Quote: “The socialist’s great-grandchildren will work for nothing to service debts run up in his name.” – T. O’ Donnell.
Introduction
Proposition: That millions of westerners are de-facto neo-serfs because, through taxation, they work to service unpayable public debts.
– One explanation is that this neo-serfdom is seen as a positive by their neo-lordships who are content for a ‘First World’ country to be trillions in debt.
– A second explanation is that rampant inflation means that £1 GBP of debt in 2020 AD is going to be worth a lot less in 2030 AD.
(But still the interest must be paid and the principal currently increases day-by-day. A side effect of inflation, if it outpaces interest rates: The worker, if he saves, ends up working for nothing for a percentage of each decade; £100 saved in 2000 AD is worth a good deal less in 2020 AD).
– A third explanation is political stupidity or venality. Middlebrow politicians don’t know or don’t care about long term consequences because they are in office for a few years only.
– A fourth explanation is political cynicism; intelligent politicians know that tinkering with the current system could lead to its collapse.
They know that their voters are herd animals and will damn them for trying, so they have decided to make what they can, or hold back the tide if they can, and then get out before the sandcastle collapses.
– A fifth explanation is that politicians and bureaucrats make nice money in or out of office facilitating transfers of tax money to private companies.
Four years serving the public can lead to lucrative directorships when you ‘leave office to work in the private sector’. Thus, neither politicians nor civil servants are motivated to modify the current system.
– A sixth explanation is that governments are currently printing money and taking on massive debt because ‘the boys in the back room’ know that the currency the debt is denominated in will eventually be rendered worthless, through economic collapse.
Article
Q: Who benefits when a government is trillions in debt?
It follows: Who benefits when income tax alone thereby increases to an average of 24% of every working man’s wages?
In addition:
Who benefits when a husband and wife work 30 years to buy the roof over their heads (while paying property taxes)?
– Who benefits when a man spends 1/8th of his monthly wage to pay for a rapidly-depreciating over-designed car that takes him to his workplace?
– Who benefits when 1/24th of a man’s salary is paid to local government just to be in a borough near his job?
Who benefits when serious fines are levied for trivial offenses?
Who benefits when a man’s personal credit rating is ruined by one or more of the above?
A: Whoever is in receipt of the principal and the interest. The lords of lucre have millions of neo-serfs working for them, all unknowing.
A possibility: Governments are currently printing money and taking on massive debt because the princes of profit (who sit above the lords of lucre) know that the currency the debt is denominated in will eventually be rendered worthless, through economic collapse.
Bonus: Paupers are politically much more controllable.
This at least would reassure this writer that our leaders are clever. They could be running up huge debts, only to welsh on them in the future. Typically a nation has 10 lean years after that and then can start again.
The current currency is mostly digital anyway. It may be replaced by fully-digital currency, which will be the currency of the neo-caesars; their political opponents can be made beggars with a ‘phone call.
(Do you, dear reader, think you are in on this deal, that you would be bailed out in the event of economic collapse? Why do you assume that?)
Q1: For 10 points: Added together as a bloc, what is the average number of days a British subject works in a year to pay income tax alone, before they put a piece of bread in their mouth? (Answer below. You win if you guess within a month either way. This figure does not include any other taxes or debts they may have accrued.)
An office-worker slogs at a job he hates while the lords of lucre amass multiple, passive streams of income at a pace they find agreeable: rents, rates, interest, levies, fines, dividends. The office-worker? He thinks overtime is a bonus.
These neo-lords do not need to make the man a neo-serf at the point of a sword; he becomes one willingly, even eagerly. This is serfdom by stealth and one has to admire the gall, even as one is incensed.
Note: I do not object to the clever man getting rich; I object to the poor man being gulled.
Politicians on both sides of the left/right divide heap greater debt upon the working man without telling him straight the long term cost.
Any man who buys a loan gets a nice long paper contract with lots of small print but at least all of the terms are there for him to read (the effects are not). The working man gets obfuscation from all politicos, and most journalists, about national or local debt.
A fun project for someone: do a blind test of 1000 politicians and 1000 journalists on high-school Economics and see how many get even a passing grade.
And the billions in serviceable debt pile up.
Medieval serfs had rights, a lot of holidays, working days with substantial breaks and did not have to give a great deal of their produce to their lord and master.
In 2023 AD the lords of lucre, operating through the technocratic class:
– Frighten or entice the underclasses. Example: a terrible infectious disease, which isn’t.
– Commoditise the ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’.
– Financialise it.
– Adorn it.
– Sell it.
– The neo-serfs’ government runs up more debt to buy it.
– Both parties suppress and ignore dissent.
– The neo-serfs figure out the solution doesn’t work or is even harmful and the problem didn’t exist but the neo-lord is untouchable because “You did it of your own free will”*.
The neo-serfs sweat, their taxes go to the government, and then on to their lordships, who in return offer weapons, pseudo-cures and over-budget projects. A government, as a buyer of anything, is about as discerning as a drunk in a casino. The neo-serfs work to pay the public debt for generations and are none the wiser.
Q2: For 20 points, in what year did Britain finally cease paying its debts accrued in WWI? (Answer below. You win if you guess within 10 years either way.)
Enchant the underclasses with glittering media, drugs, CGI, worthless prizes, ineffective or destructive ideologies, titles, medals and ranks. Frighten them with made-up terrors. Set up goals that you undermine while promoting them e.g. marriage. Play on their damaged, sinful, conflicted psyches.
They’ll be so sick , dull-minded and confused after decades of psychic poison that you won’t need special measures to control them; the idea of resistance will either not occur to them, or seem immoral if it does, or be directed harmlessly away from you. Or they’ll be just too weak to cause trouble.
Factor this across a society and the neo-lord may end up owning the labour, and thus the time, and thus the persons of hundreds of thousands of people, without them realising.
Q3: Did you know that Americans are tax-liable in America even when they live and work abroad? For 50 points, name any other twentieth-century nation that does that, of the 300+ nations on this planet. (Answer below.)
*What does the vampire say in the fairy stories? “Enter of your own free will”; no one’s putting a gun to the heads of the serfs; too obvious, too crude, too much trouble.
Welfare state? Free healthcare? Somebody pays: it’s the lady who cleans the toilets in the dole office. She works so that sweat of her brow can be legally garnished at source by bureaucrats and a percentage of that then paid onwards to ‘the disabled’ (who don’t sweat at all).
Q4: For 10 points: The British system of taxation takes 24% – 40%+ of income from a man in full-time employment.
The British welfare state offers housing benefit (rent subsidy) to the vulnerable and unemployed. Sometimes.
It offers free healthcare, which is not high quality, or always readily available, but, hey, it’s free.
Given the foregoing, estimate the amount of spending money in addition it offers the average unemployed mature male per week, to cover all other living expenses. (Answer below. You win if you guess within £10 GBP either way.)
The proto neo-lord:
– Keeps himself and his family well away from the neo-serfs’ self-destructive, dull-minded ways.
– Pays clever men to keep him out of the news.
– Pays other clever men to administer his holdings, at two removes.
– Schools his children in the ways of commerce and makes sure they do the same for his grandchildren.
– Dies rich, bored and likely damned.
Rinse and repeat for the next generation.
Any child who is a punk gets excluded. 300 years later and his great-great-etc-grandchildren are the new nobility.
Meanwhile, in Boise, Idaho, a young man, a third-generation loser, looks at a pill bottle, gun or a ligature after losing his latest concubine. He knows something isn’t quite just in the world, but, projecting his negative feelings outward, and, ignorant of history, he thinks socialism is the answer. Ha!
His great grand-children will work for nothing to service debts run up in his name.
Q5: For 10 points, estimate the number of persons killed globally by communist nations. For accuracy, socialism must be considered a heresy of communism. (Answer below. You win if you guess within 20 million either way.)
The lords of lucre lend to socialists as they they do capitalists (just by a different route), and the game goes on. Some of the masters salve their consciences by contributing to socialist causes; when society is upended they’ll be insulated by their wealth anyway and can perhaps profit from the chaos. It’s win-win.
The masters of war cooperate with the lords of lucre and the Not Us get killed, imprisoned or crippled, at 3% compound interest. They weren’t making much use of that oilfield, anyway.
Their heralds absorb the Right Way Of Thinking by simple reinforcement, media suppression and group orientation. They’ll bark a symphony of propaganda without one day’s formal rehearsal. And they think they’re rebels! Beautiful.
Next up: The Second Cold War. Let the trillions for bombs and bandages flow, while the princes of profit holiday three months of the year in beautiful sanctuaries few have heard of and fewer still may enter.
Answers.
If you get 30 points or more, consider yourself learned.
A1: About 57 days, minimum.
365 days – (48 weekends + 20 paid holidays + 8 bank holidays), with the rest of the time spent working taxed at an average 24%. [10 points]
[More: Average income tax USA. Average income tax Republic of Ireland.]
A2: 2015. [20 points.]
A3: Eritrea and North Korea. I recall Libya used to do this, also. [50 points.]
A4: About £70 GBP. £70 GBP buys in the UK about the same as $70 USD does in the US. [10 points]
A5: 200 million. [10 points]
Addendum
A little note from myself, to myself. A list of common taxes Joe Public is subject to in the UK. This is one reason working men ‘feel the pinch’ at the end of the month; the State nibbles at their pay-cheque before they put a crust of bread in their mouths.
– Income tax;
– National Insurance;
– VAT (sales tax);
– Council tax (a poll tax, effectively);
– Tv Licence;
– Car tax.