the shit show begin. The first victim was “saved” by merging it with a stronger bank. Lehman on the other hand was allowed to fail.
When the craziness of 2008 was spinning up, I watchedObama and McCain both run back to Washington to “save the day” and still remember Bush , the retarded Bush, say “I had to set aside my free market beliefs to save the free market”. This is like the pope saying that he had to temporary stop believing in Jesus to save Christianity. Pure bullshit! The truth was, rich people were going to be utterly destroyed and they decided to change the rules in the middle of the game to suit themselves.
I cheered CSPAN when the first TARP bill failed and then cried when it passed a few days later. We are now in a much worst situation than we were 10.5 years ago. I recently sold the house in Ohio that I built after the 2008 collapse and I am sitting on an even larger sum of money with no debt while looking for a reasonably priced home near my new job. I don’t want to hold onto this worthless fiat shit called the US dollar any longer than I have to but I also refuse to take on more debt.
Credit is the currency of slaves and I refuse to be a slave!
Disappointed to hear UBI referred to as “helicopter money”. Not to be confused with Quantitative Easing, a UBI would generated by cost shifting from existing entitlement programs and efficiency gains.
Yang’s simple plan needs to be pared down from the existing “subsidy for all” model to more of a safety net and alternative to coercive labor and capital market mechanisms. He’s having some success selling the idea as free money for everyone right now which is a mistake. A figure of 44 million recipients (current SNAP benefit population) is obviously more affordable than 320 million people, the majority of whom obviously don’t need “basic” income on top of their existing income. Their benefit from UBI will come from indirect economic gain from UBI dollars being reinvested in the economy.
UBI as another subsidy for the already wealthy is a moral hazard; UBI as social safety net is a moral imperative.
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