I've had the urge to adopt for awhile now. I know I love children, I know I'd love to raise a little girl and I know I don't have the time to play roulette with another pregnancy, hoping it's a girl. Thus the urge to adopt. So I follow a few adoption oriented blogs. One of which recently posted with some thoughts about the Marion IA gal with 15 kids, 8 of whom were adopted from Africa, who just died in a car accident. It shouldn't surprise me, the adoption community, especially the uber-Christian one, is kind of a small world.
After reading the post, about the shock the adoption community felt to have lost a mother, I wondered, are there any among the adoption community that sees this as the terrible situation it really is? That husband now has 15 children, a couple of which are special needs, and no one to stay home with them and raise them, as he has to work. Is there any talk in the adoption community about the morality of continually adopting, past the point of a dozen children? It's only possible from 3rd world nations where they don't care about things. And only possible with the encouragement and financial assistance of Christian organizations. No adoption agency in America would let another child go to a home that already had 14 youngsters. For just this reason, among others.
Sure she left a legacy of love, the service was standing room only. But that won't get that family very far, the husband literally can't even transport all the kids by himself, much less raise them on his own. They've all been homeschooled, so none of them have experience with even the simple routines of leaving the house for school, even if the dad could physically get them there. Every one of those children is now stuck in a terrible situation. The eldest are likely going to have to raise the younger kids themselves, probably foregoing the last of their homeschool education to do it, no matter what their transcripts say. What a great thing to do innocent children. Oh...wait.. not really.
The adoption community, and the Christian groups that funnel money into it, really need to see this tragedy as what it is. Christians playing the savior, and collecting children like they get more grace points for it, nevermind the consequences for the children in question when things like death or illness come along.
I don't like to speak ill of the dead, but the enablers of her children collecting are not dead, so I'm directing this at them. Did they think that with enough children and enough prayer, the family would be spared the normal realities of life, like sickness and death, that make 15 children problematic? Probably, it would match the other crazy things Christians like to believe. Is the community going to step in to raise those 15 children? Probably not. I'm sure they'll pray for them though.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Speaking of kids in a bad place, I'm going to boost the signal on this group, a little bit.
1000 kids. A foundation seeking to open Iowa homes and hearts to 1000 of the unaccompanied minors at the border. If every state would take in 1000, the humanitarian crisis would be well under control.
-Jennie
Showing posts with label bad habits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bad habits. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Friday, June 20, 2014
Is The End Still Nigh?
Jennie, you haven't mentioned the end of the world lately, are we still on for that?
Yes. Yes we are.
Here are some points to consider.
The US is a net importer of natural gas and will remain in that status for the foreseeable future. There will be no exporting of gas to Europe. We are not the next OPEC. All those oil and gas fracking sites, the science says they'll experience sharp dropoffs in production after their first flush. The Frackers say, "Oh, we'll get more efficient and just keep drilling." Meaning every last unspoiled piece of land in this country will be spoiled in our efforts to feed our addiction. Those lofty reserve estimates for what's in the ground? Total bunk. If we want oil independence, we NEED TO GET OFF OF OIL. Period.
Speaking of the stuff in the ground. It really needs to stay there if my grandchildren are going to have enough liveable areas to survive in. Yes, survive. A 4 degree Celsius warmup would make large
swathes of our planet too warm for humans. Too warm for our crops to grow, too warm during the heat of the day for a human to literally survive in.
Here's some of the salient parts from that Bill McKibben piece linked above.
There's disagreement as to whether 2 degrees actually is a safe level of warming. "Two degrees is actually too much for ecosystems," wrote George Mason University's Thomas Lovejoy in the New York Times. "A 2-degree world will be one without coral reefs (on which millions of human beings depend for their well-being)." Certain island nations will disappear at 2 degrees by the rising oceans.
Either way, we've waited so long to begin cutting emissions that two degrees looks flatly impossible. We're on track for 4°C of warming — which is nearly the temperature difference between the world now and the Ice Age. That's a nightmare for the planet. The World Bank tried to model it and realized that they had no idea what would happen — or whether humans could manage. There's "no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible," they concluded.
Our crops, like ourselves, are adapted to the climate we have now. Temperatures too hot will keep corn from pollinating. Weather patterns that change too much, too quickly will most certainly cause crop failures. Oh, and our global stockpile of emergency grain? Already at the lowest levels possible. Our domesticated animals won't get off free either, rising temperatures will most certainly mean increasing frequencies of disease and parasites. Water supplies are already feeling the crunch in Western and SW states, another 4-11 °F of warming will only take that crisis to higher levels. There's no way we can "engineer" our way out of all these problems simultaneously. We'll be too busy putting out the fires (literally) and trying to keep our basic (and aging) infrastructure from melting in the heat and washing away in the floods.
The problem goes so much deeper than oil, we can have a discussion about oil, and most people will agree that we need to get off of it. Every president in the past 50 years has remarked on how critical it is that we get off of oil. But nothing happens, because no one wants to talk about what that would actually mean. No one wants to talk about how stupid our fantasies of infinite growth are on a finite world.
Your friendly neighborhood doomer, signing off.
Oh, somebody buy me some of these Calamitywares.
- Jennie
Yes. Yes we are.
Here are some points to consider.
The US is a net importer of natural gas and will remain in that status for the foreseeable future. There will be no exporting of gas to Europe. We are not the next OPEC. All those oil and gas fracking sites, the science says they'll experience sharp dropoffs in production after their first flush. The Frackers say, "Oh, we'll get more efficient and just keep drilling." Meaning every last unspoiled piece of land in this country will be spoiled in our efforts to feed our addiction. Those lofty reserve estimates for what's in the ground? Total bunk. If we want oil independence, we NEED TO GET OFF OF OIL. Period.
Speaking of the stuff in the ground. It really needs to stay there if my grandchildren are going to have enough liveable areas to survive in. Yes, survive. A 4 degree Celsius warmup would make large swathes of our planet too warm for humans. Too warm for our crops to grow, too warm during the heat of the day for a human to literally survive in.
In 2012, the writer and activist Bill McKibben published a heart-stopping essay in Rolling Stone titled “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.” I’ve read hundreds of thousands of words about climate change over the last decade, but that essay haunts me the most.
The piece walks through a fairly straightforward bit of arithmetic that goes as follows. The scientific consensus is that human civilization cannot survive in any recognizable form a temperature increase this century more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). Given that we’ve already warmed the earth about 0.8 degrees Celsius, that means we have 1.2 degrees left—and some of that warming is already in motion. Given the relationship between carbon emissions and global average temperatures, that means we can release about 565 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere by mid-century. Total. That’s all we get to emit if we hope to keep inhabiting the planet in a manner that resembles current conditions.
Now here’s the terrifying part. The Carbon Tracker Initiative, a consortium of financial analysts and environmentalists, set out to tally the amount of carbon contained in the proven fossil fuel reserves of the world’s energy companies and major fossil fuel–producing countries. That is, the total amount of carbon we know is in the ground that we can, with present technology, extract, burn and put into the atmosphere. The number that the Carbon Tracker Initiative came up with is… 2,795 gigatons. Which means the total amount of known, proven extractable fossil fuel in the ground at this very moment is almost five times the amount we can safely burn.
Proceeding from this fact, McKibben leads us inexorably to the staggering conclusion that the work of the climate movement is to find a way to force the powers that be, from the government of Saudi Arabia to the board and shareholders of ExxonMobil, to leave 80 percent of the carbon they have claims on in the ground. That stuff you own, that property you’re counting on and pricing into your stocks? You can’t have it. -source
Here's some of the salient parts from that Bill McKibben piece linked above.
In fact, study after study predicts that carbon emissions will keep growing by roughly three percent a year – and at that rate, we'll blow through our 565-gigaton allowance in 16 years, around the time today's preschoolers will be graduating from high school. "The new data provide further evidence that the door to a two-degree trajectory is about to close," said Fatih Birol, the IEA's chief economist. In fact, he continued, "When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of about six degrees." That's almost 11 degrees Fahrenheit, which would create a planet straight out of science fiction.
-
If you told Exxon or Lukoil that, in order to avoid wrecking the climate, they couldn't pump out their reserves, the value of their companies would plummet. John Fullerton, a former managing director at JP Morgan who now runs the Capital Institute, calculates that at today's market value, those 2,795 gigatons of carbon emissions are worth about $27 trillion. Which is to say, if you paid attention to the scientists and kept 80 percent of it underground, you'd be writing off $20 trillion in assets. The numbers aren't exact, of course, but that carbon bubble makes the housing bubble look small by comparison. It won't necessarily burst – we might well burn all that carbon, in which case investors will do fine. But if we do, the planet will crater. You can have a healthy fossil-fuel balance sheet, or a relatively healthy planet – but now that we know the numbers, it looks like you can't have both. Do the math: 2,795 is five times 565. That's how the story ends.
-
The numbers are simply staggering – this industry, and this industry alone, holds the power to change the physics and chemistry of our planet, and they're planning to use it. They're clearly cognizant of global warming – they employ some of the world's best scientists, after all, and they're bidding on all those oil leases made possible by the staggering melt of Arctic ice. And yet they relentlessly search for more hydrocarbons – in early March, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson told Wall Street analysts that the company plans to spend $37 billion a year through 2016 (about $100 million a day) searching for yet more oil and gas.
There's not a more reckless man on the planet than Tillerson. Late last month, on the same day the Colorado fires reached their height, he told a New York audience that global warming is real, but dismissed it as an "engineering problem" that has "engineering solutions." Such as? "Changes to weather patterns that move crop-production areas around – we'll adapt to that." This in a week when Kentucky farmers were reporting that corn kernels were "aborting" in record heat, threatening a spike in global food prices. "The fear factor that people want to throw out there to say, 'We just have to stop this,' I do not accept," Tillerson said. Of course not – if he did accept it, he'd have to keep his reserves in the ground. Which would cost him money. It's not an engineering problem, in other words – it's a greed problem.
There's disagreement as to whether 2 degrees actually is a safe level of warming. "Two degrees is actually too much for ecosystems," wrote George Mason University's Thomas Lovejoy in the New York Times. "A 2-degree world will be one without coral reefs (on which millions of human beings depend for their well-being)." Certain island nations will disappear at 2 degrees by the rising oceans.
Either way, we've waited so long to begin cutting emissions that two degrees looks flatly impossible. We're on track for 4°C of warming — which is nearly the temperature difference between the world now and the Ice Age. That's a nightmare for the planet. The World Bank tried to model it and realized that they had no idea what would happen — or whether humans could manage. There's "no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible," they concluded.
Our crops, like ourselves, are adapted to the climate we have now. Temperatures too hot will keep corn from pollinating. Weather patterns that change too much, too quickly will most certainly cause crop failures. Oh, and our global stockpile of emergency grain? Already at the lowest levels possible. Our domesticated animals won't get off free either, rising temperatures will most certainly mean increasing frequencies of disease and parasites. Water supplies are already feeling the crunch in Western and SW states, another 4-11 °F of warming will only take that crisis to higher levels. There's no way we can "engineer" our way out of all these problems simultaneously. We'll be too busy putting out the fires (literally) and trying to keep our basic (and aging) infrastructure from melting in the heat and washing away in the floods.
The problem goes so much deeper than oil, we can have a discussion about oil, and most people will agree that we need to get off of it. Every president in the past 50 years has remarked on how critical it is that we get off of oil. But nothing happens, because no one wants to talk about what that would actually mean. No one wants to talk about how stupid our fantasies of infinite growth are on a finite world.
The inescapable failure of a society built upon growth and its destruction of the Earth’s living systems are the overwhelming facts of our existence. As a result they are mentioned almost nowhere. They are the 21st Century’s great taboo, the subjects guaranteed to alienate your friends and neighbours. We live as if trapped inside a Sunday supplement: obsessed with fame, fashion and the three dreary staples of middle class conversation: recipes, renovations and resorts. Anything but the topic that demands our attention.
Statements of the bleeding obvious, the outcomes of basic arithmetic, are treated as exotic and unpardonable distractions, while the impossible proposition by which we live is regarded as so sane and normal and unremarkable that it isn’t worthy of mention. That’s how you measure the depth of this problem: by our inability even to discuss it. -George Monbiot
Your friendly neighborhood doomer, signing off.
Oh, somebody buy me some of these Calamitywares.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Ode to the Civic
Well, I have, in my grubby little hand, the official title to my Honda Civic. It only took 6 years... *sigh*... but it's mine now!
This is the first car I've really owned. I bought it after college. Well, I put down a payment and took out a loan after college. It was used, but only a few years, and only one owner during those few years. It's an '03 2 door Civic and I bought it in '06.
I did a lot of research before deciding on a late model Civic. I had a couple of non-negotiables:
True story, I had been saving up for a couple of months, dancing extra shifts at the bar and eating cheap. I had test driven a couple other Civics, but I wasn't quite satisfied with them. I got a call from a local dealer that said he just had something show up on his lot that was pretty close to what I was wanting. I sweet talked a friend into driving me down to the dealer. It was exactly what I wanted, (except for the boring color) and I made him an offer on the spot. We wrangled a bit, I got a sunroof and extended warranty added, and we settled on the price. I had told him I had a downpayment of 2K. I guess most people use checks for such things, but I was a stripper, so it was all in cash. My friend's eyes nearly popped out of his head when I tossed the cash roll on the car salesman's desk. Mostly hundreds, but probably more 20's than was polite. It was funny, because he knew what my job was, he was a regular in the bar, I guess he just hadn't realized how cash oriented a lifestyle it is. The salesman had to call in a secretary to help count it. :-D
A week later, the car was clean and the sunroof was in place and the dealer called me back to sign the last bit of paperwork and take her home.
I've not regretted the purchase; not once in the past 6 years have I fallen out of love with this Civic.
It's been a reliable, mostly maintenance free car that has driven me 200,000+ miles. To job after job, and vacation after vacation.
Is it a little small for my hubby? Yea. Is it way too small for the rear facing baby seat? Yea.
But those small inconveniences are very small when compared to the excellent gas mileage that the car continues to get. And the years of flawless commutes. And the savings we see in our insurance/tax payments.
I've been in an icy ditch twice with this car, and both times I've driven right back out of said ditches with no trouble and no damage.
I've taken this car on many a pheasant hunt. It can handle a dirt road next to a corn field just as well as any 4-wheel drive truck chassis.
I've hauled hay bales (square ones) and giant tomato cages, and 8 foot long lumber, with no more trouble than popping down the back seats.
I'm a firm believer that more Americans need to downsize their vehicles to more closely match what they do with them. Sure it's nice to have a truck when there's a queen sized bed that needs moving, but why pay for the truck's shitty gas mileage 365 days of the year, just so you have it that one day of the year when nothing else will do? Most people would find themselves ahead, financially speaking, if they would downsize to a commuter car, and rent a truck/SUV for the few times they need to haul something. But of course, most Americans don't think like that, and the parking lots at work, and at the grocery stores are all packed with giant vehicles that drove one person somewhere and used a crap ton of fossil fuels to do it.
Oh well.. they're literally burning money, but it's a free country.
Anyway, it's a great relief to be done with the payments on her. It's nice to have that title that says she's 100% mine.
Now of course I'm itching to do some custom work to the old gal, spruce her up a little to more closely match my personality. Let's be honest here, the boring silver color has never appealed to me, and the black interior could be SO much cooler looking with some modification.
Raver fur covering the seats?
Some custom paint?
A cold air intake to the engine?
What should I do? :-D
I will of course report back if I end up doing any of that.
If you've made it this far, thanks for letting me gush about my car and the debt milestone.
-Jennie
This is the first car I've really owned. I bought it after college. Well, I put down a payment and took out a loan after college. It was used, but only a few years, and only one owner during those few years. It's an '03 2 door Civic and I bought it in '06.
I did a lot of research before deciding on a late model Civic. I had a couple of non-negotiables:
- It had to get 35+ mpg.
- It had to be reliable and easy to maintain.
- It had to have manual transmission.
- It had to fit into my just-graduated-from-college budget.
True story, I had been saving up for a couple of months, dancing extra shifts at the bar and eating cheap. I had test driven a couple other Civics, but I wasn't quite satisfied with them. I got a call from a local dealer that said he just had something show up on his lot that was pretty close to what I was wanting. I sweet talked a friend into driving me down to the dealer. It was exactly what I wanted, (except for the boring color) and I made him an offer on the spot. We wrangled a bit, I got a sunroof and extended warranty added, and we settled on the price. I had told him I had a downpayment of 2K. I guess most people use checks for such things, but I was a stripper, so it was all in cash. My friend's eyes nearly popped out of his head when I tossed the cash roll on the car salesman's desk. Mostly hundreds, but probably more 20's than was polite. It was funny, because he knew what my job was, he was a regular in the bar, I guess he just hadn't realized how cash oriented a lifestyle it is. The salesman had to call in a secretary to help count it. :-D
A week later, the car was clean and the sunroof was in place and the dealer called me back to sign the last bit of paperwork and take her home.
I've not regretted the purchase; not once in the past 6 years have I fallen out of love with this Civic.
It's been a reliable, mostly maintenance free car that has driven me 200,000+ miles. To job after job, and vacation after vacation.
Is it a little small for my hubby? Yea. Is it way too small for the rear facing baby seat? Yea.
But those small inconveniences are very small when compared to the excellent gas mileage that the car continues to get. And the years of flawless commutes. And the savings we see in our insurance/tax payments.
I've been in an icy ditch twice with this car, and both times I've driven right back out of said ditches with no trouble and no damage.
I've taken this car on many a pheasant hunt. It can handle a dirt road next to a corn field just as well as any 4-wheel drive truck chassis.
I've hauled hay bales (square ones) and giant tomato cages, and 8 foot long lumber, with no more trouble than popping down the back seats.
I'm a firm believer that more Americans need to downsize their vehicles to more closely match what they do with them. Sure it's nice to have a truck when there's a queen sized bed that needs moving, but why pay for the truck's shitty gas mileage 365 days of the year, just so you have it that one day of the year when nothing else will do? Most people would find themselves ahead, financially speaking, if they would downsize to a commuter car, and rent a truck/SUV for the few times they need to haul something. But of course, most Americans don't think like that, and the parking lots at work, and at the grocery stores are all packed with giant vehicles that drove one person somewhere and used a crap ton of fossil fuels to do it.
Oh well.. they're literally burning money, but it's a free country.
Anyway, it's a great relief to be done with the payments on her. It's nice to have that title that says she's 100% mine.
Now of course I'm itching to do some custom work to the old gal, spruce her up a little to more closely match my personality. Let's be honest here, the boring silver color has never appealed to me, and the black interior could be SO much cooler looking with some modification.
Raver fur covering the seats?
Some custom paint?
A cold air intake to the engine?
What should I do? :-D
I will of course report back if I end up doing any of that.
If you've made it this far, thanks for letting me gush about my car and the debt milestone.
-Jennie
Thursday, April 11, 2013
The 97%
I heard on the radio this morning that 97% of all American homes have cable/satellite subscriptions. The cable companies are worried, because 2 years ago that number was 99%. My heart goes out to them.
Seriously though! My little family hasn't had a TV or cable subscription since 2009. I hardly feel "cut off" or "out-of-touch." I get 90% of my current event/news through the radio, and yea, I'll admit it, that's heavy skewed towards NPR, because I get the most news for my 30 minute drive time. Local stations do some talk/news in the mornings, but then I have to sit through the fart jokes and inane banter to learn that a local manufacturer is letting 100 people go. The rest of my news comes from blog reading and occasional Daily Show episodes.
We do watch some "TV." But, not through the legal and heavily commercialized methods. (Hulu, Amazon and Netflix streaming, things like that.) We're pirates. Straight up. We stream from independent sources everything we want to watch. No commercials, no country boundaries, we like our limited viewing time to be self directed, and free from commercial messages. We watch a bunch of BBC shows, and have been known to check out Australian, Irish, New Zealand and Canadian shows too. There are even a few American shows that have a writing level above the 3rd grade and subject matter than doesn't offend us and we'll watch those occasionally. We watch a lot of documentaries, and cooking shows, with a healthy smattering of adult animated shows, (Adult Swim type stuff, Bob's Burgers and Archer and Southpark, etc..) Come to think of it, we're not even bound by the current year of programming, Dave watches reruns of Dr Who and Red Dwarf from the 80's.
The toddler watches a lot of YouTube cartoons. He watches train cartoons in Russian, and an animated toddler show called Pocoyo in Spanish. He loves to watch kid-made videos with Thomas the Train toys. He loves the old silent Pink Panther cartoons too. And the classic Donald Duck stuff. Between the ad blockers on our Linux Mozilla browser, and the methods we use to watch programming, I'd say Rowen has seen only a handful of actual ads in his first 4 years of life. That does make me happy, even when I would rather see him with a book or outside. :-D
Dave and I don't see many ads either. And we don't watch any of the mainstream news. (And yes, Fox is as mainstream as media gets.) It makes for a surreal experience when we go to a friend or relative's house and get a dose of actual TV programming. It's really weird. The commercials seem hyperbolic, and disturbingly repetitive. The "news" shows seem more cartoonish than anything else, with their equally hyperbolic pitch and the spastic pop-ups selling other TV programming, and those weird scrolling tickers with random twits of information. I'm always itchy to turn it off after the first 5 minutes of it.
I'm telling you folks. CUT THE CORD. If you want to live a simpler, more productive life, CUT THE CORD. If you want more time for projects and exercise and family, CUT THE CORD. If you want to lessen the corporate and governmental influence on your life, CUT THE CORD!
You'll likely go through a withdrawal period as your brain, your habits and yes, even your hormones, adjust to the quieter, slower, more pleasant pace of self directed media consumption. It's totally worth it though. Your wallet will thank you, your butt will thank you, your brain will thank you, and perhaps someday your children will thank you.
Live your life folks; watching shows on a TV doesn't count as a life, it barely counts as an activity. Mostly, it's just brainwashing, and a waste of your hard earned money.
-Jennie
Seriously though! My little family hasn't had a TV or cable subscription since 2009. I hardly feel "cut off" or "out-of-touch." I get 90% of my current event/news through the radio, and yea, I'll admit it, that's heavy skewed towards NPR, because I get the most news for my 30 minute drive time. Local stations do some talk/news in the mornings, but then I have to sit through the fart jokes and inane banter to learn that a local manufacturer is letting 100 people go. The rest of my news comes from blog reading and occasional Daily Show episodes.
We do watch some "TV." But, not through the legal and heavily commercialized methods. (Hulu, Amazon and Netflix streaming, things like that.) We're pirates. Straight up. We stream from independent sources everything we want to watch. No commercials, no country boundaries, we like our limited viewing time to be self directed, and free from commercial messages. We watch a bunch of BBC shows, and have been known to check out Australian, Irish, New Zealand and Canadian shows too. There are even a few American shows that have a writing level above the 3rd grade and subject matter than doesn't offend us and we'll watch those occasionally. We watch a lot of documentaries, and cooking shows, with a healthy smattering of adult animated shows, (Adult Swim type stuff, Bob's Burgers and Archer and Southpark, etc..) Come to think of it, we're not even bound by the current year of programming, Dave watches reruns of Dr Who and Red Dwarf from the 80's.
The toddler watches a lot of YouTube cartoons. He watches train cartoons in Russian, and an animated toddler show called Pocoyo in Spanish. He loves to watch kid-made videos with Thomas the Train toys. He loves the old silent Pink Panther cartoons too. And the classic Donald Duck stuff. Between the ad blockers on our Linux Mozilla browser, and the methods we use to watch programming, I'd say Rowen has seen only a handful of actual ads in his first 4 years of life. That does make me happy, even when I would rather see him with a book or outside. :-D
Dave and I don't see many ads either. And we don't watch any of the mainstream news. (And yes, Fox is as mainstream as media gets.) It makes for a surreal experience when we go to a friend or relative's house and get a dose of actual TV programming. It's really weird. The commercials seem hyperbolic, and disturbingly repetitive. The "news" shows seem more cartoonish than anything else, with their equally hyperbolic pitch and the spastic pop-ups selling other TV programming, and those weird scrolling tickers with random twits of information. I'm always itchy to turn it off after the first 5 minutes of it.
I'm telling you folks. CUT THE CORD. If you want to live a simpler, more productive life, CUT THE CORD. If you want more time for projects and exercise and family, CUT THE CORD. If you want to lessen the corporate and governmental influence on your life, CUT THE CORD!
You'll likely go through a withdrawal period as your brain, your habits and yes, even your hormones, adjust to the quieter, slower, more pleasant pace of self directed media consumption. It's totally worth it though. Your wallet will thank you, your butt will thank you, your brain will thank you, and perhaps someday your children will thank you.
Live your life folks; watching shows on a TV doesn't count as a life, it barely counts as an activity. Mostly, it's just brainwashing, and a waste of your hard earned money.
-Jennie
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Our National Ponzi Scheme
This post should be considered an open call for comments. Is there anyone that can convince me that the 401k my company signed me up for (I was out on maternity leave or it wouldn't have happened) ISN'T a giant ponzi scheme?
I'm being told that a 401k is THE BEST way to plan for my retirement. *blink blink* Most of this is coming from the bankers who are profiting off of "managing" my money. But even my parents seem to think that a 401k is a responsible thing to do. And in their defense, the market has worked well for their parents, and it didn't completely fail for them, so they are trying to do right by me. I just can't believe that the ginormous debt the US (and many other countries) have stacked up won't come roaring back through the markets sucking the wealth right out of everything it can. As baby boomers start taking more money out of the markets than they are putting in, how is that NOT going to contract things? And a contracting market means any money I put in will be depleted. Sure my "Money Managers" will play some shell games and put more of "my" money into bonds or something, but those too are largely propped up by faith, faith that governments will pay the debts those bonds represent, plus interest. And when the last of that faith is pissed away by those in power, the bond markets will find themselves short of customers. Again, there goes my money, since the bonds won't be worth the paper they're printed on.
I don't own the house I live in. I don't own the land I grow my family's food on. I don't own the business that pays for the rent and clothes and food. But, some funny-money scheme that locks up my cash and feeds it into the giant national ponzi scheme, (The Stock Market is what they're calling it) is really the best use of my hard earned money? I'm not buying it.
It's not Federally Insured, it can't be, it's gamboling. I'm supposed to have faith (hmm, sounds like a religion) that the stock market is going to keep growing for the next 50 years, and trust that a crash won't happen and wipe out my "investments" completely. The whole stock market is dependent on the influx of new money, (that's where young wage earners like myself come in) in order for the Wall Street and banker types to make their millions. No where in the whole Stock Market system are there benefits for young people like me. Not unless I've got one of those fancy computers making the fast swap deals churning through millions of short sales a day. Which I don't have. Or unless I believe that repeated invocations of "Eternal Growth" are going to somehow make that wish a reality. As my favorite Archdruid is fond of saying, "magic doesn't work that way."
Unless someone can talk me out of it, I'm going to cash out the couple of thousand that has built up in the past 9 months. Whether it's vested or not. I'm not saying I'll turn it into gold or bury it in my super secret bunker. But I can't shake the feeling that we have more bumps ahead of us, and a thousand dollars in my savings account is going to be much more useful to me than 2 or 3 thousand in funny money locked away in some imaginary market.
Thoughts? Arguments for or against?
-Jennie
I'm being told that a 401k is THE BEST way to plan for my retirement. *blink blink* Most of this is coming from the bankers who are profiting off of "managing" my money. But even my parents seem to think that a 401k is a responsible thing to do. And in their defense, the market has worked well for their parents, and it didn't completely fail for them, so they are trying to do right by me. I just can't believe that the ginormous debt the US (and many other countries) have stacked up won't come roaring back through the markets sucking the wealth right out of everything it can. As baby boomers start taking more money out of the markets than they are putting in, how is that NOT going to contract things? And a contracting market means any money I put in will be depleted. Sure my "Money Managers" will play some shell games and put more of "my" money into bonds or something, but those too are largely propped up by faith, faith that governments will pay the debts those bonds represent, plus interest. And when the last of that faith is pissed away by those in power, the bond markets will find themselves short of customers. Again, there goes my money, since the bonds won't be worth the paper they're printed on.
I don't own the house I live in. I don't own the land I grow my family's food on. I don't own the business that pays for the rent and clothes and food. But, some funny-money scheme that locks up my cash and feeds it into the giant national ponzi scheme, (The Stock Market is what they're calling it) is really the best use of my hard earned money? I'm not buying it.
It's not Federally Insured, it can't be, it's gamboling. I'm supposed to have faith (hmm, sounds like a religion) that the stock market is going to keep growing for the next 50 years, and trust that a crash won't happen and wipe out my "investments" completely. The whole stock market is dependent on the influx of new money, (that's where young wage earners like myself come in) in order for the Wall Street and banker types to make their millions. No where in the whole Stock Market system are there benefits for young people like me. Not unless I've got one of those fancy computers making the fast swap deals churning through millions of short sales a day. Which I don't have. Or unless I believe that repeated invocations of "Eternal Growth" are going to somehow make that wish a reality. As my favorite Archdruid is fond of saying, "magic doesn't work that way."
Unless someone can talk me out of it, I'm going to cash out the couple of thousand that has built up in the past 9 months. Whether it's vested or not. I'm not saying I'll turn it into gold or bury it in my super secret bunker. But I can't shake the feeling that we have more bumps ahead of us, and a thousand dollars in my savings account is going to be much more useful to me than 2 or 3 thousand in funny money locked away in some imaginary market.
Thoughts? Arguments for or against?
-Jennie
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
