COVID Will Fade, BUT... (Guaranteed Basic Income)

The absence of the big orange You-Know-Who at center stage of American life has changed the mood of the scene from a five-alarm fire to just another day in a collapsing civilization.

As long as he remains healthy, and evades assassin’s bullets, Mr. Trump will go after his antagonists in Congress like a mad dog toward the 2022 midterm. But now he can only watch from the sidelines and throw stink bombs.

Texas went medieval after an ice storm took the power down for millions, with ramifications building by the hour — especially the countless burst water pipes that will take forever to repair. (How many plumbers are there in San Antonio?)

Food went scarce overnight. People died in their cars. The political blowback has barely registered yet, except for Senator Ted Cruz slinking back home from a luxury resort in Cancun, whoops, and Beto O’Rourke shooting his mouth off like a cholo with a Saturday night special at a low-rider parade on Cinco de Mayo.

Meanwhile, Covid-19 cases are going down fast across the country. If it actually goes away, imagine the giant hole left in the national narrative. No more arguments over lockdowns, kids could go back to school, and Americans could see each other’s faces again.

The “progressives” in power would have to hunt up some new reasons to cancel the bill of rights. That shouldn’t be too difficult for a party adept at making things up. Right wing extremism would be my bet, even if Antifa and BLM go back to partying in the streets like it’s 2020 when the weather warms up.

What won’t go away is the nation’s fantastic economic mess. In just a few months since Thanksgiving, the financial system has gone through an epic shift, barely noticed by citizens preoccupied with unpaid bills, skipped rents, and empty refrigerators: the stock markets are now based on Bitcoin, which is to say, on less than nothing.

A whole new dynamic has emerged with publicly-held companies buying the stuff hand-over-fist. An outfit like Tesla, rumored to manufacture electric cars, invested $1.5 billion in the crypto-currency, which has shot up to over $50,000-a-coin in recent weeks.

The move was so splendidly shrewd that Tesla’s stock price also shot up, though they don’t make a profit on those cool cars. Of course, $1.5 billion is chump change for the charismatic Elon Musk, whose share of the American GDP can be seen from outer space, like the Great Wall of China.

Other companies are buying Bitcoin on margin, taking advantage of super-low interest rates to make a fast killing. What a great idea! Even better than borrowing to buy back your own company’s stock to jack-up the share value.

Don’t be surprised if half of the S&P jumps into the Bitcoin frenzy, bidding it up to six figures. Won’t that do wonders for US productivity and working-class wages? None of that will escape the attention of a “progressive” Congress, which will see a great opportunity to try to compensate for its fiscal profligacy by passing new taxes on “excess wealth” or “windfall profits.”

Then, watch the rush-to-the-exits by shareholders in those companies that loaded up on Bitcoin, aggravated by the margin calls on the dough they borrowed to buy the stuff… as well as Bitcoin itself plummeting back to its actual true value: around zero.

Meanwhile, Covid or no Covid, there is now a very large class of people across this land who either can’t or won’t earn a living, and we are seeing last year’s idle chat about “guaranteed basic income” (GBI) rapidly congeal into solid policy proposals to supply just that.

It’s insane, you know, having nothing to do with producing things of value, but such is the new faith in monetary techno-magic — of which Bitcoin is the exemplar — that the reigning grand princes and princesses of economics are unanimous that it’s actually possible to get something for nothing now.

I’m sure enough Republicans would go along with it — in terror of their broke and wrathful voters — to pass GBI.

The wild card, though, is how quickly we will destroy the value of the dollar as all this occurs, that is, provoke a king-hell inflation, so the people will get their GBI in worthless money.

Nobody believes it can happen after ten years of quantitative easing and other shucks-and-jives that seemed to hardly move the inflation needle (as officially measured), except on Wall Street.

But anyone who sets foot in a supermarket these days must feel a little shocked at food prices.

A dollar for one measly onion… eight bucks for a little flat of ground beef…? How do people with no jobs or lost businesses feed their families? Do they get a warm tingly feeling knowing that Tesla shares are also up? Or are they out in the old tool shed at midnight, sharpening the pitchforks and soaking rags in kerosene?

Perhaps Ol’ Woke Joe Biden will explain where all this is going in his upcoming State of the Union Address scheduled for next Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. Oh, you didn’t know about that? I wouldn’t blame you. There is absolutely no buzz about it in the mainstream media, like, they’d rather not think about it.

Mr. Biden has been proclaiming the wish to “unite” the warring tribes of America. He may say so, but he doesn’t really mean it, not one little bit, and everybody knows it. His calls for unity are a dodge. Unity requires broad consensus.

Biden’s been signing executive orders like Pete Rose signing baseballs in a room full of fans. Every executive order he’s issued his first month on-the-job is designed as much as a slap in the face to more than half the country as it is an actual policy goal.

But going forward, the brutal facts of America’s crippled economy are crashing down on Biden and his Woke managers like the wrath of history. All the executive orders in the world won’t change that.

[(Guaranteed Basic Income)]

I call it UBI

Universal
Basic
Income

Make everyone dependent on gov’t money - and it’s heading that way, IMHO

Then the distribution of same is regulated

Then you need to categorize the entire population - sound impossible?

They started doing it for the welfare system in India multiple years ago - retina scans and fingerprints:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNJ6CzunnXs

Now, when a world “leader” comes on the scene, makes a 7-year covenant of peace for Israel, then 1,260 days later, declares himself to be “god” - then shall be Great Tribulation.

YMMV

Thank you for referencing that article blah. Please note that the following critique is directed at the article and not at you.

"COVID Will Fade, BUT... (Guaranteed Basic Income)"

FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument

Patriots are reminded that the states have never expressly constitutionally given the unconstitutionally big federal government the specific power to take care of needy people, doing so uniquely a state power issue under the Constitution.

"10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

In fact, Justice Joseph Story had used “poor laws” as an example of a power that the states have never expressly constitutionally given to Congress.

"The power to regulate manufactures, not having been confided to congress, they have no more right to act upon it, than they have to interfere with the systems of education, the poor laws, or the road laws, of the states [emphases added]. Congress is empowered to lay taxes for revenue, it is true; but there is no power to encourage, protect, or meddle with manufactures." —Joseph Story, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1, Commentaries on the Constitution 2
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.

Also, the congressional record shows that Rep. John Bingham, a constitutional lawmaker, had clarified that the Founding States had left the care of the people uniquely to the states, not the feds.

”[…] the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Federal Constitution, is in the States, and not in the Federal Government [emphases added].” —Rep. John Bingham, Congressional Globe, 1866. (See about middle of 3rd column.)

Justice Brandeis later reflected on Bingham’s words, Brandeis volunteering his “laboratories of democracy” metaphor that each state was free to experiment with its own social spending programs, depending on what the legal majority citizen voters of a given state want.

"It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose [emphasis added], serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” —Justice Brandeis, Laboratories of democracy.

The problem with Brandeis’ laboratories of democracy is that the corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification feds keep stealing state revenues by means of unconstitutional federal taxes, taxes that Congress cannot justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers. So the individual states cannot afford to experiment with taking care of people as the Founding States had intended for them to do.

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