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January 08, 2008

Will Work for Taxes
by The Mogambo Guru

"Instead of the town saying, 'Oh, my God! What kind of ravenous vampires have we become?' and lowering their...damned taxes, 'The town is pushing a program that would let seniors work part-time...to help pay off some of their property taxes.'"

From AP, we can't believe our eyes when we read, "Plan Would Let Seniors Work to Pay Taxes". It seems that in Greenburgh, N.Y., the damned local government is eating the financial guts out of its citizens. For example, a 76-year old woman named Audrey Davison lives alone, gets a $620 Social Security check per month ($7,440 a year), and has to pay $12,000 a year in property taxes on the house that she has lived in for 43 years!

Instead of the town saying, "Oh, my God! What kind of ravenous vampires have we become?" and lowering their damned spending and the damned taxes, "The town is pushing a program that would let seniors work part-time, for $7 an hour, to help pay off some of their property taxes."

Some bozo named Scott Parkin, who for some reason is the spokesman for the National Council on Aging, said that the program "sounded interesting" to him, "as long as it wasn't limited to menial work." Apparently, easy "make-work" labor for old people is insulting, but gulag-style, back-breaking forced-labor is okay! With whips! Hahaha! "And if they fall under the load, grind them into pet food and take their houses!"

He doesn't answer my question directly, but with a little clever editing, I can make it appear that way when I now insert his quote, "It's certainly in line with what we stand for, keeping seniors involved in work or volunteering as a part of healthy aging." Hahaha!

Forcing old, sick people to work to pay their taxes is "in line with" what the National Council on Aging stands for! Hahaha!

Even more astonishing, he went on to say that he would, "Eventually...like to see the county and the local school districts adopt similar plans!" I can't believe what I am reading!

I thought that I had misread it, but then he said, "If we got seniors working for the schools, there might be a more intergenerational feeling there", and apparently with all the forced labor to do the work, "It might be easier to pass the school budgets."

JMR Wayne T. agrees with me when he says, "This is surely in the top 5 most horrible examples of Government abuse of its citizens I have ever seen. This is beyond Communism, this is serfdom."

In case you were wondering why in the world your own government would be trying to enslave you or kill you with inflation, the answer is not, "Because they are evil scumbags who hate you and who want to see you dead", but because, as Daniel R. Amerman of InflationIntoWealth.com explains in his essay titled "Inflation Index Manipulation: Theft By Statistics", the purpose of the government ruining your life, the dollar, and the economy of the USA is, "through the manipulation of both inflation and inflation indexes, the government can simultaneously repay existing government obligations at 15 cents on the dollar, while repaying inflation-protected promises (in full) at a mere 27 cents on the dollar."

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, "Wow! What a scam! How can I get in on a little of that action?" The answer is, "Buy gold. Right now. Lots of it."

Well, not satisfied with my glib answer, he actually shows the effect of 10% inflation in prices, versus the government's 3% increase in Social Security over a 19-year period from 2008 to 2027, which is particularly pertinent to you if you are planning on retiring in 2008 and living for another 19 years.

Anyway, the bottom line is found, literally, on the bottom line of his chart, and it reads, I am sorry to say, "Beneficiary Loss to index 'Management': -73%". Wow!

In terms of buying power, you are going to love this... By the government lying to you about inflation so that they don't have to pay you so much in Cost-Of-Living-Adjusted Social Security benefits for 19 years, the effect is that you can buy four things at the Dollar Store with your Social Security benefit right now, but at the end of 19 years you will be able to buy only one thing. Hahaha! "We're from the government and we're here to help you!" Hahahaha!

Mr. Amerman asks, "Can you really fool all the people with a combination of inflation and inflation index manipulation? Some might say, 'No way! People are way too smart for that, and the professors and media would quickly expose the fraud.'" Which I think is really funny because Ben Bernanke himself was the head of the economics department at Princeton, and not only did he NOT "quickly expose the fraud", he said nothing, and is now the one committing the fraud!

And don't get me started on the criminal complicity of the government-lapdog media, as I really start getting steamed, and the next thing you know, I am quoting Thomas Jefferson about how we need a little revolution every generation or so, so that we can round up newspaper publishers and throw them, as an "extraordinary rendition", into some stinking prison in some hell-hole country where the guards are sadistic and they will let me go into the cells and kick the living hell out of all of them whenever I am in the mood, which is pretty much whenever I think of their perfidy and treason and the misery and suffering they've caused, which is pretty much all of the time, which means I am going to need some steel-toed safety boots to prevent injury to myself! And it's too late for Santa Claus this year!

Mr. Amerman is aghast at the sudden appearance of the Vicious Nature Of The Mogambo (VNOTM), and trying to get back to some semblance of sanity and human decency, says, "The problem for retirees, inflation-indexed workers and general investors is that the above strategy works like a charm from a governmental perspective. Indeed it works better than any other alternative from a political perspective, as it allows much of the damage to be hidden behind statistics and economists, even as promises are legally kept, while being broken in substance."

Sort of like Bill Clinton famously declaring, "It all depends on how you define 'is'" and The Mogambo saying, "I'll pay you back!"; we all know there is a lie in there someplace.

Mogambo sez: With all the losses, the Dow Jones Industrial Average index is now sporting a price-to-earnings ratio of 47. You have probably concluded by the way my face is ashen and my breath comes in ragged gasps that something is wrong, because this means that the price of the Dow would have to fall to half to bring the P/E ratio back to 23, which is also unnaturally high, and due to fall some more!

And bonds? Hahaha! Bonds are so highly priced that they are literally yielding less than the rate of inflation as it is!

But this is all not just wrong, it is more than wrong; it is insane! Hahaha! Insane! Insane, I tells ya!

And that is why I cling to gold and silver with such force, measured in sheer firepower, which is the only sane thing left to do in a world gone mad! And that is not just me talking like I am such a smart guy who has figured out something new and exciting, but the sum total of all of the world's history, which proves over and over and over again that everyone always turns to gold at the end. Always. The smart ones first.

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Richard Daughty, the angriest guy in economics
The Mogambo Guru

Richard Daughty is general partner and COO for Smith Consultant Group, serving the financial and medical communities, and the editor of The Mogambo Guru economic newsletter - an avocational exercise to heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve it.

The Mogambo Guru is quoted frequently in Barron's, The Daily Reckoning and other fine publications.

Copyright © 2005-2008 Richard Daughty

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