Buy China

I don't think there's anything to take away from last week's extension of 13-months of unemployment, the 2% SS tax cut, and the extension of the Bush tax cuts. The extension of the tax cuts booby traps us on election-eve, 2012...where Congress and the President, seeking re-election, will be so spooked and will have no choice but to extend them even further.

I think that if you were to go back to 2000-1, when Bush entered office and we were [just] running a surplus, the tax cuts were approved "because there's a forecasted $5 trillion surplus over the next ten years, so let's give that back to the American people." Instead of any projected $5t surplus, of course, we got two unfunded wars, a Fed-engineered housal unit boom and bust, associated stimulus, er, bank bailouts and now this $800,000,000,000 tax cut extension, all that will have landed us another $5 trillion in the hole -- a $10 trillion swing.

We've "grown" our economy on personal debt and now we're "growing" our economy on Federal debt. Based on this Federal debt pattern, I believe social security won't provide me much by the time I'm eligible -- not because I think it's going to turn up insolvent (though it might), but rather I think by then changes will be made such that my entitlement will be means-tested. The more income/assets I have, the less I'll be entitled, which is to say that because I've saved money on my own I therefore don't need quite so much.

Thus! I will accept this 2% payroll tax cut with glee! That it's not going to social security that won't provide me anything anyway, well, I have a plan for that money.

I am going to spend my ~$900 relief on shit from China, that's exactly what I'm going to do with it this year, and I will document it here on my monologues. I will go out of my way to buy Chinese...er...well, I won't really have to go out of my way, but you get the idea. What, you think I'd be stupid enough to save this? Why would I? Why should I save this social security payment relief? To have it help reduce my future social security entitlement?

No, I'll support the American dreams of millions of retail sales associates who depend on the selling of Chinese shit for a living -- a growing percentage of our workforce. I will use my American social security "stimulus" to help drive the dwindling 11% manufacturing base of our nation to 10% by year's end. Hey, I've always called for a bleak future...might as well stop blogging about it and actually do something to promote it, eh?