Last night just as I was drifting off, I got to thinking about the curious double legal and moral standards regarding addicts and pushers in America. Illegal drug pushers can rake in a lot of money preying on the weak-in-character by getting them hooked on the products they sell. Pushers know that those “feel good” products will eventually ruin the lives of many of their customers, but they have no concern for any of that – they just want the money. In a moral society, selling people into drug dependency should be a crime, and so it is in America. Drug pushers who profit from tempting the weak-in-character are condemned both by society and by the law; They’re considered the lowest of the low and given long prison sentences if convicted. OTOH, the addicts created by the drug pushers are treated like” victims” with a “problem”. They’re to be “understood” and “rehabilitated”. How many times has the media been filled with sympathetic stories about some movie star going to “rehab” to kick one addiction or another? Personally, I don’t have much respect for those who get hooked, but I can understand how it happens. Humans can succumb to temptations of all kinds. OTOH, I have nothing but contempt for drug pushers.
But compare the moral and legal treatment of people in the drug trade to that of the people in the debt trade. Today we have an entire “industry” which – with government encouragement and protection – rakes in money by getting people hooked on debt that they have no chance of ever repaying. Sub-prime mortgages, NINJA loans, Home Equity Lines of Credit, credit card debt, title loans, payday loans… “Here kid, sign here – It’ll make you feel good. All your friends are doing it. You can pay me later.” Over the last 100 years the politicians, investment bankers, phony insurance executives, and Wall St. insiders have sold the entire country into wage slavery. So where is the comparable condemnation of the pushers of debt who no doubt destroy more lives than pushers of illegal drugs? For some reason, the only outrage we see is directed against the weak-at-math who actually believe the lies the credit pushers are telling them: “You can afford it. All your friends are doing it”, etc.
There are three kinds of pushers, and I believe that all three kinds should be condemned: Those who push illegal drugs, those who push individual debt, and those who push government debt. There was a time when no honest banker would lend money to a bad credit risk. Somewhere along the way the government stepped in and forced bankers to do just that. When honest bankers objected, the government told them, “Don’t worry, we’ll buy up those risky mortgages so you won’t have to keep them on your books” (…or your conscious). There was a time when no politician would borrow and spend more of the taxpayers’ money than could ever be repaid. But it seems those “Profiles in Courage” days are long gone.
William Shakespeare once wrote:
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man”
Now, thanks to the unholy alliance between U.S. Government, the Federal Reserve, and the financial industry, everybody is a borrower whether they want to be or not, and the debt pushers who are reaping the benefits are no longer true to themselves. For over 100 years in America, the pushers of bigger government and paper money have continued to enrich themselves at the expense of individual Americans who are now totally dependent upon the government to take care of them. The same crowd has seen to it that Americans are also hooked on personal credit just to live the lifestyle to which they feel they are entitled. “You have to keep up with the Joneses. You can handle it.”
Progressive Woodrow Wilson set the stage with his Federal Reserve Act which handed control of the money supply to the New York Money Trust. Those financial elites knew exactly what to do with their newly found power. Since the creation of the Fed, 96% of the value of a dollar has been stolen from the bank accounts of savers while the financial elites and their political enablers have become very wealthy. Also in 1913, Congress passed – and the States ratified – the 16th Amendment authorizing a tax on incomes “from whatever source derived”. But in order to push more and more debt, they government exempted interest on borrowing of all types from “income”. From the very first and until 1986, interest paid on all borrowed money was deductible. These days, only mortgage interest remains deductible, but that’s proved to be enough incentive to get people to sign over years of future income (and part of their freedom along with it).
FDR’s Social Security scheme convinced subsequent generations of Americans they no longer needed to save for retirement (which coincidentally may explain why banks no longer need savers). In 1965, LBJ and Congress told Americans they no longer needed to save for medical care in their old because “the government will take care of you”. Now we have over half the population receiving a government check every month and no way to pay for any of that but to steal more of the savings of an entire generation. Is any of this starting to sound familiar?
Why are why are Americans condemning the Greeks for living “beyond their means” when every American household “owes” more than they can ever possibly repay? Each household theoretically “owes” a $125,000 chunk of the $14.3 trillion national debt. Add to that the $15.1 trillion Net Present Value of the unfunded liability for Social Security – approximately $129,000 per household (Source: 2009 Social Security Trustees Report, p. 61). We can also add the $36.4 trillion NPV of the unfunded liability of Medicare – approximately $ 311,000 per household (Source: 2009 Medicare Trustees Report, p. 69). Total U.S. consumer debt is reported to be $2.45 trillion, or $14,743 per household as of March 2010 (Source: Federal Reserve’s G.19 report on consumer credit, May 2010). Add all those up and you arrive at a grand total of $579,000 of debt per American household. It’s not mathematically possible for this debt to ever be repaid because Americans don’t have the money. Americans are hooked. The withdrawal symptoms will be painful.
In a moral society, the credit pushers who profited by selling our Country into this much debt would be in jail like the drug pushers or, in the case of the politicians, swinging from a rope after being convicted of treason for selling our Country into slavery.