Beating the High Cost of Mammon

At the end of the Occupation and the hard work that was spent reporting it there were still a lot of people who were hostile to those who wanted to call attention to poverty in the world by showing how ugly it can be. The overall opinion of the consensus in the country is that the entire occupy movement was ugly.
Frank Miller the well known comic book artist famous for Sin City eschewed the political correctness of the progressives by stating that the movement is “nothing more than an ugly fashion statement by a bunch of iPhone, iPad wielding spoiled brats who should stop getting in the way of working people and find jobs for themselves.”

This sentiment seemed to echo the many people who called into a special Ground Zero that aired on Sunday night. It even irritated listeners when I stated that the Occupy movement had won the peace as they were being uprooted out of their encampment.
As much credit as I tried to give to the movement there were just as many criticisms and anytime I criticized any part of it there were armchair quarterbacks trying to pin me on my politics. There were irritated liberals who said I was a shill for Fox news and there were others who felt I was being too liberal and fair to the occupants.
The all or nothing thinking is the killer in this whole equation and the truth is that today it is Mammon that has us in its grip—the greed is evident in every part of the whole affair. It is greed that comes with an attached entitlement that includes getting money for no effort and expecting something when nothing is invested.
We have been mired in 30 years of economic crisis and now our very currency is being devalued. Americans are seeing their dollars and still value them as such but the truth is that the dollar does not buy as much and I now am beginning to see how what I once made in dollars doesn’t really value as much now as it did a mere 3 months ago.
It is like the frog being slowly cooked in the water. People are waiting for the heat to get hotter only to become accustomed to the idea of not being able to afford anything that gives them pleasure. By then it is too late. By then the ugliness we saw at the occupy encampment becomes the norm. The truth is that what the general public saw as ugly is really their future. It is a future that can be avoided.
The way it can be avoided is to restore your economic faith in investments that are beneficial and grow with time.
Money isn’t respected anywhere anymore—those who have it are frivolous with it – and those who don’t have it hate those who do and seem to scream “sell out” to those who are poor and wish to try and invest what little money they have in sound enterprise.
I can’t count how many people thanked me for pointing out that Michael Moore screamed form the podium at the occupy encampment that the 1 percent needed to cough up their ill gotten funds and give them out to the poor. Even though the man’s net worth is estimated to be about 50 million and he didn’t seem to happy when a reporter pointed it out.
Where is value now? What do we value? Is there a value in hard work and earning money or are we all thinking that we are owed an entitlement?
There were also a lot of people who told me that what I said about Moore was out of line and it was so obvious that those who felt this way were blinded by the propaganda of a man who looks like an everyday Joe – who is able to live well after exploiting political greed in order to earn money.
If he pretends to be an everyday Joe—then everyday Joe’s will believe he cares about them.
Poverty and greed are now political cudgels. The population is just content to consume and when they can’t afford to consume they can take the time to complain.
They complain to politicians even though they really don’t care about the poor at all. So who can save them? It is easy—they can be saved only if they decide to learn from those who oppress them.
It needs to be declared that those who decide not to take action that is self preserving will be those who will not and will continue to not get anything they really want.
It may sound ugly, but now is the time to survive and the message that is being drowned out by the protests is that the plane is going down in flames and you haven’t even put your own oxygen mask on yet.
You can live your life away from the lessons of history or you can learn about them and realize that it does repeat itself and you can avoid the huge bump in road by remembering where it was on the map of time.
Good old fashioned thriftiness is the way to go now. This is now your great grandfather’s economy. Your great grandfather bought precious metals, grew gardens, took public transit, and did everything he could to stretch a buck. In post World War II Germany the economy was such that three coins of gold could by a whole town and a Wheelbarrow full of Deutch marks wouldn’t even buy a loaf of bread.
Gold and Silver investments were sound investments and it was also a sound move to grow your own food . The underlying reasons which gave rise to the hyper-inflation in the Weimar republic were frighteningly similar to what is happening today. There were multiple factors as to why the economy was unhealthy and most of it came from social and political mistrust, which in turn added to the crises already in progress.
The Hyper-inflation did not simply manifest itself out-of-thin-air on a unsuspecting population. Economic conditions simply mirrored a society already reeling from severe unrest.
The so called ugly occupation that we are seeing now is a symptom of not understanding economic history. The encampments are a glimpse into the future. The solution to avoid the problem is to invest the same way, our grandparents and great grandparents did. Buy gold and silver and if you can’t grow your own food have food on hand in order to brave a possible famine.
Then one day you can use gold to buy a park – and camp all you want without any repercussions.