Both these men sit on opposite sides of the political divide. Yet, they’ve made the same call about Social Security. Perry called it “a Ponzi scheme.” Krugman said, “In practice it has turned out to be strongly redistributionist, but only because of its Ponzi game aspect, in which each generation takes more out than it put in. Well, the Ponzi game will soon be over, thanks to changing demographics, so that the typical recipient henceforth will get only about as much as he or she put in (and today’s young may well get less than they put in).” That was in 1997, even.

Technically, it’s not a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme involves an intent to defraud. We’re really not intending to defraud people paying into Social Security, but it’s Ponzi in every other way. It needs more people paying in than those collecting benefits. As originally structured, most people would die – losing what they paid in – before being eligible to collect. Now, changing aging in the USA means more people don’t die before collecting, so the system is drawing down rapidly.

As people discuss benefits, the overall consensus is to cut them for younger folks and preserve them for people already receiving them and who are about to receive them. Worse, there is no discussion of what should be done in the place of cutting those benefits, which act as a lifeline for so many people. Even if people never receive the benefits of Social Security, there are a lot of folks that would need to have those benefits in order to keep going.

As a nation, as a people, we have failed in our duty to preserve our vision for what it means to be an American. Our soldiers in our movies and on the battlefield never leave a man behind: why do we lose that camaraderie for the poor, the aged, and the infirm?

We need a plan. We need one that works and that is sustainable. Simply saying, “*I* plan to take care of my family” isn’t enough. There are enough resources in the USA so that nobody would have to go hungry or homeless. We need to figure out how to make it so we don’t have any hungry or homeless.

Or do you prefer images like this?

There are 400 Americans that have $1.57 trillion between them, which is as much as 50% of the US population. That’s one group of 400 with $1,570,000,000,000, or $3.92500 billion apiece and 153,503,275 Americans with $0.00001 billion apiece. Somehow, the PR firms hired by the top 400 and their ilk have managed to make this fact seem to be a justification for taxing the people with $0.00001 billion more and the ones with $3.92500 billion less. That’s not right.

In the game of divide and rule, the minority at the top must fracture the majority in as many ways as possible, so that it does not unite and topple the minority. With wealth, this is easily done. The pattern is repeatable: mercenary security forces provide muscle and a few of the majority are invited to partake of a crumb or two so that they become boosters for the supposed prosperity afforded by going easy on the people with wealth and power. Meanwhile, racial, religious, and gender divides are exploited with opportunistic propaganda fomented by agents provocateurs in the pay of the rich. They just have to start the ball rolling. They don’t have to go along for the ride.

When I see emails that try and make it sound that the rich are victims, I become angry. It’s a lie. How can a person that buys and sells congressmen and judges and regulatory agencies be a victim? These guys will avoid taxes however possible just so they can keep a bigger pile of goodies for themselves. They probably don’t know what people who have to have a pan card seva go through to earn money and did they earn their pile on their own? Not likely. Inheritance is the number one way to make money in the USA, followed by interest earnings. Of course, for every dollar collected in interest, a dollar is paid in interest, and the poor pay those dollars. Even when a rich man borrows from another rich man, his interest payments are passed on to the poor as part of the prices of the goods and services he provides. A poor man with zero debt will still be paying interest. Interest is money made off of someone else’s labor. Kinda like what a vampire does, only with money and only in real life.

For every “Top x% of earners pay y% of our taxes” I see, I want to shout that that x% is earning more than y% of the national income. They’re not paying their fair share in a straight proportional scale and when you consider how much tax is already claimed in the form of widow’s mites, it’s revolting to see people try to paint the rich as victims.

Cherry-picked statistics are some of the most effective propaganda out there. Watch out.

Kenneth Rogoff wrote a book with Carmen Reinhardt, titled This Time Is Different. The book chronicled economic crises around the world over the last 300 years and came to the conclusion that in the run-up to a big crash, everyone says “This time is different!” and that a crash can’t happen.

Then the crash happens.

Ironically, after the crash, governments and big financial institutions try to assure us that this time isn’t different, that this is a common-or-garden variety recession. Sadly, Rogoff informs us all that this time is different. We’re in the midst of an asset-devaluation recession, which lasts longer and deeper than the normal sort of recession. We know it’s different because, three years after the big drop, we still see unemployment at high rates and have had no return to pre-crash GDP. The debts run up by governments that should now be reckoned as insolvent is coming down hard on them and we need to own up to the fact that there are lots of toxic assets still on those bank balance sheets.

Crises don’t happen all at once. They are drawn-out affairs, especially the sorts of crises as the world is experiencing right now. Nobody in 1929 or 1930 thought they were in a depression: most folks started 1931 thinking things would be all right that year. Instead, it was the start of a long slide to the real bottom of the Great Depression, which hit the USA in 1932. The situation in the world is reminiscent of the way things were in 1931, so maybe that’s where we’re headed.

Czech Dream is a compelling documentary that asks some penetrating questions about the power and pervasiveness of advertising. Although the filmmakers lied about the new hypermart, the ending showing the ads for a fake market coming down to be replaced with ads for cigarettes and credit cards made me ask which ads were really more damaging.

You need to see this. The proposed cuts for 2012 are very, very small indeed. Neither the Republocrats nor the Demicans are serious about trimming the deficit. Both talk about the need for either more taxes and/or more cuts, but neither is willing to go to the extent necessary to keep the wolf from the door.

Have a nice 4th, everyone. I mean that. We still live in a nation where we can holler about things we don’t like, and that’s a precious thing indeed. Governments are idiots everywhere: at least our idiots have to put up with people complaining about them.