The TV ad showed a modern American tragedy. A man was writing a letter to a friend talking about “you remember when we used to say WHEN we retire?” Not too long ago another ad showed a man trapped in a huge office building while another was shown happily walking around in the country in his retirement.
Today I was reading a feature on California as a failed state. For the first time in history, it has lost half a million in population after two centuries of steady rise. Economically it is in a state of collapse.
These are problems I predicted long ago. One comes from the Soylent Green Syndrome, back when everybody who got paid for social commentary predicted a population that was standing on each others’ toes. As always, this evil was blamed on WHITE people having children.
At the time of Soylent Green, Europe was undergoing a population bust unmatched since the Great Plague, but Europe is the most social fad-oriented people on earth, so commenters condemned child-bearing in Europe while the population explosion was in the third world. America went along, of course.
So now the generation that went along with the Soylent Green fad can’t retire.
Poor babies!
But there was another fad that was supposed to take care of the Soylent Green one. Instead of having white children, we would take care of TWO guilt complexes by not having any white children and importing colored ones to pay off our retirement.
That would idealistically get rid of whites and at the same time make sue it wouldn’t cost US anything.
Perfect!
The Libertarians were ecstatic with that idea, open borders!
I pointed out the problem with the latter solution in a paper to an economists’ society which included Nobel Winners and then a chapter in my The New Right Papers, the latter in 1982 when this fad was becoming policy. The disaster I predicted is now shown in California.
You see, what the libertarians cannot see is that labor VOTES. California now has a Politically Correct voting majority which led to socialist mentality which led to the economic collapse described today.
So the end of retirement is simply the result of fads of the past.
By the way, there is no economic collapse in California. All that is happening is that a third world population is returning to a third world existence. It LOOKS like a collapse when a first world economy and government turns into a third world one, but it is not a collapse.
All that is happening is a demonstration of an obvious reality: when you move a third world population across an imaginary border, the country across the border becomes third world.
As I told them in 1982, it is the rankest kind of superstition to actually BELIEVE that a brown-skinned people will prosper because they have crossed a line where Magic Talisman called The Constitution or libertarian books exist.
You accept the fad, the pay the price.
But gee, Bob, it felt so GOOD at the time!
#1 by Gator61 on 10/10/2009 - 5:40 pm
This brings up a point that has been bothering me lately. The fact that our economy is based on an ever expanding population.
Why does the Economy have to grow continuously?
Economics is the study of how scarce resources are distributed. If there are more people using the same resources then everyone should be worse off. But our entire economic system is built on the notion that we are made better off when the population and the economy grows continuously.
Everyone seems to think it is a wonderful thing that China’s economy is growing and becoming more prosperous. That means the Chinese can buy more cars. Theoretically some of those cars will be purchased from us.
But what does it mean when the Chinese buy more cars?
It means that they will be using more oil. If the supply of oil is inelastic, then the price of oil has to go up. For you and me that means we will have to pay more for gas. How and why is that beneficial to me?
#2 by Just Joe on 10/10/2009 - 6:47 pm
You can call it California, North Mexico, Tanskinia or whichever name you want to put on a piece of paper. The state is just as bio-degradable as the piece of paper the state’s constitution is written on when the matter that occupies it begins to decompose. Once The only boundry line that matters and the only line worth a damn is the racial line.
#3 by Gator61 on 10/10/2009 - 10:20 pm
Dave,
I’m not convinced. I believe that the real reason the economy needs to grow it to sustain a debt based economy and a fiat currency. It is not a grave concern to us when better computers can be purchased at lower prices. It is however a huge concern to people when the price of housing goes down. The difference, people don’t take out a mortgage and use their computers as a store of wealth.
Here in my part of Central Florida a large part of the economy is dependant on the construction of retirement homes. In order for retired people to move into these retirement home they have to access the wealth that they have stored in their homes up north. To do this they must sell their existing homes to an expanding population in the North.
The means they used to purchase those homes was, in most cases, was a 30 year mortgage, where they paid two or three times the price of that home in interest. The economy and population must expand in order for those houses to continue to be a store of value.
The entire system is artificial. The government forces people to buy theses homes on credit by confiscating a portion of their wealth in the form of taxes on their labor, then promising to give part of their money back if they go into debt to buy a home.
Now if currency were a true store of value and the government didn’t insist that a home must be purchased on credit, people would be able to choose the type of dwelling they lived more freely. Many who would choose a large house, to maximize it’s utility as a store of value may instead choose a smaller home and use currency as a means of storing value.
I don’t see how an expanding population necessary for an expanding economy in any way enhances the quality of the air or water. This is doubly true if the population in increased by bringing in millions of black and brown people.
For wealth to be created the economy must be dynamic, but not necessarily expanding. A growing economy produces a bigger pie, but the expanding population reduces the size of each slice.
Trouble is it requires a paradigm shift in thinking to make it work. I can see that such a change would work, I am just not smart enough to see how it would work.