According to the book When Money Dies by Adam Ferguson, there were several times in the early 1920s when authorities in Germany's Weimar Republic misdiagnosed the causes of rising prices. They decided that the reason people could not afford basic necessities was because there was not enough money in circulation. So they printed more.
More money chasing the same amount (or less) goods bids up prices. The additional money in circulation fosters hoarding and has a negative net-impact. The authorities printed even MORE money. It was like watching a Dachshund chasing its tail.
I thought "How can they be so STUPID? The problem is as plain as the nose on their face and they cannot see it!"
Today
Today we seem to be in the early stages of accelerating inflation. We are the golf-ball rimming the cup.
We are paying people money to stay unemployed. Out of a misplaced sense of altruism, we feel sorry for them and continue to expand the pool of benefits they are eligible for.
We send(sent) millions of dollars to score of foreign countries to fund Gay-pride parades and to fund "gender studies".
We are propping up the military all around the world. And it is not just "poor" countries. We are subsidizing Europe's defense and they look down their noses at us. We are propping up Ukraine in the bear's armpit and Israel in the middle-East.
We are subsidizing spendthrift states and cities. We are blindly throwing money at Pharma. We get seduced by The Next Big Thing whether it is Green Energy or AI and the Goobermint pumps money into them, too.
(tiny violin playing) And the law-makers and the Fed say "Gee, Johnny and Joanie can't afford a house. We better goose the economy with stimulus".
BAM!
Just like the Weimar Republic.
But now it is a virtual dog chasing a virtual tail. Progress!
Putting people back to work
"More money chasing fewer goods"
Presumably, if more people are working, more goods-and-services are produced. That defuses one side of the inflation spiral. Getting able-bodied people off of the dole is mandatory if we are going to avoid hyper-inflation.
From the comments: "I think asking 20 hours out of every 168 hours is already lenient. If it were up to me, I'd have them fall in and call it boot camp for layabouts.
Section 8 is hereby known as barracks. Lights out at 2100."
Human bodies are plastic and adapt to the physical demands placed on them. Muscles grow. Callouses develop. Stamina increases. Pain perception shifts. Time perception calibrates. Intervals for defecating adjust.
Otherwise healthy men in the late teens are the most "plastic". Women, lacking testosterone, harden-up more slowly. As we age, our cells speed of growing and dividing decreases and we are adapt more slowly.
But even young men have limits. Almost three-quarters of young men are unfit for military service (although some of them are unfit due to drug use and/or criminal records). Dropping an unfit person into boot-camp means they will be red-lined due to blisters, sprains, back-issues or repetitive-use pathologies.
If you played football in high school, think about the first practices of the season. The coach started at two-a-day with (maybe) one hour each of actual exercise. Then three-a-day (with recovery periods between them). Then practice with pads and uniforms.
 |
| This is who is going to show up for "work day". Mid-thirties. Not very fit. |
 |
| "I am a knowledge worker. I don't sweat" |
 |
"I can't get my shirts dirty" |
On the civilian side, IT IS WORSE. They will show up to the first day of work in flip-flops, crocs and high-heels. They will be wearing spandex and lacy camisols. They will have long, artificial nails, fingers covered in rings, false eyelashes and ridiculously long dreadlocks. And the women will be dressed even more inappropriately. Both men and women will see it as a way to meet potential partners.
They will be on disability in a heartbeat and will be sheltered from having to work if they are dropped into 20 hours if strenuous, physical labor like cutting-and-dragging brush.
The only way I can see to avoid having 95% of the "workers" crash out of the program in the first week is to mimic the football coach and not the drill instructor.
The first day will be most covering what they CANNOT wear on the job. That includes rings because they are a snagging hazard and because you cannot wear work-gloves that fit when you have chunky rings or rings with stones mounted in them. Footwear is a big deal. And on and on and on.
Bottleneck
Getting crews like this going is very labor intensive. Realistically, it is going to take one supervisor for every four-or-five workers. I don't know where all of those supervisors are going to come from.
It sure won't be people with Masters degrees in Social Work.
Bless you Joe, for always seeing the positive. You're a far better man than me.
ReplyDeleteI have heard more than a few comparisons to todays time w/ that of Weimer Germany (the sexual degeneracy was rampant at that time as well - the books burned at "Krystalnacht" were homosexual literature, not greek classics and shakespeare.)
The one that struck me the hardest was comparing Trump to Hitler, and not in the sense that the leftists do. Rather he was elected (as was Adolf) by the people (as was our aspiring painter), and promised to return the country to its former glory (where have I heard THAT before)?
Lost to the pages of western history, is the fact that most Germans admired and liked Hitler quite a bit! I speak as someone who has heard this firsthand from my Grandparents who lived through all of that (like a lot of GI's, Dad met Mom on deployment in the 60's).
Trump is well liked enough by a sizeable portion of the population he won the election, based on a platform of turning away from the more recent adjustments and returning the country to its former state. Literally exactly as happened 100-so years ago in Bavaria.
Rhymes, it always rhymes.
Hitler scape-goated the Jews right from the beginning. I don't see Trump doing that.
DeleteThe Dems DID make the comparison more valid. Hitler spent time in prison (where he wrote Mein Kampf or My Struggle). The Dems did arrest him and take mug-shots although Trump avoided time behind bars.
The NAZI shit-show really went south when their empire stopped expanding. Everything was in place before then, but the mass executions began in earnest when they were unable to strip resources from newly conquered territory.
Regarding my optimism: I worked in a Union shop as a supervisor. There were a lot of "games". One that applies is when people who had been on disability (SLL people) returned to work and were being "placed".
Nobody wanted them. The supervisors didn't want them. The teams did not want them. The returning workers considered themselves very fragile and they "job shopped" for the least aerobic and least physically demanding jobs. They did that by finding a compliant doctor (or a corrupt clerk in a doctor's office" to write them "restrictions" like: "Cannot lift arm above shoulder height", "Cannot lift more than ten pounds", "Cannot bend over", "Cannot wear a respirator" and so on.
It will only take the EBTs a few days to figure that out.
The solution is to have the State Licensing and Regulation department start "investigating" the doctors who are writing all of the scripts. That would dry it up pretty darned quick.
Honestly, I tried so many types of online work but just couldn’t make it. This system changed everything! For the past 6 months, I’ve been earning $7K–$9K every single month from home. If I can do it, so can you — click the Home Profit System link below!
Delete.
More Details For Us→→→→→→ https://goto.now/y3CuX
Hitler was running for office, but the commenter is surprised how many people were persuaded to like him, as if that's unusual for a leader in a political campaign. Hitler was promoting a nationalist message that included hatred of Jews, but also promised to return Germany to its prominence as a world leader at a time when people were starving. Commenter then pronounces 'Trump = Hitler', with a triumphant sneer, as if he's made a breakthrough discovery. If it wasn't for Bad Faith, some people would be without faith.
DeleteAnother bottleneck as you sort of mentioned. Proper Clothing.
ReplyDeleteNot just getting them to remove jewelry for gloves to fit, Proper Gloves for example warm weather vs cold weather snow removal job gloves and clothing to match. Crocs and a snow shovel seem a really bad idea.
Friends when you've created a multi-generational PROBLEM it's going to take harsh methods and the violence that WILL Ensue OR Generations to gradually eliminate that PROBLEM.
No simple answer for CREATING a Entitled paid to protest by socialists and well armed violent members and getting them to "GO TO WORK" for their "Free Gibs".
So maybe the main deliverable ISN'T turning Billie Bum the IV into a model, productive citizen but in having Billie Bum the V hearing BBIV curse and complain for months about the shitty Goobermint job and Joe the Supervisor-from-Hell which motivates BBV to get a real job.
DeleteChuckling I was returning here as I was musing across the internet with my coffee cup in hand.
DeleteAnd here you are saying something I was thinking.
Now the TRICK as Hans Solo might say is keeping the VIOLENT NATURE of the worst of them from destroying what little we still have functioning.
It's FAR EASIER to destroy than build. A single disgruntled "EBT Employee" to bring to work a bottle of flaming but mostly peaceful (per CNN) gasoline to that Damned Slave Pit.. Or more subtle a little petroleum products in your greenhouse irrigation system (say GOODBYE to your soil and drip irrigation system)
VS the real effort and resources deployed to CREATE REAL JOBS that actually have the potential to produce something useful. I.E. A greenhouse full of Food or spices (you know you CAN grow Ginger, Turmeric and even black pepper in NH if you try hard enough, all imported right now).
REAL WORLD yesterday at Walmart I was asking around if anybody was willing to make 200 dollars cash for painting my deck. I am supplying the gear and stain.
NO TAKERS, just excuses like "my injured shoulder" on a 30 something tattooed across his neck and such who I KNOW has a wife and kid and mentioned money issues now and then over the years I've talked with him.
We've bred a MONSTER by LBJ's plan to as HIS Quote said "We'll have those ******* voting democrat for 200 years".
That Supervisor from Hell will be doxxed and his family destroyed by the socialist-democrats IF not simply murdered by an angry Gimme Dat.
It seems pretty obvious to me that this mountain will have to be shaved-down a layer at a time.
DeleteJust-in-time inventory strategies reduce costs because they sequentially uncover problems that must be addressed. (Graphic here: http://leanmanufacturingtools.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Inventory-Sea1.gif)
It looks like a Catch-22 situation. The local culture is mutually reinforcing in one direction. What needs to happen to avoid hyper-inflation or other unpleasantness is in the opposite direction.
Elevators out of poverty that involved cohesive sub-cultures (Boy Scouts as an example) have been "turned" by the larger culture.
Oddly in my morning readings I found this:
ReplyDeleteBenjamin Franklin had a tough practical attitude in helping the poor. “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.”
AND THAT was in the era BEFORE LBJ's "Great Society" started multi-generational Welfare lifestyle. When being "on the Dole" was something to be ashamed of and NOBODY would marry, let alone have you become their "BABY DADDY".
IE Lazy folks didn't BREED. That my friends IS the PROBLEM IMHO. And they will use those Glocks with "giggle switches" and violent resistance to being "CUT OFF".
Going to get ugly. Hope you've done your AO study and have trusted friends to work together with.
I don't see where the 20 hours s week has to be hard labor - at least not in places that have lots of open jobs.
ReplyDeleteFor example, here there are lots of jobs and not many people. There are openings in fast food (Taco Bell is about to open, yeah!), grocery, restaurants, the hardware store, etc.
I suspect lots of places have trouble filling those pretty much menial jobs.
Is there a particular reason you are looking at hard labor and government jobs?
Jonathan
Many of the chronically unemployed have traits that make them poorly suited to traditional, entry-level jobs. In fact, it makes them unsuitable for virtually any job.
DeleteSome of the traits are genetic (i.e. they lack the mental capacity to remember to load the housekeeping cart with rolls of TP.) Some of the traits are social (Why are you yelling, I was on-time once this week).
From the standpoint of the employer, the most problematic trait is that they seek revenge when they hear something they don't like (i.e. "I was disrespected"). They destroy property. THey physically attack the boss or coworkers.
Cutting invasive honeysuckle in very small teams dilutes some of those issues. If they show up an hour late they can stay an extra hour to make up for that (they are not rewarded with a short work-day). If they destroy some bushes when in a rage...isn't that the point of the exercise? It takes a lot of effort to destroy a tool and they are cheap to replace...cheap enough that it can come out of their paycheck. There aren't a lot of visitors at the park in the off-season so there aren't many people to put on a theatrical show for.
That is why I am writing about this particular task. Other people might read the description and come up with work with similar characteristics in their A-o-O.
Gee Joe, really sucks that the Work Bus has several FLAT TIRES this morning.
DeleteAnd tomorrow... And who stole all the tools and...
Folks that are Gimme Dats are really willing to work harder to steal and or avoid than actually...you know Work?
As I recall, the Weimar- or its successor -tried that, also. There were camps for the “work shy”.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMaybe if there was some immediate incentive for entry level work. The paycheck should do it, but apparently it isn’t enough for some people. Maybe, ‘do this for a week, do it right, and next week you get a slightly better job with slightly more pay. ‘
ReplyDeleteI think for a lot of the unwilling, there isn’t anything, short of starvation, and law enforcement, to get them motivated.
I was raised to work, most of us were, so I can’t quite understand the living on hand-out attitude.
Southern NH
2 issues with you argument:
ReplyDelete1: You forget that firstly we need to start drug testing people before they receive any government benefits. Clean test or no Free Shit.
2:You assume that these people need to be "given" a job. Wrong. Not up to the government.
Instead, make them FIND and KEEP a job. IF they can't , then they get cut off.
Lots of people looking for workers, It isn't up to anyone but the worker to adapt.
Once they get hungry enough, they will decide to show up dressed appropriately, And they will deal with the blisters and sore muscles because they need the job to keep getting the Free Shit.
I 100% concede the first point.
DeleteRegarding the second point: There are strong disincentives for most private sector employers to hire "employment resistant people", not the least of which is litigation and reputation risks.
Maybe it seems like a really stupid idea now, but some time in the next thirty years some of us are going to need somebody to wipe out back-sides or fetch our slippers.
It isn't fixable. We are screwed. Collapse is on the way. --ken
ReplyDeleteI've read somewhere in Revelations. That a man will work from dawn to dusk for a loaf of bread! That's spicy times.Woody
ReplyDelete"need somebody to wipe out back-sides or fetch our slippers."
ReplyDeleteThe job title is Personal Care Worker. There are 20,000 unfilled PCW positions in Wisconsin. The pay is poor but the job satisfaction can be rich. Unfortunately, people don't want to work because it's easier to be on the dole.
Aside: Nurse Becky would visit in-home care situations to ensure things were being done correctly. When a PCW would get canned for not doing the job, she would attend the unemployment compensation hearing with documentation in hand. 200 times at last count and not one of the bums got unemployment. She had flame tatts on both arms and a powder puff blue .45 under the driver's seat. I liked Becky!