Category: Economics

Social Security in Dire Straits

“It gets worse. A big part of this started in 1964, when the Imperial City decided to move Social Security “Trust Fund” receipts into the general fund. This meant that our elected officials were free to spend that money, as they usually do, to buy votes, and that since then the Social Security “Trust Fund” has not existed; it’s a box full of IOUs from a government that is thirty-two trillion dollars in debt. In case you’re wondering, that’s about a quarter-million dollars per taxpayer.”

USDA Now Asking People to Register Their Vegetable Gardens for National Database

Do you garden? Why do you garden?

Do you garden for fresh produce at home? Maybe even to can some surplus for later home use?

Or do you garden to foster a

“more diverse and resilient local food system to empower communities to address issues like nutrition access and climate change.”

If the latter, the government wants YOU to register your garden.

What could possibly go wrong?

Like registering your guns, registering your garden is just telling the Democrats who has food to confiscate. Remember:

As the world teeters on the verge of nuclear war and economic collapse, remember that in times of war and economic downturns, food is more valuable than gold.

(Remember to thank your Democrat neighbors for this state of affairs.)

So go on, register your garden.

At least you’ll get a cool sign for your front yard.

Source: USDA Now Asking People to Register Their Vegetable Gardens for National Database

The Great Supply Chain Collapse – Daily Reckoning

Everything described above sits somewhere in a complex supply chain needed to produce one loaf of bread. Now take everything else in the grocery store (fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, canned goods, coffee, condiments and so on) and imagine the supply chains needed for each one of those products…

The bottom line is if supply chains are breaking down, the economy is breaking down. If the economy breaks down, the breakdown of social order is not far behind.

And the costs of social disorder are far higher than any possible savings from supposedly efficient supply chains.

Source: The Great Supply Chain Collapse – Daily Reckoning

Everything Is Broken

“Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.” — Will Durant

“In the fullness of time, after the West is a ruin of its own making, this age will be remembered as a gross and sustained violation of that sentiment. If over the last thirty years the people in charge had done nothing but entertain themselves with their toys, none of this would be happening. Instead, they kept trying to prove nature wrong and overturn the wisdom of ages. Reality does not take kindly to this amount of abuse, so there will be consequences.” — The Zman

Source: Everything Is Broken

‘Containergeddon’: California Emissions Law Caused the Supply Chain Crisis

California passed an emissions law that required trucks to meet standards that the majority of trucks in America can’t meet. Basically, about half the truckers in America are banned from operating in California.…

The Constitution clearly allots to the federal government the authority to regulate interstate commerce, but California’s law — one Democrat-controlled state’s “Green New Deal” — is clearly having a disastrous impact on this commerce. Donald Trump would have put a stop to this, but Biden got 64% of the vote in California, and Biden would very much like to impose those job-killing policies on the whole country.

Applying this emissions law to existing trucks makes it an ex post facto law and therefore unconstitutional.

This is also a violation of Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution:

The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.

Therefore a vehicle licensed in one state is licensed in all states.

The Constitution is not rocket science. It was written for the people to understand. The only reason to rely on ‘Constitutional’ lawyers, scholars, or ‘experts’ is when you are trying to obfuscate and get around the plain text of the Constitution.

I’m so tired of ‘experts’ in this or that.

Source: ‘Containergeddon’: California Emissions Law Caused the Supply Chain Crisis

The Great Reset of Beef Consumption

They’re coming for our food. Lying, as usual, and worse—promoting serious eating disorders like veganism. All on the false premise that meat is inefficient and therefore bad for the environment.
 

“Another big lie is that beef production causes substantial waste of crops that could be consumed by humans. But it’s not as if beef cattle are mostly fed grain that humans may consume. In fact, 84% of livestock feed is inedible to humans — corn husk, oat straw, almond hulls, soybean skins, and other agricultural waste. In a sense, livestock convert what we cannot eat into what we can — namely, dairy products and beef, both sources of high-quality protein.”

Source: The Great Reset of Beef Consumption

Can gas stations be held liable for selling to DWI drivers?

And now, from New Mexico, comes a Florida-man level of judicial stupidity:

If you make the station attendant responsible for ensuring the sobriety of customers, they will either have to walk out of the station every time someone pulls up to the pumps or discontinue the self-serve option altogether. That would be even more disruptive to the industry.

Source: Can gas stations be held liable for selling to DWI drivers?

Two things I see here. One, it could be the lawyers are just looking for someone with deep pockets to go after. Greedy liberals they are, but that’s redundant. Two, a case could be made that this is another environmentalist attack on the oil industry.

Personally, I’m going with #2.

Why Used Car Prices are Going Up – EPautos – Libertarian Car Talk

And that is precisely what’s happening now – to all used cars. They are going up in value because people increasingly don’t like – or simply can no longer afford – new cars.

Part of the reason for the not-liking, arguably is because of the over-the-top electronic nannying that comes standard with practically all new cars. It has reached a degree of insufferability that is almost intolerable. Like having a horse fly constantly buzzing – just the right word – around your head.

Lane Keep Assist. Brake Assist. Park Assist. Blind Spot Assist. Pedestrian Detection Assist. Speed Limit Assist.…

Older cars lack “advanced driver assistance” technologies. They don’t attempt to countermand your steering or apply the brakes on your behalf or automatically shut off the engine every time the car stops moving. They don’t put the transmission into park because you tried to back up with the door open – in order to use your eyes rather than a camera and beeping electronics to see where you want to go.

Because of the steadily, inexorably increasing cost of government, necessarily folded into the price you pay. These are the cost of compliance with all of the many federal “safety,” “emissions” and “mileage” befehls – a German word for decree, which is what they are – and which manifest in cost-adding hardware such as smaller engines with turbochargers – to make up for their being smaller, in order to comply with federal MPG mandates.

And aluminum bodywork, which costs more to manufacture and which is more easily damaged and more expensive to repair (and so, insure), costing you more, several times over.

Source: Why Used Car Prices are Going Up – EPautos – Libertarian Car Talk