inflation book

INFLATION SURVIVAL GUIDE BOOK

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note: R. P., got your PayPal donation.  Holy crap, dude!  Thank you.
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INTRO

At the time of this writing, Spring 2017, the common perception of the American public is that there is no inflation.  Food prices have stabilized as has gasoline, and any upticks in medical insurance or practice cost is blamed on the ( White ) House Negro’s disastrous Mau Mau occupation of the last eight years.  You think Obammy is a smart little Kenyan, don’t you ( when the “proof” of Hawaiian birth was presented, his Social Security number reflected that of a resident of another state, but you just keep believing that “The Birthers” are crazy and deluded )?  All those degrees from Ivy League schools, those books, that Nobel Prize?  He was an ignorant whore, sorry to burst your bubble.  He allowed himself to not only be a meat puppet for his owners/handlers, he is now the whipping boy for all the systematic collapse issues he had no part in other than as a Front Man.  You could say he was laughing all the way to the bank but, one, he is saddled with his transvestite “wife” which seems not worth all the millions and two, he was too dumb to do anything other than what he was told to do ( the college degrees were just Negro Quota diploma mills ).

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Anyway, sorry about that as sometimes a memory of my horrid whore of an ex-wife surfaces and sometimes it is that of the First Kenyan and you get what you get.  Back to inflation.  We are only seeing a quasi-deflation now due to a near complete collapse of global consumer demand.  Made up money being injected into the stock market is the only illusion of buying or selling, but elsewhere in RealityLand where most of us live, Sales Of The Century are occurring as less profit is better than no profit and everyone desperately attempts to goose sales.  The leading indicator is of course decreasing oil sales because since everything is made with oil and shipped with oil and customers use oil to perform employable work that gives them disposable income, less oil being consumed even at lower prices means the whole Extract-Manufacture-Work-Buy process has slowed down.  Remember the last Depression we were in ( don’t make me laugh with such made to order propaganda bullspit replaceable titles such as The Great Recession ) when nobody could buy an ocean of crap because nobody had a job?  Rinse and repeat. 

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Now is the perfect time to really think hard about inflation because now is when you have the opportunity to stockpile cheap to combat future price increases which are guaren-friggin-teed to occur which we’ll cover shortly.  And a good time to use the last of your paychecks to get out of debt.  In short, if you don’t feel like my deity level wisdom is worth consuming for the rest of this book, being out of debt and having stockpiled consumables is all the inflation hedge you need to worry about.  Gold?  Real Estate?  Maximizing your income potential?  All equally worthless.  And all covered in due time, not to worry.  But I do like to babble on incessantly and I don’t want you to feel like I keep stringing you along without getting to the point.  So there you go.  The Point.  All you need to know is how to minimize your need for money because inflation is NOT beatable, only manageable.  Anyone that is telling you otherwise is selling a dream.  I only sell nightmares.  It is kind of my niche, yo.

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CAUSES OF INFLATION

Inflation isn’t exactly Rocket Surgery.  More dollars are created and so each dollar is worth less and hence to be giving  a commodity or service the seller needs to bring in more dollars to equal the same amount of purchasing power to buy his own commodities.  It is more currency chasing the same amount of goods.  Inflation is just readjusting barter units to reflect the fact there are more of them in circulation.  Prices did not Go Up, the amount of dollars did.  Prices can increase if supplies decrease, but that is not currency inflation which is what we are concerned with here.  If prices increase because of shortages, you have bigger problems.  Because currency inflation is just a tax but commodity inflation means systematic collapse is possible.  A shortage of food or oil is civilization collapse.  A glut of currency is just an individual collapse.  Hyper-inflation usually means collapse to the system anyway, but from your perspective 100% inflation or one million percent is equally unmanageable ( and civilization collapse is already baked into the cake for everything NOT having to do with the banks or the economy as they are mere indicators ).

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Just understand that any paper currency ever, historically or to come, is always inflated to worthlessness as every government or civilization ALWAYS creates too much currency ( and credit creation verses currency creation is more of an academic abstraction than a noticeable distinction as the end results are the same ) to pay the bills.  It is a verifiable law of nature like gravity.  The only reason a hegemony group can “kick the can down the road” for any length of time AFTER they inflate is because of colonial resource extraction.  Exporting the inflation, partially or in whole.  But those chickens always come back to roost.  We forced other countries to assume most of our inflation after we created the PetroDollar and priced oil in dollars, and that standard is eroding with our global dominance.  Inflation in a very meaningful percentage is on the way.  Oil was paying our bills but soon only currency will be left to do so, and we have a LOT of bills.  And tomorrows inflation isn’t going to be like the ‘70’s inflation, because next we’ll have no colonies to exploit resources from ( and the only wealth creation engine for the last five centuries has been colonialization, besides oil extraction, and unless you are a Fracking Fag you understand the oil is running out ). 

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MONETARY INFLATION

Credit creation is nothing more than monetary inflation.  A bank says to you, in effect, here is a credit card.  The credit card is backed by zero assets from savers.  Inflating the currency by a fractional reserve process ( if you have $5 savings, you can create $100 to loan ) and creating credit ( $100 from nothing ) is nearly identical because the interest you collect from each is free money.  You are collecting $5 a year on the loan and $25 a year on the credit card, and all you had to do was get a schmuck to put $5 in the bank ( of which then becomes your property  in the event of a bank bankruptcy ) which he pays a monthly fee on to have an account unless his balance is high enough to make you more profit, AND you get to control inflation which is a another bit of free money.  And if someone defaults on the credit card, you are out no money.  It was made up, not drawn from savings!  Sure, you had to pay vendors for the products purchased, but the vendor transaction fees are more than the default rates!  And you made money on those vendors taking your credit card!  You make money on poor people buying food on an EBT card!

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And all that is before the derivatives market profits, and the mandatory auto and health insurance everyone must buy!  The federal government is paying interest on Twenty Friggin Trillion Bucks A Year!!  Who cares if the interest rates went from three to one percent!  Give me a quarter of one percent of twenty trillion a year and I’d be happy.  All the credit cards in everyone’s wallet are at 20%, 10% at the least, so there is an equal amount in interest right there.  Good Christ On A Pogo Stick, this credit creation stuff is all right!  Interest payments, the inflation tax, mandatory insurance.  Being a banker is fun.  And don’t think this is a favorite Christmas movie with a loveable loan officer, this is a single entity, a Rothschild’s banking empire of old.  The Federal Reserve Bank is an umbrella group that controls all the “independent” banks, as well as the government ( really, you think the feds tell their loan officer what to do? ) and the corporations ( who borrow for competitive advantage ).

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Now, inflation is the key here.  Yes, the bankers and government get a slight advantage by spending money as it enters the system, prior to that money creation raising prices, but inflation is needed for the simple fact that loans need to be repaid.  Every time a new loan is created, more money must enter into circulation so that the interest on the loans can be paid.  It is as easy as that, a concept simplified beautifully by the Peak Prosperity folks and their “Crash Course”, free on YouTube if you are poor, or available on DVD if you want a hard copy.  And what has by and large guided the amount of monetary inflation?  Energy entering the system, as energy creates products.  New products that mostly counterbalance the new money entering the system.  The inflation rate you see as rising prices is the amount of dollar creation above and beyond the rate energy is introduced.  Yes, like everything else in this booklet, this is a simplification.  But this stuff IS simple.  Complication is for a group of economists ( what do you call a group of them?  A Gaggle?  A Herd? How about, like crows, a Murder?  That seems fitting ) that are busy jerking each other off for fun and profit.

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Inflation used to be more straight forward.  There was gold, and then there was gold bonds, a paper currency that was a redemption certificate ( prior to paper, the gold content was degraded in the coin ) and one day a gold storage place figured out they could create more bonds than there was gold and since not everyone withdrew the physical gold at the same time it was safe to do so.  So then you had the storage fee you were collecting, then on top of that more interest on more loans you were using that gold for ( the gold you weren’t authorized to lend out as loans ).  Well, that was all rather primitive compared to funding imperial governments to go conquer distant lands, using some of that loan to pay the military ( the rest was from taxes ) to occupy a zone of near free commodities which created new wealth which was the interest needed for new loans.  Today, oil takes the place of colonies commodities.  It is basically the same thing but in concentrated form. 

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This is your basic capitalistic system.  The banks loan money to invest in the means of extracting wealth, and wealth MUST grow to pay back the banks.  It looks really good on paper but the problem is that we live on a finite planet and capitalism requires infinite growth or it dies.  Along with the planet, evidently.  Look, I hate to burst your bubble, but capitalism was only a creation to enable the Industrial Age to flourish.  It wasn’t to set the poor free or to be a more efficient way of conducting trade.  The benefit’s the masses saw was from extracting carbon fuels, not because of capitalism ( which is a rich mans game ).  The philosophy of capitalism is the same benefit to the bankers as religion was to the kings, a system of thought used to delude the oppressed into thinking it was to their benefit.  The fact that you are thinking I’m a communist for saying that is proof it has worked wonderfully.  I know I sure as heck would appreciate it more if it wasn’t mostly for the benefit of the Bankers.

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INFLATION USED TO HELP

Way back in the day, the urban legend that fooled most people into accepting inflation was commodity inflation.  Real estate and precious metals went up at one time and so everyone had it stuck in their heads that inflation wasn’t all that bad.  Heck, it was usually good.  Gold and silver only inflated at the end of the Seventies, although that set the legend, but since only crazy survivalists bought the stuff it doesn’t apply to most.  The real estate market was the focus of Joe Average.  Heck, he didn’t even believe gasoline saw inflation, since it was the Evil Corporations that raised prices and beef prices were always raised due to drought and the EPA regulating land for the protected species of mold.  Real estate inflation was a huge racket that was enriching the elites systematically and the lesser players such as the local evening news and newspapers happily went along with as they received advertising from those enriched.

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The mortgage payer thought that rising prices were magically enriching them.  They could sell the home and make a profit, even after buying another one ( or if they didn’t make money, if they broke even, the next house was bigger ).  That was good inflation!  Well, that was also property tax inflation, and gross mortgage loan interest payment inflation, and local government development fee inflation and contractor and laborer inflation and an increase in roads and car sales and gas taxes and real estate developers profits, also.  Anyone who was anybody was making money off the prices of homes increasing, but it usually wasn’t the home owner.  Any gains were subject to tax if not put right back into real estate ( another push on inflation ) and with real estate agent fees, property taxes and interest, plus repairs and improvements, the gains were largely illusion.  Enough early trend setters made real money profits to fuel the fantasy, but your average working couple was barely staying ahead.

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Most of the time you made enough money for the down payment on the new home, followed by a thirty year mortgage.  All that commodity inflation allowed you to do was to more easily stay in debt.  And the interest rates lowering since the Reagan administration?  That gain was also an illusion.  The prices went up quick enough that even at a lower rate you still paid more in toto.  The interest rates lowering was just allowing you to get into more debt on everything, since most folks buying anything on credit-a car, a card, college-just look at the monthly payment.  What did they care it took twenty years to pay off at a fraction of a percent of the principle payment?  They only looked at the monthly budget.  And, they never look to inflation as a culprit.   Their house equity went up, so inflation is their friend.  Monetary inflation is never to blame, it is greed and incompetence that make prices increase according to the narrative and any official recognition is downplayed and admitted to as a necessary evil ( we MUST inflate this benign amount to stop deflation!  OOOOO, deflation is bad, it will make your house go down in price! ).

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Well, 2009+ was the end of the housing/real estate commodity inflation.  Suddenly, after trillions in equity was lost in homes, your house was underwater.  You owed more on it than it was worth.  AND the property taxes increased as local governments were seeing all their funding sources disappear.  You remember, when roads couldn’t be repaved and cops had to budget their gas on patrol and prisoners were released early.  That passed after a time but it wasn’t because the economy recovered.  It was because the government inflated.  Most went right back into the bankers profits, such as pumping up the stock market and the Fracking Industry ( an outright subsidy to get that energy back into the economy-too bad that Frack wells peak and crash in two or three years rather than decades, meaning that source is unavailable for the next crash ), getting the velocity of money ramped back up ( velocity is just money being spent rather than hoarded ).  Between the increased spending and the increased energy, we had our recovery such as it was.  It was a great breathing spell and a wonderful chance to prepare since 2008 pretty much caught most by surprise ( not the real estate bubble popping part, that was obvious, but the derivatives markets crashing the global economy ). 

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By a lot of empirical evidence it appears that most people have adjusted to this new reality on a superficial level.  Consumerism is as rampant as ever but debt levels are down and downsizing in one way or another has been experimented with if not necessarily practiced widespread.  But they still haven’t a clue of inflation, mostly because it remains hidden.  Products both downsize portions and quality and the crashing of global demand does bring the odd product down in cost at regular enough intervals that the illusion of steady prices prevails.  Rents become somewhat more reasonable as folks use the cheaper gasoline to live further from the high cost areas or the supply of overbuilt units forces the reduction.  Meat somewhat keeps going on sale enough to give the effect of food price stability ( too bad we all stock the big chest freezer when a sale occurs, and those are reliant on a very overburdened outdated electrical grid using fracking gas ).

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And meanwhile unwatched and unappreciated is the disintegration of the PetroDollar standard that has allowed us to export inflation away from our shores.  Saudi Arabia, at the time pumping around 20% of the globes petroleum, agreed to only accept dollars in payment for oil.  Since the dollar bills in existence aren’t enough to buy tens of millions of barrels of oil a day, everyone used Treasury notes.  That’s our national debt.  Foreigners bought our debt to buy oil.  We paid interest on that, and on the debt we used ourselves to buy nearly free oil.  And our economy recovered from losing our domestic sources of petroleum ( remember, your oil supply needs to INCREASE to keep the economy moving economically.  Ours stalled and soon dropped ).  It was a sweet deal for us.  In 2003 we invaded Iraq when Suddam threatened to start taking Euro’s for oil.  He didn’t have a lot of oil, but we couldn’t allow the precedent to be made.  We stayed there as an anchor for the rest of “our” oil.  Libya wanted to trade oil for gold Dinar’s, and that wouldn’t do!  But that was our last successful military defense of the PetroDollar.

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Since then we haven’t been able to stop anyone else for trading other instruments than Treasuries for oil.  China and Russia completely ignore us in their trading, and Russia is in one of the top slots for production.  And China used to buy our debt.  No more.  The demise of the PetroDollar has been underway and is gathering steam.   We are completely oblivious.  We have no idea how oil for dollars has kept our inflation rates down so far.  And it has really simply kept our economy running when nothing else was.  THAT is completely off the radar.  We think fracking oil will save us.  Except fracking oil and tar sands and deep water Gulf Of Mexico drilling is most of our fuel supply and it is low as hell EROI ( energy return on energy invested-far simpler, net energy ).  But to veer back from Peak Oil to economics ( the two are connected, but we’ll focus on the one ), the lesson point here is that the day the PetroDollar dies is the day our oil imports take a huge hit AND inflation enters hyper-inflation territory.  Nothing to be done for that.

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WAGES AND COLA

Are you old enough to remember wage hikes?  Sure, during the Dot Com bubble the economy was going gang busters and there was actual job positions going unfilled, but that didn’t last long.  You might have gotten paid more to start a job but the bubble didn’t last long enough for you to see a wage increase.  The last time wage hikes were violently agitated for was the 1970’s, over forty years ago.  Now, we all just know we are screwed on that as it is far too easy to lose your job now, and to get another is far less easy.  2009 as my productivity was skyrocketing and oil went to $150 and prices shot up to the moon, I got a nickel increase on my $7 an hour wage ( which was minimum wage to begin with ).  I know the boss gave herself a much bigger cut, and everyone else got the same nickel even as they didn’t work as hard, so it was all a bit insulting.  In nearly nine years there that was my only wage hike outside of minimum wage hikes.  And since my hours kept getting cut it was a wage decrease in effect.  That is the new reality.

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So even if the inflation rate as officially reported was factual-which it ain’t, it is always a minimum of three times higher ( see the Shadow Stats web site )-your wages aren’t even keeping up with that.  And again, folks don’t care.  They live on a budget and everything is almost frozen.  They have X for rent and if that goes up they move ( if they can.  If they can’t they cut elsewhere ).  The car payment is their transportation cost.  If gas goes up they just take less trips on their days off to compensate.  If food X goes up they instead eat food Y.  They are so used to substitution and trimming and adjusting that they don’t look at inflation as systematic.  Hell, I can’t really notice it myself and philosophically I’m hyperaware of being screwed by the elite.  I don’t go to the doctor ( knock on wood ) and I don’t rent.  I don’t buy insurance or gasoline.  I buy food, pay some of the electrical bill and go to thrift stores for clothing.  My bicycle is my transportation.  I’m as deceived by the pause in inflation as most.  The only difference is I know it is temporary.

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If you get COLA, you are being paid at the official acknowledged inflation rate.  That is bad enough.  I’m sure Seniors are looking at insane medical and pharmaceutical increases, not to mention it seems most are either paying rents or unconscionable property taxes which amounts to the same thing.  But then, to make matters worse, you are getting paid a year late!  Your COLA increase goes into effect at the end of the year ( fiscal or calendar, same difference ) and if inflation is one percent a year this is no big deal but if it jumped from one year to the next, you in effect eat the difference.  Now, an uncharitable person might comment that those bastard old humps are getting free money and they shouldn’t complain if they get less free money ( the way withholding taxes were historically, a lot of Baby Boomers got back all they paid into the system within three or so years and then everything beyond that is extra.  Since Social Security was a Ponzi scheme from day one, there was NEVER any investment and growth on your contributions so you can’t claim you earned interest off your taxes.  Not to mention medical cost inflation and their very low Medicare taxes ), but I’m a swell guy so I’ll only point out the scam of COLA.

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Here is your point.  Even at a very benign rate, inflation thus far has been a tax.  Wage hikes and COLA do not counteract inflation, if they even make a difference at all.  So far you’ve been able to pay.  But you mustn’t confuse historical inflation with future rates.  And heck, hyper-inflation isn’t even for fuzzy foreigners like Zimbabweans or Germans, Hungarians or Argentines.  Hyper-inflation is as American as apple pie.

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AMERICAN HYPERINFLATION

“Ain’t Worth A Continental” is an obscure saying few are familiar with.  Our history books are chock full of propaganda and I’m not even talking about textbooks.  An otherwise very brilliant English author whom I wasted money on but still won’t name as he has illuminated me in other periods, started out a giant tome on the War Of Northern Aggression with the blatant bullspit of blaming the conflict on slavery.  Number one, slavery was legalized by the northerners in order to get the Constitution ratified, a document that federalizes power at the expense of the States ( which was the beginning of the coup de tat, the end came during the Civil War when ALL states rights were banished ), and since slavery was legal for almost a century after we became a nation I can’t believe it suddenly became an issue.  And two, millions of young men weren’t going to risk their lives for a sub-human race ( pardon the candor, but this is how Blacks were viewed at the time.  In the North, Blacks were legally bared from holding occupations, owning property, mating with Whites or even simply occupancy ).

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Washington “stop-loss’ed” his troops, forcing them to stay after their contracted enlistment, after NOT paying them and shot “deserters” as examples.  He needed a 300 man protection detail because of this, but you rarely hear about that.  Nor that he profited off land speculation after the promised land for troops was postponed and most of them sold off the to-be-delivered real estate at a huge loss.  You don’t hear about Lincoln arresting newspaper reporters for exercising freedom of speech, or how as a politician on campaign he endorsed slavery or how he imposed martial law on border states to force them into the Union, by arresting House members while debating. 

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You don’t hear about how unarmed peaceful protesters, trying to get their bonus’s paid early because of the political/banker caused Great Depression devastated them, being burned to death and gunned down by soon to be famous WWII generals such as Macarthur.  You don’t read about FDR, days after being inaugurated, makes gold illegal and devalues Greenbacks 40% overnight.  Or how he was preparing for war long before the Pearl Harbor false flag attack.  How he ignored the Jewish problem in Europe, or how he encouraged Stalin’s suppression and financially rewarded him with Lend-Lease.  You don’t read about us occupying Greenland and building bases uninvited. 

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So why would you hear about the Continental currency hyper-inflation?  Most accounts would have you believe that since the bills couldn’t be paid the government simply printed a butt ton of the currency.  Which was true as far as it goes.  But that was also instrumental in getting the Articles Of Confederation repealed and the Constitution installed.  The Articles were very friendly towards the States, and the federal had almost no power.  But, almost magically, after a financial scare, after hyperinflation, it was a lot easier for States to surrender a good amount of their sovereignty in exchange for a gold backed currency.  Of course, I digress with all that.  The main point is that hyperinflate we did.  There was also hyperinflation in the Confederacy during the Northern Aggression War, after the naval blockade did enough damage to leave the government few choices in the matter ( not to mention the behind the scenes pressures to keep Britain and France out of the conflict ).

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Financial scares were also used to install the Federal Reserve Bank, and we know how poorly that worked out inflation wise.  It just wasn’t hyper-inflation.  But we’ve seen it before, twice, and we’ll see it again.  You can pretty much bet all your savings on it.  Which you are.  I’d strongly advise getting out of ALL debt ( we cover that next ) and maxing out commodity storage and minimizing the bills you have.  Nothing else is going to protect you, not in the long run.  Burying gold won’t help as much as you think, just because cashing in too much of it for too long to pay for too many things does mark you for kidnapping, torture and death.  A small amount is fine, for use when law and order haven’t collapsed.  Few will engage you in a running gun battle for twenty pairs of shoes and a case of Tampons, but for the gold you‘d buy them with after the collapse, you betcha.   Not to mention gold will be illegal again.  Not that many have it, or the government will have the means to search for it, but just so your assets are frozen unless you visit a black market participant to liquidate.  That is just common sense paranoia to assume.  You can, given enough surplus, engage in a gamble and buy one or two ounces now and hope the price goes up enough for you to cash out prior to inflation indexing on debt for you to pay off your mortgage, but if it was me I’d rather invest that in junk land and an underground hovel for a better living location during chaos.

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DEBT ISN”T HELPFUL

Even if debt isn’t indexed to inflation, which I believe it will be even as your wages are not, you still have the basic problem with debt in that you can’t assume you’ll have a job to pay it back.  How can anyone but the most delusional even think, given all the evidence to the contrary, that massive unemployment won’t take place?  If you think your job is secure, you have not been paying any attention whatsoever.  Did you just enjoy a plate of fried chicken recently?  How did that cooked feces taste to you?  You know why you’re eating that?  Robots and immigrants are doing the butchering now, after we eliminated Union wages and conditions in that industry.  How secure was their jobs ( “you’ll always need butchers since people have to eat” being some very famous last words, I would imagine )?  Lower management is there to supervise you, but upper management has one job and that is to make the company more money.  And that isn’t by supervising your immediate supervisor.  It is figuring out how to screw you.  Oh, I’m sure that every single one of those fat silver spoon sumbitches would positively love you all to pieces if they got to know you, but that ain’t happening.  Like an enemy in war you must be dehumanized and vilified.

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This is Class War in the trenches.  The spawn of the elite went to private schools all their lives, then an East Coast collage, all not to educate the person but to prove that his family could afford to do so, a mark of the elite ( the idiots allowed to go through, such as faggot cocaine huffing Kenyan Muslims, are recognized as equalitarian propaganda tools and relegated to harmless roles such as Presidential Meat Puppets or HR hacks in corporate ), a price of admission to the Mandarin Class.  They don’t need all that education to be a ruthless prick-you can teach that from Life Experience.  If your workload just increased as your hours were cut to pre-medical insurance levels, you’ve just been Elite-jacked.  Welcome to the Real World.  Now, really, most of our jobs aren’t all that important.  We only have them because the idiots in charge don’t know how to run a company ( they only know how to screw people for money-what?  You think it is an accident you keep getting sold inferior products as a consumer? ). 

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But a stopped clock is right twice a day and eventually the idiots will stumble on a way to downsize your position.  And guess what, you cheap bastard who won’t pay a buck a month to read this, if you are one of those upper management pricks tasked with screwing others, your time will come.  The revolution always eats its young, doesn’t it?  Once no one else is there to fire, why do they need you?  The more you earn the bigger a target on your back.

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Once upon a time in the farthest reaches of the World Trade paradigm, the BRIC nations happily watched as their GNP’s increased.  Praise Baby Buddha, they cried, now we can wear Big Boy pants and GROW.  We can smoke Marlboro cigarettes and drive Fords, not because they are good products but because I need to get laid and nothing impresses the girls like a status symbol to announce my junk is indeed plated in gold.  Well, how is that working out for them?  Not so great now, as all the First World consumers for all that crap made in the Third World are losing their jobs and hence putting the kabosh on GROWTH.  They are losing their jobs because the energy supply is contracting, and by losing their jobs and not being able to buy stuff the people that make the stuff are losing their jobs and the companies that were selling stuff to both parties aren’t doing so great financially.  And one of those companies is the one you work for, or, they do business with one of those companies and really what it all boils down to is that your employer is not very happy right now and wants to send you a pink slip instead of a check.

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You think you have job security because you work for the government?  Those with jobs will circle the wagons and layoff the new hires, and never hire again, and give themselves early retirement to “save” the taxpayers money, as soon as money gets tight.  As soon as money hemorrhages, a point where “tight” was a nice memory, nobody is safe.  Not cops ( selective enforcement to compensate for less bodies ), firemen ( replaceable with volunteers ) or ambulance drivers ( focusing on pre-paid subscribers, those headed to the ER as indigents  might need to not die so quick waiting in line ).  It simply amazes me the delusional hoops preppers jump through convincing themselves how their job is safe.  All we need is to elect Republicans instead of Democrats and the fracking oil flows ( “the spice must flow!” ) and all is good dawg, cause I needs me some FLIR scope, bitches!  All of our jobs are Oil Age dependent, so deny the Oil flow is in danger and your job will last forever, and you’ll retire to the Arizona golf course safe as can be from Cartel drive-by shootings because you stashed an AR in your club bag.

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By denying your job is in danger, you can keep buying stupid crap on credit.  Bug-out vehicles, bug-out retreats, semi-auto’s ( I’m not completely against semi’s.  If you can use one properly rather than spray and pray with suppressive fire idiocy, they can be a pretty sweet toy.  Since all the good WWII surplus is gone, it is now a choice between a perhaps low quality hunting rifles or a semi-better semi for almost the same price.  I’ll stick with bolts out of personal preference, but semi’s have their advantages.  One handed operation, lessened recoil, better parts availability.  I just saw a Slavic made beefed up AK, along the lines of their SAW rather than the carbine, in handy calibers such as 762x54r and 308.  And only $900!  If I was still working for The Man I might even consider it, except nothing built has ever surpassed the Lee-Enfield ).  Not that you CAN’T buy anything on credit.  A piece of junk land seller financed is still a great idea as long as the note is easily paid off.  Just that if you have the idea your job is safe you’ll tend to waste money on crap you don’t really need.

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As far as debt being paid off with cheaper dollars, that was a strategy from the ‘70’s.  Even as manufacturing left for Japan and elsewhere, retail and computer industries were growing.  You could realistically move and get a job, even if it paid less.  Now, what friggin jobs?  Even fast food is in trouble, job-wise.  The terrible racket about increased minimum wage demands is really not a valid argument.  Fast food jobs were being automated long ago ( and places that pay fifty percent over industry averages such as the delicious In-N-Out Burgers in California and a few points east are selling better food at the same price and making good profits.  That is the difference between an intelligent operator and your typical run of the mill moron CEO ).  Have you tried to choke down the swill these places are passing off as food now, at greatly increased prices?  It doesn’t matter how much you pay the help, you are torpedoing your own business even if you got it down to one person per store per shift and had robots doing everything.

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No jobs out there mean you simply cannot have debt any more.  It doesn’t get less complicated than that.  No more sirloin steak dinners when you are belt tightening and no more credit when your job is in danger.  You need to figure out NOW what to do later when you do lose your job.  Unsecured credit must be bankrupted and everything else repo’ed and you need to walk away from ever needing or using credit again.  You don’t necessarily need to live like bare assed savages to pay off all the debt now, as long as your plan allows you walk away legally without any more payments.  Perhaps a mixture, paying off what can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, leaving unpaid that which can be returned such as your car.  Dude, when the economy goes for good, your credit rating doesn’t mean dingus!  Stop trying to protect it.  Slash and burn that bitch, because being debt free isn’t just a huge weight off your shoulders it also allows you to prep far more efficiently and intelligently.  And it allows you to hang in their more comfortably on the way over the cliff.

*

If I had debt, would I have been able to retire and live on my writing income?  It isn’t about being lazy ( even though I have less free time now than when I worked for a paycheck ), but about knowing a job in the very near future will be a luxury and a lottery winner position.  What shiny babbles I could buy on credit can compete with the freedom to live on far less money, and while working half time on minimum wage being able to prep like crazy, AND triple my savings?  No debt and almost no bills stretches a dollar a mighty distance.

*

 

PROTECT ASSETS

If you could get out of debt ( yes, I know it can be difficult and sometimes untenable ), you can then start protecting your assets.  An unsteady job and too much debt, you’ll pretty much lose everything and be screwed ( if this is the case, put a piece of junk land under a relatives name and stash your preps there, then plan on just disappearing off the map [ I hate those shows like the detective dramas that say “they went off the grid” meaning they are leaving no electronic traces.  Off the grid should mean what it has always meat, severing the power and water lines ] ).  No debt means you can live in society in relative comfort a little longer as those around you move to homeless camps and underneath overpasses.  It also means you have a surplus to invest.  Not to spend, but to invest.  A mortgage is just spending money, junk land is an investment.  A car is just wasting money, alternate transportation is investing.  Not because it will make you money, that system is ending ( Dark Ages don’t allow peons to have money ), but because it will eliminate bills.  Which you can’t afford without a job.

*

But if you invest it is survival commodities alone, or an alternate business, you aren’t completely helping yourself.  Not against inflation.  Remember, this is the step PRIOR to the collapse.  More carbine ammo can’t help you at this point.  A shrinking client base certainly won’t.  You need as few bills as possible prior to hyperinflation, so that come the time you can far more easily eliminate those remaining if possible.  This is where raising most of your own food is really helpful, since your shelter is paid off and you can feed yourself you’ve eliminated 90% of the money you’ll need.  100% would be better of course but that is impossible under our current system.  You learn to downsize living within the system or you head out to the wilderness and live Stone Age.  Just note, prior to reading further, that no matter what asset you’ve combated inflation with, the primary strategies are no debt, few bills and stockpiled consumables. 

*

Silver and gold are only for stopping inflation on your property tax bill.  Unless you burn down the records building and take out the grid to your county, they will know you owe them.  And those taxes will just keep increasing.  Your homelessness means nothing to them, but their paycheck does.  Food storage is necessary as you can’t grow all your own.  Have enough for inflation, AND post-collapse.  You just need supplementation, not complete coverage.  Alternate water and energy sources will allow you to survive the utilities being turned off if you still live in town.  Note that these aren’t even really extra assets being protected but the bare minimum.  Even living off grid, that is a minimum ( even though your bills are a lot less off grid ).  There are no real asset safe parks, because we are going from inflation to collapse, die-off to Dark Age.  It isn’t that important to preserve your wealth, but more to live comfortably during hyper-inflation.  And then live Pampered Peasant after the collapse. 

*

But forget post-collapse.  Focus just on inflation.  How can you turn cash, now, into no-cash-needed for tomorrow?  Most of your bills are unnecessary for survival.  But bare bones survival is for post-collapse.  How can you minimize your life style changes for inflation?  That junk land can have a regular cabin on it ( save the underground for after the collapse ).  I’m not talking about Yuppie Scum miniaturized McMansion, but more like the Unibomber shack or the Ruby Ridge plywood home.  A minimum housing unit just above being homeless.  You can do that cheaply enough regardless of your budget.  And there went a mortgage or rent, the cable bill, the power bill, etc.  What, you can’t downsize from two vehicles being paid for to one being paid off?  You might not have gasoline available to buy for it, even at $50 a gallon, so don’t live too far from town.  Better than a car, get a couple of two cycle motor powered bicycles or even a solar powered one. 

*

All this has been covered ad nauseum before.  What I’m trying to emphasize is the need to prep for inflation, which is a step on the way over the waterfall collapse.  If all you have are MRE’s, and you use those because after six months of unemployment you are out of money, PLUS the food in the store is up 3,000%, you’ve cannibalized your collapse preps to live through a functioning economy going through price inflation ( mere rioting rather than civil war ).  You can’t be a Yuppie Scum Survivalist, only prepping for a six month grid interruption followed by a complete recovery.  You need to prep for joblessness, then for hyper-inflation, then for the die-off and then for the Dark Age.  A minimum of four distinct preparedness stages.  Not just warm economy-cold-warm and that is it.  Not just a slight vacation for The American Way.  You know what needs to be done to sit out unemployment and insane prices.  That isn’t the hard part.  Forcing yourself to do it is.

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Can you tell me one thing that isn’t beneficial to you even if we never see hyperinflation, or a collapse?  Being out of debt is good, regardless of the economy.  Stockpiling consumable every day items protects you against even minor inflation ( such as stocking up the chest freezer when meat goes on sale, buying BOGO shoes, end of season mark-downs ).  A junk land shack is a great vacation or retirement location, saving money either way.  As we discussed earlier, if nothing bad ever happens, you are just stockpiling for retirement since medical costs will necessitate saving money elsewhere in the budget.  You cannot lose if you plan on combating inflation. 

END BOOKLET

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