This article was written by Charles Hugh Smith and originally published at his Of Two Minds blog.
Editor’s Comment: The complicated financial landscape today has made everyone “slaves to the central bank” while ordinary people have found themselves stuck in debt, and spending all they have just to get by.
The few who are able to save at all have lost value by saving during extended periods of ZIRP and have instead been sidelined as hedge funds and Wall Street bankers have used virtually free money to buy up assets – like houses – which force the middle class types to rent rather than buy. It is truly a vicious cycle, and it will leave humanity at the bottom again, reversing all the gains of the 1776 revolution – as we are all serfs now.
Central Banks Have Pushed the Middle Class Down into Neofeudal Serfdom
by Charles Hugh Smith
The injustice of central-bank enforced neofeudalism cannot be suppressed like interest rates.
In traditional feudal systems, serfs were the landless peasantry who worked the land of their feudal lords in exchange for protection. In our present-day neofeudal system, serfdom has a different definition: present-day serfs own little or no productive capital and have few opportunities to ever acquire any.
The Marxist term wage-slaves describes those who, lacking capital, have only their labor to sell. This describes the vast majority of people in both capitalist and socialist systems, but what makes the present system neofeudal is the central banks: by extending essentially unlimited credit at near-zero interest rates to financiers and corporations, the central banks have given the top .01% the ability to outbid mere savers for income-producing assets (i.e. productive assets).
Just as the feudal-era serf had no choice but to enslave himself and his family to the manor-house lord, the modern-day serf must indenture himself to banks to “own” a car or home or “buy” a college education.
The X22 Report and I discuss this and related topics in the podcast Central Bankers Are Creating A World Where We Are All Serfs (38:10).
As I outlined in The Flaws in Basic Income for Everyone, all the guaranteed basic income schemes being proposed as solutions to automation are merely institutionalized serfdom as they sentence the unemployed to the marginalized political status (equivalent to powerless serfs) of state dependents while stripping them of purposeful work and the opportunity to acquire the means of production and productive capital.
Guaranteed basic income is thus the perfection of neofeudal serfdom.
The central banks are the critical enforcers of this neofeudal system. Without access to unlimited credit at near-zero rates, financiers and corporations would not be able to outbid savers for productive assets.
Here’s an example that illustrates how central banks have created a neofeudal system. In an economy not suffering from extremes of central-bank financial repression, home mortgages in recent decades were around 7.5%. This rate of interest (coupled with strict lending standards) was high enough to make credit-fueled bubbles difficult to inflate, so homes cost $100,000.
Those who had saved $50,000 had an advantage over financiers who were borrowing the full $100,000. The base operating costs of buying the home as a rental (investment) property was roughly $4,000 more annually for the financiers than for the savers: the savers’ $50,000 mortgage cost around $4,000 a year (not including property taxes and other expenses of ownership) while the financiers’ mortgage was around $8,000 annually.
This difference was large enough to make the property unprofitable for the financiers to buy and rent out, and large enough to make it a risky bet to buy the home and hope appreciation exceeded the annual expenses.
If the home rented for (say) $1,200 per month, the financiers’ higher mortgage expenses put them at a disadvantage to the saver/owner, who had a significantly lower monthly expense.
Contrast this with the world of today, where financiers can borrow essentially unlimited sums at rates far below what savers can get. As a direct result of ultra-low rates for banks, corporations and financiers, even high-earning wage-slaves cannot outbid the financiers for productive (i.e. income-producing) assets.
If a person is unable to earn enough to save, and is unable to compete with financiers and corporations for productive assets, that person is a modern-day serf, a debt-serf indentured to banks and stripped of opportunities to own the sort of assets the Financial Nobility use to accumulate ever-greater wealth and income.
The injustice of this central-bank enforced neofeudalism cannot be suppressed like interest rates.
Central Bankers Are Creating A World Where We Are All Serfs (38:10) (X22 Report podcast).
Of related interest:
What Does It Take To Be Middle Class? (December 5, 2013)
How Many Slots Are Open in the Upper Middle Class? Not As Many As You Might Think March 30, 2015
America’s Nine Classes: The New Class Hierarchy (April 29, 2014)
Imagining A Middle Class Does Not Create One (October 12, 2010)
My new book is in the top 10 of Amazon’s category of international economics: A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology and Creating Jobs for All. The Kindle edition is $8.45, a 15% discount from its list price of $9.95.
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… and as Aldous Huxley said, they will love their chains.
I think Huxley was a nut, but the Fabian socialists may get this one right. Some of you may want to google Fabian socialism, or the Frankfurt School, or Antonio Gramsci as part of your education on how we got here. Most of you already know about the vile Saul Alinsky, and what he did (including his dedication of Rules for Radical to Lucifer)
It is, as Charleton Heston wrote, “Modern media fills the cultural airwaves with a mist of anesthesia, so that principles and values are slowly desensitized to the coming onslaught. The new culture arrives on the heels of this propaganda. It simply moves in and takes over, like slipping a fine new glove over a numbed hand. The outcome of the war is just as devastating, but without bombs bursting , twisted bodies to bury, or rubble to rebuild. A new class, a different culture, simply takes over.”
Now, back to Dancing with the Stars, Kim Kardooshian, Lady Kaka, and Mahdoona “news”, my daily “Yes we can/Yes we have no bananas” chant in, and my attendance at the Cult of Al Gore Faux Global Warming/Big Green Money meeting!!!
Obama’s War on the Middle Class
“…One of the hallmarks of all socialist countries is the is the absence of an independent middle class.
From the Bolshevik experiment in Russia to socialist Venezuela today, it is necessary for communist leaders to eliminate that class of citizens who are not dependent on government for their welfare.
Political theorists from Aristotle to Locke understood that a truly INDEPENDENT AND PROSPEROUS MIDDLE CLASS WAS ESSENTIAL TO THE COLLECTIVE WELL-BEING OF ANY SOCIETY.
The middle class has always, in every society, been characterized by qualities of social restraint and economic realism — a shrewd and skeptical conservatism that serves to restrain the grandiose plans of utopian revolutionaries and embittered reactionaries alike.”
“It is an ominous sign that the political left, with the loyal support of more than a third of our population, is intent on its destruction.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/obamas_war_on_the_middle_class.html
Fabians may get this right…. but if we fight back with **information**, education, wit, intelligence, truth, justice, courage in a cogent, winsome way, we will win.
We have been here before. Hitler an his National **Socialists** had the war won. They had heavy water for the atom bomb, old Joe Geobbels for the propaganda edge (cf. former CBS News president Richard Salant.“Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.’),the weapons (think the Bismark, the Me 262 jet, the Leopard tanks, etc.); they had most of the civilized world under their boot, etc.)
But you know what they didn’t have? Truth, justice, or an understanding of human nature (same with the Soviets). That is why they failed. And the latest anti-freedom, Lucifer adherent types will also fail. And as always, our battle is one of non-violence, where we educate, inform, communicate – THAT is what is most difficult. I also see many on this site advocating the Grima Wormtongue approach. Sorry, don’t buy it, and I”m glad those like Jimmy Doolittle in WWII didn’t give up either. We may well lose. But not without acquitting ourselves as men and women of truth and faith. Any more Jimmy Doolittle’s out there? And more Wake Island defenders (and the risk of incurring the wrath of the vile PC types, those were the outmanned, outgunned Marines who, when asked pretty much if anyone was still alive right after Dec. 7, 1941, radioed back “send more Japs”
Oh, and did I mention there is indeed a God who intervenes, as He sees fit, in the affairs of men? Read some of the history of WWII, and you will find incredible things that happened by “chance.” And of course, as Vince Lombardi said, luck favours the PREPARED. Not to mention those of courage.
CS Lewis laid this all out in the third book of his space trilogy, That Hideous Strength, written right after WWII. Elsewhere, he noted the same, “The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”
Test, damn good post.
Two thumbs up!
Great comment, thanks.
Большое спасибо
What is sad about this?
It will bring war. These kinds of economic depression always end in war. Not little skirmishes not an Iraq or Afganastan, but big dam wars like WWI and WWII.
Russia is saber rattling and the US is turning a blind eye, which is causing Russia to saber rattle even more.
The US is trying to pick a fight with China. China can kick our asses hands down, just because that have over a billion of them. They can stand to loose 5 to 1 and still win.
War is coming. In the next 8 years i think it will be a big one.
I was considering building a bomb shelter. I think the missile crisis of the 1960s is about to come back.
China can win what exactly? I agree they could invade us and hold territory but there really is no win. They would eventually be pushed out. Any general war will be a no win for either side. Neither politically or economically.
“Oh Brave New World
That has such people in it
How beauteous mankind is…”
Funny how we work for pieces of paper with no real value. We sell tangible things for paper, we trade paper for things and have pieces of paper saying we have the right to control (or not) property. Paper slaves in a paper world. The world revolves around paper satans and cyber satans. Pretty pathetic.
I read an opinion piece in the LA times(I think) in the 1980’s that was written buy a guy who was a driver for some very wealthy corporate execs who had a meeting in LA around that time. According to the guy writing the piece the execs were talking about and planning on how to out the middle class. The middle class was more competitive then they were and so stealing their profits.
The plan was to open trade with India where the rich could get their products made cheaply thus undercut the middle class then make manufacturing much more difficult in the USA legislation wise.
This is pretty much what happened during the last 30 years with the exception of the sudden shift away from India and to China.
Remember in the 1980s all the cheap crap was made in Pakistan. Then it was Japan in the 1990s, then it was Taiwan in the 2000 and now it is all made in China.
At least China still gets to MAKE SOMETHING, cheap or otherwise.
Just part of “the plan” to collapse the economy…
The nation’s middle class, long a pillar of the U.S. economy and foundation of the American dream, has shrunk to the point where it no longer constitutes the majority of the adult population, according to a new major study.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-fi-middle-class-erosion-20151209-story.html
If the government collapses the economy then they won’t have to pay back $20 trillion. They will just issue a new currency and scratch off the old.
Or they’ll sell of all of our natural resources and assets to the NWO IMF, impose massive austerity measures on the people, and the big banks will truly own the air we breathe — all going according to the plan.
For further details, SEE Cyprus, Greece, Spain, Scotland, Italy, South Africa, Ukraine, various parts of the middle east (that’s still standing)…whatever they haven’t outright stolen already, SEE Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya…
Look at the bright side we only have to wipe out 1.5% at the top and those sucking on the entitlement nipple of the 1.5%!!
Once the 1% were wiped out, the rest would take care of itself naturally.
you must be living in a dream world just how many enemies do you think you have right here in the country now, walking the streets, that you will have to deal with when this mess goes down
It only takes about a week without food, for a human to be unable to do much of anything but lay there and moan. I can tell you from personal experience that after 3 or 4 days of going hungry, life really loses it’s importance to you. Those sheeple don’t have the guts and drive it takes to defeat starvation by getting off their asses and DOING SOMETHING FOR THEMSELVES. They’ll wait for someone come to rescue them, and confusion will incapacitate them.
All I have to do is stay out of their reach. I don’t believe that everyone out there is my enemy. I simply have to avoid being the low-hanging fruit.
I’ve got something else planned for the fucking criminals who scour the countryside looking fore victims, and I won’t lose one minute of sleep over their demise.
My enemy is the globalists and their puppets in my government.
Genius, nowadays our world revolves more around little plastic cards called credit/debit cards and less around paper. Never had any type of loan or credit card and don’t want them. At least my own personal world still revolves around paper for the most part. all of my cars have been bought for cash only from private owners and never from any dealer. I’m literally debt-free and will stay that way. That way I can concentrate more on preps than most other people can and stay way ahead of the game. Most people around me think something’s wrong with me for not using credit for anything but they’re all in debt up to their foreheads on something. Go figure. It’s awesome to NOT be paying on any type of loan or credit card.
If people think there’s something wrong with you cause you don’t use credit but they’re in debt up to their eyeballs, they’re plain jealous. However, therein lies the problem. PEOPLE make bad choices. Look, banksters are predators but people, albeit weak, still make the choices that put themselves where they are. I’m in debt, a mortgage and two car payments. But we can afford it. We don’t use credit cards, take out personal loans or anything else that adds the extra pain. When people wake up, grow up and take a good hard look at themselves, then maybe circumstances will change. Quit pointing fingers as if you bare no responsibility.
Funny story. I bought my son a new flatscreen, an elgato, new monitor and some really cool headphones. Cost about 1300 bucks. When the associate said “will you be paying by credit card” I said “do you still take cash?” He said of course but he had to call his supe to count it out. So I noticed there were people watching this go on and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for them because I know they were charging their stuff and will be paying for a long time and well more than what the merchandise really is worth. Debt is not your friend. Cut off all ties and stay away from it.
Jacknife, thanks for helping to reinforce my points. Whenever I really needed something, if I had enough money in the bank I would go ahead and get it. If I was running short, I would wait until I had enough money to cover the cost. Debt has never been my cup of tea and never will be. I’ve never regretted living without credit. Just like you said, other people made their own bed so they have to lay down on it.
The way to use credit cards is to pay off the balance every time you get a bill. No debt, but you get extra protection for purchased items.
Agreed the credit card allows TPTB to track you and your spending habits, but keeping some stuff above board will make sure you don’t stand out so much. America is going down hill, but we aren’t totally “Black market” yet.
Until SHFT it is always good to look like a “good” citizen. Unless you go Galt, then I can suggest a good Island to head out to.
The only reason you do not have credit cards is because either you are a deadbeat with poor credit or someone with no discipline to pay your cards off every month. How the hell do you get by in todays world with no credit? You are living in a fantasy land. Why would anyone want to carry large amounts of cash? Not only do you have the crooks to worry about but the cops. No debit card either? Get a clue.
You’re not jealous are you John?
You’re not jealous are you John? If I didn’t have good credit, I wouldn’t have that house and 2 cars. I CHOOSE not to use credit cards. I don’t carry large amts of cash except when I plan on buying something that costs that much. stop hatin child. If you can’t discipline yourself and save enough money to buy nice stuff then start a go fund me page jackass.
john, I have no credit cards just debit and I haven’t used credit since 2001. Everything I own is PAID FOR! House, cabin, trucks all of it! Get back to work and pay off your cards! Whos a deadbeat? Better look in the mirror oh jealous one 🙂
Brave, The plastic card peeps will soon see the folly of their ways. I get tired of going to the store to stand behind idiots buying a soda and chips and having issues with their cards. Just wait till the cards don’t work lol, but then they probably will have empty gas tanks too so they won’t be getting out much. I wonder if I still have my shopping poem… hmm I will check lol.
Genius, I still use cash for most of my transactions and know what you mean. In my area you would think cash was banned. I only use my debit card for some online shopping and don’t do a whole lot of that. I won’t miss the cards, LOL. And yeah, bring on the shopping poem.
Damn I didn’t save it. I will have to get good and drunk to remember it lol.
Test: This guy a former us senate aide to NY dem senator Jacob Javitz, 1965 immigration reform laws main promoter/sponcer claims that the “PEN is NOT Mightier Vs the Sword”!….His claim is a 180 degree opposite of what you call for test…So which is correct?
“The American people have been easily ruled through our propaganda that the pen is mightier than the sword. We virtually get away with murder, and all the goy do is to talk about it, which is ineffective since we, the masters of propaganda, always publish a contradicting account. If the Aryan would review history and apply those lessons of the past, then the pen will be thrown down in disgust and the sword wielded in the heat of passion. (A recurrence to history would edify our minds and show us that the European countries solved their Jewish problem only by use of force.) Thus far, we have escaped the sword, when the only reprisal is some periodical of no repute, or some pamphlet with limited circulation. Their pen is no match for ours, but our constant fear is that they may open their eyes and learn that no change was ever brought about with a pen. History has been written in blood, not with ink. No letter, editorial or book has ever rallied the people or stopped tyranny. We understand this principle and are continually propagandizing the people to write letters to the President, to Congress and to their local media. We are safe to continually exploit, intimidate and disenfranchise the white American as long as they are preoccupied with the illusion of educating the masses through printed material. Woe be unto us if they ever see the futility of it, lay down the pen and employ the sword.” – Harold Wallace Rosenthal
I think Themguys post asked a question of Test, did it not?
Tests articles are full of lets do things the non-violence way and take up the pen, spread the literature around. However, the literature being spread around needs to be the truth, and only the truth to ever dig America out of the hole she is in.
Harold Wallace Rosenthals’ quote needs to follow every non-violent post that Test supplies here at shtf.
How many years has TPTBs’ lies been fed to the non-violent, peace loving Americans; and what has our country got to show for it? A bunch of sleeping sheep!
So all you posters that praise Tests articles need to read carefully what he is suggesting and then read Rosenthals’ quote once more.
Who is telling the truth? Test or Rosenthal?
all the guaranteed basic income schemes being proposed as solutions to automation are merely institutionalized serfdom as they sentence the unemployed to the marginalized political status (equivalent to powerless serfs) of state dependents while stripping them of purposeful work and the opportunity to acquire the means of production and productive capital.
Only for the first generation or two.
Once they stop reproducing you get your magic society in maybe 50-80 years. And that can be arranged. God knows they’re doing a fine job of it now with all the financial dis-incentives. Not sure how they do it when everyone’s on welfare, frankly, as now everyone has no financial skin in the game… but I’m sure they’ll think of something. Oh yeah. Like the fact that 110,000,000 citizens now have STDs, and the number is increasing by 20,000,000 per year.
Well that will take out the more intelligent. The dumber ones not so much as again they could care less.
Food rationing makes sense though. Or… basically welfare rationing. Your “family unit” gets $X. You add people? That’s your problem.
We’ve noticed.
One more for you guys, relative to educating yourselves. Edward Louis James Bernays – the pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as “the father of public relations”. He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.
Here’ one of his quotes:
“Those who manipulate the organized habits and opinions of the masses constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of the country….It remains a fact that in almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons….It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world….As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.”
You want to get some off these “Yes we can/Yes we have no bananas” chanters off the blue pill? Some will, some won’t. Our job is to find those that will, and then help nudge others on the blue pill towards reality. For most this is not some quick epiphany – thus the frustration on this site (and me too). But that is our only chance. Time to get crackin’ folks!
Test, that’s an interesting post, and oh so true.
Complaining would be pointless for me, and unthankful as well, but I guess I’m hanging from the bottom end of the middle class by a thread.
This is only tangential to Mr. Smith’s post but I wonder if I can ask the thread’s opinion on something that seems true to me:
Is it your experience that, in general, people tend to worship either their choice of supernatural deity, or they deify government authority and worship that instead?
One cannot serve two masters.
Before the village atheist screams that he’s been maligned again, I am non-theistic.
While I don’t worship it, individual liberty including its economic dimension, is my liege.
“Before time began, I knew you, loved you, and called you by name” preceeded the nobles telling King John in no uncertain terms that he was going to respect their rights at least a little bit.
While there were a few skeptics and dissenters in the Anti-Federalists who wrote the B of R, most who approved it at the Convention, and among the State ratifying conventions, were Judeo-Christians. Few Buddhists, Hindoos present, ya dig.
The warriors in Sparta had some personal power, but the helots did not. The wealthy in Rome had some prerogatives, but the commoner did not.
Individual liberty for the everyday person seems to flourish best within soil that has a Judeo-Christian substrate.
The Samurai could lord it over the commoners, so long as they served the Daimyo. So far as I know, individual liberty for the common person didn’t exist anywhere in the East. But for Western intervention, it would never have.
Maybe that’s why there’s been a concerted campaign to drive religion from the public square in the U.S. Because it’s the only values shaper and social molder big enough to compete with “government says so.”
What do you say?
I Forgot to add: You stated of a concerted effort to “Drive religion from the public square”….yes indeed, but once again I Must add that for the past 40+ years now it is ONE and ONLY One religion that has happened to…And it is done to destroy Christianity alone.
You cannot show any evidence from hollywood-msm tv-tv news-newspapers and magazines etc in any usa sector nor in any EU nations where Judaism nor any other of a vast multitude of religions has or are being treated same as christianity has been.
In fact you would be 100% unable to show a single incident within any tv news, or MSM sources or usa Political entities or sources where even a slight small mention is ever made regarding the Talmud, nor any of its 66-volumes of books many verses are ever named nor quoted as we always see and hear of when it is the bible, koran, christianity, muslims, hindu’s etc etc…Even witchcraft and satanism gets spoken publically of…Yet One and only one alone is being stricken from public, aka Christianity.
Name last time any such was spoken publically about the Talmud or its verses etc…it simply is a Taboo and total off chart subject never ever discussed openly period.
The Only reference ever seen or heard where the very word of “Jewdeo” or “Judiac” is spoken of is in fact when used as I outlined in an Oxymornoic way of ‘jewdeo christian”.
And as an oxymoron term that does Not count in any sense as I described of public speech etc.
Now one Must ask them self…Just why Is this so?!
For That question’s true answer Is The Key to being fully awake as can be.
Good post. Attributed to GK Chesterton “when men cease to believe in God, they don’t believe in nothing, but *anything.*
…A technical amendment to the otherwise very correct pyramid shown: dukes and duchesses, marquis and marquises, earls (counts) and countesses, viscounts and viscountesses and barons and baronesses are not considered to be landed “gentry”. The gentry (baronets and baronetesses, knights and dames, esquires and ladies and gentlemen) are “untitled” lower nobility (yet, often the cadet branches of higher–“titled”–noble families). The titled or higher nobility would be the very few (around a thousand of them, out of tens of millions of people in Great Britain) who are even fewer as the rank goes higher.
America’s elites would, socially (as well as legally, in America), only be accorded “gentry” status. Yes, at least some U.S. jurisdictions do define “gentleman” (an, originally feudal–family military–English rank of society) as one who does not work–the definition of “rich”, living off the work of others, though often only used as a polite, tongue-in-cheek, back-handed way of euphemizing the destitute. Lawyers (a powerful class) in the U.S., are customarily accorded the courtesy title of “esquire” and, in some jurisdictions in the U.S., the law attempts to make that legally exclusive for them–a “legal” reestablishment of gentry as a class of ranks in America. The U.S. Courts still use “letters patent” (the form of grant of nobility in Great Britain) to confer life tenure (in effect, life peerage–what would be life baronies in Great Britain) to federal judges.
The pyramid is correct, though, in characterizing the very richest and powerful of American elites as still being equivalent the of dukes, earls, barons and such. We informally call some “captains of industry” and such “barons”. The corporatist model, in effect, does make them “lords”, with their corporations being really just a “modern” form of feudal estates over which they rule, by which they form a collective “house of lords” in power (largely by having preferred status through lobbying), and, with which they can wage some form of warfare against others (either by using the state’s (U.S.’) military, the police, or, we may increasingly see, by using their own corporations’ “security” divisions or whole “security” corporations for such use.
So, where does everyone else fit in? The elites (what we in America call “our” aristocracy, the nobility, in “modern” times) would like for us all to be their serfs. That’s what they’ve got in store for us.
That’s how they’ve got their billion Chinese serfs who make for them all that’s “Made in China”. That’s why they like China’s unelected, “unopposable” Communist Government there who are the taskmasters of those billion serfs for “American” Big Business from whom Americans buy all that’s “Made in China”–making the rich rich and powerful and richer and even more powerful over the rest.
But, the real, ancient definition of “nobility” would be that of ancestry. “Ancestor” is the real, natural, God-given, “Divine-right” title of nobility. Since everyone descends from ancestors, that makes everyone, by inheritance, noble. The family model of nobility belongs to the people.
Nobles have the ancient right to keep and bear arms–whether armaments or armor– with which to protect their ancient rights of freedom. That’s why there is the “modern”, Constitutional expression of that ancient right of the People, by the Second Amendment of the otherwise total Federal (“Imperial”) supremacy that was slipped in by the Big Business Federalist for public ratification in the earlier, unamended Articles of the U.S. Constitution.
Therefore, the People’s right to keep and bear arms is an ancient expression of the true nobility–the gentry of ancestry–that the People of the United States proclaimed when declaring independence from the serfdom they still had under King George III. Thomas Jefferson alluded that the American People, by declaring independence from the Crown, were just re-asserting their ancient rights as Englishmen (and women, as we would assert) and undoing the bondage they had been subjected to since the Norman Conquest of 1066 (no, not the Normandy Invasion of WWII). That’s the nobility that the people can claim as their own, seeing the corporate “nobility” claim theirs.
Want to get out of the serf status?
We are doing OK, despite neither my wife nor I being given **anything** (in fact, one year at university I worked full time at night, and went to school full time in the day; another year, while in graduate school in Canada, I slept in an unheated basement. Not fun.
Here’ the thing. I just turned 62, my wife is slightly younger. We bought a Nissan Altima a couple years ago (big splurge). Prior to that, in over 80 years of driving between the two of us (approx.) we had spend a total of maybe 50 – 55k on cars in our lives, both of us, since age 16.
I have read that cars are the biggest transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor (basically, the assumption here is that if you can afford a new car, you are rich). Don’t want to be a serf? Be very, very, VERY aggressive with cars!!
I read another guy who was in the same state as me – pretty much on his own financially. He scraped together enough for a down payment, then lived in the basement, and rented out the upstairs. He paid his house off in record time, and now has a net worth of a quarter million or so.
Upshot? Yes, the crony banksters (BTW, anyone know where Obama crony Jon Corzine is vacationing this Christmas? Or is it “Saturnalia” in his house?) are doing a number on us here in flyover country. But we CAN be creative. You want to live an uber-luxe lifestyle of the rich like Michelle-Marie Antoinette Obama, using debt? Don’t blame the bankers for that.
Rather, as St. Paul wrote in Philippians 4:11-13
“…for I have learned how to get along happily whether I have much or little. 12 I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of contentment in every situation, whether it be a full stomach or hunger, plenty or want; 13 for I can do everything God asks me to with the help of Christ who gives me the strength and power.”
One year old pre owned with low miles. many rental car companies sell those all the time. Only way to go. Only new car I have bought out of the last five was a 1500 GMC Sierra that they were asking 29,900 for and I was able to buy for 19,000. Too good to pass up. No idea why they let it go with that big a discount.
True shit story 100% went past sprint store to pay cell bill had cash i usually just mail in a check but was out so i figured id save a stamp and bigger than shit they were go8ng to charge me $3.00 fee just for paying in cash but if i used debit or charge card no fee all i can say is wtf if that is not prodding us towards a cashless society i remember when gas stations had 2 prices one for cash and a higher one for credit but that was understandable cus they had to wait for payment
I said the hell with it went home and used a stamp
Usually companies charge more for using credit because the card company charges the merchant 3% of the sale. But you have sprint which is hands down the WORST cell company there is. ATT is a close second.
Any one else running into situations like this
No. I use Walmart straight talk.
Remember when SHTF you will never have to pay your credit back.
James 5: 1-8: “Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.[a] 6 You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.
Patience in Suffering
7 Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. 8 You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.
@ Godsoldier:
It’s on the FRN: This note is legal tender for all debts public and private.
NO corporation can refuse to accept a cash payment made in person. If they have a point of sale computer and a “cashier” they can suck it up.
I”m sorry to hear you went to all that trouble.
I just paid a real estate tax in person in larger denominated bills. I wanted to pay in one cent pieces but couldn’t manage the logistics.
What total censor Bullshit! Why was my First reply of which I then ADDED this to deleted?…Not one single good reason for its deletion period.
Same goes for my reply to John Stiners posting regarding how only jews got disarmed by germans in wwii era etc…
Not one fuckin thing I wrote was in Any way,shape or form different than what MANY others here are quite always able to get posted up and FAST too.
I maintain my orig thesis aka Mac mostly allows my replies while Test deletes them entirely and always regardless WHAT I write of!
Well Mac if your true aim is to ruin this site and forum?…Just continue to allow a free reign for Test and his assinine deletions of perfectly Valid replies simply due to Test don’t agree with it nor like Real Truth period.
IMHO Test never yet really disowned his admitted prior leftist liberal ways and attitudes…Maybe a small bit test has done so…But the nasty smoke like permeations of leftist lib and sal alinsky tactics still remain as tests main weapon against truth.
At least it seems Mac flips a coin toss prior to deletings instead of delete all a person submits eh.
PS Mac perhaps You need check several Other sites forums and Read what many others claim has ruined this forum…Hint..Its NOT replies about that Taboo subject peoples neither…