[ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians

[spike]

> ...On Behalf Of Olga Bourlin
....
> 
> From: "spike" <spike66 at att.net>
> To: "'ExI chat list'" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> >
> > Now, imagine if someone had asked Obama the most obvious 
> question, the 
> > one that is *still there* waiting for some reporter 
> anywhere:  where 
> > did you get your money?  Let him reply "I choose to not 
> answer that."  
> > What else could he say?
> 
> What are you implying?  That Buffett gave Obama money?  What?... Olga

Olga, I coulda made that more clear.  In Dreams of My Father, Obama
described doing "blow" in high school "...when you could afford it..."
Well, OK, when could you afford it?  Why could you afford it?  Hoooowwwww
could you afford it.  What were you doing for a living in those days Mr.
Obama?  

I recall being in high school the same time he was, and the drugs of choice
were beer and marijuana, because those were cheap, a high for a couple
bucks, or free if you grew your own grass.  But cocaine was crazy expensive:
usually took at least fifty bucks or more to get stoned once, or so I am
told.  Those who did it were either stealing or dealing.

Now, the thing I am really looking for is a sense on the part of our
leaders, that whenever money is spent by the government, must be *taken*
from someone who is working her ass off for that money.  When I was that age
in the late 70s, those formative years, I had a minimum wage job; $2.90 an
hour back then was gross pay.  Beekeeper, hot as all hell if one wore
protective clothes under the bee suit to reduce stings, dangerous (I still
have back problems that originated from hoisting my weight in bee hives),
overall just damn hard dirty work for little pay, pretty much like what most
of us here did at that age when we were forming attitudes about money.
Well, if one works like that, one doesn't snort a week's takehome pay up
one's nose for a few hours of whatever that stuff does.  NO WAY!  Not one of
my fellow beekeepers did "blow" altho plenty of them drank beer and smoked
reefers.

But if someone had some mysterious source of money as a teen, they may not
get it that when one snorts fifty bucks worth of powder, someone somewhere
is supplying that money with honest hard work.  Might have been his
grandparents, who didn't know.  It probably wasn't his mother, for she was a
welfare queen, and if so, someone somewhere is working her ass off to supply
that welfare for her to give to her son to waste that way.  But good chance
if a teen is doing cocaine, they are either stealing or dealing.  Or both.
In which case, they won't get the evil of spreading the wealth around.  If
one doesn't work for their money, they cannot understand.

I keep getting this creepy feeling that our current US government just
doesn't get that notion that when governments spend like they are doing, the
taxpayers who work hard, who work their lives away every day, are paying the
bills.  Money doesn't magically appear: it is taken from taxpayers.  We will
continue to pay the bills way out into the future; the debt that is
currently being run up could very well crush us before the singularity, or
possibly even defeat the singularity, prevent it by keeping those who would
discover its secrets busy working some mundane task in order to survive.

spike