This is the same blog as posted on MySpace, so if you read my blog there, don't repeat this unless you found it so midbogglingly amazing the first time you want to read it again! Mua hahahaha!

Sooo... Happy New Year. I hope that this 2009 is not as scary crappy as it portends to be. At this point I am just grateful I have a job and so does Glenn, even if half the jobs he keeps getting scheduled to do keep getting canceled; at least he is at the shop getting paid instead of claiming unemployment. I tell you, this year could be horrible. At my work we already got the letter that pretty much says: no bonus this year and no cost of living increase.
Which brings me to my first opinion soap-box stand of the year for all you poor souls who stick around to listen to me rant and rave and never change a thing.
In all my ignorance of fiscal matters, I think that this country is going to shit... turning very quickly into a third world country.
I have a friend who always opines and is very eloquent and funny. Mostly he is always right (or seems to be, or at least I agree with him), but this time I beg to differ and as much as he may know, or his father, a college professor who teaches business or economics or both (albeit a small college in a small town in Michigan, nevertheless still: a professor! my respects!), may know, they are both still raving republican fanatics (sorry, but true, and I still love my friend dearly) and he always preaches as to how the economic crisis would be solved if the rich were able to hang on to more of their money, if they were taxed less and if corporations were taxed less and were allowed to hang on to more of their money too.
When I hear this all I can think to myself is: ahh what YOU want is a third world country ecomony! Having lived in many third world countries and being from one (though it claims to be somewhere in between third and first.. yet no "second world" term exists as of yet) myself, I KNOW how that works: the rich and the corporations (and that is why they all go there to build factories in the first place!) get all the breaks. ONLY the rich can afford schooling and higher education, only the rich can afford the houses and the cars and the rest is a barely visible middle class that works their ass off and a very poor majority mass that works and begs for the favor of the rich and is happy just to be able to afford a bus or maybe have a beat up car and a tv in their house. THAT is what happens when the rich get more breaks and more money. Trust me on this, I got 10 countries under my belt in 4 continents.
Bailing out banks and bailing out auto manufacturers does NOT change the fact that the masses can no longer afford to pay for their houses, cannot afford to buy a car and cannot afford to pay their debt. So.. you can give all the breaks you want to the guy who makes cars, but who will buy his cars and then how will his company pay off its loans? See??? very simply said, in the very words of my republican friend as way of explanation as to why the poor should not get breaks: "if you give money to the poor they will just spend it."
Exactly, my friend.
And that is called FLOW: that means the cash FLOWS. Oddly this is the one time that something has to flow DOWN before it flows back up.
As in: the less rich need the money which they will spend buying the stuff that the rich make and thus returning the money to the rich who employ the poor and thus pay the poor for their labor who then happily go and spend their money... it is a very simple cycle as you can see.
Hmmmm.... am I retarded???? Do you need to go to Harvard to understand that? I am livid knowing that my taxes which I will openly share for the sake of this point: $22,365.76 just me, not counting my husband's, for last year. (OF my first paycheck of 2009, already they took over $800!!!) went to bail out banks!
BANKS!
Banks which used the money to acquire other banks, NOT to help with the mortgage crisis. MY TAXES went to help corporations, not to help others, and certainly not to help me, though even I struggled, as my husband spent nearly half of 2008 unemployed, to pay MY MOTGAGE on TIME!!! See how that works??? I did not shop I did not consume.. Had I had an extra 22K to spend, then it would have FLOWED right back into the the very greedy grubby hands of the rich businesses that need it. Small businesses may say they need tax breaks, guess what, all the tax breaks in the world will not help them pay THEIR loans if people like me can't afford to go to their small business and spend some money!!! I could have paid off A LOT of debt had I had my 22,000. That is more than millions of families around the world make in a year!
Think about that.
Think some more.
I paid more in taxes than a family makes in a year, even in THIS country!
But I got no assurance that I will have social security when I retire, I still have to worry if my health insurance will want to cover me the rest of my life.
I will stop whining.
It is not about ME.
It is about the fact that 22K of my money went to a government that is doing nothing, NOTHING to stop the downward spiral into a third world country economy. My MONEY went so that a CEO can still earn MILLIONS of dollars a year, so that a BANK can buy other banks, so that an AUTO company can continue to make cars that guzzle gas and break down a year after they are made. It is exactly as my friend said: My money helped keep the rich rich and the poor poorer; and me? I just worked my ass off so that I can pay the bare minimum and stay out of debt hell.
Think about that the next time you hear someone say that businesses need the breaks. It is likely that person speaking has never lived in a true third world country. You do not need a Harvard education to tell you that throughout history it is the middle class, and the poor, who carry the rich.
Happy New Year.
Now go back to work!