Jim Rogers: We’re Wiping Out The Savings Class Globally
h/t Occam
25 Replies to “It’s Probably Nothing”
Unfortunately very true summary.
When the music stops, the consequences of debasing the currency will be very apparent to everyone. The Total Debt Burden of the USA alone is 144T, the EU is in the same mess, Japan has been treading water since the 1990’s. The wreck will be very bad indeed, it will make the Dirty 30’s look like a picnic. Those trapped in cities like Chicago, Detroit, LA, Toronto etc will be in very bad shape. Makes you wonder why DHS purchased 1.6B rounds of dum dum ammo and heavily armoured tanks for domestic use. Best set aside some supplies and real assets for the lean years. It should not be too long now. The real economy is disconnecting from the stock market which is being juiced all over the globe by heavy money printing.
Yup. Listened to that yesterday.
He makes the key distinction that extinction awaits a morally topsy-turvy society which rewards debtors (who once went to prison) while punishing savers.
Recall the Keynesians consider saving unpatriotic and our own PM Cretin called them hoarders.
And Krugman’s fave lesson is the “paradox of thrift”.
I’m ancient enough to recall a time when my parents’ generation considered having a mortgage was mildly shameful; when your debt load was not a source of pride.
Loved his observation that there were more graduates in public relations than in agriculture.
He once made the folksy observation that soon farmers will be driving Porsches while the brokers will be tractor-driving farm hands.
Most baby boomers are in their 60s. Most of them will be dead within the next 20 years. It will be a very different world by that time and part of what will make it different is the absence of those boomers. Why should we care about the Boo Hah scary people most of whom have no clue what they are talking about. There are so many wild cards that can and will change the course of events. Like “Hari Seldon” or the “Mule” in Asimov’s “Foundation Trilogy”.
I prefer equities on the theory that a selection of well-run companies represents real wealth that has a better chance of holding its long-term value than, say, bonds issued by a government flooding the market with fiat currency.
When we reward theft, why would we complain when thieves proliferate?
Only graduates of political science would assume you can steal without consequences.
Our political bureaucracy’s cost has exceeded their value.
All social contracts are null and void.
Why should I produce?
For diminishing return ?
To further enrich parasites?
That trillion dollar debt might be a clue that paper money needs to be softer and more absorbent, other than wallpaper thats its future function.
Saving about $20K a year but what’s the point when inflation wipes out those savings.
It makes more sense to buy guns and reloading components. My investment into the primers performed better than gold.
Too many people believe that ultra-low interest rates are win-win for everyone. What they fail to understand is that this is a huge disincentive to save and invest. Since saving and investing are necessary for capital formation, this strategy is just sucking the lifeblood out of our economy.
Inflation should never be confused with economic growth.
Negligible returns on GICs and term deposits are driving people into riskier and riskier investments like stocks, which is fine as long as you understand what you are doing there. Unfortunately, most people have no idea what can go wrong in the stock market and won’t prepare themselves for it.
Usually, it is the unexpected and unpredicted that bites our economic a$$. Often, the “experts”, both paid and citizen, can be so very clueless.
The next Black Swan may very well be population decline. Population decline is already happening but our beloved media is still in the ‘population bomb’, ‘man is bad’ mode. More than half the countries in the world have declining populations and the rest are rapidly approaching negative pop growth also.
Population decline will change everything – all traditional economic “wisdom” could be chucked out the window.
[ We’ve all heard the thesis on real estate investing: “They’re not making any more land.” It turns out that before too long we may not be making enough people either.] http://www.forbes.com/sites/joonyun/2012/12/06/the-next-black-swan-global-depopulation/
Well, of course. Only a fool would trust his old age to the Toronto-Dominion Bank any more than he ought to trust it to the Canada Pension Plan.
Gold? Silver? Rubbish. Try defending your hoard from a mob of “diverse” and desperate youth on your own—and trust me, your ammo will run out sooner or later. The only realistic retirement plan is the one that was used since the days of Abraham—raising sons and daughters in the way they should go, and do all in your power to give them away to support themselves when you can no longer do it for them—a family farm, an honest trade that will never go out of style, a good marriage to a good man who can keep your daughter as well as you kept her.
If you did right by your children, they almost assuredly will honour you in their old age and care for you when you’re too old or ill to work, repaying their debt to you as best they are able and know how. If you neglected your children and did not bother with assuring their future, they owe you precisely nothing—and then your only other option is to pray for a quick death, or do what you must to hurry it along.
Here’s the awful truth. The boomers systematically alienated and drove off those children they suffered to escape the womb alive, and did nothing to assure their futures by seeing about their being placed in honest trades or good marriages. Why bother, when the CPP will provide? If you really want to live in style, take the money you would have spent on the little monsters and put it in an RRSP at the Toronto-Dominion Bank. (And not everyone did that. I’ll spare you another retelling of my own parents’ folly.)
They had conveniently forgotten that their pension plan’s assets were the liabilities of the firms where their children and grandchildren worked for a living. Put plainly, their “pensions” are claims on their children’s wages. Whether the claim iss enforced through taxation or interest hardly matters (and in any event much of the pension fund was invested in government bonds that are serviced with taxes anyway). What does matter was that the ones who thought it through at all knew very well that their long-suffering children would not keep their useless parents in style willingly, so they planned to take the money by force.
Problem: those of their children and grandchildren who managed somehow to land on their feet, no thanks to dear old Mom and Dad, will, when forced to choose between pampering their useless parents and feeding their own children, find better uses for the money than to hand it over in payment of a debt they never assented to and could not possibly pay. They can’t pay, they shouldn’t pay, and they won’t pay. If revolting isn’t an option they’ll emigrate if they can. The firms they worked for will go out of business, and the firms’ debts will be worthless. Their parents will join their children in exile at the children’s convenience, not the parents.
By the way, the Toronto-Dominion Bank know better than anyone that their customers’ RRSPs will be paid out, if at all, in worthless bank-confetti, because it couldn’t be repaid in full even if the Toronto-Dominion Bank wanted to. Here’s the thing—the banksters don’t have to. All they have to do, if and when the mob overwhelms the police and storms the TD Centre (or the army and police joins the mob as happened in Romania), is be sure that the “loot” is offshore and they are on a plane headed out of Canadian airspace.
Ever wonder why the World’s Central Bank’s stimulus ways have not been working? Why the Politicians are trying to confiscate the savers wealth? Simple. Because they are desperate.
[ Bulgaria’s population has declined from a peak of 9,009,018 in 1989 to no more than 7.3 million, according to the country’s 2011 census.] http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=133353
And yet the media comes up with every reason in the world for economic malaise. Bad, bad austerity ect ect. Should print more money and debase the savers wealth blah blah.
The Telegraph makes no mention of population decline in it’s all knowing, superior explanation of Bulgaria’s economic woes. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100022927/bulgaria-succumbs-to-euro-deflation-curse/
From the article and said by Rogers, ” the hollowing out of the ‘saving class’ resulting from this situation. Central planners’ policies are punishing the prudent in favor of rescuing the irresponsible. This has happened before in world history, and the aftermath has always had grievous economic, social — and often human — costs:”
I think this debasing of the monetary values has a deeper intent in mind beyond just wiping out the middle class saver. I know it sounds far fetched and maybe a little conspiracy theorist like, but I believe their aim is create financial chaos in order to advance more subjugation of the populations by a more central government.
Ken(Kulak) @ 2:27PM…..nothing conspiratorial about it all. Read the UN’s Agenda 21.
Agreed.
The people most adaptive to situations are the savings class. They will adapt and find new ways to ‘save’.
Those tanks the statists are stocking up on will be used against the Tapeworm class.
The boomers are marching into a ‘death panel’ health care industry. They are no longer of any use to the statists, and for the statists to get their spending paws on their boomer savings, the boomers will be vilified (the smear campaign is starting in the statist media, note) and then recycled.
Nobody I know has any trust in the big banks savings industry. They only participate through various forced programs. Otherwise they are ‘saving’ in various underground and secret society methods.
When the cities burn, it appears (so far) to be the most liberal centers that burn first, and best. The employment equity hires do a bad job of suppressing the Tapeworms. I would point at Quebec (students running wild), California, and the east coast of the US of A.
The end of this chapter is still unwritten. Throughout history desperate times have always been followed by war. It will be no different this time. It’s not a matter of if, just a matter of when. It’s the traditional, tried and tested way to reset everything.
War;
Reset and allow the “leaders” to avoid being rewarded by the mob.
When the public get angry with lying thieving leaders, its look over there, kill the “_______” . Scapegoat of choice.
Its always somebody else’s fault, when we are robbed by our trusted elites.
I am a Boomer, and I resent the comments from the X Y and Whiners Generation. I worked at heavy trades for 43 years, and ran a small ranch as well. I had to retire after 43 years because my joints and back were worn out. My wife and I raised 4 children, never took welfare or pogie in 43 years. If I got laid off, I was never to proud to accept a lesser job at less pay until something better came along. I was forced by law to always pay into CPP and various government schemes. Regardless and inspite of the government I own my ranch and everything on it outright. I own my house in town. What I paid for I want back, I paid MILLIONS in Income and other TAXES in those 43 years as man and boy. I have paid my way. It sure would be nice if you X Y and Whiners generation could shut up the whining and get your asses to work. The last years at work, I saw many of you pukes. All you were good for was kissing the bosses ass and laying around in front of computers while us older men got off our asses and got the job done. Bunch of damn consultants. Consultant the old tomcat that fell off the back fence and ripped his nuts off, he ain’t a tomcat no more so he goes consulting…
Bitter much, RFD? lol
You got played, plain and simple. You were tricked out of your productive capacity and told you were working hard to the benefit of country and it’s citizenry. You can take your 43 years of working and put it wherever you see fit. You can’t even begin to compare the environment you worked in with the one that exists today or the mess future generations are expected to inherit. And btw, you own absolutely nothing if the state decides to collect it. I watched my parents work themselves into early graves all the while trumpeting how lucky they were to be able to participate into a system that was there for everyone when they needed it. Then I watched those same systems fail them when diagnosed with cancer. I watched the government probate all assets and punitively punish the distribution of what assets were left and what savings they had managed to create. And I learned…
My parents were cheated out of their lives for a promise that was never intended to be kept and specifically designed so it couldn’t be, at least for not more than a handful of years. And I was cheated out of my parents who bought into the lie wholesale. I work hard, but not for any country, company or any other individual….I do it to benefit me. Emotionally and financially. I see little reason to become another burnt out husk hoping to enjoy life in the later years just so the parasitic classes of the social welfare state can enjoy ‘relative’ equity. Could I do more? Absolutely. But until the system starts to recognize and appreciate the efforts and sacrifices that the productive class brings to the table, and allows them to enjoy and benefit the fruits of their labour, I see no reason to play a rigged game.
Ambition, diligence, independence and persistence shouldn’t be punished as it is in our current economic system. Lower or eliminate income taxes, stop taxing overtime as though it is regular working time, encourage corporate taxing based on employment growth, anything is better than the idiotic system that is in play today.
Boy Jan you sure read me wrong. I am not bitter at all. My net worth is pretty darn good for an old cowboy. Because we never bought in to any system. I worked hard and paid cash or I did not play. I purchased insurance when I was younger, which has more than kept us, I lack nothing that I need or want really. I merely dispise whiners like yourself who are part of the problem. The Occupy No More boys and girls who think that Boomers did not pay their own freight. So you can take your little diatribe and stuff it were the sun don’t shine, bitter OCCUPIER.
I certainly agree with you. Most from the older generation asked for nothing that wasn’t earned. This seems alien to the whiners and weenies that want it all and want it now. Just don’t expect them to work for it.
You read me wrong too, old cowboy. The Occupy crowd can go pound salt, right beside the Tea party-ers, and anyone else who identifies themselves as some a member of some amalgamous group. Rugged individualism will beat the rigid conformity of groupthink in the end.
I too ask for nothing I didn’t earn on my own. I have credit, but don’t use it for anything more than leverage when dealing with banks or other financial institutions. I keep a fair share of cash on hand, pay and work for cash wherever possible, have my own debt insured and live well within my means.
What I don’t do anymore, is bust my ass trying to achieve more. I used to work 270-300 days a year, make 250K and paid damn near half in taxes. All that time believing that what I was doing was not just helping me, but everyone. What it got me was a whole lot of broken promises, including a divorce. Go get chewed up by the family court system and see how much help you get as a ‘hard working’ man. I understand now how I was viewed by the system, a second class citizen…a tool. Now I work as much as I have too. Nothing more, nothing less.
Go ahead and label me a whiner, if that is what you care to think. But I am not hurting myself anymore. I am free of being a beast of another’s burden. And it doesn’t nearly effect me as much as those who used to depend on the tax revenues I used to provide and the job opportunities that I used to create.
Peter,
I agree with you to a point. There will be those who lash out at ANY convenient target of hate or opportunity. Witness Reginald Denny in L.A. I don’t necessarily feel that it takes a “media complex” or vested groups to start a scapegoat campaign, though it helps.
As a former member of the savings class, I am now taking a new route. This is the first year I didn’t make an RRSP contribution and will try to figure out some way of using my current RRSP’s to finance the remaining small portion of my mortgage. As 454guy notes, buying guns and ammo is one of the best investments to make now and my ammo stocks have appreciated signficantly faster than gold. Next step is to buy reloading tools as I expect that the brass I have now might have to last a lot longer than I thought.
Right now the only worthwhile savings are things that will be useful in a SHTF scenario. Have moved out of Vancouver, pay for things almost entirely in cash and steadily buying up stuff that won’t be available in a SHTF scenario. Food is a problem but did try an experiment of surviving on canned chili for 2 weeks (I was alone in the house at the time). I’m sure the statists will try to find some means of taxing people like me as my savings are increasingly in a form that won’t lose value with inflation and 0 interest rates. Considering I pay cash for everything except what I order over the internet, they have no idea what I own.
No plans to retire; when I get too old and decrepit to work I’ll deal with the situation myself. In the meantime am enjoying the decline.
RFB @ 5:25pm right on!
Very well said diatribe. Your experience would parallel mine. My apologies to Jan In Alberta, but your wrong about including the Tea Party along Occupy people. The Tea Party people in the U.S. are committed to not enslaving their citizens to taxation and the elite and unlike the Occupy people believe in their Republic and it’s values and would never trespass and squat on others’ turf. This exposes you Jan as a part of the Whiny class. Jan I do commend you on not tolerating being exploited by the Leftist Social Engineers – you are right about that. Keep up that good work…just try to understand Jan there are good, solid people like RFB and myself that have always pulled our weight always will and yes we don’t mind helping out others…WITHIN REASON! Having wealth is not a sin, especially if you earned it with your own hard work, sweat and aching joints. Doing the least one can do to avoid the taxman while a strategy is also is a zero end game – it’s just not in our blood.
I do fear for my children as we have not created a very hopeful world and they are not immune to it’s cynicism or apathy. I like RFB with enjoy our lives as long as our health lasts, but still we have a heavy conciense as we know the difference between pettiness and selflessness, victim-hood and productive lives, and entitlement vs empowerment in having pride in working for it. I look in the mirror with self-assurance, I will die certain I was a humble, good, faithful man. Each take care gentlemen on each of your chosen path’s.
Unfortunately very true summary.
When the music stops, the consequences of debasing the currency will be very apparent to everyone. The Total Debt Burden of the USA alone is 144T, the EU is in the same mess, Japan has been treading water since the 1990’s. The wreck will be very bad indeed, it will make the Dirty 30’s look like a picnic. Those trapped in cities like Chicago, Detroit, LA, Toronto etc will be in very bad shape. Makes you wonder why DHS purchased 1.6B rounds of dum dum ammo and heavily armoured tanks for domestic use. Best set aside some supplies and real assets for the lean years. It should not be too long now. The real economy is disconnecting from the stock market which is being juiced all over the globe by heavy money printing.
Yup. Listened to that yesterday.
He makes the key distinction that extinction awaits a morally topsy-turvy society which rewards debtors (who once went to prison) while punishing savers.
Recall the Keynesians consider saving unpatriotic and our own PM Cretin called them hoarders.
And Krugman’s fave lesson is the “paradox of thrift”.
I’m ancient enough to recall a time when my parents’ generation considered having a mortgage was mildly shameful; when your debt load was not a source of pride.
Loved his observation that there were more graduates in public relations than in agriculture.
He once made the folksy observation that soon farmers will be driving Porsches while the brokers will be tractor-driving farm hands.
Most baby boomers are in their 60s. Most of them will be dead within the next 20 years. It will be a very different world by that time and part of what will make it different is the absence of those boomers. Why should we care about the Boo Hah scary people most of whom have no clue what they are talking about. There are so many wild cards that can and will change the course of events. Like “Hari Seldon” or the “Mule” in Asimov’s “Foundation Trilogy”.
I prefer equities on the theory that a selection of well-run companies represents real wealth that has a better chance of holding its long-term value than, say, bonds issued by a government flooding the market with fiat currency.
When we reward theft, why would we complain when thieves proliferate?
Only graduates of political science would assume you can steal without consequences.
Our political bureaucracy’s cost has exceeded their value.
All social contracts are null and void.
Why should I produce?
For diminishing return ?
To further enrich parasites?
That trillion dollar debt might be a clue that paper money needs to be softer and more absorbent, other than wallpaper thats its future function.
Saving about $20K a year but what’s the point when inflation wipes out those savings.
It makes more sense to buy guns and reloading components. My investment into the primers performed better than gold.
Too many people believe that ultra-low interest rates are win-win for everyone. What they fail to understand is that this is a huge disincentive to save and invest. Since saving and investing are necessary for capital formation, this strategy is just sucking the lifeblood out of our economy.
Inflation should never be confused with economic growth.
Negligible returns on GICs and term deposits are driving people into riskier and riskier investments like stocks, which is fine as long as you understand what you are doing there. Unfortunately, most people have no idea what can go wrong in the stock market and won’t prepare themselves for it.
Usually, it is the unexpected and unpredicted that bites our economic a$$. Often, the “experts”, both paid and citizen, can be so very clueless.
The next Black Swan may very well be population decline. Population decline is already happening but our beloved media is still in the ‘population bomb’, ‘man is bad’ mode. More than half the countries in the world have declining populations and the rest are rapidly approaching negative pop growth also.
Population decline will change everything – all traditional economic “wisdom” could be chucked out the window.
[ We’ve all heard the thesis on real estate investing: “They’re not making any more land.” It turns out that before too long we may not be making enough people either.]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/joonyun/2012/12/06/the-next-black-swan-global-depopulation/
Well, of course. Only a fool would trust his old age to the Toronto-Dominion Bank any more than he ought to trust it to the Canada Pension Plan.
Gold? Silver? Rubbish. Try defending your hoard from a mob of “diverse” and desperate youth on your own—and trust me, your ammo will run out sooner or later. The only realistic retirement plan is the one that was used since the days of Abraham—raising sons and daughters in the way they should go, and do all in your power to give them away to support themselves when you can no longer do it for them—a family farm, an honest trade that will never go out of style, a good marriage to a good man who can keep your daughter as well as you kept her.
If you did right by your children, they almost assuredly will honour you in their old age and care for you when you’re too old or ill to work, repaying their debt to you as best they are able and know how. If you neglected your children and did not bother with assuring their future, they owe you precisely nothing—and then your only other option is to pray for a quick death, or do what you must to hurry it along.
Here’s the awful truth. The boomers systematically alienated and drove off those children they suffered to escape the womb alive, and did nothing to assure their futures by seeing about their being placed in honest trades or good marriages. Why bother, when the CPP will provide? If you really want to live in style, take the money you would have spent on the little monsters and put it in an RRSP at the Toronto-Dominion Bank. (And not everyone did that. I’ll spare you another retelling of my own parents’ folly.)
They had conveniently forgotten that their pension plan’s assets were the liabilities of the firms where their children and grandchildren worked for a living. Put plainly, their “pensions” are claims on their children’s wages. Whether the claim iss enforced through taxation or interest hardly matters (and in any event much of the pension fund was invested in government bonds that are serviced with taxes anyway). What does matter was that the ones who thought it through at all knew very well that their long-suffering children would not keep their useless parents in style willingly, so they planned to take the money by force.
Problem: those of their children and grandchildren who managed somehow to land on their feet, no thanks to dear old Mom and Dad, will, when forced to choose between pampering their useless parents and feeding their own children, find better uses for the money than to hand it over in payment of a debt they never assented to and could not possibly pay. They can’t pay, they shouldn’t pay, and they won’t pay. If revolting isn’t an option they’ll emigrate if they can. The firms they worked for will go out of business, and the firms’ debts will be worthless. Their parents will join their children in exile at the children’s convenience, not the parents.
By the way, the Toronto-Dominion Bank know better than anyone that their customers’ RRSPs will be paid out, if at all, in worthless bank-confetti, because it couldn’t be repaid in full even if the Toronto-Dominion Bank wanted to. Here’s the thing—the banksters don’t have to. All they have to do, if and when the mob overwhelms the police and storms the TD Centre (or the army and police joins the mob as happened in Romania), is be sure that the “loot” is offshore and they are on a plane headed out of Canadian airspace.
Ever wonder why the World’s Central Bank’s stimulus ways have not been working? Why the Politicians are trying to confiscate the savers wealth? Simple. Because they are desperate.
[ Bulgaria’s population has declined from a peak of 9,009,018 in 1989 to no more than 7.3 million, according to the country’s 2011 census.]
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=133353
And yet the media comes up with every reason in the world for economic malaise. Bad, bad austerity ect ect. Should print more money and debase the savers wealth blah blah.
The Telegraph makes no mention of population decline in it’s all knowing, superior explanation of Bulgaria’s economic woes.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100022927/bulgaria-succumbs-to-euro-deflation-curse/
From the article and said by Rogers, ” the hollowing out of the ‘saving class’ resulting from this situation. Central planners’ policies are punishing the prudent in favor of rescuing the irresponsible. This has happened before in world history, and the aftermath has always had grievous economic, social — and often human — costs:”
I think this debasing of the monetary values has a deeper intent in mind beyond just wiping out the middle class saver. I know it sounds far fetched and maybe a little conspiracy theorist like, but I believe their aim is create financial chaos in order to advance more subjugation of the populations by a more central government.
Ken(Kulak) @ 2:27PM…..nothing conspiratorial about it all. Read the UN’s Agenda 21.
Agreed.
The people most adaptive to situations are the savings class. They will adapt and find new ways to ‘save’.
Those tanks the statists are stocking up on will be used against the Tapeworm class.
The boomers are marching into a ‘death panel’ health care industry. They are no longer of any use to the statists, and for the statists to get their spending paws on their boomer savings, the boomers will be vilified (the smear campaign is starting in the statist media, note) and then recycled.
Nobody I know has any trust in the big banks savings industry. They only participate through various forced programs. Otherwise they are ‘saving’ in various underground and secret society methods.
When the cities burn, it appears (so far) to be the most liberal centers that burn first, and best. The employment equity hires do a bad job of suppressing the Tapeworms. I would point at Quebec (students running wild), California, and the east coast of the US of A.
The end of this chapter is still unwritten. Throughout history desperate times have always been followed by war. It will be no different this time. It’s not a matter of if, just a matter of when. It’s the traditional, tried and tested way to reset everything.
War;
Reset and allow the “leaders” to avoid being rewarded by the mob.
When the public get angry with lying thieving leaders, its look over there, kill the “_______” . Scapegoat of choice.
Its always somebody else’s fault, when we are robbed by our trusted elites.
I am a Boomer, and I resent the comments from the X Y and Whiners Generation. I worked at heavy trades for 43 years, and ran a small ranch as well. I had to retire after 43 years because my joints and back were worn out. My wife and I raised 4 children, never took welfare or pogie in 43 years. If I got laid off, I was never to proud to accept a lesser job at less pay until something better came along. I was forced by law to always pay into CPP and various government schemes. Regardless and inspite of the government I own my ranch and everything on it outright. I own my house in town. What I paid for I want back, I paid MILLIONS in Income and other TAXES in those 43 years as man and boy. I have paid my way. It sure would be nice if you X Y and Whiners generation could shut up the whining and get your asses to work. The last years at work, I saw many of you pukes. All you were good for was kissing the bosses ass and laying around in front of computers while us older men got off our asses and got the job done. Bunch of damn consultants. Consultant the old tomcat that fell off the back fence and ripped his nuts off, he ain’t a tomcat no more so he goes consulting…
Bitter much, RFD? lol
You got played, plain and simple. You were tricked out of your productive capacity and told you were working hard to the benefit of country and it’s citizenry. You can take your 43 years of working and put it wherever you see fit. You can’t even begin to compare the environment you worked in with the one that exists today or the mess future generations are expected to inherit. And btw, you own absolutely nothing if the state decides to collect it. I watched my parents work themselves into early graves all the while trumpeting how lucky they were to be able to participate into a system that was there for everyone when they needed it. Then I watched those same systems fail them when diagnosed with cancer. I watched the government probate all assets and punitively punish the distribution of what assets were left and what savings they had managed to create. And I learned…
My parents were cheated out of their lives for a promise that was never intended to be kept and specifically designed so it couldn’t be, at least for not more than a handful of years. And I was cheated out of my parents who bought into the lie wholesale. I work hard, but not for any country, company or any other individual….I do it to benefit me. Emotionally and financially. I see little reason to become another burnt out husk hoping to enjoy life in the later years just so the parasitic classes of the social welfare state can enjoy ‘relative’ equity. Could I do more? Absolutely. But until the system starts to recognize and appreciate the efforts and sacrifices that the productive class brings to the table, and allows them to enjoy and benefit the fruits of their labour, I see no reason to play a rigged game.
Ambition, diligence, independence and persistence shouldn’t be punished as it is in our current economic system. Lower or eliminate income taxes, stop taxing overtime as though it is regular working time, encourage corporate taxing based on employment growth, anything is better than the idiotic system that is in play today.
Boy Jan you sure read me wrong. I am not bitter at all. My net worth is pretty darn good for an old cowboy. Because we never bought in to any system. I worked hard and paid cash or I did not play. I purchased insurance when I was younger, which has more than kept us, I lack nothing that I need or want really. I merely dispise whiners like yourself who are part of the problem. The Occupy No More boys and girls who think that Boomers did not pay their own freight. So you can take your little diatribe and stuff it were the sun don’t shine, bitter OCCUPIER.
I certainly agree with you. Most from the older generation asked for nothing that wasn’t earned. This seems alien to the whiners and weenies that want it all and want it now. Just don’t expect them to work for it.
You read me wrong too, old cowboy. The Occupy crowd can go pound salt, right beside the Tea party-ers, and anyone else who identifies themselves as some a member of some amalgamous group. Rugged individualism will beat the rigid conformity of groupthink in the end.
I too ask for nothing I didn’t earn on my own. I have credit, but don’t use it for anything more than leverage when dealing with banks or other financial institutions. I keep a fair share of cash on hand, pay and work for cash wherever possible, have my own debt insured and live well within my means.
What I don’t do anymore, is bust my ass trying to achieve more. I used to work 270-300 days a year, make 250K and paid damn near half in taxes. All that time believing that what I was doing was not just helping me, but everyone. What it got me was a whole lot of broken promises, including a divorce. Go get chewed up by the family court system and see how much help you get as a ‘hard working’ man. I understand now how I was viewed by the system, a second class citizen…a tool. Now I work as much as I have too. Nothing more, nothing less.
Go ahead and label me a whiner, if that is what you care to think. But I am not hurting myself anymore. I am free of being a beast of another’s burden. And it doesn’t nearly effect me as much as those who used to depend on the tax revenues I used to provide and the job opportunities that I used to create.
Peter,
I agree with you to a point. There will be those who lash out at ANY convenient target of hate or opportunity. Witness Reginald Denny in L.A. I don’t necessarily feel that it takes a “media complex” or vested groups to start a scapegoat campaign, though it helps.
As a former member of the savings class, I am now taking a new route. This is the first year I didn’t make an RRSP contribution and will try to figure out some way of using my current RRSP’s to finance the remaining small portion of my mortgage. As 454guy notes, buying guns and ammo is one of the best investments to make now and my ammo stocks have appreciated signficantly faster than gold. Next step is to buy reloading tools as I expect that the brass I have now might have to last a lot longer than I thought.
Right now the only worthwhile savings are things that will be useful in a SHTF scenario. Have moved out of Vancouver, pay for things almost entirely in cash and steadily buying up stuff that won’t be available in a SHTF scenario. Food is a problem but did try an experiment of surviving on canned chili for 2 weeks (I was alone in the house at the time). I’m sure the statists will try to find some means of taxing people like me as my savings are increasingly in a form that won’t lose value with inflation and 0 interest rates. Considering I pay cash for everything except what I order over the internet, they have no idea what I own.
No plans to retire; when I get too old and decrepit to work I’ll deal with the situation myself. In the meantime am enjoying the decline.
RFB @ 5:25pm right on!
Very well said diatribe. Your experience would parallel mine. My apologies to Jan In Alberta, but your wrong about including the Tea Party along Occupy people. The Tea Party people in the U.S. are committed to not enslaving their citizens to taxation and the elite and unlike the Occupy people believe in their Republic and it’s values and would never trespass and squat on others’ turf. This exposes you Jan as a part of the Whiny class. Jan I do commend you on not tolerating being exploited by the Leftist Social Engineers – you are right about that. Keep up that good work…just try to understand Jan there are good, solid people like RFB and myself that have always pulled our weight always will and yes we don’t mind helping out others…WITHIN REASON! Having wealth is not a sin, especially if you earned it with your own hard work, sweat and aching joints. Doing the least one can do to avoid the taxman while a strategy is also is a zero end game – it’s just not in our blood.
I do fear for my children as we have not created a very hopeful world and they are not immune to it’s cynicism or apathy. I like RFB with enjoy our lives as long as our health lasts, but still we have a heavy conciense as we know the difference between pettiness and selflessness, victim-hood and productive lives, and entitlement vs empowerment in having pride in working for it. I look in the mirror with self-assurance, I will die certain I was a humble, good, faithful man. Each take care gentlemen on each of your chosen path’s.