Caring

Penn says it much better than I can

 

I hope it's safe to use this image, because it sums up a blog post that has been fermenting in my mind the last few days.

An accusation you'll often hear out of "liberals" is that "conservatives don't care about the poor!" What is that supposed to mean?

Usually this claim is offered up as a logical fallacy intended to stop debate. The "conservative" makes a comment like "We seriously need to cut government spending" and the "liberal" retorts with "You don't care about the poor! You want old people thrown out of nursing homes and onto the streets! You want children to starve!"

It's happened to me. I didn't know what a logical fallacy was at that point, so I caved to the emotionally overladen illogic. I knew it was wrong, but had no idea how to counter it.

What exactly do liberals mean by "caring" anyway? Most that I've known don't indicate how they care through any other action than voting and verbally and emotionally supporting government programs. Most of these programs actually leave the people they claim to care about worse off than at the start.

I don't want to be cared about like that.

Then there's the invasion of conscience. What goes on in my head is my own business. What external words and actions I give off can become your business. Who cares how I "care" about the poor other than the actions I take toward them?

I routinely give money (after taxes) in ways that end up benefiting the poor in my local community. How many of you liberals do that? I'm part of a group that occasionally cooks meals for the homeless. I've put my own money into making that meal. Again, liberal proponents of government programs, how many of you have done that?

I can't say I walk around with an overwhelming feeling that I "care" about the poor, but I have actually done productive things with my time and money that directly benefit and provide for the poor.

I've found that liberals and other people who are largely ruled by their feelings engage in a process I refer to as "projection". They take what they're feeling and project it onto somebody else.  My ex-wife did that a lot. It took me years to figure it out. But once I did, I noticed it a lot more in other places.  My ex-wife's projection habit really makes me wonder about her insecurities that I might have been unfaithful (I was not) and refusal to believe me when I said I had been entirely faithful.

Whenever somebody accuses you of something that can only take place inside your own head, and is unverifiable, chances are, it's really in their head. They're just projecting it back onto you. This is where I believe a lot of accusations of "hate" come from.

This makes me think liberals who accuse others of not caring about the poor really are that insecure of their endorsement of oversized and inefficient government programs that in many ways just make things worse. I, of course, have no personal experience on which to base this, because I have never been a liberal and I have never advocated large, inefficient government programs. Other than defense, that is. And I've begun to question that over the last several years.

By the way, I'm not a "conservative". I describe myself as a libertarian/anarchist. Not the chaos type anarchist, but the "leave me the hell alone and I'll leave you the hell alone" anarchist.

Want Some Advice on Joining The Military?

This guy, another Navy vet, says it better than I could. It's almost exactly what I would tell you.

Speaking of the Air Force (my dad is retired Air Force), a guy I work with often says "I wasn't in the military. I was in the Air Force".

Fractional Reserve Gold?

I saw this yesterday. One of the ways for goldbugs to store their shinies is to have them stored somewhere else, like this Dutch bank. It looks like they were using this bank as a broker to buy and store their gold.

Gold is very heavy, and probably not easy to store. A book on my list to read is Anna Eisenmenger's diary, Blockade. In it, she says people in Austria who had gold stored had it stolen from them. I do not believe gold to be the safe investment/value store it's made out to be when an emergency strikes.

In any case, for those who wish to maintain a vast store of gold, paying somebody else to store it is probably best in normal times. I don't think we're in normal times anymore. For those who wished to buy gold through this Dutch bank, it isn't.

That doesn't mean they can't just buy their gold somewhere else.

I can't discern from the article why the bank will no longer deliver gold to customers, but instead will pay them the value of their gold in a fiat currency, probably the Euro. My first thought was they're treating gold the same way they do money, through a fractional reserve system. The article doesn't give enough detail though. Just that if you bought gold through them, and want your gold delivered, you'll get paper instead.

How Much of the Consumer Economy is Devoted to Women's Disposable Income?

I doubt I could find the relevant posts if I tried, but Aaron Clearey has written on this several times since I started following his blog and reading his books last year. In several of his posts, he's written how the majority (note: not all) women work in jobs that mostly facilitate other women to work in other jobs.

Somebody else once wrote (can't remember who) that a large portion of the consumer economy is devoted to women having disposable income.

I am not writing about whether this is right or wrong. At this point, I don't care. Something made me think about it recently.

Last time I was home in New Jersey, I took my wife to a Chinese buffet, then she needed to stop at a women's clothing store. I'm not very fond of following my wife around in women's clothing stores, so I began to look around for things to do other than sit in my car and read on my iPhone. As I surveyed the strip mall, I realized that just about every store there profited mostly from women having money to spend. The majority of the stores there were either women's clothing, accessories, household decorations and the like. There was a Sleep Number store, but I've already got one. There's a 5 Guys, but I already ate. There's a Moe's, but again, I already ate.

Fortunately, there was a Jos A Bank, so I stopped in and pondered WHAT THE HELL COULD POSSIBLY MAKE A PAIR OF BOXERS WORTH $25.I guess if you have to ask, you can't afford them. Tidy Whities, similar to the ones the Navy issued me in Boot Camp, are almost $40.It makes me wonder if most of Jos A Bank's profits come from women shopping for their men. (Disclosure: I have never bought anything from Jos A Bank. They have nice stuff, but I sure as hell don't have the disposable income to pay their prices. Somebody obviously does).

The problem with being in the disposable income retail business is, you're one of the first to go out of business when the economy tanks. How many vacant strip malls will be around when the tab for our societal Keynesian borrowing and spending binge comes due?

Government Layers Contradict Each Other

I've considered myself a libertarian for many years. I'm slowly drifting toward being an anarchist.

I've never understood why people feel they need a large government to "feel" secure. Especially when all available evidence shows government is the LEAST EFFICIENT way to do anything. It is large, it is wasteful, it steps on toes, and exists only to perpetuate itself. It does not care about you. It makes you THINK it cares about you so you'll vote, but it truly doesn't care.

For those of you who fall into a category I refer to as "Green-tards", here's a good one. OK, so we should all drive hybrids or something "for the planet" or "for the environment". But wait, there's more!

So you're driving a hybrid, and using less gas and supposedly creating less pollution. BUT... you're no longer paying your fair share of federal gas taxes, so now Virginia (of which I am a resident) wants to make up for it by charging you $100 a year for driving a hybrid. You know, because while you're all busy "saving the planet" you're not paying your fair share of gas tax.

I have decided I will not listen to a single argument by a greenie weenie or greentard who does not support the maximum telework possible for people in jobs in which telework can be done. Like every job I've had since I left Lockheed Martin in 2004.

But then, if I were able to telework (and as such not have to pollute) I wouldn't be paying my "fair share" of gas taxes either. You know, because government is entitled to it or something. To pay for the large and inefficient programs that make the rest of you "feel" secure or "feel" like they "care" about you, or about something you "care" about.

So now, on the one hand, government wants you to not pollute and use more gas, but at the same time, government wants you to continue paying the gas taxes it has come to depend on.

How does this make any sense to anybody?

I Wish People Would Stop Comparing Congress to Drunken Sailors

I've been a drunken sailor. We were NOTHING like Congress. Once we finished drinking our own money, and our friends ran out of money, we either went back to the ship or hung out at the USO if one was available.

Other than the Inaccurate Congress/drunken sailor comparison, this interview is pretty good:

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/making-waves-hawaii-perspective-washington-politic/2013/jan/4/forecast-2013-aurini/#.UOd9fcbJqG8.twitter

U.S. To Become An Oil Powerhouse by 2015?

Twice in the last week, I came across predictions that the United States will become an oil and natural gas powerhouse. The first was an hour plus sales pitch Porter Stansberry did for his newsletter. I won't subject you to it. I'm afraid my continuous screams of "Get to the ****ing point!" may have become permanently burned into the audio track.

Leading Trader relays his prediction a lot faster.

If true, this would change a lot of things. Some for the better, and some for the worst. If not true, I guess Goldman Sachs gets another bailout for blowing taxpayer money on another "get richer quick" scheme.