An American comparison of individual Coronavirus relief benefits from all around the world showing how the USA stacks up.

Spoiler alert; America is the most pathetic of the bunch. But you all need not worry. Businessmen in Washington DC can now deduct their three-martini lunches from federal taxes. Dictators in Africa get billions of dollars, and there are decreased taxes for the super-wealthy. Aren’t you so very proud to be an American?

While the world is reeling from the pandemic, the oligarchy toiling away in Washington DC have been using this pandemic to push for structural changes to the tax code. Many of the changes are stealth changes. Changes that have been been implemented silently over the last four decades or so. All of which is tax the poorer, working level citizenry, while providing benefits and tax relief to the wealthier people.

Greater taxes on the vast bulk of citizenry.
Less taxes on the higher social-economic citizens.

This is pretty well understood, if not at all reported.

And now, in the midst of a serious emergency; a global pandemic that America has completely bungled (politely stated, America has truly FUCKED UP on this issue), the oligarchy have been focused on making taxpayers subsidize lavish lunches for wealthy executives.

And their work has paid off in the latest Covid relief deal. Buried in the details of this modest aid plan is a provision to give executives unlimited tax deductions for their business meals for two years.

No. Not enough money to pay rent. (The last time my rent was under $600 was in the 1980’s.)

No. There isn’t any free treatments or hospital services if you get the coronavirus illness, like the FUCKING REST OF THE WORLD. You have to pay for the medical service out of your own pocket.

But this idea of giving extra benefits is pretty much the “old normal”. A normal that pre-dated the Ronald Reagan Presidency.

That’s how it worked back in the 1970s, when Presidential candidate George McGovern had this to say about it: “There’s something fundamentally wrong with the tax system,” he said, “when it allows a corporate executive to deduct his $20 martini lunch while a workingman cannot deduct the price of his bologna sandwich.”

"There’s something fundamentally wrong with the tax system when it allows a corporate executive to deduct his $20 martini lunch while a workingman cannot deduct the price of his bologna sandwich."

-George Mcgovern

President Ronald Reagan, of all people, actually agreed with McGovern. His 1986 tax-code overhaul, best remembered today for lowering overall rates, reduced the deductibility of business meals from 100 to 80 percent. In 1993, the Clinton administration pushed that deductibility rate down to 50 percent, where it has stayed ever since.

Now corporate lobbyists have managed to restore that 1970s-era perk – claiming, of course, that bigger tax write-offs for business meals would help struggling restaurants and the people they employ. It’s a real stretch. But those in Washington DC live in their own bubble of reality.

This argument that giving deductions to the activities of the upper-class would “trickle down” to the working-level folk has been proven to be a fallacy. Yet, it was used in the opposition to the Clinton-era tax reform. It was flawed then and it’s even more preposterous now.

Hey! Do you want to help the people working in the restaurants? Really? Then how about stop taxing tips.

Duh!

Which solution would best serve waiters and waitresses?

[1] Allowing the patrons to have tax deductions for their business lunches and alcoholic beverages.

[2] Stop taxing the tips that the waiters and waitresses get.

Today, when the real problem is a public health crisis that’s keeping people at home. The justification that lowering taxes on business meals will do anything to help struggling restaurant owners and employees is just bullshit.

This is not a true relief package. Relief would mirror the economic response of other western industrialized nations, where working people either receive regular monthly payments or are guaranteed up to 80% of their pre-Covid income. 

A real relief bill would have canceled mortgage and rental debt. 

Real relief would have included the expansion of Medicare and Medicaid to cover all medical debt resulting from the crisis. 

Congress knows that the bill won’t solve the problems of a household facing upwards of $6,000 in unpaid rent. 

They just hope it’s enough to distract from the utter lack of care and compassion that they have shown to people.

In this time of crisis, any support for corporations should encourage executives to treat their workers well, trim their own fat paychecks, and pay for their own lunches.

It’s never going to happen though. No one ever listens to me.

Why are we not surprised that the peons will get a one time check for $600, but a billionaire CEO will get to write off his $600 “business lunch” each and every day, all year long. You know, I can’t help but figure that this was thrown in for one reason, and one reason only. A giant middle finger to the working class. A quick brutal reminder that they indeed own the political class, and they are in charge.

That the stratification of America into a caste system, along the lines of India, is in process and there is nothing that Americans can do about it.

How do we know?

That’s a pretty damning statement. How do we know that is this the case?

Well, if you compare how citizens are treated around the world by their governments during this global pandemic, you can see this all quite clearly.

In nations that have governments that care for their citizens and take on the role of protectors and actuators, you can see that there are very large outlays given to the citizenry. But in nations that have either a very repressive government, or that possess one that is socially stratified (either officially or unofficially) they pretty much resemble America.

A comparison between different coronavirus stimulus packages.

The U.S. has passed a third stimulus bill Monday night and an  international comparison shows that it has been high time. According to  an analysis by think tank Bruegel, the U.S. is the country currently offering a much lower level of coronavirus  financial aid and stimulus than other developed nations. The bill's  $900 billion in aid will up the level of stimulus from previously 14  percent (of 2019 GDP) to approximately 18 percent. 

While that  will still leave the U.S. at the lower end of the comparison, the  country's share of immediate fiscal impulse is higher than elsewhere.  Since cash checks for citizens are once again included in the new bill,  the high level of immediate spending will likely remain the same after  the new bill is entered into the Bruegel calculation, which has last  been update on Nov 24, 2020.

April's checks for $1,200 to all  Americans in a certain income bracket came to US$600 billion, the  biggest single item in the entire stimulus package, which consisted of  almost $2 trillion in direct stimulus and $560 billion each in deferrals  (of payroll tax and student loans) and in liquidity/guarantee measures.

All the details

Yeah. All the details are available on the internet. Though you would be hard-pressed to find them in any American “news”. If you want to check out the details, you can find a pretty comprehensive listing at the (American based) Tax Foundation.

For the most part, except for the United States and India, most (but not all) nations follow the following guidelines…

Tax relief should be broad-based.
Tax relief should be in keeping with good long-term policy.
Using refundable tax credits designed for future credits.
Repair distortive tax policies that could impede recovery efforts.

Compared to America, most other nations are very generous. Even if they are tiny, or are short in resources.

Consider Australia as an example…

Australia Coronavirus Tax Relief

Australia has announced federal relief proposals that total around $320 billion (AUD). State governments have also announced relief packages and in some cases deferrals of payroll tax payments (Australian Capital Territory, Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia).

The federal relief package includes direct payments to citizens. For job seekers impacted by the downturn, there will be payments of $550 every two weeks in addition to current income support payments. The government expects these payments to cost $14.1 billion. There is also a broad-based, $750 one-time payment to eligible recipients—this is expected to cost $4 billion. Individuals will also be able to temporarily access up to $10,000 from certain retirement accounts.

Through a new wage-subsidy scheme, employers will be able to receive a $1,500 payment per retained worker every two weeks. Businesses qualify for the subsidy if their revenues have fallen by 30 percent (50 percent for businesses with revenues greater than $1 billion) in the relevant time period relative to a year earlier. The subsidy will be in place for six months.

The aid packages provide relief to businesses through subsidized loans and central bank lending, and temporary relief from insolvency laws, immediate expensing (instant asset write-off), and accelerated depreciation.

Immediate expensing will now be available for assets costing less than $150,000 on a per-asset class basis. Eligibility is expanded to include businesses with annual revenues of less than $500 million (the current cap is $50 million). This measure applies until the end of June.

Accelerated depreciation will be provided temporarily for businesses with less than $500 million in revenues. In addition to current depreciation deductions, the policy allows an additional 50 percent deduction but only applies to assets purchased after March 12, 2020 and put into service by June 30, 2021.

Businesses subject to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) can apply for deferred payments if they are facing cash-flow challenges. Also, businesses that receive credits or refunds under the GST can switch from quarterly to monthly filings to speed up their refunds. Importers may also apply for the deferred GST scheme.

Two states—South Australia and Western Australia—announced land tax relief for landlords who have provided rent relief to tenants in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Australia makes America look really, really bad.

It really does.

But you know what? It’s not just Australia. It’s just about every nation on the planet. And while there are certain differences between each and every plan, most nations are putting relief efforts for the day-to-day working-citizens of their nations FIRST, with consideration for the wealthy LAST, if at all. Not so in the United States.

For I have been saying that the American “benefit package” is along the lines of what India has. It is a stratified system of benefits where the wealthiest get the most support, and the rest of the citizenry get token relief.

Wealthy get the greatest benefit from the “Coronavirus relief legislation”.
Average people get little relief, or token benefits.

So…

You don’t believe my narrative, eh? That this is a fundamental principle of stratified communities. Well…

Let’s look at India…

India Coronavirus Tax Relief

India has provided a fiscal support package of 150 billion rupees focused on the health system’s response to the outbreak. State-level fiscal support has also been announced. Tax filing has been postponed from March 31 to June 30 for income tax returns and goods and services tax returns. There is also a reduced interest rate for tax payments made by June 30, and late filing penalties are waived. Goods and services tax (GST) deadlines for March, April, and May are extended to the end of June.

India is also working on a relief package for the airline industry including deferring aviation fuel tax. Refunds for Goods and Services Tax and customs duties will be accelerated. Companies’ income tax refunds up to INR 500,000 will be accelerated. Deadline extended for FATCA and CRS returns from May 31 to June 30. The deadline for March’s provident fund contributions has been extended from April 16 to May 15.

But what does this matter?

You know, you all can slice and dice the data any which way that you want. You can make a pile of dog shit smell like roses if you want, and I am sure that there are many people in the MM audience that might think that I am too “salty” on this matter. That “America is number one and the best”, and yada, yada, yada…

My argument is rather simple.

Nothing shows how absolutely stratified the United States has become, than the comparisons in Coronavirus relief measures globally.
The only nations that share in the same type of American-style relief programs are those representative of severe social stratification. Like India.

And if you don’t want to believe it, that’s just fine.

Americans know this

You might not want to believe this, but most Americans (today) realize that the nation is a private club and they ain’t in it. There are two sets of laws, two sets, of rules, two sets of living areas, and two sets of people.

It’s just that most do not want to face the ugly truth.

So they fight back. You know, like sheep baa-ing in their pen, or monkeys howling in their cages. Modern Americans protest using meme’s. Most are far too timid to do anything more aggressive than that.

American protest memes

Here’s some “protest” meme’s regarding the grandiose coronavirus relief plan…

Seems strange – right?

Yes. Non-Americans won’t really understand the meme’s. So let me put this in perspective…

Here is some comparative data from the Zumper National Rent Report: December 2020. And keep in mind the following;

Most American live in 2 to 4 bedroom homes.
Those that do not rent, have a mortgage that has typically much larger monthly payments.

Combined means that the data is damning.

Why?

Because Congress has this information, and already knows this.

Knows what?

This…

Typical monthly rent for Americans all over the United States.

Which pretty much means that, for a nation where…

Most citizens live paycheck to paycheck.
Most citizens have no savings.

Will result in most citizens at a point of eviction from their homes, with little compensation, no savings, no cushion, and ZERO support from the American government.

This is setting up a “perfect storm”.

A perfect storm

It appears that the long-awaited “fork in the road” has arrived. Americans can either accept the role as destitute indentured-serfs or they can revolt against an uncaring, inefficient, and criminal government.

And maybe it is already happening….

A perfect storm is brewing.

You have [1] a “clueless”, psychopathic American leadership, supported by [2] selfish minions that have [3] become blatant in their treatment of the 99% of the rest of America. You have [4] an oligarchy that is trying to create strife and discord for the sole purpose in obtaining personal advantage. [5] You have a completely disillusioned serf-citizenry that is [6] waking up to their reality, while [7] the government controls all the media that is fed to them, and [8] a government desirous of sparking a violent “hot” war in a “distant land” to unify the [9] balkanized Americans for a common goal.

And no one wants to do the “hard stuff”.

“Hard stuff” ?

Yeah. The “hard stuff” as described in this lengthy article (shown below) and pointed out at the end…

Across the political spectrum, there is widespread agreement that America must get serious about the threat posed by China. As the Trump administration comes to a close, the State Department has just released a document called ‘The Elements of the China Challenge’. A distillation of conventional wisdom among national security experts and government officials, it argues that the U.S. needs a concerted effort to push back against Beijing. On its first page, the document tells us that “the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has triggered a new era of great-power competition.” If there was a major intellectual thread running through Trump’s foreign policy, or at least that of the people he appointed, it was that confronting China was the national security issue of our time. America during the Trump era was single-minded in its focus on turning up the pressure on Beijing, including unprecedented support for Taiwan, sending ships more often through the South China Sea, and attempting to stop the spread of the telecom giant Huawei.

The idea of the China threat will not end with the Trump administration. Michèle Flournoy, once thought to be the frontrunner to become Biden’s Secretary of Defense, argued in Foreign Affairs that the U.S. has not been steadfast enough in its military commitments in East Asia. Sometimes, great power competition is presented as an imperative of history; in the formulation of Graham Allison, a former Pentagon official and the current professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, the two powers are involved in a “Thucydides Trap.” Looking at the last 500 years of world history, Allison believes that when the ambitions of a rising power conflict with those of an established power, war becomes likely.

But what are we afraid of China actually doing? Reading foreign policy analysis can often be frustrating to those who believe arguments should proceed in a straight line, with clearly defined terms, and logical connections between ends being sought and the means being recommended. Once can read op-eds and government reports on “great power competition” or the “China challenge” and never understand clearly what the U.S. and China are actually competing for. ‘The Elements of the China Challenge’ from the State Department adopts a strategy of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks, accusing China of everything from being too successful in trade, to trying to dominate the world, and being racist against African migrants.

This kind of ambiguity about what a conflict is actually about has not existed throughout most of history. The two world wars nominally centered around rivalries between Germany and its neighbors over specific territories one could locate on a map, such as Alsace-Lorraine. The Cold War was a struggle between the capitalist and communist systems. But why, exactly, are the U.S. and China rivals? Beneath the comparisons to any number of classical or modern conflicts, the reality is very different. China is not a threat in the way traditionally understood. There is nothing vital to American security or prosperity that China threatens. While the U.S. will be less powerful in the coming decades in relative global terms, that is inevitable with the rise of the developing world more generally, a trend Washington has encouraged.

China’s true menace is neither military nor geopolitical, but rather ideological. Its continuing success, even if it in no way harms the prosperity or security of most Americans, poses a major threat to the American political establishment, how it justifies its own power, and its understanding of the U.S. role in the world.

What is the China Threat?

In the last three decades, China has experienced a rate of economic growth unprecedented in modern history. Between 1990 and 2019, GDP per capita increased 32 times. In terms of total GDP, China may become wealthier than the U.S. in the next two decades—and by some measures, already is. For the sake of comparison, in 1980 the Soviet Union had a GDP that was about 40% that of the U.S., with the trendlines actually favoring the West. Recently, when the economist Branko Milanovic suggested that the Nobel Prize in his field should go to scholars who study the most important questions out there, he pointed to Chinese growth as an example, calling it “40 years of the most extraordinary increase in income for the largest number of people ever.”

This would be frightening if the U.S. and China coveted territory from one another. Azerbaijan’s recent military victory over Armenia in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh can be attributed to the former growing economically, and therefore militarily, stronger than the latter over the last two decades. Yet the two modern superpowers are on opposite sides of the world and have no similar dispute between them. It is true that the U.S. seeks to preserve the territorial integrity of allies and partners, such as Taiwan and Japan, that may be threatened by Beijing. The incoming Biden administration will likely have a policy of willingness to defend the Senkaku Islands, an uninhabited five rocks and three reefs that the U.S. considers part of Japan. But why America should risk nuclear war over this issue is rarely explained. To the extent such objections are addressed, they are buried under appeals to morality that forgo any kind of cost-benefit analysis, and buzzwords such as preserving an undefined sense of American credibility or the broad goal of reinforcing deterrence.

Another idea, popular among pundits and the general public, is that Chinese growth is necessarily bad for the U.S. But in reality, Chinese growth has so far directly benefited U.S. consumers: it is undisputed among economists that trade with China made America better off by lowering the price of goods. Despite the temptation to political amnesia, the fact is that U.S. policy privileged these economic gains for many years, and its relationship with China was explicitly informed by these political decisions.

While this has undermined U.S. economic capacity in important ways, the cause wasn’t cheating, trickery, or even growth on the part of China. Instead, the cause was the success of American policy priorities. If there is a problem, it is most immediately that those priorities were misguided. The U.S. has the right to conduct trade on its own terms. It can choose what kind of strategy it wants in trade negotiations, and is free to deal with the downsides of neglecting domestic industry and increased competition for jobs through whatever means it considers appropriate. To see China as a civilizational enemy over such issues, however, is bizarre.

The same is true regarding IP theft. While the practice has been estimated to cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars a year, it is nonetheless normal for developing economies, with South Korea and Taiwan having had similarly bad records as their economies began to grow. No other state was considered a fundamental threat to the U.S. over the issue, with a mix of external pressure and internal incentives leading them to ultimately develop more rigorous patent laws and enforcement. Many corporations, the parties most directly affected, treat the problem as the price of doing business.

Perhaps, then, the threat is that China seeks to remake the world in its own image? This is a popular trope among the national security establishment. H.R. McMaster, perhaps the quintessential representative of this class, says China is “leading the development of new rules and a new international order that would make the world less free and less safe.” When one scratches the surface of these arguments, it is clear that most of the indictment against China involves things that every country does, but only looks frightening if you completely ignore American behavior. Chinese loans to poor countries are said to trap them in debt, but the evidence doesn’t bear this out. The same criticisms don’t often extend to the sorts of loan programs offered by the International Monetary Fund, even though these have often been as controversial as, and much more comprehensive than, any Chinese financial aid.

But despite the growth of this position among the American establishment, still others accuse it of strategically respecting the sovereignty of other states. In March, Daniel Tobin of the Center for Strategic and International Studies testified to Congress that China continues to promote the normative principles of “mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual nonaggression, mutual noninterference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and cooperation for mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.” Ted Piccione of the Brookings Institution writes of China under Xi putting forth “orthodox interpretations of national sovereignty and noninterference in internal affairs…”

While China is not blameless, one could reasonably make the argument that, from an international perspective, it has had easily the most peaceful rise to great power status of any nation of the last several hundred years. While China has carried out the re-annexation of Tibet, blockaded Taiwan diplomatically, and launched internal colonization of territories like Xinjiang, such actions always occur under the ideologically important claim that they are internal to China. The U.S., conversely, undertook external colonial ventures during its rise and still regularly sanctions unquestionably sovereign nations. China’s territorial claims are naturally controversial internationally, but are modest compared to those sought by other powers—not least the U.S. itself, which early in its history declared the entire Western Hemisphere as off limits to the nations of Europe. Its interventionist policies since then have led to the overthrow of governments, the killing of leaders, and the economic sanctioning of entire nations.

Perhaps, as the McMasters of the world claim, this is all because Beijing is biding its time in hopes of world domination. Alternatively, China may be an inwardly focused civilization that, while it may have disputes with its neighbors, is not on a mission to fundamentally remake the world. While it would naturally prefer rules that favor it and resists any principles that would legitimize regime change supported from abroad, Beijing does not seek to fundamentally replace the U.N. or rewrite international law. Its strategy has mostly sought stability and growth within the rules of the system developed by Western democracies in the aftermath of the Second World War. While its current position of strength is recent, it has not yet broken from this precedent.

This interpretation is most consistent with past behavior and, given the costs of American militarism abroad, with common sense about how a rational actor should be expected to act. It is also consistent with the arguments of the most honest kind of “China hawk,” who argues that the real problem with Beijing is not that it wants to dominate the world, but that it might stop the U.S. from doing so in a unipolar manner.

The Threat to the National Security Elite

Given the incoherence of these arguments, one must look below the surface to see what motivates political hysteria towards China. To understand the motivations of analysts, think tank fellows, and generals, one must comprehend how they see themselves and the American role in the world. For decades, the ideology of the American government in its dealings abroad has been based on the necessity of creating a liberal democratic world—a necessity which, as the Soviet model proved an ineffective threat and the Cold War ultimately ended, became seen as ever more natural. The assumptions supporting this view have, in various ways, driven American leaders since the post-WWII era.

The collapse of the Berlin Wall increased this confidence. While the possibility of nuclear war had to be managed, and it was assumed that communists might hold on to their captive populations indefinitely, the spread had been contained. During the entire Cold War, the trend was towards more democratic governance and the opening of markets.

The 1990s saw the U.S. engage in what can be described as mop-up operations against the few holdouts against the trend towards democratic capitalism like Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic. Academics even before Francis Fukuyama saw democratization as a natural consequence of people demanding more of a voice in their governments, as incomes rose, and as they became more educated. Countries like Chile, South Korea, and Taiwan seemed to validate this view.

None of this meant that the U.S. was to stand back and let history unfold. An expansive military presence abroad was necessary for all these projects, and even after the Cold War to address WMD proliferation and protect civilians abroad from human rights violations, and to stop Islamic terrorism after 9/11. The assumption was that, while the move towards democratic capitalism was natural and maybe even inevitable, it could be delayed by communists, terrorists, or Baathists if the U.S. did not lead.

The result was a paradox. The greater the inevitability of this grand historical arc, the more urgently it had to be backed up by force, and the more unreasonable and deviant all resistance seemed. Even the language of a “clash of civilizations” as the War on Terror commenced did not radically depart from the larger story. This justified a large military establishment with costs that dwarfed those of every other potential rival combined. American global leadership was pushing on an open door.

China Versus Western Political Science

China is something completely new. The Soviet Union had military power and appealed to Western intellectuals, but was clearly an economic basket case that could not deliver on its promise of rising standards of living. Islamic terrorists could kill Westerners and destabilize countries, but had little overall effect on American security, and did not threaten either U.S. hegemony or its justifications. Modern day Russia can seek to have an influence on our culture and politics, but nobody looks to it as a model, and it nominally accepts the legitimacy of competitive elections.

China, however, rejects liberal democracy—the idea that leaders should be chosen on a one-person, one-vote basis—even as an ideal or ultimate destination. As Daniel Bell explains in The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy, Chinese leaders have implemented a system in which government officials are selected and promoted based on examinations, performance reviews, and the meeting of objective criteria at lower levels. Its political qualification is not electoral support, but party membership and loyalty. This system is not justified on the grounds simply that the Chinese people or their institutions are “not ready for democracy,” a line sometimes taken even by Middle Eastern dictators like Bashar al-Assad. Critiques of democracy certainly are not foreign to the West; Plato is possibly the most famous anti-democratic thinker in history, and today modern skeptics use the language of economics when they talk about concepts like the influence of interest groups and the “rational irrationality” of voters. Yet opposition to the principle of democracy as such is unthinkable for an American leader, and even for most prominent intellectuals.

What went wrong with political science models that generalized from a moderately large number of cases in which economic growth led to democratization? To see how they erred, one could imagine a social scientist at the end of the first millennium arguing that the whole globe would become Christian because princes across Europe had all adopted that religion. If statistical models existed then, one could have done a regression and “proved” this hypothesis. The most common statistical models used today rely on the assumed independence of observations. The logic of regression analysis and hypothesis testing as applied to political development says that if we see the same patterns across time and space, then we may be able to infer a causal chain of events.

But the spread of economic and social systems operates in the realm of path dependence and network dynamics. Under this view, the move towards democratization after the Second World War depended on the power and missionary zeal of the U.S. more than the laws of history. If American power declines, its focus on world affairs wanes, or democracy loses its luster due its perceived shortcomings, the connection between economic growth and democratization can break down.

China is not simply passing the U.S. in overall GDP. Other measures one might use to measure the health of society also indicate that leaders in Beijing have been doing a better job than those in Washington in recent years. Are dictatorships more conflict prone at home? China’s murder rate is a fraction of that of the U.S., and the country has practically none of the rioting and political violence Americans have gotten used to. Are dictatorships more likely to menace countries abroad? China has not been to war since 1979, while the U.S. has been at war almost every year since that date. Are dictatorships less innovative? In 2020, China passed the U.S. in publications in the natural sciences, and its children score higher than American students on IQ tests and international standardized exams. While in 2008, the U.S. recorded over 16 times as many international patents as China, already by 2018 the gap had shrunk to 2.4 times as many, with trend lines indicating that China could surpass the U.S. before long.

With the American post-war liberal consensus having staked much of its legitimacy on providing better results, China’s development is an ideological threat regardless of how benevolent its rulers might theoretically be. American elites can tolerate a more successful system on a smaller scale. Lee Kuan Yew, the founder and long-time leader of Singapore, was explicitly anti-democratic, and horrified American elites with stances like his belief in eugenics. Yet his nation’s population has never even approached that of the largest American cities, and Lee was happy to geopolitically align his country with the U.S.

China’s ideology, and the success it is achieving, is ultimately threatening because of its size. Of course, as a country moves from Third World status to the most powerful nation in the world, it should be expected to become more geopolitically confident. Recently, China has begun asserting its will in a century-old border dispute with Bhutan, a country of 800,000 people, after 24 rounds of previous talks. Such results in this dispute and others like it are inevitable.

So, what question should American leaders be asking? It is not whether China will become more powerful, which it certainly will, or whether it will democratize, which is out of American hands and not relevant to its security anyway. Rather, it’s whether China has ambitions beyond what the U.S. can live with. All else equal, a few rocks in the South China Sea are not worth the possibility of war, or even worth forgoing the benefits of trade and potential collaboration on issues of global importance like climate change and containing pandemics.

In that case, what about Chinese financing? What about IP theft? What about Taiwan? Rather than invoking concerns about ethereal leadership or precedent, it would behoove American leaders well to explicitly set out their red lines, and tie their arguments for action to why crossing them threatens America’s fundamental interests. This also requires honesty about why certain actions are provoking concern. If the real worry is ideological, it should not be cloaked in rumors about predatory debt.

The answer to the China question would therefore be easier if American leaders were simply looking after the economic or security interests of the nation, or even the concrete concerns of a formalized alliance. Unfortunately, they also have financial, bureaucratic, and ideological reasons for being opposed to China’s rise. If universal democratization is not the ultimate endpoint of history—or even an imperative for development, peace, and prosperity—how can the American role in the world be justified? What will it say about the American system if the U.S. is no longer the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world, having been surpassed by a country that became the dominant power in East Asia without even paying lip service to democratic ideals?

Ultimately, Americans themselves might begin asking themselves difficult questions about how well they have been served by their own system, including the sacrifices in blood and treasure they are regularly asked to make abroad.

How Will the U.S. Manage Its Decline?

The rise of China is based on long-term economic trends. Washington can no more stop or contain it than European powers in the mid-twentieth century could hope to hold on to their colonies in the midst of population growth in Asia and Africa, the rise of mass media, and their national declines relative to the U.S. and the Soviet Union. American leaders debate questions such as whether to reduce trade with China, call Beijing out on human rights violations, ban apps like TikTok, or undertake more naval missions through the South China Sea. Even if the hawks get their way on each of these issues—like they did under Trump and are unlikely to under Biden—none of these policies are going to significantly impede the rise of China.

At present, Beijing has demonstrated no desire for territory far from its borders; nor does it seem to want veto power over what governments do in distant lands, as the U.S. has exercised over large swaths of the world. Chinese leaders have always reasonably acted as if such entanglements are not worth the cost. While we cannot predict what future opportunists may attempt, it would be a mistake to craft our approach to the Chinese relationship as if this was not the case.

Understanding this, perhaps the most important question becomes the extent to which the U.S. is to play a game of chicken in the South China Sea. This is the real Thucydides Trap, though the concept only applies if both sides consider hegemony in an area important. China has built an impressive collection of fortified artificial islands in the South China Sea that will be useful in any dispute in Taiwan. Nonetheless, an all-out invasion is unlikely. Rather, Chinese economic strength should be enough to make most countries of the region take its side in any disputes and isolate Taiwan. At that point, various scenarios are imaginable, from an indefinite continuation of the status quo, to overwhelming economic pressure and attempts to force the island nation into submission, to a blockade or invasion. Only the very last of these risks war with the U.S. Assuming we avoid such a scenario, American leaders can be expected to easily forget about Taiwanese independence and democracy and move on.

Recent events in Hong Kong and Belarus demonstrate the limited nature of U.S. commitments to faraway nations most Americans know little about. Over the last two years, both of these places have seen pro-democracy protests that were given rhetorical support by the United States. In both situations, authoritarian governments were able to reassert authority and hold on to power. In the aftermath, the U.S. puts sanctions on the guilty parties, but the issue recedes from the headlines, and things go back to normal. Just as America lost interest in Tibet, it will eventually lose interest in Hong Kong and the Uighurs.

This quiet decline in the Asia-Pacific influence is the most likely scenario, even if the same military commitments remain. The U.S. can keep troops in Japan and South Korea as long as those two countries agree to host them, especially since China is unlikely to force this issue in the near future. Despite relying on the U.S. for defense, South Korea already aligns with China over the U.S. on a host of important geopolitical issues, from welcoming Huawei as a 5G provider to accepting the view of Hong Kong as an internal manner. Should political winds change direction in Japan, U.S. bases will not do anything to prevent better relations between Tokyo and Beijing. Just last month, China and Japan joined 13 other nations to sign the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a free trade agreement that will expand trade and cooperation throughout the Asia-Pacific. Nothing about the American military presence prevents the region from resisting any attempts to isolate China.

Ultimately, the danger for American elites is not that the U.S. may become less able to accomplish geopolitical objectives. Rather, it is that more Americans might begin to question the logic of U.S. global hegemony. Perhaps not every state is destined to become a liberal democracy, and nations with very different political systems can coexist peacefully, as many countries in East Asia do. Maybe the U.S. will not always be at the frontier of military and economic power, and the country that overtakes it may have completely different attitudes about the nature of the relationship between government and its citizens.

While most Americans will never experience a ride on a Chinese bullet train and remain oblivious in differences in areas like infrastructure quality, major accomplishments in highly visible frontiers like space travel or cancer treatment could drive home the extent to which the U.S. has fallen behind. Under such conditions, the best case scenario for most Americans would be a nightmare for many national security and bureaucratic elites: for the U.S. to give up on policing the world and instead turn inward and focus on finding out where exactly our institutions have gone wrong.

-Richard Hanania is the President of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology and a research fellow at Defense Priorities. He holds a PhD in political science from UCLA and JD from the University of Chicago. He tweets @RichardHanania.

Yes.

The article is comparative. And that comparison is damning.

America has long, long past the time needed to restructure it’s failing and corrupt institutions. It has long past the time when the “policing elements” of “democracy” (such as the media) have become corrupted to the point where they are no longer functional. It has long past the time when the American Military Empire needs to be scaled back…

…firstly wind back 20 years to just an oligarchy…

…then wind back 40 years to just a “federal democracy”…

…then wind back 100 years to a “democracy”

…then wind back 100 years again to go back to a republic…

…then on to individual fully autonomous States…

…but you know…

…that isn’t going to happen. At least not peacefully. Abrupt change is required at this late stage “in the game”. The cancer has metastasized. It’s eating the host and it is on life-support.

Someone needs to pull the plug…

…press the reset button…

…perform a CTRL – ALT – DEL…

…and reboot.

You all know this, right? You know that the roller coaster has no brakes, and that it is careening out of control on a shoddy track, rotten by termites, broken in places, and run by drunk madmen.

Conclusion

I would be very surprised if any of this is new to you the reader.

What I am just doing here is something that you will not see in the American news. NO alternative media, mainstream media or anyone else is comparing the American ‘stimulus” packages with the rest of the world. Only here. And the comparisons are damning.

Just horrific.

Do you want to see similar posts?

I hope that you found this post curious. Please take care. You can view other similar posts in my SHTF Index, here…

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An audit of American Exceptionalism; what is real and what is a lie

Well, it is 2020, and America is in flames. This is both figuratively and literally. Yet, the mechanisms of power are still operating. They still crank out new laws and regulations, as well as bans. Taxes are still rising, and more and more people are unemployed to the point where the beginnings of starvation are starting to manifest. The government solution to all this is more international interventionism, higher taxes, more regulation, and more laws.

I know it’s an election year, but really!

One of the things that I am seeing is die-hard American supporters of the President are saying that it is God’s will that America rule over the rest of the world. That it is our “manifest destiny” and that is why America is so very exceptional. This kind of narrative and response to all things going on right now is worrisome. And perhaps an audit of what America is today is in order.

Because if America is actually “exceptional”, then by what measure of this quality would make the world a better, a safer, and a happier place?

Well…?

The following is an article titled “American Exceptionalism” written by Larry Romanoff on August 22, 2020 and edited to fit this venue. All credit to the original author.

American Exceptionalism

“Welcome to America, the Land of Freedom”, read the signs at Washington, DC’s international airport as you line up to have your fingerprints taken and your body cavities searched for mini nuclear devices.

I could have titled this article “Setting the Cat among the Pigeons”. In an attempt to forestall the expected avalanche of disagreement, I confirm my awareness of statistics produced by a wide range of individuals and institutions of widely-varying intent and ideology, and which can “prove” almost anything one cares to prove, GINI coefficients being one easy example. The statistics on which this article is based were not selected carelessly and are not invalidated by a reader’s disaffection.

The United States Is the Best Only at Being the Worst

Let’s look at the figures, shall we…

Money and Savings

The US today has the greatest income inequality of all Western nations[1][2], surpassing China and more than a few undeveloped nations as well.

From this, it has the lowest social mobility of most nations[3], meaning that improving one’s station in life is becoming increasingly impossible.

If your parents are not educated and wealthy, you will never be either, and the American Dream is dead.

The US today has the smallest middle class and the largest lower class of all major nations, the middle class having been mostly eviscerated in 2008, that process completing itself today, and will probably never now recover.

Americans carry the largest amount of personal debt among all nations[4], including credit card debt and increasingly unrepayable student loans, and the US now leads the world in personal bankruptcies[5].

Since 2008, according to the US government’s own statistics, the US has the lowest percentage of home ownership at 57%[6], ranked 43rd in the world, far below China at 90%[7].

Further, America now has a virtual epidemic of homelessness compared to most other nations, with untabulated millions of homeless families with children.

The poverty rate in the US is extraordinary, with official statistics placing this number at 13% but in reality with more than 25% of the population living below the poverty line, in most cases far below[8].

It also has the highest percentage of children living in poverty, and with almost a third of all US citizens dependent on food stamps and other government aid to survive[9].

Unemployment is also extraordinary. According to the government’s own statistics, fully 40% of working-age Americans have no job[10][11], with many of the rest under-employed, working only part-time.

It is only American cities or those in the most impoverished of nations that contain such vast areas of urban decay and desperate slums like those of Detroit and Chicago, where half of the areas are violent crime-ridden wastelands where no one goes.

Education

The US has the highest educational costs, and yet the poorest overall quality of education in the developed world and parts of the rest. Read this article[12]. It will open your eyes.

A few good schools or universities in an entire nation do not make it a world leader, the proof residing in the highest level of functional illiteracy of all major nations (25%) and a truly legendary level of ignorance[13].

The US is the only country in the world where, in repeated polls for the past 60 years, a full 75% of the adult and student populations cannot find their own country on a map of the world[14].

Healthcare

Compared to other nations, the US has the highest health care costs by a factor of two to ten, and yet has a surprisingly poor overall quality as well as the highest percentage of a population without health care[15].

The US has the highest infant mortality rate and the shortest life expectancy at birth of all major nations and far below many others[16][17], ranking around 50 in a list of countries.

The US has the highest obesity rate of all nations, with nearly half of the population being overweight[18].

America has one of the highest rates of sexually-transmitted diseases[19].

America has the highest rate of of anti-depressant drug use that increased by 65% in only 15 years[20].

America is in a national crisis in opioid drug use[21] and of depression.

America has the highest teen-age pregnancy and abortion rates of all developed nations[22].

America has one of the highest divorce rates[23][24].

Note that in many international studies US statistics aren’t collected because, as observers noted “The authors left out the US because the country is “an extreme outlier.”

The US also has the largest number of one-person households (about 30%)[25][26], and the largest percentage of fatherless children (about 25%)[27].

Society

America is one of the two most racist countries in the world, where even the random and unprovoked killing of non-whites is not only permissible but usually meets with approval.

Americans are gun-crazy, owning more guns than the entire rest of the world combined, and more guns than all the world’s police and military. They carry their guns everywhere, and use them everywhere.

As a result, the US has the highest rates of gun shootings and murders of any nation, with more than 20 small children and more than 200 adults being sent each day to either the hospital or the cemetery.

Many small American cities, like the nation’s capital of Washington DC with only half a million people, or places like Detroit or Chicago, have more murders each year (by an order of magnitude) than does Shanghai with 25 million people.

The overall homicide rate for China is 0.6 and for Shanghai 0.2; that for the US is 4.0. The gun death rate for children in the US is 40 times higher than for any other nation in the world[28][29].

The US also has the highest number of crimes committed with firearms each year, a staggering total of a minimum confirmed of 500,000 and an estimated 3 million[30][31].

America also has the highest number of violent raids on private homes, with more than 80,000 instances per year of SWAT teams kicking in someone’s front door in the middle of the night, always terrorizing and sometimes killing the occupants, usually without identifying themselves and often attacking the wrong house.[32][33]

The US has the highest rate of cocaine and meth usage of any nation[34], thanks in large part to the CIA’s very successful war on drugs which permits that agency to import cocaine duty-free.

The US has the highest rate of gender inequality[35] among industrialized nations, far exceeding egalitarian nations like China (and formerly Iraq and Libya).

The US has the highest number of lawyers and lawsuits in the world, by orders of magnitude, a reflection of both natural belligerence and inborn greed, Americans spending twice as much on lawsuits each year as on new cars[36]. Japan has 14,000 lawyers, China 160,000, the US 1.35 million (11 per 100,000 for Japan and China compared to 300 per 100,000 for the US).

Americans surpass the entire world in their amount of useless consumption, having long passed the point where it can be deemed pathological. As one measure, that of shopping mall space per capita, Germany has 2.7 sq ft per person, Japan has 3.9 and the UK has 5. For every American shopper there are 24 sq ft of mall.

The US has by far the highest level of carbon emissions on a per-capita basis, thanks in no small part to General Motors who has repeatedly committed genocide on electric automobiles.

Military

Wars and violence are defining adjectives of America. The US as a nation is now, and has always been, intensely militaristic, inherently provocative, combative and violent. The US is by far the largest merchant of death in the world, being responsible for about 70% of total world arms sales. For comparison, Russia is second at 17%, while China is at 3%.

If we include everything, the US spends about twice as much on its military each year as the entire rest of the world combined, already well-documented by many authors at well in excess of $1 trillion.

America also has the world’s largest network of foreign military bases, with more than 1,000 such installations, including many that appear on no map.

America also has the world’s largest number of bio-weapons labs, with more than 400 outside the US.

America has launched the most wars of aggression in the history of the world and has been at war for 235 of its 243 years as a nation, all those wars unprovoked and unjustified, and none of which were either wars of ‘liberation’ or ‘to make the world safe for democracy’, but for colonisation and plunder.

The US is also outstanding in that it has assassinated more foreign world leaders and other officials (about 150)[37] than even Israel has done, and also operates the largest network of torture prisons that has ever existed in the history of the world.

The US also wins first prize for having some of the most bloodthirsty homicidal mass murderers and pathological killers in the history of the world, far exceeding our former heroes Stalin and Hitler. Kissinger, Albright and Curtis LeMay come immediately to mind, but there are more.

Crime

The US has by far the highest incarceration rate of all nations, with more than 25% of the world’s prisoners in its jails and with almost 35% of all adult Americans having a criminal record.

Alarmingly, the US has by far the highest number of internment camps – prison camps – in the world, all 800 fully-staffed but empty, waiting for Americans to dare launch another Occupy Wall Street or similar protest.

The US has the most militarised police forces of any nation, with frighteningly heavy-duty military hardware like MRAPs, APCs, drone aircraft and automatic weapons.

The police motto “To protect and serve” that was once plastered on every police car, has been amended. It now reads “To occupy and kill”. The US has by far the highest number of civilians killed each year by police (well over 1,000) of any nation in the world, even including rogue states and axis of evil members.

Americans have far more to fear from their local police than from terrorists. Police brutality in America is now legendary, so common as to be one of the nation’s defining adjectives, with beatings, shootings, harassment, false criminal charges reaching epidemic proportions and increasing.

America is the world’s only nation with a website named “Killed by Police.org” to document the epidemic of civilians killed by police, and the only nation where local newspapers have sections devoted to listing the number of daily killings in each neighborhood of the major cities to assist citizens in house purchases.

Violent crime rates in the US are at least an order of magnitude above those of China or Japan (and many other nations).

Corruption

The US also has one of the most corrupt police and judicial systems in the world.

No Western country is particularly free of this charge, but America excels. As one example, the US has by far the largest number in the world of citizens falsely convicted by fraudulent testimony, some 40,000 convictions caused by one fraudulent forensics lab alone.

And of course, the US has the world’s largest espionage network by orders of magnitude, with an ambition to steal every secret and to record and save every communication by every human on the planet.

Leadership Corruption

The author is getting a little bit "off the deep end" in his accusations here...

It is no longer a secret that American-style democracy has a few flaws, with extreme dysfunction and rampant corruption among the more visible, though looting the public trough would run a close second. The US also has the government most totally over-run with puppet-masters and controlled by parasitic aliens, having entirely lost control to its various lobbies and with all its elected officials having sworn allegiance to the Jews and Israel rather than to America.

The US has the highest number and percentage of Presidents, Secretaries of State and Defense Secretaries who were certifiable as criminally insane and who should have been given lobotomies and committed to institutions for life.

Too many names to list here. America is the one nation that has more or less institutionalised government corruption at virtually every level, extending deeply into the judiciary, the regulatory bodies and Congress, as well as local and state governments.

The US is well-known for compiling the most fraudulent economic statistics of all developed and undeveloped nations, including the hugely fictitious ‘average income’ of $45,000, and is one of the most indebted of all countries in the world today. I strongly suggest everyone read this short article on US economic statistics[38] and cease the rubbish about how China’s numbers can’t be trusted.

White Collar Crime

Not to be outdone, the US media are in a class by themselves in terms of dishonesty, bias, censorship, and petty opinion-based journalism. American journalists are mostly cut from the same cloth, displaying more or less the same malignancies.

The US has the most complete immunity for elite white-collar crime, prosecuting only its person-companies but never the persons. Americans boast of their transparent and corruption-free financial system, and the US media enjoys trashing China for what appears to be an occasional corporate fraud. But in the long list of the world’s largest corporate bankruptcies due to fraud and corruption, all but one occurred in the US. Ron Unz prepared a list that included Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Global Crossing, Adelphia, MF Global, Lehman, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, and Wachovia.

The US has also been home to the world’s largest Ponzi schemes like those of Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford, that resulted in almost $100 billion in public losses. It is the US, not China, that is the home to corporate fraud and deceit, while all but two of the largest corporate frauds in China in recent decades were committed by American firms, not Chinese.

A Hated Nation

To end our list of areas in which American Exceptionalism truly shines, the US has for years been deservedly voted the world’s most hated nation, is widely reviled as the world’s greatest bully, and judged by all peoples – including Americans – as the greatest threat to world peace.

Lest anyone think the above list is unfair or exaggerated, you can do a simple test by applying the items to other countries. Germany, for example, or China or Canada.

Certainly every nation has some deaths, crime, divorces, military spending and so on, but none of the items in this list can be applied to Germany, China or Canada, nor to any other nation. The US does have the greatest debt, highest military spending, racism, killings, guns, incarceration, torture prisons, initiated wars, and all the rest.

The records for inequality, obesity, consumption, personal debt, poverty, cocaine use, murders, all belong to America, with no other nation even in the running. The claim is as demonstrably true for ignorance and hypocrisy as it is for police brutality. As an accusation or an indictment, the list is 100% accurate, a factual description of America as it is today, seen without the propaganda and rose-colored glasses.

Treason

A complete list of areas of American Exceptionalism must include one other item: The most traitors. This unfortunate category exists on several levels, the first being the President and White House staff and the US Congress who, as we already know, have pledged allegiance to Israel rather than America.

The second is the foreign-owned US FED, criminally pursuing its own agenda while systematically destroying the economic fabric of America. The cadre of elite owners of most large US banks and multinationals fall into this category as well, pursuing their own private advantage while consciously gutting the economy of their own nation.

But there is a third, more pervasive level, a large cadre of educated Americans who are essentially compradors, traitors to most of their values and to their people, embedded in the system and dependent on it, participating fully in the destruction of their own country by acting as lieutenants for the officials of the secret government. These individuals are vital for the success of the transformation of the US to a fascist state, with the elites dependent upon them to execute their policies, yet they also profit from their positions in terms of attractive salaries and protection from much of the law.

These are the people who best know of all the crimes and social injustices, being in fact a willing part of their execution process, but least likely to blow the whistle for fear of damaging their careers. It is the middle level of educated executives, lawyers, accountants and managers in government, criminal corporations, Foundations, think tanks, the media, and so many others, who are directly responsible for knowingly inflicting the vast damage on their own people and nation. Like the CEOs of the banks and multinationals, these compradors seek only their own advantage, discarding their human values and blinding themselves to the harm they do.

The following bulleted list is for your ease in reading.

American Exceptionalism in listed format…

Greatest Income Inequality of major nations
Lowest social mobility
Smallest middle class and largest lower class of all major nations
Largest amount of personal debt
Highest percentage of university graduates with massive student-loan debts
Lowest percentage of home-owners of major nations
Highest number of homeless of major nations
Highest percentage of repossessed homes and autos in the world
Highest Poverty rate of major nations
Largest number of children in poverty and homeless children in major nations
Greatest slums and urban decay of any Western nation
Highest percentage of population receiving government food aid
Highest level of unemployed, under-employed, and part-time employed
The highest number of people aged 65 to 75 returning to the workforce to survive
Only nation with no mandated paid holidays or maternity leave
Highest educational costs
Highest functional illiteracy rate of all developed and semi-developed nations
Highest level of ignorance
Highest health care costs
Most people without health care
The only Western nation with high GM food content
Highest infant mortality rate
Highest obesity rate
Shortest life expectancy at birth
Highest rate of sexually-transmitted diseases
Greatest production and access of pornography
Highest anti-depressant drug use
Highest teen-age pregnancy and abortion rates among developed countries
Largest number of one-person households
Largest percentage of fatherless children
The most strident nationalism of all nations
Highest level of racism and race-related violence
Highest number and percentage of guns
Highest murder rate
Highest number of gun shootings
Largest number of firearms crimes per year
Highest cocaine and meth usage
Largest number of lawyers and lawsuits
Highest carbon emissions
Highest military spending
Highest arms sales
Largest network of foreign military bases (1,000) and foreign bio-weapons labs[400]
Most wars of aggression of any nation in the history of the world
Most governments destabilised and overthrown
Largest number of foreign leaders and officials assassinated
Longest-lasting genocide in the history of the world
Largest network of torture prisons – and prison ships – in the history of the world
Worst human rights record of all nations, possibly excepting Israel
Highest incarceration rate
Highest percentage of population with criminal records
Largest number of civilian internment camps
Most militarised civilian police force
Largest number of civilians killed by police
Highest number in the world of violent SWAT raids on civilian homes
The only nation with widespread civil forfeiture
Largest commercial and military espionage network
The government most over-run by parasitic aliens
Highest percentage of criminally-insane Presidents and officials in history
Most institutionalised government corruption
Most complete immunity for elite white-collar crime
Most and largest corporate bankruptcies due to fraud
Most fraudulent economic statistics of any major nation
Most biased and dishonest media and columnists
Most hypocritical of all nations
Most hated nation
World’s greatest bully
Greatest threat to world peace

The American Government

So what is in control of this entire mess? What person or persons oversee this “great land of exceptionalism”?

This is a government that, in conjunction with its corporate partners, views the citizenry as consumers and bits of data to be bought, sold and traded.

This is a government that spies on and treats its citizens as if they have no right to privacy, especially in their own homes.

This is a government that is laying the groundwork to weaponize the public’s biomedical data as a convenient means by which to penalize certain “unacceptable” social behaviors.

This is a government that subjects its people to scans, searches, pat downs and other indignities by the TSA and VIPR raids on so-called “soft” targets like shopping malls and bus depots by black-clad, Darth Vader look-alikes.

This is a government that uses fusion centers, which represent the combined surveillance efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement, to track the citizenry’s movements, record their conversations, and catalogue their transactions.

This is a government whose wall-to-wall surveillance has given rise to a suspect society in which the burden of proof has been reversed such that Americans are now assumed guilty until or unless they can prove their innocence.

This is a government that treats its people like second-class citizens who have no rights, and is working overtime to stigmatize and dehumanize any and all who do not fit with the government’s plans for this country.

This is a government that uses free speech zones, roving bubble zones and trespass laws to silence, censor and marginalize Americans and restrict their First Amendment right to speak truth to power. The kinds of speech the government considers dangerous enough to red flag and subject to censorship, surveillance, investigation, prosecution and outright elimination include: hate speech, bullying speech, intolerant speech, conspiratorial speech, treasonous speech, threatening speech, incendiary speech, inflammatory speech, radical speech, anti-government speech, right-wing speech, left-wing speech, extremist speech, politically incorrect speech, etc.

This is a government that adopts laws that criminalize Americans for otherwise lawful activities such as holding religious studies at home, growing vegetables in their yard, and collecting rainwater.

This is a government that persists in renewing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the president and the military to arrest and detain American citizens indefinitely.

This is a government that saddled us with the Patriot Act, which opened the door to all manner of government abuses and intrusions on our privacy.

This is a government that, in direct opposition to the dire warnings of those who founded our country, has allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to establish a standing army by way of programs that transfer surplus military hardware to local and state police.

This is a government that has militarized American’s domestic police, equipping them with military weapons such as “tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft,” in addition to armored vehicles, sound cannons and the like.

This is a government that has provided cover to police when they shoot and kill unarmed individuals just for standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.

This is a government that has allowed private corporations to get rich at taxpayer expense by locking people up in private prisons for non-violent crimes, while providing Corporate America with a source of cheap labor.

This is a government that has created a Constitution-free zone within 100 miles inland of the border around the United States, paving the way for Border Patrol agents to search people’s homes, intimately probe their bodies, and rifle through their belongings, all without a warrant. Incredibly, nearly 66% of Americans (2/3 of the U.S. population, 197.4 million people) now live within that 100-mile-deep, Constitution-free zone.

This is a government that treats public school students as if they were prison inmates, enforcing zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior, failing to teach them their rights under the Constitution, and indoctrinating them with teaching that emphasizes rote memorization and test-taking over learning, synthesizing and critical thinking.

This is a government that is operating in the negative on every front: it’s spending far more than what it makes (and takes from the American taxpayers) and it is borrowing heavily (from foreign governments and Social Security) to keep the government operating and keep funding its endless wars abroad. Meanwhile, the nation’s sorely neglected infrastructure—railroads, water pipelines, ports, dams, bridges, airports and roads—is rapidly deteriorating.

This is a government whose gun violence—inflicted on unarmed individuals by battlefield-trained SWAT teams, militarized police, and bureaucratic government agents trained to shoot first and ask questions later—poses a greater threat to the safety and security of the nation than any mass shooter. There are now reportedly more bureaucratic (non-military) government agents armed with high-tech, deadly weapons than U.S. Marines.

This is a government that has allowed the presidency to become a dictatorship operating above and beyond the law, regardless of which party is in power.

This is a government that treats dissidents, whistleblowers and freedom fighters as enemies of the state.

This is a government—a warring empire—that forces its taxpayers to pay for wars abroad that serve no other purpose except to expand the reach of the military industrial complex.

This is a government that has in recent decades unleashed untold horrors upon the world—including its own citizenry—in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances, all packaged in the guise of the greater good.

This is a government that allows its agents to break laws with immunity while average Americans get the book thrown at them.

This is a government that speaks in a language of force. What is this language of force? Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality. Contempt of cop charges.

This is a government that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security, national crises and national emergencies.

This is a government that exports violence worldwide, with one of this country’s most profitable exports being weapons. Indeed, the United States, the world’s largest exporter of arms, has been selling violence to the world in order to prop up the military industrial complex and maintain its endless wars abroad.

This is a government that is consumed with squeezing every last penny out of the population and seemingly unconcerned if essential freedoms are trampled in the process.

This is a government that believes it has the authority to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation, the Constitution be damned.

In sum, this is a government that routinely undermines the Constitution and rides roughshod over the rights of the citizenry.

This is not a government that believes in, let alone upholds, freedom.

Notes

[1] Income inequality in the United States; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States

[2] US income inequality | US news | The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/us-income-inequality

[3] The Decline of Social Mobility in America – The Atlantic; https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/social-mobility-america/491240

[4] Total US household debt soars to record above $13 trillion; https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/13/total-us-household-debt-soars-to-record-above-13-trillion.html

[5] https://www.debt.org/bankruptcy/statistics

[6] October 29, 2019; https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf

[7] China Home Ownership Rate | 2019 | Data | Chart | https://tradingeconomics.com/china/home-ownership-rate

[8] The official U.S. poverty rate; https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/09/16/official-us-poverty-rate-is-based-hopelessly-out-of-date-metric/

[9] One-Third of US Population Gets Food Subsidies; https://www.newsmax.com/US/food-stamps-assistance-program/2013/07/08/id/513860

[10] The real jobs numbers: 41% of America unemployed, 1 in 3; https://www.rt.com/usa/jobs-us-employment-welfare-749

[11] Shocker: 40% of Workers Now Have ‘Contingent’ Jobs; https://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2015/05/25/shocker-40-of-workers-now-have-contingent-jobs-says-u-s-government/

[12] https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/substandard-education-in-america/

[13] https://www.globalresearch.ca/brief-look-substandard-education/5694267

[14] Ibid

[15] Americans without health insurance; https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/16/americans-without-health-insurance-up-more-than-3-million-under-trump.html

[16] Infant Mortality; http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/MaternalInfantHealth/InfantMortality.htm

[17] U.S. Infant Mortality Rate 1950-2019; https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/infant-mortality-rate

[18] Adult Obesity Facts; CDC; https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

[19] America’s sexually transmitted disease rates are out of control; https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/americas-sexually-transmitted-disease-rates-are-out-of-control/ar-AAIAW4M

[20] U.S. Antidepressant Use Jumps 65 Percent in 15 Years; https://consumer.healthday.com/mental-health-information-25/antidepressants-news-723/u-s-antidepressant-use-jumps-65-percent-in-15-years-725586.html

[21] Opioid Crisis Statistics | HHS.gov; https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-epidemic/opioid-crisis-statistics

[22] Teen Pregnancy Rates Declined In Many Countries; https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2015/teen-pregnancy-rates-declined-many-countries-between-mid-1990s-and-2011

[23] Marriage and Divorce; https://www.census.gov/topics/families/marriage-and-divorce.html

[24] “Coming out of the penumbras: World culture and cross-national variation in divorce rates”, December 2018 issue of Social Forces. https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/97/2/675/5055442

[25] U.S.: Number of households 1960-2018; https://www.statista.com/statistics/183635/number-of-households-in-the-us/

[26] Single-person households United States 1960-2018; https://www.statista.com/statistics/242022/number-of-single-person-households-in-the-us/

[27] Fatherless Statistics for the United States; https://fatherhoodfactor.com/us-fatherless-statistics/

[28] Gun Violence in 2018; https://www.thetrace.org/2018/12/gun-violence-facts-statistics-2018

[29] Guns in the US: The statistics behind the violence – BBC News; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34996604

[30] CDC Study: Use of Firearms; https://www.cnsnews.com/…/cdc-study-use-firearms-self-defense-important-crime-deterrent

[31] CDC Asked About Defensive Gun Uses; https://www.forbes.com/…/2018/04/30/that-time-the-cdc-asked-about-defensive-gun-uses

[32] Speaking Truth to Empire: 80,000 Swat Team Raids Per Year; https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/04/28/speaking-truth-to-empire-80000-swat-team-raids-per-year-in-usa-wtf/

[33] The Rutherford Institute :: Are Police in America Now a Military, Occupying Force? John W. Whitehead; August 05, 2013; https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/are_police_in_america_now_a_military_occupying_force

[34] What is the scope of cocaine use in the United States; https://www.drugabuse.gov/…/cocaine/what-scope-cocaine-use-in-united-states

[35] Gender equality stalls in the U.S., Stanford report finds; https://news.stanford.edu/2018/03/16/gender-equality-stalls-u-s-stanford-report-finds

[36] Issues of the Lawyer Population: Japan; http://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1614&context=jil

[37] https://www.globalresearch.ca/cia-us-government-assassinations/5693720

[38] https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/us-economic-statistics-unreliable-numbers/

Conclusion

The United States is a mess. While it was once an exceptional nation, now it is something else entirely.

You can either accept things as they are…
You can try to change it through available channels.
You can try to change it outside of regular channels…
You can leave it and sail far away and let it collapse in upon itself.

Your life is in your hands. What are you gonna do about it?

I bailed.

Here is downtown Shenzhen, China. This is the Nanshan district. The rest of world not only isn’t anything that resembles what the United States media says it is, but it’s actually far nicer than anything remaining inside of America today.

Downtown Shenzhen China. Movie of a typical Nanshan street.

Your life is in your hands.

What you do with the time you have will define the kind of life that you will live.

Do you want more?

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Why Can’t We Party Like It’s 1905?

We have gotten so used to the way that things are, we painstakingly believe that they have always been this way. We think that taxes, regulation and dual-working families are the norm. They are not. They are progressive inventions. The life we live today is the utopia that President Wilson forged back in 1913.

Here, we take a look at what life was like before the progressive improvements in American Society.

Detroit’s Belle Isle back in 1905. Source: Coleman Family

The following article is titled: “Why Can’t We Party Like It’s 1905?” written by Paul Rosenberg on FreemansPerspective.com . Edited to fit this venue, but otherwise left intact. All credit to the author.

Why Can’t We Party Like It’s 1905?

by FMPadmin6120 on March 13, 2020

Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, circa 1905. "Lawn tennis courts, Pocono Mountain House." 8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. — Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, circa 1905. “Lawn tennis courts, Pocono Mountain House.” 8×10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company.

When writing historical things, I try to include perspective from people who actually lived through the events. And for money issues in the US, I’m able to do that back to about 1905.

So, do you think life was nasty, brutish, and short in 1905? That there were poor and starving people falling dead on every street corner?

Hardly.

1905. "Lackawanna Railway station, Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. — 1905. “Lackawanna Railway station, Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania.” 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company.

The Wright brothers were flying for 30 minutes at a crack; Einstein was upgrading the laws of physics; telephones and electric lights were being installed all across America; Henry Ford was getting the final pieces in place for his moving assembly line and Model T; radio was being developed; art was flourishing; and the world was more or less at peace.

Sure, we have far more tech and better medicine now, but mostly because the people of earlier times (like the 1905 era) gifted it to us.

People in 1905 lived in heated homes, refrigerated their food, had access to professional physicians, traveled the world (mostly on trains and ships), read daily newspapers (there were many more of them in those days), watched movies, and ate just about the same foods we eat.

Chicago circa 1906. "Lake Shore Drive, Jackson Park." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. — Chicago circa 1906. “Lake Shore Drive, Jackson Park.” 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company.

So, was it really that bad a time?

No, it wasn’t. In fact, it was better in important ways.

Money Issues in the US: The Facts Don’t Lie

Consider this:

The working person of 1905 kept his or her money. They ended up saving somewhere between a quarter and a half of everything they made – after living expenses.

Portland, Maine, circa 1905. "Congress Square Hotel, Congress Street and Forest Avenue." 8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. — Portland, Maine, circa 1905. “Congress Square Hotel, Congress Street and Forest Avenue.” 8×10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company.

It’s hard to be completely precise when reconstructing the budgets of average people in 1905 (records are hard to find), but we do have enough for a good, close guess.

Here’s how finance worked for a working family man of 1905:

Annual income:           $700.00
Annual expenses:      ($350.00)
Annual savings:       $350.00

Life in the center of a medium sized town in 1905.

If you’re thinking that I’m taking liberties with these numbers, let me assure you that I’m not – I’m being conservative. For example:

The income figure should probably be higher. I’ve found figures of well over $800 for construction workers.
As for expenses, I rounded up from a New York Times article, dated 29 September, 1907. It specified $325 per year.
Added to that is the fact that many people grew their own food during that time, which would skew the figures further.
As noted initially, I compared these numbers with stories I heard from relatives who lived through the time. My uncle Dave, for example, used to tell me how he got a job paying $390 per year sweeping floors as an unskilled immigrant (who spoke almost no English) in 1903.

New York, 1904. "A flower vender's Easter display, Union Square." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Photographic Company. — New York, 1904. “A flower vender’s Easter display, Union Square.” 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Photographic Company.

The next time you drive through an old part of town and see the grand old houses, remember that people were able to build and buy them because their paychecks weren’t stripped bare.

There were no income taxes in 1905, no sales taxes, no state taxes, and not much in the way of property taxes.

Circa 1905. "Saranac Lake central station, Adirondacks, N.Y." With a locomotive of the Delaware & Hudson Railway. 8x10 inch glass negative — Circa 1905. “Saranac Lake central station, Adirondacks, N.Y.” With a locomotive of the Delaware & Hudson Railway. 8×10 inch glass negative

There was also no such thing as a military-industrial complex in those days, and – miracle of miracles – the rest of the world survived!

And Now…

Today, the situation is much, much different. The average working family pays about half their income in combined taxes: income taxes (to the state and the Feds), payroll taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, utility bill taxes, sales tax, local taxes, and on and on.

Philadelphia circa 1904. "City Hall clock tower from South Broad Street." 8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Photographic Company. — Philadelphia circa 1904. “City Hall clock tower from South Broad Street.” 8×10 inch glass negative, Detroit Photographic Company.

So, figuring an average income of just over $50,000 (the 2011 figure). And combined taxes of about $25,000, the average American family is left to pay bills like these:

Mortgage                     11,000
Car payments              6,000
Gas, repairs, etc.         2,500
Property taxes             2,500
Food                            3,000
Total                         $25,000

That leaves people zeroed-out. And again, I’m being conservative, and I haven’t included a number of smaller expenses.

The Mississippi River circa 1905. "Union Depot and steamboat landing at foot of Jackson Street, St. Paul, Minnesota." Starring the sidewheeler Hiawatha. 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Photographic Company. — The Mississippi River circa 1905. “Union Depot and steamboat landing at foot of Jackson Street, St. Paul, Minnesota.” Starring the sidewheeler *Hiawatha*. 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Photographic Company.

Great Grandpa Did It, So Why Not Us?

Your great grandfathers faced very few of the taxes that we face. (The government survived on tariffs.) There was no social security either, and – believe it or not – the streets were never full of starving old people. Families were able to take care of their own – it’s not that hard when you’re saving half of your income!

Circa 1905. "St. John Street, Quebec." Rue Saint-Jean at Côte du Palais in Quebec City, home to the drugstores of P. Mathie and J.E. Livernois. 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Photographic Company. — Circa 1905. “St. John Street, Quebec.” Rue Saint-Jean at Côte du Palais in Quebec City, home to the drugstores of P. Mathie and J.E. Livernois. 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Photographic Company.

We have forgotten that it was once possible for an average person to accumulate money. The truth is that productive people should be comfortable. Well-off, as they used to say.

So, why can’t we party like it’s 1905?

New York circa 1903. "Looking up Broadway from City Hall." With a view of the National Shoe & Leather Bank, and a roving vendor of DESKS. — New York circa 1903. “Looking up Broadway from City Hall.” With a view of the National Shoe & Leather Bank, and a roving vendor of DESKS.

So, why can’t we party like it’s 1905?

…

So why NOT?

…

You might want to think about that question.

May 1910. "Noon hour at Obear-Nestor Glass Co., East St. Louis, Illinois. Names of the smallest boys are: Walter Kohler, 981 N. 18th Street; Walter Riley, 918 N. 17th Street; Will Convery, 1828 Natalie Avenue; Clifford Matheny, 1927 Summit Avenue. All employed at the glassworks." Photo by Lewis Hine. — May 1910. “Noon hour at Obear-Nestor Glass Co., East St. Louis, Illinois. Names of the smallest boys are: Walter Kohler, 981 N. 18th Street; Walter Riley, 918 N. 17th Street; Will Convery, 1828 Natalie Avenue; Clifford Matheny, 1927 Summit Avenue. All employed at the glassworks.” Photo by Lewis Hine.

Paul Rosenberg

FreemansPerspective.com

Thank you for reading this masterfully written piece. If you loved the photos, you can check out a ton-load of them on SHORPY. You can go to SHORPY HERE.

Circa 1907. "Northampton, Massachusetts -- Elm Street." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. — Circa 1907. “Northampton, Massachusetts — Elm Street.” 8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company.

Meme

And here’s a meme that you can use to spread the message…

If you enjoyed this post, perhaps you might want to check out some of my other posts in my Happiness Index, here…

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The Taxpayer (Full Text) by Ray Bradbury

This story was written by Ray Bradbury, and presented here under Article 22 of China’s Copyright Law. This is from the Martian Chronicles. Which is a great collection of stores about Mars.

Ray Bradbury is one of my personal heroes and his writings greatly influenced me in ways that I am only just now beginning to understand.

Here is a story that illustrates the frustration of American taxpayers that dutifully give away their hard-earned money to a government that squanders it with stupid abandon. How can we forget the seven billion dollars that Obama gave to South Africa to “improve their energy grid”, Heh heh… Or the millions to universities to study the endangered tiger-striped bo-bo fly? The emotions and feelings are real. And Ray Bradbury captures them perfectly.

I love the way that Ray Bradbury brings advanced concepts to the masses though his very (seemingly) simplistic stories.

Introduction

“There was this fence where we pressed our faces and felt the wind turn warm and held to the fence and forgot who we were or where we came from but dreamed of who we might be and where we might go…” 
-R is for Rocket Ray Bradbury

For years I had amassed a well worn, and dusty collection of Ray Bradbury paperbacks that I would pick up and read for pleasure and inspiration. Later, when I left the United States, and moved to China, I had to leave my treasured books behind. Sigh.

Ray Bradberry book colleciton — A small collection of well worn, well read and well appreciated Ray Bradbury books. My collection looked a little something like this, only I think the books were a little more worn, and a little yellower.

It is very difficult to come across Ray Bradbury books in China. When ever I find one, I certainly snatch it up. Cost is no object when it comes to these masterpieces. At one time, I must have had five books containing this story.

I have found this version of the story on the Ray Bradbury library portal in Russia, and I have copied it here exactly as found. Credit to the wonderful people at the Ray Bradbury Library for posting it where a smuck like myself can read it within China. (Рэй Брэдбери .RU found at http://www.raybradbury.ru ) And, of course, credit to the great master; Ray Bradbury for providing this work of art for our inspiration and pleasure.

Martian ruins. — The book “The Martian Chronicles” discusses the planet Mars and the humans that try to visit it. It takes place around a fictional world where Mars has inhabitants and large cities and canals.

THE TAXPAYER

Ray Bradbury

He wanted to go to Mars on the rocket. He went down to the rocket field in the early morning and yelled in through the wire fence at the men in uniform that he wanted to go to Mars, He told them he was a taxpayer, his name was Pritchard, and he had a right to go to Mars. Wasn’t he born right here in Ohio? Wasn’t he a good citizen? Then why couldn’t he go to Mars? He shook his fists at them and told them that he wanted to get away from Earth; anybody with any sense wanted to get away from Earth. There was going to be a big atomic war on Earth in about two years, and he didn’t want to be here when it happened. He and thousands of others like him, if they had any sense, would go to Mars. See if they wouldn’t! To get away from wars and censorship and statism and conscription and government control of this and that, of art and science! You could have Earth! He was offering his good right hand, his heart, his head, for the opportunity to go to Mars! What did you have to do, what did you have to sign, whom did you have to know, to get on the rocket?

They laughed out through the wire screen at him. He didn’t want to go to Mars, they said. Didn’t he know that the First and Second Expeditions had failed, had vanished; the men were probably dead?

But they couldn’t prove it, they didn’t know for sure, he said, clinging to the wire fence. Maybe it was a land of milk and honey up there, and Captain York and Captain Williams had just never bothered to come back. Now were they going to open the gate and let him in to board the Third Expeditionary Rocket, or was he going to have to kick it down?

They told him to shut up.

He saw the men walking out to the rocket.

Wait for me! he cried. Don’t leave me here on this terrible world, I’ve got to get away; there’s going to be an atom war! Don’t leave me on Earth!

They dragged him, struggling, away. They slammed the policewagon door and drove him off into the early morning, his face pressed to the rear window, and just before they sirened over a hill, he saw the red fire and heard the big sound and felt the huge tremor as the silver rocket shot up and left him behind on an ordinary Monday morning on the ordinary planet Earth.

Posts Regarding Life and Contentment

Here are some other similar posts on this venue. If you enjoyed this post, you might like these posts as well. These posts tend to discuss growing up in America. Often, I like to compare my life in America with the society within communist China. As there are some really stark differences between the two.

Excuses that we use that keep us enslaved.

Stories that Inspired Me

Here are reprints in full text of stories that inspired me, but that are nearly impossible to find in China. I place them here as sort of a personal library that I can use for inspiration. The reader is welcome to come and enjoy a read or two as well.

Articles & Links

You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
You can find out more about the author HERE.
If you have concerns or complaints, you can go HERE.
If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

just clean up the mess and get on with life Yes. I love it. Great. -MM

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Australia Coronavirus Tax Relief

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But what does this matter?

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Conclusion

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American Exceptionalism

The United States Is the Best Only at Being the Worst

Money and Savings

Education

Healthcare

Society

Military

Crime

Corruption

Leadership Corruption

White Collar Crime

A Hated Nation

Treason

American Exceptionalism in listed format…

The American Government

Notes

Conclusion

Do you want more?

Do you want to see similar posts?

Articles & Links

Why Can’t We Party Like It’s 1905?

Money Issues in the US: The Facts Don’t Lie

And Now…

Great Grandpa Did It, So Why Not Us?

Meme

Articles & Links

Introduction

THE TAXPAYER

Posts Regarding Life and Contentment

More Posts about Life

Stories that Inspired Me

Articles & Links