I realize that some of our younger members may not be as well versed in the subtleties of politics as the thoroughly indoctrinated children of the Coldwar Era.

For this reason, I am going to list a few modern political/economic concepts here to help our youngest members understand what us geezers are babbling about when we talk politics.


Capitalism: There's a sucker born every minute and SOMEBODY has to be the sucker. Capitalism is a great thing, if you happen to be in the top 10% of the income ladder. Capitalism is the only economic model that has been able to produce top quality, state-of-the-art material goods and services since the Monarchies.

In pre-industrial America, capitalism was the perfect economic engine, as long as you happened to be a white, christian, male landowner. Back then, your handshake and a witness was a binding contract. There was no health care...if you got seriously ill, you died. If you didn't show up for work, you lost your job. If somebody tried to rob you, you shot or stabbed the fucker, because if you let him kick your ass and missed work the next day, you lost your job. If he took your stuff, you were S.O.L. Shoot, schovel and shutup was not a catchphrase, it was a way of life. It was not all THAT bad, though, if your house burned down, the neighbors would go steal some lumber from the Indians and help you build a new one.

Along came industrialization and things got tougher for Capitalists. Vast numbers of workers were required and that meant cities needed to be expanded. Roads, railroads and ports needed to be built and capitalists had to build them. All these costs started cutting into the bottom line. Diseases sprang up in the cities, adding to the cost of labor. Not only that, but the workers were demanding food and a roof over their heads. Italian marble, gold indoor plumbing fixtures, electric lighting, Cadillac coaches and staff to deal with all that stuff added to the cost of maintaining a rich robber-baron lifestyle, making larger profit margins necessary.

Socialism:  Once the cities were up and rolling, the workers started breeding like rabbits. There were more people than the capitalists could afford to carry and still live like rich robber-barons. FUCK THAT. Some of these freeloaders, who were not busy slaving away for 12 hours a day, seven days a week, without benefits, in the factories, were starting to notice that the Capitalists were not picking up the tab for all the freeloaders.

The freeloaders had to find some way of justifying their bedspace and their place at the dinner table, since there wasn't anymore Indian land out there to steal, especially in Europe. Unfortunately for all of us, the problem was turned over to scholars, intellectuals, academics and clerics to be solved. (Capitalists have been forever making this mistake) Thus were born the modern version of the Social Sciences.

Rather than gather up all the excess people and use them for cannon fodder, like any rational robber-baron would do, for some inexplicable reason (ask the scholars and clerics, maybe they know), these freeloaders were given administrative jobs to help operate the huge cities and ports required by the robber-barons to maintian their profit margins and lifestyles. The adminstrators, being freeloaders, came up with the idea of taxing the workers to pay for their existance.(no doubt, with some coaching by the robber-barons) But then some jerk named Lenin came up with the idea of taxing the robber-barons!!!

The next thing ya know, this Lenin dolt starts promoting a truely disasterous idea called:

Communism: You're OWNED. You exist at the indulgence of the state. The individual means nothing except in context with the needs of the collective. There is no incentive to work your ass off and reap the rewards, since there won't be any rewards. Safety, ergonomics, envionmental health? HAH! The New Soviet Man craves not these things....

The first thing Communist governments do is set up special communities where members of the Party are rewarded for their more valuable contributions to the collective. In other words, it's a members only club. That's right, it's like corporate America, where that's the whole idea in the first place. The main difference is that the bottom dwelling scum in America have indoor plumbing, cable TV, cars and roads to drive them on, food.....stuff like that.

In a Communist state, the propoganda value of slapping the sheet metal on 24 tractors in a shift is greater than the economic consequences of the fact that you drove in all the screws with a hammer.


Other Important Concepts

How business is supposed to work: You come up with a product or service that people want and/or need. You make the product and/or provide the service. You add up ALL the costs of the product and/or service, including: the costs of the materials, manufacturing, payroll, taxes, business lunches, advertising, envionmental offsets, bribes, benefits, business trips to tahiti, your home office space, the uber l33t laptop, the Escalade, toilet paper, the mistress's apartment, the silk suits and anything else you think you can foist on the buying public and you call that the cost of making the product. Then you add in a nice markup to pay for the trophy wife and all her expenses, the kids, the private schools, the yacht and the rich robber-baron lifestyle. You add up the cost of making the product and the nice markup and you have your wholesale price.

You sell the product and/or service to someone, who marks it up and resells it. This process is repeated as often as necessary until the product actually reaches the the buying public. All of those costs are added to the wholesale cost, along with a nice markup to come up with the retail price of the product.

In Communist countries, you go to the market to buy a toothbrush and come home with a potato, if you're lucky.

OK, there you have it, from a right wing perspective, four years of college and a degree in business administration in a few condensed paragraphs.

It's great to be

Low on meds Bunny boy?

Actually, I wrote this right after I took my meds....why?

You might wanna let them take effect next time before you start your psycobabble  

OK, I admit it! I was trolling!!! I was trying to stir up something...

I am such a failure....I've lost my touch...I used too much raw data...I didn't color it PC. So many mistakes, so little time...

Hey i'm trying to hook a brutha up here Bunny, but no one else is joining in.