Precarious: One Misfortune Away from Insolvency
By Charles Hugh Smith
OfTwoMinds.com
May 16, 2024
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As a result, a significant percentage of households that are considered middle-class are one misfortune away from insolvency.
We can summarize the changes in our economy over the past two generations with one word: precarity, as life for the bottom 90% of American households has become far more precarious over the past 40 years, despite the rising GDP and “wealth” as measured in phantom capital.
This reality is expressed in the portmanteau word precariat, combining proletariat (someone whose livelihood comes from their labor) and precarious: outside of government employment, work has become far more precarious. Where it was still common 40 years ago to work for a company for much or most of one’s career and have a private-sector pension, now private-sector pensions have vanished, replaced by self-managed 401K funds, and private-sector work is characterized by a series of not just job changes but career changes.
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I blame this phenomena on the Gooferment. Specifically, the Federal Reserve System.
The Federal Reserve Bank is a misnomer. IT ain’t “federal”. It reserves nothing. And, it ain’t a “bank”. It is a private cartel of the elite banks run for their benefit and that of the entrenched politicians.
The Gooferment’s politicians and bureaucrats spend far more than we can afford and the Fed borrows and “prints”.
“Money is a matter of functions four, a medium, a measure, a standard, a store.” He repeated that four times like poetry. “Six Characters in Money: Portable – Durable – Divisible – Uniformity – Limited Supply – Acceptability.” — CHURCH 10●19●62 (Vol 1) 978-0-557-08387-9 page 110
Unfortunately, it is no longer a store of value and hasn’t been since the 1970’s or maybe 1913.
“The gold standard did not collapse. Governments abolished it in order to pave the way for inflation. The whole grim apparatus of oppression and coercion — policemen, customs guards, penal courts, prisons, in some countries even executioners — had to be put into action in order to destroy the gold standard. Solemn pledges were broken, retroactive laws were promulgated, provisions of constitutions and bills of rights were openly defied. And hosts of servile writers praised what the governments had done and hailed the dawn of the fiat-money millennium.” — Ludwig von Mises
Penny candy, Nickel cigars, Dime store comics, and Quarter a gallon gas.
Are all indicators of how much the value of the U$D has been devalued.
Remember that on payday, Election Day, or any other day.
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