kjohnnytarr

There must be something out there that could fill in this blank:

"Bikes are to cars as ______ is to money."

Just wish I could figure it out. I'm of the opinion that our economy in America is controlled by people who mean to enslave us by debt, and I'm trying to figure out an alternative.

flats

I feel the same way, and I plan to go live like a hunter-gatherer (with a little bit of sustitence farming) without any reliance on the modern economy.

Artkansas 

And health-care will be the kicker. Health plans will be how they control our day to day living.

kjohnnytarr

Oh god, I never even considered that.

Real ID/RFID, robbery via taxes and interest and inflation, civil liberties removed by the Patriot Act, no privacy thanks to technology, government-sanctioned crime, and now the medical-industry is going to screw us. Shoot.

Machka 

You don't have to be enslaved by debt if you don't want to be. That's your choice.

kjohnnytarr

While individual people (in America) may or may not suffer from personal debt, we ALL suffer from our national debt. The value of our money is only governed by how much is in circulation, and since the amount in circulation always rises over time, each American Dollar is naturally worth less in the hands of the citizens than it was at the time of printing. This is a debt that can only be paid with more of the same printed money. This inflation, combined with interest and our (unconstitutional) income tax, guarantees the gradual enslavement of Americans. I don't know how it is for you, but I hope you in Canada can learn from our mistakes.

JusticeZero

Er... that's easy. Don't be 'enslaved by debt', use it to your advantage. Build up good credit and don't blow all of the cash that you don't even have on worthless garbage like a lot of people do. The luxury car will not make you successful. The big house on a big overgrown lot will not make you successful. The 56" widescreen will not make you successful, happy, or anything else. Neither will the high end video game machine, the pleather couch, or the name brand jeans in the latest fashion that will look tacky and out of date in a week.
Putting together a nice investment portfolio with the money you save by not blowing everything on all the things I mentioned above and more? That might make you be successful.. Being able to retire early knowing that you've got enough invested to be able to live the rest of your life off of the interest alone with some left over? That makes me feel kinda happy. Being able to do what I want when I want would, anyways.

I always get a bit annoyed at the school of thought that goes something like "Damn Nintendo, Wal-Mart, and McDonalds! Damn them and their evil mind control lasers forcing people to buy their stuff!" Nobody is 'enslaving' anyone. Who's fault is it exactly that people keep crowding in line pushing to be the first to put shackles on themself?

Smallwheels

A few days ago I heard an economist state that the world wide debt is more than the world wide money supply. So, if by magic every person, company, and country wanted to pay their debt tomorrow, it wouldn't be possible due to there not being enough money in existence.


"Bikes are to cars as work is to money."

Bikes are smaller and slower than cars but they can do what cars do.

Ten hours of work can be turned into money. The money can flow much faster and accomplish the end goal of work.

Bikes can replace cars in many cases. Work can replace money too if you just work to make food or trade work for items you want.

Money just represents work (unless you are the privately owned Federal Reserve Banking System which prints $100 bills for 4 cents apiece in South Korea and charges the USA $100 plus interest for each one).

FOR FUN

You and a friend could get a $100 bill and give it to each other 1000 times. Each of you could honestly say that you had a $100,000.00 income. Just don't tell the tax people.

cerewa

You could try to fill in the blank with "self-sufficiency" or "barter". A better answer is probably to be found in the story i just heard on the radio about a guy's vision of a "harvest economy" or something, where villages used to have huge amounts of work to accomplish during the harvest season and everybody just pitched in and got it done.

A guy who was a rich businessman in ireland decided he was going to give the rich-person life up and walk to where Gandhi lived, with nothing but a change of clothes or two...asking for everything he needed as kindness from strangers... as well as offering to share his skills (carpentry and plumbing or something) with anyone he could be helpful to.

The problem with barter is that you can run in to problems if you have, say, knit clothes and you need yarn and food, but the people who have yarn and food don't need any knit clothes right now.

JusticeZero

Actually, you shot yourself in the foot. To whom is the national debt owed? Ourselves. If you got a student loan, you own a piece of the national debt. The people who bought war bonds in WWII were buying national debt. Paying off the national debt means buying back all of the bits of the nation that American people and other parts of the US government bought. Paying it off actually mostly involves shuffling it around a bunch. Who is the National Debt owed to? Other parts of The Nation. Okay, so what's the problem? Economists freak out over it. Economists have a lot of strange notions though. Economists are the people you go to if you want to find out how many people can be slaughtered in order to speed commuting times by a few seconds and want a serious answer. Economists are the ones who think that it costs billions of dollars because every car isn't able to drive at the speed limit all the time. On the bright side, they also are the ones who state that parking lots cost more than the U.S. military budget.

Smallwheels

You're only partially right.

Regarding the Federal Reserve, they print money that costs them 4 cents per bill no matter its denomination. They lend it to the USA at face value and get interest payments on its face value. So we all are paying interest on all of the face values of all the bills they give us instead of paying interest on the 4 cents per bill actual cost.

Who owns the national debt? Well, right now China does along with many foreign countries who buy treasury bills to give the U.S. government its money. The USA owes China about one trillion dollars plus interest.

For decades banks that are members of the privately owned Federal Reserve Banking System have been borrowing money from the Federal Reserve (the people who print the money) at one rate and using that money to buy US Treasury Bills that pay a higher rate of return than they are paying the Federal Reserve. They are essentially trading one piece of paper for another and earning billions of dollars in interest at the tax payers expense. All of us are subsidizing bank profits.

You and I can't do that. I can't go to the bank and get a loan for $100,000,000.00 at 4 percent interest and buy $100,000,000.00 worth of Treasury Bills that pay me 6 percent interest. This is the type of banking corruption that has been in existence since 1913 when the Federal Reserve system was created.

All of that banking debt is created by the Federal Reserve, congress, and all of the presidents continual overspending. That debt is now owed by the citizens of the USA. All political parties have willingly participated in this.

It's this type of corruption that makes people hate paying taxes because we know our money is being wasted.

Cosmoline

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be."

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Newspaperguy

That sounds a little like the story of Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity. He was a self-made millionaire by 29 but he was left feeling miserable. He and his wife sold everything and moved to a religious community in Georgia.

Neil_B

You do realize Polonius is a sententious old windbag, don't you?

acroy

Who owns the national debt?
Answer right here:


and how much is there?


whooo.

brunop

i like money. i use it to buy bike stuff. what's wrong with money?

eofelis 

I'm living on a very small amount (under taxable level) and doing ok. I am a f/t student. I have enough of what I need, no debts. The only problem I have not been able to solve is getting health insurance. I guess I'm not the only one facing this issue.

acroy

Suggestions on health insurance: don't be brainwashed into believing it's a necessity. Insurance of any type is literally a bet against yourself. Health insurance companies are profitable because they take in more in premiums than they pay out in health care

If you're reasonable healthy, and do not have ready access to cheap insurance through work/school etc, seriously consider pay-as-you-go for health care. Cash talks! Paying cash for care will generally get you a much lower rate for care than if they had to go through the hassle of dealing with insurance. Routine health care like checkups, taking care of the flu, even minor emergencies, are seldom over a couple hundred bucks.

Personal experience: I do have health insurance but it's a so-called "HSA" plan where my work gives me a debit card with $1500 on it to be used specifically for health care. The doctor's office just swipes it like a regular debit card - no other hassle involved. The women in the office love it I recently paid $65 for a filling, and $125 when i lopped off part of a thumb (in a disc brake, doh) and required stitching up & a shot.

Keep a bit of change in a health account for the occasional sick day. You can even set it up to be a pre-tax health-specific account via an HSA.

For major disasters, like a broken leg or that $100k open heart surgery, super-hi deductable insurance is available cheaply from any number of places for a few hundred dollars a year.

Also keep in mind that if you are involved in a wreck or something, it's not like the hospital will turn you away before providing emergency care. They'll fix you up regardless.

Cheers

Elkhound

As a full-time student, you may be able to get some sort of subsidized group plan through your school; not all schools have that, but some do.

If your income is that low, you may qualify for Medicaid.

iltb-2

You better hope you stay healthy and are never admitted to a hospital for anything. Your cash will be saying Bye-Bye to you. As well as all your future cash if you are able to earn any. You may find yourself living very simply because you won't own anything of value after you lose your bet on staying healthy forever. I assume you have no dependents, or are you gambling on their continued good health too?

eofelis 

I'd feel marginally better if I had health ins., but at this time I can either pay rent and go without health ins., or pay health ins. and live in a box under the 5th Street bridge. Lemme see: rent, electric, basic phone, food, no cable, free dial-up, paid-for car. I ride bike or walk mostly, but do need to drive places for geology work. Not too much I can cut out of my budget to accomodate another couple hundred a month right now.

I had catastrophic health coverage a few years ago. It started out with reasonable monthly rates. Then by a year and a half later the rates had doubled and the deductible had quadrupled to keep the rates as low as possible. Unfortunately, my income had not done the same, so I had to let it go.

I just applied for a student GIS internship with the BLM. If that works out maybe I can get in there permanant someday and have a few bennies.

mustang1

poverty

iltb-2

Not being able to afford health insurance due to poverty is one thing; to risk becoming impoverished by recklessly gambling on staying healthy and not paying for insurance with available money is another.

jcwitte

"Bikes are to cars as poverty is to money"??

I hardly think so. I'd say "Bikes are to cars as financial freedom is to money". It's not really about financial freedom as much as it is about freedom in general. It's a state of mind that enables that freedom rather than finances.

Henry David Thoreau makes the same point in Walden, throughout the entire book, really, but this passage is a good example.

crotch_rocket

WRONG.

The Federal Reserve owns ALL of the National Debt, and worse, the Federal Reserve is a PRIVATE CORPORATION THAT HAS NEVER BEEN AUDITED SINCE 1913. Look it up. That's why the constitution states, that only Congress, controlled by the people, has the right to make and coin money, because the people control congress. The name Federal Reserve is to mislead the people into thinking it's a government entity!

Not to mention the Federal Reserve is beholden to foreign, and private interests, but that's another story. If your really want to learn more about this, watch Aaron Russo's film, "From Freedom to Fascism". It explains it really well.