like rome

LIKE ROME

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note: for those with KU, "Shooter Galloway" by Roy F Chandler is quite excellent.  As are a lot of his other books.
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note: all those that caught my mixing Hi-Power with Hi-Point, thank you.  As embarrassing as it was, leaving as is would have been worse.
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I’m not going to get into all the aspects of collapse that all empires share.  Depleted soil, slavery, ruined economy, militarily weak, etcetera.  Today, I’d like to merely touch on the one thing you can clearly see and taste.  Taxation to the point of ruin for all the lower classes.  I used to be an adamant Libertarian ( before anthropology threw a wet blanket over that fantasy ) and read far and wide on the ways of our FedGov.  It wasn’t wasted effort since those facts come in handy now and again, but all it was good for at the time was to agitate the believers into political action.  Futile political action, obviously.  “If voting could change anything, it would be illegal”.  I’m not sure who said that but I believe it goes way back to the Great Depression/FDR time or even earlier with Girl Power/Women’s Righter’s.  Back in a more innocent and simple time, that just meant the one party system monopoly but sometime in the past, perhaps even prior to the Hanging Chad/Supreme Rubber Stamp Court fiasco, that was getting too expensive and so now they just fix the vote beforehand ( wonder why politicians are getting even worse?  The graft and bribes are decreasing along with the very need for their class and that shrinking pie is more viciously fought over ).

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So, hence explains the demise of any political party but especially the Libertarian.  Our Owners/Elites have complete control and could care less for your opinion, on your blog or in the editorials in the newspapers or in the voting booth.  Nobody willingly votes for more taxes for themselves and the level we now face is proof positive our votes don’t mean dingus.  I barely remember the thirty year old numbers, but it was insane the amount of taxes we paid on everyday items.  Taxes on cigarettes were 50%, alcohol about the same.  A loaf of bread was around 30%.  I think a take-out pizza was even more.  Everything is taxed at astonishingly high levels.  Take your 30% direct paycheck withholding, and then take most likely half of the remainder as hidden and indirect taxes just on consumer items.  Add in the recently doubled or tripled property tax.  Now the increased medical care costs that are a direct result of the Obammy UnAffordable Health UnCare Act.  Do you really think you get to keep more than about a fifth of your gross pay? 

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We think we are free because we get to pick which babbles to purchase with our remaining pay?  30% direct payroll withholding.  At least 50% of the remaining 70% in taxes on hidden fees and levies and taxes ( what, you don’t think your house cost has hidden taxes? How much do you think a raw lot of land is in building permits?  Hook-up fees? Not to mention materials and labor AND the extra you pay the banker monopoly AND the mandatory insurance ).  That is 65% right there.  Now add the increased property taxes and medical costs.  EASY another 15%.  80% might even be low-balling.  Here we are in the Oil Age which allowed the Industrial Age to take over the world, and we can’t keep more than 20% of our already low Stagnant-Since-The-70’s wages?  Where is the surplus going ( I could say it evaporated in our too low EROI current economy but I don’t want anyone blowing an ass gasket because I brought up Peak Oil )?

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Rome too increased taxes to an unbearable level, even as their currency decreased to near zero value, its military was stripped down to an ineffective force even as mercenaries were bribed to fight and it started to see environmental collapse leading to the inability to feed its overpopulated lands.  Slaves and serfs might not have even gotten 20% of their wages ( there were none to start-enough gruel to just barely replace the expended calories obviously doesn’t count ), but they also were not living off of an incredible oil bonanza that was an incomprehensible amount of surplus energy ( if I’m not mistaken, the figure I remember is one solitary barrel of oil is worth TEN YEARS of a mans labor in kilocalorie energy.  All the more astounding the world pumps 700 million man years of labor EVERY DAY.  How much of that is simply wasted to no good end?  You might burn a years worth of man labor just to run down to the store to buy a snack, which results in mere pennies of profits for all those benefiting from our system.  Think about that for more than two seconds.  Now multiply that to fit our population ).

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With a Niagara Falls of oil spewing from the ground constantly, it is still necessary to take 80% of the slaves wages JUST in taxes?  How much more obvious does it have to be that, one, not only are we in the End Days of collapse, but, two, it can only get worse as the oil pressure and volume fall?  Come on folks, you can’t Happy Optimism Glittery Unicorn Flatulence wish the obvious away.  We are just like Rome in the end times, WAY at the wrong end of the super long slow collapse certain someone’s can’t help but hawk as snake oil balm to the book buying public that shan’t be stampeded by Super UnHappy news.  Huge taxes and collapsing efficiency aren’t because we didn’t vote for Rush Limbaugh’s favorite politician, it is because the whole system cannot be saved and is in the last phase of collapse.  I understand that the band on the deck of the USS Titanic is taking requests, but you’ve heard the song enough times already.  Push that old fat bitch out of the lifeboat and start rowing.

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