Government Handouts Exceed Tax Revenue - The Balloon

Pretty soon it will take a third of that to fill up your car just so you CAN go buy groceries

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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

There's approximately 50% of the US residents don't pay taxes, but get back sometimes in excess of $5K. I don't think they should be getting anything back if they're not paying in.

Bobg

Yeah, that too. I stopped to fill up my tanks a couple of days ago and I about had a heart attack. $130 for both tanks and the spare can I carry for emergencies.

The cashier amused me though. She asked, "Cash, charge, or home equity loan?"

Yup, I have a relative who gets EIC for each of his kids when he files his tax return. He doesn't even live in the US, so I imagine he is committing fraud at that....He gets 10K a year from the government and he doesn't even have a job here. BTW, he wife is pregnant with #5

To be honest, I try not to think of those who have made a job out of working the system., other than be aware. I really can't change it by expending energy discussing it.
IMHO, the people who have had to collect food stamps and unemployment recently needed to..but I have to question what they've done with their time while off. Especially since jobs have simply disappeared and there isn't much to "retrain" for. Did they see "IT" coming?
Most people I know who have been out of a job (and I live in a rural area) are just doing with less and sitting it out. They are behind on the bills, toughing it out by doing without. Doing odd jobs to make ends meet. Their standard of living has rolled right over them, to the point where their houses and land are now a huge liability financially instead of a haven.
And its all because of debt.
My father used to call it "living higher on the hog". He recognized that we all were living unsustainably...the week he died he told me that he was sorry that our generation was going to have to bear the brunt of it. He saw the GD and he knew. I listened for years and I saw it unfolding again even though I did not like it. What can you do?
That aside, what have I done...responded to the internal call from years ago to get out of the city. I bought a small farm, and I will be paying it off this year. I've invested money in fencing, tools, livestock. I've learned to rear chickens, turkeys, and garden. I'm adding a greenhouse to the acreage, and working to upgrade the buildings for a '30 year haul'. I know this won't continue indefinetly - we are already on the slide big time.
Last weekend, I had to buy stock fencing and posts. I spent for 1000 ft, nearly 1,000$. Five years ago it was $500. So things aren't going to continue to go up in price indefinetly.
I can't even afford to buy at Lands End a simple broadcloth shirt now. And I have a good paying job that is holding up in these troubled times...
Am I worried? Somewhat. Am I sure this will collapse? Absolutely.
But I do know that whatever happens I'll be in better shape to organize any surrounding community since my own house will be in order.
The question in my mind at this point is, how much longer do we have to prepare and change the habits of the "old life".

for prepping now. I hate to be a chicken little, but the dollar is falling dramatically today, gold is over $1500 and silver is well above $46. This does not look good.

Our preps are well under way, but there is little we can do faced with old age and savings being inflated away. Yeah, we have some in silver, but I am convinced that the .gov will change the rules on that like they always do when their tail is in a crack. Thus, it would be time to sell that soon, before the rules change. And put it into what? No good answers here. Pitfalls everywhere.

Self reliance rules! Do all you can for your own basic needs.

For us that means a roof-fed cistern, gardens, orchard, wood heat, solar PV, and re-start the farm repair shop when we can't get by on SS. Meanwhile we use our time to pump up the self reliance. It still won't be enough.

Any money Uncle Sam sends out, is a hand out.
Everyone, well, at least productive members of society, pay for all those handouts. I'm forced to pay for welfare, the same as all the other handout programs, like ss, medicaid, medicare, etal....

Govt. doesn't 'owe' anyone. SS/Medicare are welfare programs, pure and simple. They are NOT savings accounts, or investment vehicles, or anything remotely similar. You pay premiums on a life insurance policy, or make regular payments in a 401k, or a real estate/stock/bond portfolio, and die at 59 (like my mother) and you get a hefty insurance payment, on other investments you get back all your investment money, plus interest compounded. With SS, you get a big fat [edited... originally said "back"] bag of warm doodly squat. If it 'were' a real investment vehicle and not a ponzi scheme, my family would have gotten back all of her SS "contributions", plus interest. Of course, that is Not how it (welfare) works. What comes in today, goes out nanoseconds later, to someone already on the dole.

Of course, this castle made of sand is about to be breached by the incoming tide.... there are more takers now than there are makers...

This problem will take care of itself... if we as a country wont/don't. I think it'll happen the hard way, as no one that's latched onto a sugar teat ever wants to let go. Read: social unrest.

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

As our crystal balls are opaque on the future as it unfolds around us, no one can predict just how the masses will react to nothing in the marketplace to eat, or nothing in their checks to buy it with if it was there, but ew have a fair idea from watching the news around the world as it happens in other nations here and there..... riots and oppression by government forces in the beginning and revolution that will end as who knows what in the end....'

We also do not know just how the economy will ravel, though any prudent person who has been keeping a weathered eye on the horizon knows that in mid May the George Soros funded crowds are saying they will start to take on the banking people and "know where they live" and use the unions to get it done..... and well the government already has the solution to the problem that right now does not exist and its gonna end with less freedom i figure, but yet i dont know.

George Washington had a vision, and though there are some who do not believe it is true, there are others that do, I happen to be in the latter crowd, and this darkness that is trying to envelop us by taking over the government "our forefathers brought forth on this continent, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" but the pockets of freedom fighters across the nation will turn it all around and the REPUBLIC will return, and those who cant make it without a hand out, will have to seek the handout from the charity of those who surround them and not from the government that is set in place for our common DEFENSE. hopefully "We shall overcome" renew and revisit our past and promised type of government, and the people will once again become responsible for their own action or in action in being able to care for themselves. I know sounds utopian.

We have become a society that pretty much just trades quarters any more and not much effort is put into actual wealth building from the ground up, mining and agriculture are looked down upon, but if you stop and think abou tit, pretty much everything that is used, is either mined or grown and harvested, and without mining the machines to harvest really would not be manufactured.

So what i think everyone should contemplate having in thier tool box along with the knowledge of how to use the tools is mining equipment of some sort, even if its just a couple gold pans and the knowledge of how to find gold in the wilds..... its there, hiding and waiting to be found..... and its real wealth no one has ever used before which would help out the status of the nation's economy..... albeit minimal. yeah i know borderline spam cause i sell the tools to help ya bring home the gold..... and clean up the worlds waterways one pan at a time..... but i believe its important in being able to produce some real wealth if you are just sitting and waiting, at least yer trying to be productive!

Will the people who git hungry tear apart the nation as we know it and help to continue to lower the western way of life as we have come to know it to that of what we now call third world country status?.... I can t say but that is what i have come to believe is about to happen, by talking to your friends and neighbors we as a whole could more than likely prevent it from happening in the manner those who would like to see it happen, believe it will unfold and perhaps that would be enough to return to the republic as our founders set forth for us to try and keep.

The time to have money is when no one else has any, while my wife and i do not have "enough" to go debt free[just bought this house last fall on our signature], we do have the means to get enough to make a payment for awhile, even if it means doing so under the cover of darkness and using the grey/black market to come up with that payment. WE have a garden ready for the year, while its not planted, it is tilled, it will take a couple years to get improved enough to rely on feeding us 100% but i know i can get it there for veggies, and I have a a friend who does raise rabbits and chickens, so I believe we might be able to get by in the tougher times we see coming.....

I aint went dark yet, so you know its not as bad as i think it will get, and we have slowly crawled out of the hole we ended up in a few years back, though the bubble hurt us worse since i had not been working, "regular" and still aint but my wife has..... the other thing that hurts is as the kids have been getting older they really cant grasp why their friends get this r that and they dont, but one day their friends wont have what my kids have, cause while we prep, many of their friends families do not, or believe they can not.... and the number of folks on un-employment in these parts is staggering which makes it all the more hard to understand why some families spend the way they do.

I am gonna sell off a few tools i have that i dont have room for, like a second table saw and radial saw, and a few other things of size or at least trade them for something smaller....... cause i do not think i am gonna get back into contract building any time soon.

William
Idaho

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Upon the plains of hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions, who when on the dawn of victory paused to rest, and there resting died.
- John Dretschmer

Hmmm, that's good to know.

If more people start having that opinion, we disabled vets will send out the word. Don't risk health for your country. Gobermint doesn't owe anyone.

I really hope you didn't intend to make such a blanket statement.

I'm one of those residents that doesn't pay taxes cause of the way things are set up. Due to my slight disability, the economy has been tough for me for quit a long time. I'm lucky to find a job and it's usually only temporary or part time jobs that I can get hired at. Right now I only drive a school bus at $7500. a school year. If it wasn't for the earned income credit money I get back, I wouldn't be able to afford any upkeep on my house, clothing for my kids, repair work on my vehicles, and many other things that I could not afford on $7500 a year.

If it was not for some of these handouts your disgusted about, there would be many people without food in their mouths, more homeless people, tormoil and rioting across our country like you've never seen before. It would be very bad already, worse then what your seeing now and may see to come.

Maybe one of these days you will find yourself in the same situation and we'll see how much you appreciate a handout or two.

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r.h. in oklahoma

Raised a country boy, and will die a country boy.

I'm glad that you served your country, and I'd shake your hand, for your service.

My point, and the underlying theme of this thread is....... the govt. is broke. There are more and more takers and less and less makers.

Hopefully you have something that you can do, when the checks Uncle Sam sends you monthly for your disability either stop arriving (very very unlikely) or arrive, as usual... but are worthless. 1K today will buy a lot of stuff. Last year would buy a lot more. Ten years ago, even more. Inflation is here... Uncle Sam is trying to print it's way out of it's troubles... that 1K is going to buy less next month, less the next, and in a year, might buy what 100$ buys today. Inflation will eat away mercilessly at those on fixed incomes... A lot of the world's commodities are priced in dollars.... and the dollar is going to heck, as GWB raised the deficit, and BHO doubled down, with his massive Union Protection bills (TARP)... you could take 100% of everything the 'rich' make each year, and it might pay for the interest on the debt.

I sincerely doubt whether govt. payments will be indexed for inflation. Definitely not hyper-inflation. To do so, would hasten the death spiral.

Time.... time is running out. When the teat (the rich) is dry, most folks will insist on eating the milk cow... and then, finally, the bleak reality will hit... and anyone getting a check from the govt. is going to either start working/scrounging, or die. Sure they'll first go after anyone with an ounce of productive blood in their bodies... stripping the middle class, then the lower middle class...

I sincerely hope you, and everyone else, getting a govt. check, finds another 'cash cow' or a real milk cow (or better yet, milk goat), before it's too late.

If someone told me that something evil was to befall me next month, I'd do my consarned best to mitigate that eventuality, and by then, the evil would no longer be an evil... a mere nuisance to laugh at when it passed by.

....sorry, I look at issues through the 'worst case scenario'.... I sincerely wish that things weren't getting worse and worse... but you couldn't script the collapse of the American economy any better, than it's being done right now... if something drastic and draconian isn't done, we are headed towards an America with checks from the govt. won't be worth delivering... if there were anyone that'd bother trying to deliver anything...

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

I'm certain we are in the down spiral now, there is no way out for now. I'm not scared at all, a year ago the thought would of scared me. Not now, it's here. I know I WILL SURVIVE it. I will do what I need to do to do so. It's like I have a hand guiding me right now, letting me know what must be done and that I will be alright.

For those who are unable to find a way to make a living, or who want to come take from those who can, watch out, we are ready for that too.

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It's not that I don't like mankind, I just like nature a whole lot more.

Over the years I've planted many fruit trees. I have several gardens. I just planted 6 more berry bushes. I strive to live as much like my ancestors as possible.

That sounds like a lot when you consider that I live alone. I'm planning for the future when my kids and grandkids will depend on this land for their survival.

One of my most important preps was when I bought this place 20 years ago. I bought in a state with low taxes, so low that with my homestead exemption my property tax is now at zero. That is important cause I know many homes and lands were lost for back taxes during the depression (a place nearby was lost back then for taxes due of around $4 or $5!) I can't imagine losing 40 acres with several houses on it for that paltry sum of money, but that shows how bad it was back then. Nobody had money, and the little bit they could scratch up wasn't enough to save their homes.

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That's it and here's the reason why. They want us all in debt to the company store. Increase the National debt, do everthing possible to lower wages, and you create a perpetual slave class. I'll say no more because I or the post will be moved or locked.

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So in the morning, please don't say ya love me.
Cause you know I'll only kick you out the door.

Yes! That's ultimately the function of ALL governments. Our founding fathers gave us the means to resist this and set up the first government in the history of human civilization that had built in protections from the start. However the basic premise of government IS forceful oppression, so it began to erode almost instantly.

All of the advice I ever give on anything practical is centered around one basic premise, which is also the motto of my publishing company:

"It is a truism that the more self-sufficient a man, the more free he is. The more a man can do for himself, the more he chafes at even the least of the bonds that the government wishes to place upon him.

In short, to free a man, teach a man."

In every other language the word "frontier" translates to "a boundary", or a thin line on a map. In American English, and very specifically to Americans, the word frontier means a place of boundless resources and riches available for anyone willing to endure hard work, privation, and danger.

We all want to be free. We want to be free of governments, of corporations, of our neighbors, of oppressive religious interpretations, or simply free from want. Our character is defined by what we do in order to be free.

Did anybody by chance watch Beck last night?

If not, it's worth a look. You Are Being Robbed

Even Denninger posted it on his site.

Or worse, there are no eggs or bread to choose from.

I thought of this thread while watching the classic 1973 movie Soylent Green last night. Hadn't seen it in many many years.

The year was 2022
Small jars of strawberries for $150 indeed.