Earlier we discussed how many miscreants we need to deal with. That raises the obvious question; What are we gonna do with them all? We can't kill them, we don't even want to as we need them to keep busting butt to pay us back. We certainly don't want them locked up either for the same financial reason. Likewise they cannot get a free passas that would only set us up for a worse problem far sooner than any could expect. I'm thinking tax surcharge. Any thoughts?
12 comments:
aaack!!!
http://robertkiyosaki.typepad.com/
Is this really RK's blog? What'dya think guys?
thppttt!!
S_t_C
PS - A bullet to the back of the head sounds like a good solution to me!
Casey's newest post confirms that the boy is a lost cause. It is just a reiteration of every excuse he's ever made.
I'm done with him.
Casey's Most Ignored Advice Post make me want to puke.
PLEASE STEPHANIE J?
@all. As long as Stephanie is not done with us.
@Rob. It's too late for the ones who are already adults. We need to start with the basics. Classes & exams before licenses are granted to marry and/or have children.
Sputnik,
this is the reverse DNS on that site.
OrgName: SIX APART LTD
OrgID: SAL-48
Address: 548 Fourth St
City: San Francisco
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 94107
Country: US
NetRange: 204.9.176.0 - 204.9.183.255
CIDR: 204.9.176.0/21
NetName: SIXAPART
NetHandle: NET-204-9-176-0-1
Parent: NET-204-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: NS1.SIXAPART.COM
NameServer: NS2.SIXAPART.COM
Comment:
RegDate: 2005-11-01
Updated: 2006-02-01
RTechHandle: NOC2026-ARIN
RTechName: Network Operations Center
RTechPhone: +1-415-344-0056
RTechEmail: ***@sixapart.com
OrgTechHandle: PBW1-ARIN
OrgTechName: Wohlers, Peter B.
OrgTechPhone: +1-415-344-0056
OrgTechEmail: ********@sixapart.com
# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2007-01-13 19:10
Mr. Bubbles:
Whois info isn't helpful in this case because the blog is hosted by a service (in this case SixApart's typepad) which takes care of all the setup including DNS. All the whois info tells you is who registered the root domain (typepad.com in this case). It would be just like running whois on EN: all you'd find out is that the domain belongs to Google.
@ Bemused...
Done with you? No way.. I'm you're hag honey-bun. :)
I just have started to feel that level of dislike for Casey that is no longer just something I can laugh at.
Sputnik:
I think Robert Kiyosaki needs his shoes pooped in.
make them go rebuild Baghdad! And for the ones like Casey - they can work on rebuilding Fallujah 'cause it's extra special there.
(Note from Tim. I don't know the best place to put this little expression of my opinions, this mini-esssay. Like Casey's blog, like a lot of blogs, people tend to just dump stuff into the topmost blog entry, probably because that's what people read. A lot of comments added to older main blog topics probably never even get read. I know this has been my experience over in Caseyworld, where a 121st comment gets added weeks after the earlier entries had petered out.
Blogs are really an Ogg-like throwback to the ancient days. No proper threading.
Oh well, I didn't think this fit under the current "top" entry, about Duane LeGate, so here it is, buried down here.)
The Real Bubble
The bubble in real estate, the bubble brain mentality that is Casey's, reverberates throught the American economy.
Want a Jamba Juice, but got no money? Charge it.
Want a new PDA, but got no money? Charge it.
Want to increase Medicare funds, but got no money? Charge it.
Want to expand "No Child Left Behind" social boondoggles, but got no money? Charge it.
Want to send more troops to a foreign war, but got no money to pay for their medical benefits and pensions for the next 50 years? Charge it.
Want to send $7 billion to Israel and $6 billion to Egypt (or the Swiss bank accounts of their rulers), but got no money? Charge it.
About 20 years a CPA friend of mine told me something I'd never heard about. He said the national deficit was not the $4 trillion or $6 trillion or whatever it was officially being reported as back then. Because it didn't include what would be needed to pay for PROMISES MADE and INDEBTEDNESS BEING INCURRED. Things like:
-- promises made to pay for health care, medicine for a retiring Boomer generation
-- pensions for a vast number of government workers, military personnel, etc.
-- "pension guarantees" for corporations which failed to set money aside
-- the effective "co-signing" of dubious loans, even including loans taken out by foreign governments and their corrupt leaders
(these are the "loan guarantees" we keep signing, and the "debt forgiveness" do-gooders like Bono keep telling us we must agree to, so that more billions can be "lent" to Chad and Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe)
-- a vast array of mandated social programs and retirement benefits for which no actual money has been set aside
My friend Stewart told me that in his community--Certified Public Accountants--the best estimate being bandied-about was $60 trillion. That is, $60 thousand billion. This amount of money would have to be SET ASIDE RIGHT NOW (this was around 1987-89 he told me this) to provide, under reasonable expectations of interest rates and inflation, the promised pensions, medical care, loan co-signings, and other detritus of the modern socialist state.
(As we will see in the item below, this number has sharply increased. The unfunded liabilities time bomb has shot up in magnitude. Now even just the Medicare/Social Security part is now $86 trillion.)
To put this in perspective, there are approximately 100 million taxpaying households in the U.S. (the rest are spouses in joint returns, children, the elderly, non-filers, prisoners, etc.). The precise figures are not the point, as you'll soon see.
Dividing $60 trillion--the 1987-89 number--by 100 million households gives $600,000.
This effectively means that each of the households effectively would've had to put $600,000, on average, into an escrow account just to pay for the yearly costs of the promised benefits.
And that number has since grown enormously.
Of course, there are two caveats:
1. Much of future benefits are supposed to be paid out of current tax revenues. (But a little bit of math should show that that's not possible--the "tax overhang" is enormously larger than what taxpayers are now paying....so the overhang just keeps getting snowplowed out into the nebulous future, where it will eventually come due--or promised benefits will be slashed by a factor of ten in real terms)
2. Households pay varying amounts, so this $600K per household in what we may call "credit card debt" (things bought, countries bought off, pensions guaranteed) is not a "per household" amount. Sure. Most taxpayers pay less than $10,000 a year in federal and state taxes. Some pay millions.
But do the math. Even if the top-earning taxpayers are taxed at 100% (as in "progressive" countries), $60 trillion is not going to be raised even over the next 20 years.
What about corporations? Couldn't they be "soaked" to provide the funds to pay off this credit card bill? They're already paying close to 50% of all profits to gubmint. Raise taxes higher and even more growth happens in China and other "less communist" nations (!).
Maybe selling off a big chunk of land--all of California, for example--would pay for a part of this debt. It's why past governments sold land to _us_. (But I think China would only agree to buy California if the rest of the U.S. agreed to pay off its debts, take its fruitcakes and gangbangers and welfare addicts.)
But enough silliness. What we face is "Caseyism" on a national scale. Other nations face just as bad a problem. It's really just a massive credit bubble, with money "borrowed" from a future that cannot possibly pay it. Gulp.
Bottom line: America has been one big Caseyworld, charging things and worrying about the bill later. America is just bouncing on its blue ball, rearranging papers on its desk.
But it gets worse. I said that estimates are now much higher than the $60 trillion estimate from 20 years ago. Here's one article. Remember, this is just for Social Security/Medicare. It doesn't include the "pension guarantees" for airline companies which have skipped-out on their pilot and crew pension plans (and before you mention it, the "funds" to supply "pension plan insurance" have paltry amounts in them....the first couple of Uncle Sam payouts has completely depleted that paltry fund--further payouts are coming straight from the taxpayer).
Read it and understand why the only thing that keeps me sane is "Schadenfreude."
Watching the train wreck is going to be fun.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2006/05/01/hey-buddy-can-you-spare-86-trillion/
Hey Buddy, Can You Spare $86 trillion?
That’s how much Congress would have to put in an interest-bearing account today to cover the gap between the Social Security and Medicare benefits it has promised, and its ability to actually keep those promises.
The trustees of the Medicare and Social Security programs released their annual reports at 3pm today.
A brief rundown:
The unfunded liability of the Social Security program grew by 20 percent (from $12.8 trillion to $15.3 trillion) while Congress dithered over reform proposals.
But the Social Security gap is still smaller than the unfunded liability of just the Medicare prescription drug program, which weighs in at a robust $16.2 trillion.
The total unfunded liability of Medicare topped $70 trillion (It’s actually $70.8 trillion. Round up or down to suit your taste.)
....
@Tim from MBA:
Have you considered starting a blog or web site?
Not to sound like a suck up, but you're one of the most interesting people on the Internet. You've got incredible analytical skills/thinking that really get to the important or underlying ideas about things.
I've followed you on Usenet and some mailing lists for a few years now. Those mediums both work well for short, back and forth discussions in their respective ares i.e. Cypherpunks or misc.survivalism. For issues outside of the specific forums, or people who want to follow your thoughts in a specific place without searching multiple places, a blog or website would work well. A blog or website also works better for longer posts.
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