Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Consequences

"For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for the want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for the want of care about a horseshoe nail."
- Benjamin Franklin, U.S. Statesman, "Poor Richard's Almanack"

These lines signify the consequences resulting from one misplayed moment in time. Our once-great country is experiencing the results of several earlier, seemingly innocent decisions or actions, now converging upon us with great force. Let's dissect two of those decision-paths.

In most areas of today's America, it's nearly impossible to buy a home on one income, and even with two, the currently-declining market remains hostile to younger buyers. Yet, a mere 50 years ago, a single wage-earner could easily afford the keys to a new home. How did this happen?

There are several factors, of course, but preeminent among them are the rise of the feminist movement coupled with a shift into increasing consumerism fueled by the use of a home's equity as a secondary income source.

Prior to "women's liberation", as promoted by such jewish feminists as Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Germaine Greer, men were generally the sole income source per household. The housing market had to remain within the affordability boundaries of that single paycheck, thus pricing was constrained by the active market. Once career women were added into the equation, almost literally doubling the revenue per family, housing prices rose to accommodate the influx of new buying power. At the same time, women, who had been brainwashed by the same relentless radical feminists into believing that their primary work in raising young children was somehow demeaning, now faced the dilemma of trying to work outside the home while still raising those children. By and large, the offspring of working families began to be farmed out to daycare, or "early indoctrination", centers. The negative ramifications of outside, non-maternal daycare on society would require another blog entry to cover.

As housing prices began to rise, the equity (difference between amount owed and current valuation) of homes also began to rise. There began a general cashing out of equity in two ways. First, through outright sale of an existing home and a move to a lower-cost area (i.e., sales by retirees of homes in the Northeast, and a new retirement home in cheaper Florida). Second, the purchase and use of various home-equity loans by those "staying put". In these, homeowners put at stake their very residence for money for various, usually unproductive purchases, from SUVs and hot tubs, to near-useless nominal "educations" for their kids at the rapidly-declining universities nationwide.

In order for the second group of people to continue to make their payments each month without much resistance, housing prices had to continue to escalate so their "investment" was "paying off". Housing construction boomed, and the mortgage market began to admit more and more under- or un-qualified buyers in, with low interest rates to get them in the door. Many of these were adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) which could vary by several points per period. Others were zero down-payment mortgages or worse, in some cases 120% of the appraised value of the home. In extreme cases, the mortgages became negative-equity after the initial rise in rates.

The banksters, knowing that the bubble would not last, began to press their pets in Congress for some guarantees, and they wanted them to extend not only to mortgages, but to all consumer credit. Congress responded by putting in place a bail-out insurance package (similar to the previous Savings & Loan disaster), coupled with much tighter restrictions on bankruptcy and delayed payment plans. The liars in Congress also tossed in a revocation on usury limits ("usury" is usually used to mean "extreme interest rates", but in fact, all interest charges are usury). One missed or even late payment and suddenly, the credit card was at 2.5% interest per month, or the mortgage step kicked in and payments rose 20%.

Now, we see housing markets in which sellers literally can not get out from under their mortgages. They can't file bankruptcy right away, can't avoid making payments on their credit debt, and can find neither sympathy nor any available exits. In the cases where mortgage companies agree to "forgive" a portion of the debt, for which the Federal insurance already covers them, the borrowers face another problem. The sweet, lovable IRS folks will consider the value of that "forgiveness" as income, and it will be taxed at regular rates. We are reverting back to the days of "debtors' prisons" as described by Jonathan Swift and others. We are literally becoming slaves to our indebtedness.

The consumerism of the 1950's led to a desire to have more disposable income, which led to women working outside the home, which led to increased housing prices, which brought us to a national crisis as more and more people attempt to walk away from their financial liabilities. The hangover from this party will be with us for quite a while.

One other situation specifically germane to White people comes to mind.

In 1950, the United States was almost 90% White. The country had, except for Hawaii, been spared the ravages of warfare. Our industry was intact, our finances buoyant, and our future looked very bright. University enrollments boomed, families grew, the housing market expanded through massive "subdivisions" and the suburbs were born. One consequence of this was, White Americans began to have a lot more leisure time, which forked into two results.

First, while our government was busy involving itself with other countries which we should have stayed out of, our people began to see themselves as the great benefactors to the world's "unfortunate" and "underprivileged". It was the time of rise of the great charities, with aid money being sent to Latin America, Africa and Asia. Part of this largesse, or, superiority masked as piously benevolent pity, was that along with money went technology, medicine and education. All that Europeans had worked so hard to conceptualize, invent, develop and put into production was given to non-Europeans for free.

The Third World recipients began to use those gifts. Countries filled with people who'd been having 10 babies so 2 would survive continued to have those 10 babies. However, now 8 or 9 would make it to reproductive age. They became healthier, but placed no limits on their growth. In 1950, there were about 2.5-billion people on Earth. By 2000, that number was SIX billion. Estimates for 2020 are NINE billion, and in the next 20 years, as with the past 50, the growth is expected to be almost entirely among non-Europeans.

Second, we became lazy as a people. Tasks which had been carried out by White Americans were suddenly seen as "beneath us". Again, the media played a huge role in this paradigm shift, portraying the "good life" as material-based and consumer-driven. Our connection with the land, getting one's hands dirty, became utterly undesirable. And so, in America and in Europe, we began to admit more non-White people into our countries as laborers.

Initially, they were sent home when the work was done, but increasingly, they remained here. As their numbers grew, illicit businesses began to rely on them as cheap, off-the-books workers. This savings was entirely redirected toward the comfort of the scumbag owners of those businesses: their golden parachutes, perk packages and new luxury cars in the driveways of their McMansions.

But average 'sheeple' liked it too; they paid less for lettuce and other groceries. And they could afford to have someone trim their hedges, since, with both parents working and the kids increasingly in daycare or playing video games, no one was at home to do it anyway.

To assist the invasion of the United States, a jewish Senator named Emmanuel Celler proposed a bill in 1964, which was passed the following year as The Immigration and Naturalization Services Act of 1965 (INSA), crafted to reverse the ratio of European/non-European immigrants. It was shepherded through by the younger brother of the late President John F. Kennedy, Senator Edward M. "Teddy" Kennedy. A straight-faced Kennedy told the American public,
The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs.
As the numbers of, especially, Mexicans began to rise, so too did their political clout. Beginning in the border states and spreading across the country, politicians began to pander to them. Activists began to encourage them to "reconquer" the Southwest, under claim of illegal "taking" by Whites. Today, La Raza ("The Race"), a vehemently Mexican-nationalist group, has offices on most college campuses, as does another Mexican org, MEChA ("Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán", or the "Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan"). Aztlan is their mythical name for the U.S. southwest, which, again, they intend to retake for their own.

While all this was going on, American consumers, being pushed by advertisers to spend, wanted even cheaper products. So the same illegitimate "American" businesses began to send their factories and production facilities offshore, notably to China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia. Other factories began to spring up in Central and South America. While we imported the Third World's jobless, we exported American jobs to their stay-at-home brethren. And as each outsource country, starting with Japan, began to rise to American standards of living from their newfound wealth, the formerly low pricing structure began to rise, and businesses were forced to find new Third World countries to plunder.

So the liberalist mentality of the 1950's led to the stoppage of White American manual labor and the open-door mentality of the 1960's, which led to the influx of immigrants, some legal and most not, which produced a reliance by consumers on low-cost goods, which pushed the export of the low-end job market as well as industrial facilities to the Third World, which led to the transformation of the American economy from production-based to service-based, which was followed by the debasement of the U.S. dollar, which ended in our current spate of invasions of Middle Eastern "rogue nations" who dared to try to leave the dollar behind for the Euro. It also changed the composition of this country from 90% to 62% White, and from 0% to 16% "hispanic".

Imagine if we'd simply said "No" at the times when it would have mattered. For want of a nail, our battle is all but lost.

2 comments:

goddess of... said...

ahhhh, to just say "No". Easier said than done. And why is that? Because saying "No" requires doing something to back it up. Saying "Yes" is so easy.

Take a child asking for ice cream before dinner. You say "No", the child throws a fit, you punish, the child cries, you get a headache. So on and so forth.

You say "Yes" and the child happily eats his ice cream, you happily go about cooking dinner. Everything is peaceful. But what happens when you both sit down to dinner? Now the child is no longer hungry. He doesn't want to eat. You insist he eat his dinner. He cries, you get an ulcer. He gags on his food and throws up. Now you can't eat your dinner and everyone retires from the table sick and unhappy.

Thus today's world. Thus the results of saying "yes" too easily, too quickly and without thinking of the consequences first. Born, the sheeple.

Anonymous said...

Very well stated. I agree with you 100%.