Oh, Jeez, Rufus! I was 19 in 1971 and 21 when the oil embargo hit. These are not happy memories. Nixon doesn't have a "tainted memory" with me. I hate that ski-nosed bastard as well as his predecessor the jug-eared LBJ.
August 15th, 1971, Nixon goes on TV on a Sunday night and tells us Americans that "temporarily" the dollar is de-linked from gold. Six days later, on August 21, we 19 year old males born in 1952 get to watch our birth dates come out of the military lottery drum to see if we win a free trip to Vietnam. That was a bad week.
I, too, have PTSD listening to the madness of politicians pushing price controls, taxes, and tariffs. They are also pushing the military draft.
Arghhh! Do I have to go through this fucking shit again?
Great article, BTW. You hit all the major points of why our economy is going to hell.
I have one point of sympathy for Nixon, in that he was couped by Watergate. Outside of that, he did end the war just before I graduated from high school and would have been eligible for a ticket to the shit.
It is astounding that anyone is buying the Bumbledick schtick, but anyone born after 1982 wouldn't have any memory of the nightmare, and certainly wouldn't have a good education to lean on.
An old navy dog friend of mine wrote today. He's drying out his powder. Probably not a bad idea. This won't end well.
Thanks for the compliment! I aim to please, and your aim is appreciated.
In much the way WW2 and FDR are abstractions to me, Vietnam, LBJ and Nixon are to my junior sibs.
The way I figure it, if I can take one of "them" with me, I did my bit for God and country. Both my grandfather and my father said it was coming, one way or another, and looks like it's here. If you want to see what comes next, just look at the Zoomers. The one thing that makes me happy in all this, is eventually even the Zoomers will have the same experience of sitting on the porch throwing rocks at kids in the yard. Hell, Socrates complained about the youth of Athens. And the ball keeps spinning.
There are numerous accounts of folks having a picnic lunch while watching various Civil War battles rage. For most of human history, wars took place between combatants on a field of battle. Not to say civilians were never caught in the cross-fire, but WW2 seems to have been a turning point, where everywhere was the field of battle and everyone was a combatant. Even worse, war seems to have moved almost entirely into the mind, with psychological manipulation and perception being the primary strategy. We've entered the realm of mental neutron bombs. Time to tune out, drop out, and turn off.
Rufus, The American War Against the Confederacy started out with picnics, but Lincoln soon enough unleashed his hounds. General Phil Sheridan killed everything and burnt everything in sight in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. General William Tecumseh Sherman than did the same in Georgia, South Carolina and elsewhere. (Though Sherman spared Savannah, Georgia as his mistress lived there.)
After the Civil War, Sherman and Sheridan went to the Great Plains and massacred every Indian they could find.
Adolph Hitler studied Lincoln and his war strategies. Hitler copied them.
Yes lived through it all, the 70’s and 80’s wondering what the heck is this inflation? What is it? What causes it? That’s when I finally found LV Mises. No internet then. What a discovery!! Turned me into a libertarian overnight. None of your article is really taught in our schools let alone mention of the Mises Institute. Don’t expect it to happen anytime soon. It would spoil the gravy train of a lot of parasitic blood suckers
Blood suckers, indeed! I was fortunate (in hindsight) to have a history teacher/politician for a father (Ron Paul was his protege), and a great economics teacher in high school, both of whom introduced me to Von Mises and the Austrian school before I graduated from high school. The unfortunate side effect is that I was jaded and cynical even before I had my first "job". They would both be proud, as I've managed to become even more jaded and cynical over the years.
"No one in their right mind wants to take the cure, but biting the bullet and brassing it out is the only way to heal a century’s worth of malfeasance and bad choices."
Nice economics lesson there Mr. Farside--for those in need of such. I'm a bit further over the hill than you. Graduated college in 68 when draft notices were handed out with diplomas. Spent all of 1970 in Vietnam, and was trying to establish a little version of the American dream by 71. Had a decent job as a soils geologist with a small engineering firm, Wife and 3 year old little girl , bought my first house in Austin (10,200 dollars) and felt pretty good about our future. But, my combat related ptsd was having effects even then, and by the end of 72 I was divorced, out of my house, quit my job, and living the street hippy life. I guess I was sort of aware of all the economic turmoil. but it sure didn't have that much effect on me personally. By 1975 I was living in a tent out on Lake Travis, with a 1/4 acre garden. and my 52 dodge pu didn't require much gas... That simple life ended when in a foolish moment I married a rather fertile woman, and started fathering babies in 1980. Back on that treadmill of the American dream (nightmare???) Again, I wasn't very good at it, but it took till 1990's, and a friend insisting I get into the VA that the root causes of my troubled life (Vietnam) finally surfaced. Been working on that ever since.
So, in essence, all the economic turmoil of the Nixon thru Carter years wasn't very high on my priority list===ya things cost more, but as a self employed mason/stone carver ( geology degree??) I just upped my bids to stay inline with the cost of things. But I do pay attention, and have known for years that the government will be the end of us. A new president (not yet on the horizon) who would cut the bureaucracy by 50% on their first day would be making a good start. That's the thing about government programs, they start to metastasize from day one, and all that government cancer, growing beginning in the 30's or so is now at stage 5 and killing the host. Personally, I think the best thing that could happen for the American people is for this unconstitutional mess we are saddled with to totally collapse , and the sooner the better. However because of how our children have been educated since the 70's or so, what they bring out the other side of said collapse is yet to be determined. Could be better, or a whole lot worse. Happy to watch from the front porch rocker.
As we say in Texas, the next time I meet a woman, fall deeply in love, and want to marry her, I'll buy her a house and walk away. I had something akin to your tent for nearly 2 years packing around the planet. It was a much better way to live.
I'm grateful for what you gave up to serve. Hard for me to say what I would have done had my number come up, but I saw what happened to the guys who burned their cards.
It never ceases to amaze me that someone could buy a house for 10k, and a new car for 2k. Houses were well over 100k by the time I was in a position to buy one and give it to the ex. I had the unfortunate ability to see it all coming, and spent most of my life as a "conspiracy theorist" because of it. Now that it's all happening in real time, no one remembers that I told them so. The smartest thing I ever did, though, was rush right out and start buying gold bullion at $88/oz., once Nixon turned it loose. A lot of people laughed at me when I told them in 1999, to sell out of the stock market and buy gold at $235/oz...1,000% profit in 25 years, as of today. The funny thing is that an ounce of gold would have bought a finely tailored suit back then, and still does today. The value of the gold hasn't changed a bit, but the price has.
I think this might be why we are in a bit of bother.
Someone even wrote a book selling up psychos' benefit to mankind (!). (Kevin Dutton 'The Wisdom of Psycopaths'
I'm of the opinion that if you place a psychopath in a position of authority said psychopath will cause chaos and suffering in any way they can - doesn't have to be the blood and guts kind.
We are being ruled/governed/economically ruined by psychopaths. Always have been, always will be unless we learn to recognise said psychopathy.
Spot on! I suppose it's a blissful life being a psychopath. Don't have to deal with all that empathy stuff. The US Framers knew it would happen, and they did their best to keep power from concentrating in any one place, but the psychopaths have had 250 years to manipulate the system, and seems they've finally succeeded.
East Berlin in 1984 would be an excellent place to set a story about, well, the Stasi and the state apparatus ruining lives. Might be a fun time watching.
Thanks for your excellent thoughts on the economy. I am right there with you on the Hershey bars. I remember when my nickel would no longer buy one. And a while later they had a bar "50% larger" but twice the price. I laughed when I saw it. Buncha chooms.
I wouldn't say the word "fun" comes to mind, but the film is well worth a watch, and it's not all Hollywooded, which makes it twice as interesting.
Yes, the 50% larger bar, which was what the original nickel used to be. I feel like my parents reminiscing about the Saturday matinee, with an A & B feature, a newsreel, a couple of serials, and an animation short, with popcorn and a drink, all for a quarter. Ain't inflation great!
I share these memories. The earliest film experience I can recall would have been in the Spring of 1968. Dad drove us into Kansas City to a palatial cinema with amazing carpets, curtains, gold wall paper, antique sconces in the lobby. We sat in really nice seats and watched Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" which started out very strange, about some ugly hairy persons beating on pigs and dramatically transitioned to a very interesting film about people travelling, living, and working in space, and then became a really bizarre film about dropping acid and living in a hotel room forever. Pretty sure we had an evening of it, after supper at the Savoy Grill, and don't recall any serials or animated shorts. But there was popcorn and a sense of luxury. Didn't pay to attend so don't recall the price.
No, my friend, inflation is a lousy thing. Using gold's price as a proxy, that 25 cent piece, which in 1968 might have been dated 1964 or earlier and had 90% silver, would today buy roughly $17.90 worth of stuff. Adult ticket in Houston today is about $11.61. Kid price is $8.44. Seniors get in for $9.15. A large popcorn is $9.90. Medium soda is $4.40. So of course there is a lot to be said for "it don't go as far as it did" about this thing they're pretending is a dollar.
Did you know that the 1792 mint act not only specifies what amount of gold or silver or copper is a "dollar" but includes the death penalty for putting less precious metal in the coin of the realm? This matter was first brought to my attention right around 1992. There are a whole lot of lampposts on Constitution avenue in the district of corruption, and rope is a sustainable material.
Oh, Jeez, Rufus! I was 19 in 1971 and 21 when the oil embargo hit. These are not happy memories. Nixon doesn't have a "tainted memory" with me. I hate that ski-nosed bastard as well as his predecessor the jug-eared LBJ.
August 15th, 1971, Nixon goes on TV on a Sunday night and tells us Americans that "temporarily" the dollar is de-linked from gold. Six days later, on August 21, we 19 year old males born in 1952 get to watch our birth dates come out of the military lottery drum to see if we win a free trip to Vietnam. That was a bad week.
I, too, have PTSD listening to the madness of politicians pushing price controls, taxes, and tariffs. They are also pushing the military draft.
Arghhh! Do I have to go through this fucking shit again?
Great article, BTW. You hit all the major points of why our economy is going to hell.
I have one point of sympathy for Nixon, in that he was couped by Watergate. Outside of that, he did end the war just before I graduated from high school and would have been eligible for a ticket to the shit.
It is astounding that anyone is buying the Bumbledick schtick, but anyone born after 1982 wouldn't have any memory of the nightmare, and certainly wouldn't have a good education to lean on.
An old navy dog friend of mine wrote today. He's drying out his powder. Probably not a bad idea. This won't end well.
Thanks for the compliment! I aim to please, and your aim is appreciated.
Rufus, More Americans died in Vietnam under Nixon than in LBJ's presidency. But we all see the world through our own experiences.
My brother is 6.5 years younger than me. He doesn't give a whit about Nixon, LBJ, or Vietnam. The war didn't affect him at all. That's the way it is.
Now, I'm too old to fight. If it comes to that, I'll use the pellet gun and be suicided quickly as a danger to the state.
In much the way WW2 and FDR are abstractions to me, Vietnam, LBJ and Nixon are to my junior sibs.
The way I figure it, if I can take one of "them" with me, I did my bit for God and country. Both my grandfather and my father said it was coming, one way or another, and looks like it's here. If you want to see what comes next, just look at the Zoomers. The one thing that makes me happy in all this, is eventually even the Zoomers will have the same experience of sitting on the porch throwing rocks at kids in the yard. Hell, Socrates complained about the youth of Athens. And the ball keeps spinning.
Rufus, I haven't hear the term Zoomers before. It's a good name for the new generation.
The cycles of war and peace just keep spinning. The wars keep getting more violent and deadly. Perhaps this war will be the last one.
There are numerous accounts of folks having a picnic lunch while watching various Civil War battles rage. For most of human history, wars took place between combatants on a field of battle. Not to say civilians were never caught in the cross-fire, but WW2 seems to have been a turning point, where everywhere was the field of battle and everyone was a combatant. Even worse, war seems to have moved almost entirely into the mind, with psychological manipulation and perception being the primary strategy. We've entered the realm of mental neutron bombs. Time to tune out, drop out, and turn off.
Rufus, The American War Against the Confederacy started out with picnics, but Lincoln soon enough unleashed his hounds. General Phil Sheridan killed everything and burnt everything in sight in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. General William Tecumseh Sherman than did the same in Georgia, South Carolina and elsewhere. (Though Sherman spared Savannah, Georgia as his mistress lived there.)
After the Civil War, Sherman and Sheridan went to the Great Plains and massacred every Indian they could find.
Adolph Hitler studied Lincoln and his war strategies. Hitler copied them.
Yes lived through it all, the 70’s and 80’s wondering what the heck is this inflation? What is it? What causes it? That’s when I finally found LV Mises. No internet then. What a discovery!! Turned me into a libertarian overnight. None of your article is really taught in our schools let alone mention of the Mises Institute. Don’t expect it to happen anytime soon. It would spoil the gravy train of a lot of parasitic blood suckers
Blood suckers, indeed! I was fortunate (in hindsight) to have a history teacher/politician for a father (Ron Paul was his protege), and a great economics teacher in high school, both of whom introduced me to Von Mises and the Austrian school before I graduated from high school. The unfortunate side effect is that I was jaded and cynical even before I had my first "job". They would both be proud, as I've managed to become even more jaded and cynical over the years.
Thanks for the comment!
"No one in their right mind wants to take the cure, but biting the bullet and brassing it out is the only way to heal a century’s worth of malfeasance and bad choices."
You are right on.
And you have the intelligence to recognize it. :)
Nice economics lesson there Mr. Farside--for those in need of such. I'm a bit further over the hill than you. Graduated college in 68 when draft notices were handed out with diplomas. Spent all of 1970 in Vietnam, and was trying to establish a little version of the American dream by 71. Had a decent job as a soils geologist with a small engineering firm, Wife and 3 year old little girl , bought my first house in Austin (10,200 dollars) and felt pretty good about our future. But, my combat related ptsd was having effects even then, and by the end of 72 I was divorced, out of my house, quit my job, and living the street hippy life. I guess I was sort of aware of all the economic turmoil. but it sure didn't have that much effect on me personally. By 1975 I was living in a tent out on Lake Travis, with a 1/4 acre garden. and my 52 dodge pu didn't require much gas... That simple life ended when in a foolish moment I married a rather fertile woman, and started fathering babies in 1980. Back on that treadmill of the American dream (nightmare???) Again, I wasn't very good at it, but it took till 1990's, and a friend insisting I get into the VA that the root causes of my troubled life (Vietnam) finally surfaced. Been working on that ever since.
So, in essence, all the economic turmoil of the Nixon thru Carter years wasn't very high on my priority list===ya things cost more, but as a self employed mason/stone carver ( geology degree??) I just upped my bids to stay inline with the cost of things. But I do pay attention, and have known for years that the government will be the end of us. A new president (not yet on the horizon) who would cut the bureaucracy by 50% on their first day would be making a good start. That's the thing about government programs, they start to metastasize from day one, and all that government cancer, growing beginning in the 30's or so is now at stage 5 and killing the host. Personally, I think the best thing that could happen for the American people is for this unconstitutional mess we are saddled with to totally collapse , and the sooner the better. However because of how our children have been educated since the 70's or so, what they bring out the other side of said collapse is yet to be determined. Could be better, or a whole lot worse. Happy to watch from the front porch rocker.
As we say in Texas, the next time I meet a woman, fall deeply in love, and want to marry her, I'll buy her a house and walk away. I had something akin to your tent for nearly 2 years packing around the planet. It was a much better way to live.
I'm grateful for what you gave up to serve. Hard for me to say what I would have done had my number come up, but I saw what happened to the guys who burned their cards.
It never ceases to amaze me that someone could buy a house for 10k, and a new car for 2k. Houses were well over 100k by the time I was in a position to buy one and give it to the ex. I had the unfortunate ability to see it all coming, and spent most of my life as a "conspiracy theorist" because of it. Now that it's all happening in real time, no one remembers that I told them so. The smartest thing I ever did, though, was rush right out and start buying gold bullion at $88/oz., once Nixon turned it loose. A lot of people laughed at me when I told them in 1999, to sell out of the stock market and buy gold at $235/oz...1,000% profit in 25 years, as of today. The funny thing is that an ounce of gold would have bought a finely tailored suit back then, and still does today. The value of the gold hasn't changed a bit, but the price has.
Onward through the fog, as we say around here.
https://www.businessinsider.com/professions-with-the-most-psychopaths-2018-5
I think this might be why we are in a bit of bother.
Someone even wrote a book selling up psychos' benefit to mankind (!). (Kevin Dutton 'The Wisdom of Psycopaths'
I'm of the opinion that if you place a psychopath in a position of authority said psychopath will cause chaos and suffering in any way they can - doesn't have to be the blood and guts kind.
We are being ruled/governed/economically ruined by psychopaths. Always have been, always will be unless we learn to recognise said psychopathy.
Spot on! I suppose it's a blissful life being a psychopath. Don't have to deal with all that empathy stuff. The US Framers knew it would happen, and they did their best to keep power from concentrating in any one place, but the psychopaths have had 250 years to manipulate the system, and seems they've finally succeeded.
East Berlin in 1984 would be an excellent place to set a story about, well, the Stasi and the state apparatus ruining lives. Might be a fun time watching.
Thanks for your excellent thoughts on the economy. I am right there with you on the Hershey bars. I remember when my nickel would no longer buy one. And a while later they had a bar "50% larger" but twice the price. I laughed when I saw it. Buncha chooms.
I wouldn't say the word "fun" comes to mind, but the film is well worth a watch, and it's not all Hollywooded, which makes it twice as interesting.
Yes, the 50% larger bar, which was what the original nickel used to be. I feel like my parents reminiscing about the Saturday matinee, with an A & B feature, a newsreel, a couple of serials, and an animation short, with popcorn and a drink, all for a quarter. Ain't inflation great!
I share these memories. The earliest film experience I can recall would have been in the Spring of 1968. Dad drove us into Kansas City to a palatial cinema with amazing carpets, curtains, gold wall paper, antique sconces in the lobby. We sat in really nice seats and watched Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" which started out very strange, about some ugly hairy persons beating on pigs and dramatically transitioned to a very interesting film about people travelling, living, and working in space, and then became a really bizarre film about dropping acid and living in a hotel room forever. Pretty sure we had an evening of it, after supper at the Savoy Grill, and don't recall any serials or animated shorts. But there was popcorn and a sense of luxury. Didn't pay to attend so don't recall the price.
No, my friend, inflation is a lousy thing. Using gold's price as a proxy, that 25 cent piece, which in 1968 might have been dated 1964 or earlier and had 90% silver, would today buy roughly $17.90 worth of stuff. Adult ticket in Houston today is about $11.61. Kid price is $8.44. Seniors get in for $9.15. A large popcorn is $9.90. Medium soda is $4.40. So of course there is a lot to be said for "it don't go as far as it did" about this thing they're pretending is a dollar.
Did you know that the 1792 mint act not only specifies what amount of gold or silver or copper is a "dollar" but includes the death penalty for putting less precious metal in the coin of the realm? This matter was first brought to my attention right around 1992. There are a whole lot of lampposts on Constitution avenue in the district of corruption, and rope is a sustainable material.