The Corollary of Optimism

I have heard, again and again, that I am "negative". This is the opposite of optimistic. The corollary of optimism is, alas, stupidity. I am repeatedly told to be positive by the sort of people who loaded the Challenger up one cold Winter morning and watched it explode overhead. I'm sure they said the techs that warned them the O-rings would fail at subzero temps were being "negative". My last couple jobs, I was The Guy who predicted failure points and planned to avert or reduce their damages. I was often told I was Negative, again and again, by people I know for a fact are Stupid. Their repeated inability to learn from their mistakes and the examples of others are defining features of stupidity. Ignorance can only be excused once. Stupidity is forever. I object to stupid people being in charge of anything more complicated than a broom. This is not to say you can't be happy about the future, provided you plan for potential failures. Optimism is about avoiding failure because you believe it is impossible because anything else wouldn't be Optimism. Optimism is crazy. That was the whole point of Candide, by Voltaire. Showing how Optimism is NOT SANE. You have to plan for the potential failures, not pretend they can't happen because they're inconvenient for your delusion.

America is facing the Fiscal Cliff. Most programs are getting cut, including military spending. There are upsides to that, many upsides since I'm a Libertarian and I'm morally opposed to "*bama Stash". The Fiscal Cliff got its own countdown timer on the financial news channels today. If the USA defaults (it probably won't) it would mean the final nail driven into the USD$ as the World Reserve Currency. The Dollar is the reserve currency because it is used by OPEC for all oil sales, an agreement between FDR and the king of Saudi Arabia back before WW2. That set the stage for the eventual defeat of the USSR and ended WW3 with only warning shots fired. So we're fighting WW4 now, not WW3.

The collapse of the Dollar, closer each time Quantitative Easing is used, will cause imports to become dramatically more expensive (car parts!) and the value of any savings to collapse to approximately half of their current value, possibly lower. My own math on US farm and military weapons exports (USA's two biggest dollar value exports), means the USD$ is actually worth around 20% what it was in 2006, before the big currency crash started and housing values were at their highest. Housing prices are starting to go up now, but there's this thing called "inflation". So you might see a huge price spike in your home... or not.

The limiting factor in home prices is actually the market value price, and that's controlled by the ability to pay. Since wages are falling across the board to Minimum Wage in all jobs, even highly skilled ones (the dream of Communists everywhere), the amount a couple can put towards a mortgage is growing smaller, not larger. For now, mortgage rates are low, so this is probably the bottom of the market HOWEVER, the fiscal cliff could drive that lower, and anything impacting the price of commuter fuel (gasoline and diesel) will also impact what price people can pay for a house because it impacts what jobs they can have. When their wages bottom out, housing values will be highest closest to jobs and lowest furthest away from them. Lowest could be almost nothing. Especially once the FedGovt stops paying *bama Stash to welfare mothers' rent because the Fiscal Cliff ends their program, under established law. Laws supported by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Naturally, this will not happen. As history shows, the government never defaults. They just compromise in a way that nobody likes. Of course, *bama has only given his usual baseless optimism speeches and has refused compromise, then went on vacation again. The days are counting down and the Democrats are playing chicken with their constituents, betting that the opposition, who would love to push those Democratic constituents into the sea like lemmings on a cliff in front of a bulldozer called "The Law", will back down.

Huh? I know the Democrats are crazy but HUH? Do they (Democrats) really think that attacking the wealthy party is going to get them (Republicans) to back down? The wealthy will lose some money in the fiscal cliff, but the poor will lose EVERYTHING; all their programs get cut, all their pet projects and free rent and cellphones, the entire *bama Stash is coming to an end with the fiscal cliff. Why aren't they cursing at their Democratic representatives to compromise and save their piece of the Stash? Dead poor people are people we don't have to pay taxes for. How is that hard to understand? Republicans aren't interested in punishing their own children so someone else's child will steal their future. Duh!

I look at the madness of the Democratic Party and all they aren't doing for the people who voted for them and despair. Only an insane person would find any Optimism in this situation. America needs jobs. The multinationals are exporting jobs for increased profits. The Multinationals ARE the problem and need to be shut down or taxed so heavily they'll stop seeing this country as a convenient tax shelter. That will open opportunities for local companies, ones that confine operations to within our borders and pay their appropriate taxes rather than cheat the system. This is a problem from both political parties. At least one needs to admit this and turn it into something they stand against. One party needs to be for the Middle Class. Right now, neither gives a damn.

We keep having problems with Robber Barons who put profits before all else, and bribe the politicians to ensure they can keep cheating the system. It is time to do something about that. Of course, that can't happen as long as those Robber Barons keep funding the election campaigns of the Democratic Party. Ironically, since taxing people is what the PRK does best, even those Robber Barons are finding it hard to retain their personal wealth in my state and the more poor people there are, getting *bama Stash, the more *bama Stash they vote for. Eventually the tipping point is reached and it all collapses with the poor voting themselves an infinite number of worthless dollars. That is the true end of Wealth, at least when measured in Dollars.

Penn and Teller are Libertarians, like me. Except of course, they have jobs. And money to lose. And pie.

The obvious answer to the current political climate is to work less so you have less money to pay taxes with. Work as little as you can get away with, and reduce your taxable spending. Give money to charity YOU approve of so that comes out of your taxable income. Drive cheaper cars so you pay less road tax (in the form of license/registration fees), and drive less in general so you pay less money towards OPEC, the bastards, so they can fund less terrorism. And think hard, every time you spend money, whether there's an American-made product you could buy instead of one that's "made in China". Start draining the funding of those *bama Stash programs so they go bankrupt, so the Poor can't abuse them anymore. Make the Dollar Crash. And put your money somewhere immune. I hear that fertile farmland is the next big thing. That's where the money comes from: food. Soon that will be all that's holding up our debt burden. Of course, the poor will probably vote for free food and higher taxes on farmers, again, so you may want to think really hard about failing just enough there, and reinvesting, so you again reduce taxable income. And if you can't do that, buy stocks/partnerships in farms that do. Do what the Robber Barons do, just do it smaller. Eventually the poor will die out or get jobs to eat because their vote becomes meaningless. That's the future we're headed towards. Democracy can't work for long like this, on Mandatory Optimism like some cult about to implode.

No thank you. Plan for the potential problems, be prepared for them, just in case. Accept that life isn't all Puppies and Rainbows. We need Realists these days. Not Optimists. If you don't believe me, look at Detroit Collapse in a Google image search. Optimists built that city, put in the pipes that broke and set aside no money in case housing prices stopped rising or fell. They were sure it could only get better. It collapsed. That's what Optimism gets you. Sometimes Optimists are lucky and they don't fail this time. This just encourages them to keep making the same mistakes. A Realist knows that stuff happens and you can't count on Good Luck to save you from yourself. You can't count on it. Optimists count on it. That's crazy.