Friday, February 10, 2012

The on again - off again Greek bailout is off again.

It doesn't matter.  It's money down the drain.  As I, and every real economist in the world continue to say, there is more sovereign debt in every country than there is potential money so the debt can't be paid except by everyone borrowing more money from everyone else until that no longer works.  Then the sky will fall on people who are not food and energy self-sufficient.  

I'll bet you'd like an example.  OK.  The Hawaii Electric Power Company and the State and County of Hawaii were all offering incentives for people to put up solar panels so HELCO didn't have to build new diesel and coal-fired plants.  When everyone did that, HELCO suddenly wasn't making enough money to pay their overpaid staff - so they raised their rates by about $10 a month.  Now everyone who isn't on solar is having to pay extra to make up for the incentives HELCO paid to get people to switch to solar. But BECAUSE HELCO is raising rates, even more people are installing solar.  So HELCO will have to raise their rates again. That will incentivize even MORE people to go solar. How stupid is that?

"But wait", you say. "Why doesn't HELCO just start cutting their costs and buying back solar power from the grid"?   Well, because in Hawaii, land of beautiful seas and stupid politicians,  HELCO is required by law to buy back power from private sources (including the geothermal plant) at the same price it costs them to buy diesel and coal.  And since they aren't reselling solar power because solar cut the demand, EXACTLY AS IT WAS INTENDED TO DO, it also cut HELCO's bottom line.  So the 'Green' revolution just got run over by our 'no child left behind' politicians who cannot think an hour ahead about the ridiculous rules they make.

OK, so the bottom line is that everyone except renters are now thinking of ways to finance solar because it's obvious that grid power will continue to become more expensive - and ours is already the most expensive in the country.  Wait, there's more.  A LOT of the renters are on the dole.  That means the County and State pay their rent and medical and food costs, and give them spending money, and pay for their car insurance and gas their kids' babysitters and their prescriptions and refill their Electronic Bank Cards every month so these mopes will have spending money - which they spend on 'natural, organic, healthy' food and the health food stores and 'natural, organic, healthy' dope.  So when HELCO raises their rates, the County and State have to raise their tax rate so they can keep handing out money.

THAT means that more and more businesses have to cut back on employees and employee benefits.  THAT means fewer public services, like police, fire and ambulance, and more people applying for welfare, and more crime and a reduced overall standard of living.  When people start complaining, the only thing the government can do is raise taxes and borrow more money.  But almost no state in the US can pay it's own obligations without federal aide - which is borrowed - and almost no sovereign nation can pay IT's debts.  So it's pretty obvious that almost no PERSON can pay their own debts either, and that doesn't include the debt load the government has tossed on everyone's back without their permission.  40% of the people in the US live below the poverty level and the number goes up every year.  It's a downward spiral and we are in it. 

Let's follow that logic one more decimal place.  If only 1% of the people in the world can pay their own debts, and the county can't pay it's obligations, and the states can't pay theirs and sovereign nations can't pay theirs and taxing everyone in the world at 100% of their gross income still won't stop the spiral, why does it require a genius to understand that this is going to blow up?  "Austerity" is a fine word, but if one is already unemployed and living below the poverty level without medical insurance, the only 'austerity' measure left is starvation and death.  Except that 40% of the US population isn't going to go willingly and having the police strong-arm protesters won't make them go away because it doesn't solve the rampant underlying problems of dishonesty and government waste.

We are literally at that point.  It makes more sense to keep jobs here so people have the money to pay taxes - and it makes more sense to keep people in their homes instead of repossessing them - because at some point that strategy will come to a screeching halt, too.  Because the counties and states still want taxes paid on those homes.  Banks which repo have to keep paying the taxes, but there is a scam there, too.  If a lender robo-signed a false statement and illegally repssessed a home, they may not be able to get clear title.  So they just post signsthat the home is bank-owned and stop paying taxes on it.  Three years later, the city or county sells it at a tax sale and the bank buys it from themselves, using the tax money they didn't spend to pay the overdue taxes and they get a clear title.  Cute, eh?

So.....why isn't it going to get any better?  Human nature.  People think from inside themselves and see through their own eyes.  People tend to believe that they deserve whatever they have regardless of what anyone else has.  That's why fences exist and walls and gated communities.  I know people who are millionaires.  That was their lifelong ambition.  I know people who have spent thirty years in professions they hated to make that money.  I know others who cash their Social Security check every month but don't need a penny of it.  They say they deserve it - after all, they paid into the system and it's their money.  OK, no argument.  But these same people think that I, and people like me, are suckers on the tit of society because we paid into it too and we NEED it to live on.  We don't deserve it because we aren't paying income tax - because we have no income - because there aren't any living-wage jobs for people past retirement age.  But we ALREADY paid our fair share, IN ADVANCE and we DO pay tax.  On everything we buy.  On our homes, on food on medicine, and on the Social Security benefits we get - although we already paid tax on them when we earned them - and now we have to pay again to get our own money back - and the government calls it an 'entitlement' and wants to keep it.  Of course it does,  It stole the money and left us with IOUs which aren't worth anything. 

So the government took our money without our consent by promising us enough to eat in our old ages. And it taxed us on the money.  Then it stole that money and spent it on foreign wars and prisons to put us in if we complained.  And the wars turned out badly, so we are bailing out of them so we can start ANOTHER war.  Because if we can kill enough Americans, we don't owe them any money.  And the 1%...the rich people...think they deserve all that and more and the rest of us are lazy bums who should be dispersed with tear gas and rubber bullets. One millionaire I know has collected ~$250,000.00 in Social Security over the past twenty years.  He didn't pay that much in, but he deserves it anyway because that's human nature - and that's the social contract the government made with us when they started stealing out money for their ponzi.  I will never collect what I paid in - I either won't live that long or the system will tank.  But I'm not bitter, nor do I object to Social Security or Medicare for old people.  I object to open-ended entitlement programs - like welfare - and The War on Americans our government is waging. And undeclared wars fought for profit that someone gets but that we pay for.

And the very CONCEPT that congress could pass, and the President could sign, the NDAA - which removes the last vestiges of any civil rights you might once have had is an appalling and blatant attempt to destroy the Constitution.  Now the Homeland is legally a battlefield.  That is the law.  It is codified.  We wouldn't be living on a battlefield unless we had a battle to fight.  I am pretty sure that making the homeland a battlefield automatically invokes a REQUIREMENT for every American over twelve years old to own a rifle. 

Arm up.  It's the price of living on the battlefield.

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