slackerRevolution

See Alan Greenspan admit that the Federal Reserve just threw working people and savers under a bus

Look at the happy little chart that shows in the last 5 years, the value of the money you earn and save has dropped by 25%. Did your pay increase or interest on your savings increase by that amount? Don’t forget to subtract the 1/3 in taxes on any “profit.”

Inflation is really the only option our bankrupt government has. I still have a nagging feeling that other forces will override the governments’ ability to pull off this heist…but I can’t think of what those forces might be. The folks being robbed just can’t seem to catch on to what’s happening.

Me, I’m going to protect my cash by getting it all spent. I stopped working a year ago…why bother? Why feed the beast? Inflation doesn’t hurt if you are broke already.

I don’t have to play this silly-ass game, and you don’t either. People are controlled by fear…fear of not making their payment, fear of being broke when they’re old… into slaving their entire lives away to enrich others.

Maybe the fear is justified, but it sure looks like the slaving isn’t doing anything about the risk. The Enron employees learned it first…bust ass, save, be robbed blind by corporate thieves and spend your old age in poverty, dreaming about how you should have spent your youth.

I’m cutting out the middle man. My golden years are now, and I every hour I live at my leisure is an hour that absolutely cannot be stolen from me. If I don’t accumulate wealth, I can’t have it stolen from me…by financial crooks, the taxman, or the Fed devaluing it.

You don’t have to be mad as hell. You don’t have to take it anymore. Join the slackerRevolution. Freedom is yours for the taking.

S.D. boy floats down Mississippi on raft of trash

This is the kind of thing you can only do if you aren’t a debt/tax/wage slave.

While you were making keyboard hanky panky sitting in your cube, Thor Anderson and a handful of other idea-laden 20-somethings built a raft out of things not intended to build rafts with.

Definitely a low cost adventure that did not go on the Visa card.

So the government gets 1/3 of your income right off the top, and various other slices here and there when you spend your money. But hey, you still end up with about half of it…that’s not so bad, is it? Better than nothing.

There’s somebody else that gets a piece of what’s left. The good old banking system. Their willingness to extend more and more credit for practically anything has given millions of people the ability to buy things they couldn’t otherwise afford, which, not surprisingly, drove up the prices of those very things.

Not to worry, you can just get more credit, and for a fee of around twice the cost of the actual item you bought, and make affordable payments on it for decades!

We never see them, we have real use for them, but for some reason we find value in their continued existence. Why do we value freedom if we don’t use it? Freedom means doing what you feel like doing. Some folks go to the zoo to see the lions, others are happy feeding the pigeons, and some like to watch the monkeys throw poo and whack off. It’s all dependent on the proclivities of the individual, but you don’t get to see anything if you don’t go to the zoo.

Right now, you may have the freedom to belt out a stirring rendition of God Bless America…or you may not. The only way to know for sure is to start singing and see what happens.

Feeling tired? Baggy eyed? A little beat up? Wouldn’t it have been nice to sleep in another hour or so rather than drag yourself out of bed to get to work by 9:00am? Too bad. You get to spend that first 2 hours and 40 minutes earning money for the government. They also borrowed about 10 minutes worth, in your name, to give you a little extra cash to spend. Go buy something nice for yourself eh? Generate some sales tax. Or better yet, hire somebody to cut your grass because you’re too damn tired to do it, so they can fork out their 1/3 to our overlords.

We know they will spend it responsibly for the good of all. Right? RIGHT?

Given: In 2007, your government spends $147,000,000,000 a year to support the occupation of two foreign countries. Joe Sixpack earns $48,201 , and pays 1/3 of that in taxes.

Question 1: How many dollars second second does your government spend to occupy these countries?

Answer:

$147,000,000,000 / 365 days / 24 hours / 60 minutes / 60 seconds = $4661.34 per second

Question 2: How many years would Joe have to pay taxes to pay for one day of occupation?

Answer:

$147,000,000,000 / 365 / ($48,201 / 3) = 25,066 years.

Question 3:  In 2007, how many Joe Sixpacks will devote their entire tax contribution to funding the occupation of those two countries?

Answer:

$147,000,000,000 / ($48,201 / 3) = 9,149,188

Question 4: Would you be happy if you found out you were one of them?

So, you’re wondering, what is the purpose of this blog?

I was born in, and currently inhabit, the United States of America, which by most standards is a pretty darn wonderful place, filled with the nicest folks you could meet. I like it here. I belong here. I love my country.

Unfortunately, a small minority of our population has managed to gain nearly complete control over the rest of us. They call themselves Democrats and Republicans, and although they make a great show of being in opposition to each other, in reality, they are allied in their goal of maintaining complete control of our government, and viciously attack any candidate that is not one of them. They have been extremely successful in preventing anyone not allied with them from getting elected to any position of real power.

American democracy has degenerated into a criminal farce, with voters given the choice between two evils. Voters make their decision based on fear of the other guy, instead of a sense that a candidate will represent their interests. We are set against each other to prevent the realization that in reality, there is no choice, and that none of these candidates represent our interest.

All pretense of civic duty goes out the window when the elections are over. The government, no longer content with plundering our incomes, borrows against our future incomes at an ever increasing rate, and all we ever see is crumbling infrastructure, fear mongering, wars halfway across the planet, and a steady erosion of the freedoms guaranteed us by the Constitution.

It would appear that we have been stripped of our power to control the government, but one thing remains. The government needs huge amounts of money, our money, to continue to make payments on its debt. If it can’t make the payments, no one will lend to it, and it will be forced to cut spending. Its power over us will weaken.

How do I use my earning power to affect the government?

By legally reducing the amount of taxes we pay. By earning less, and spending less. By focusing our energy on helping ourselves and those around us become better people instead of being driven to buy things we don’t need so we will feel better about working our lives away.

Every ten bucks you don’t earn cuts the government out of three bucks. The seven bucks you don’t spend cuts the government out of $2.33 in taxes from the guy you give it to…and so on. By leaving that ten bucks unearned and unspent, you deny the government a lot more than ten bucks.

Most importantly, you gain the freedom from earning that ten bucks. Earning money takes a chunk out of your life, and life is short. Americans have been conditioned to work as hard and as long as we possibly can, which seems virtuous at first examination, but causes us to neglect our families and communities. We work harder and harder to compete with our countrymen for stuff we really don’t need, and don’t have time to enjoy.

This is why I have chosen to slack. This is why I think others could benefit from slacking. I hope you’ll consider slacking a bit yourself. You can slack as little or as much as you like…from declining that overtime to dropping out and becoming a hobo.

A single phrase from a song triggered this idea. The song is by Ani DiFranco, and its titled “Garden of Simple”:

they never really owned you
you just carried them around
and then one day you put them down
and found your hands were free

Put down the congressmen. Put down the bankers. Put down the lobbyists. Freedom unused is no freedom at all.