Newly-minted GOP Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina tells the crowd at CPAC today that “Having a job is a good thing, but creating jobs is a far better thing.” Too bad everything in the last four years in the US — and the last 20 years in California — has been designed to stack as many odds as possible against the person who wants to do just that.
Which is why, while I’m not sure if I agree with all of the suggestions in Aaron Clarey’s new book Enjoy the Decline, but as a testament to the category of “It’s come to this,” it’s a brilliant synthesis of what today’s bombed-out hyper-regulated and hyper-taxed economy has created. Or as Kathy Shaidle writes in the PJ Lifestyle blog in “5 Controversial Ways to Enjoy the Decline of America:”
#1 — Don’t save for retirement
Clarey — who blogs as “Captain Capitalism” — writes:
In 2008 Argentina stole the private pensions of its workers, nationalizing those funds to deal with their own debt problems. Bolivia did the same in 2010, as did Hungary. And Bulgaria did their own scaled-down version of confiscating people’s private pensions in 2011. (…)
Unfortunately, the Democrats took note of what Argentina did in 2008 and have since bantered around ideas of rescinding the tax benefits of those programs, even outright nationalizing them.
Until very recently, the whole notion of retirement didn’t even exist.
Then governments decided to curtail restless citizens’ revolutionary sentiments – in Germany, America, and elsewhere – by doling out goodies such as old-age pensions.
Of course, 65 was chosen as the retirement age because few people lived to be older than 65 anyhow.
In other words:
No one was ever even supposed to collect this money!
Private- and public-sector pensions are unsustainable Ponzi schemes.
Retirement is a fad. Having a retirement plan is like having a “hula hoop plan” or a “Charleston plan.”
Clarey and I agree: the government is going to seize your savings, assuming you have any left come seizure time.
If you must, Clarey advises, invest in gold, silver, copper, and land – although I don’t see why the government can’t just as easily seize that too. They’ve done it before, from Roosevelt to Kelo.
Clarey “jokingly” recommends the “Smith and Wesson Retirement Plan,” i.e., suicide.
Like him, I don’t see the point in saving money your whole life just so you can bankrupt your family trying desperately to stay alive for the last six (crippled, diaper-wearing, mush-eating) months of your life.
While I’m not prepared to go as far as Clarey (yet), it’s true:
My retirement plan is death.
Geez. At least in Logan’s Run, there’s 30 years of perfect weather, free plastic surgery and wall-to-wall sex inside the giant Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome, before you’re forced to don a polypropylene hockey mask and flame-painted spandex body suit and ride the fishing wire-powered Carousel on the way to checking out.
Oh, and given all of the talk of demographic decline, the new economy, as Clarey writes in his book and Kathy writes in her article also strongly discourages having children. And so does political correctness in general, Dr. Helen adds:
Many parents are afraid to stand up to others and speak out, as they do not want to harm their kids. Many parents don’t want their kids to be embarrassed or held accountable for what they do if they speak out against the prevailing authorities. We need people in our society who don’t have to worry about their kids being targets, held hostage, or used as weapons by the PC authorities.
Read the whole thing, to coin a phrase.
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