Creating and sustaining a nation of zombies is expensive.
Large sections of the US population have been turned into zombies. Retirees. Medicare dependents. Food stamp recipients. Disabled people. They are not necessarily bad people. They are not necessarily dishonest or lazy. But rather than add to wealth, they consume it. And when you have too many of them, your society consumes more wealth than it produces and you are on the road to The Downside.
But the feds are not only creating individual zombies, they are also creating corporate zombies. An obvious example: “green” energy. Without subsidies, loan guarantees, tax benefits and direct giveaways, the industry as we know it would not exist. Nor would the ethanol industry in the Midwest. Nor the security industry in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC.
The financial industry too, as we know it, would not exist either. Much of it would have been swept away in the financial storm of 2008-09. That story is well-known, but not well understood. Most people believe the authorities acted heroically, saving the nation from a depression. But what the authorities really did was to take the public’s money and give it to cronies on Wall Street in order to prevent them from suffering the losses they deserved. The government transferred nearly $2 trillion in various forms from the public purse to the pockets of the financial industry. With that kind of backing, most of the old investment firms survived. The new ones that might have replaced them never saw the light of day.
Industries need to be sustained by the government when they cannot sustain themselves. This is practically the definition of “malinvestment” — putting capital and energy into investments that don’t pay off. When an industry is only profitable with government backing it means that the industry uses resources — labor, energy, raw materials — and turns them into finished products that are worth less than the inputs required to make them. The more of these zombie industries the government supports, the poorer the society becomes.
Read More at The Daily Reckoning . By Bill Bonner.
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Let’s see now, if your retired and who has worked for 40 years, paid into SS and Medicare, your a zombie?..sounds like a young high school kid writing……I paid in these programs because the goverment forced me to,…..I was forced to take medicare because my insurance would no longer insure me when I made 65…and that makes me a Zombie? It must be nice to be young and so smart not to know any difference……..waste of an education.
I’m with you on that. I remember paying into FICA for over 30 years and am still paing premiums to Medicare every month and have been ever since I retired in 1995 and I am anything but a zombie. You and I both earned that money and what we get from Social Security is our money that we put in it to begin with so we are entitled to both.
I am a retired Social Worker and retired after paying into Social Security and Medicare for over 50 years and still have to pay premiums to Medicare. I am no ZOMBIE and I resent your implications that retirees and Medicare recipients are Zombies. We earned our salaries and the government forced us to pay into their programs. Now we are collecting the money we allowed the government to hold for us. Now I never voted for those Democrats who looked at the Social Security Trust Fund and saw a nice little pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. LBJ and his cronies started to dip their sticky paws into our money and left us those worthless little IOUs. Then they decided to allow folks who never paid into Social Security dip their sticky paws into our money and they did not even leave an IOU. I know of women in their 30s and 40s with children from previous liaisons (not adopted by the current husband) who are getting a check because the husband who is over 62 is drawing Social Security and those children are also getting a check. So clean out the deadbeats who do not contribute but who draw out our money.
Amen Brother! To all the retired who think we paid into the system that the author used to get his College degree with. He means zombies like him! hehehe
Military retirees have EARNED their retirement by virtue of limited pay for a future retirement plan. I am an OLD veteran retiree who was originally DRAFTED and started with a base pay of $59 a month!! My military retirement stipend is based on the amount of (base) pay received when I retired in 1985 after 30 years service. It is not a great amount, but would be more if it were permitted to be accrued in a personal retirement account from the start of service. The social security payment would also be much more if what was taken out of pay were ALSO permitted to accrue in a personal retirement account. 1.7 % for cost of living when food and utilities have risen 100 % ? Theft by the government is what it is.
okie flash, and joseph-C-Moore
I was going to make some scathing comments about this article and then point out some things they have completely omitted, but the two of you covered it all for me. AMEN regarding military retirement pay. I could not have said it better or added to it. My husband is retired military too. Also, while he is not medicare age yet, I am and I too was forced to take medicare, because an insurance company simply will NOT insure someone my age. They are leaving that up to government. Which reminds me, I never realized that a zombie spends money and contributes to the over all economy, like you and I do.
I am no zombie! I worked at the same company for 30 years and paid into SS. I took an early retirement in 2000 and haven’t drawn anything from the govt until I turned 62. Pisses me off that because I do get “MY MONEY” from SS I’m no longer contributing to society? GRRRRRRRRR I get no pension because I was bought out by taking early retirement at 50. I bought a house and invested a major chunk, which I lost a few years after 9/11/01. Oh well, such is life. HOWEVER, I contributed to charities, paid my union dues, paid my taxes and bills, and have never sucked off the system. The nerve of someone to label me a zombie! GGGGGRRRRRRRRRR
Boner is an idiot! This type of moron is why the far right is in trouble – still hanging on to the trickle down economy B.S.and making ‘entitlements’ a bad word when they are using your ‘entitlement’ contributions to fund stuff that, if we had a congress, would be very likely illegal! It makes you believe more and more that both parties are on the same side and their pretend conflicts are pure bull.