I missed that and the conversation was already going in quite a different direction. If you’re still here, you said:
Common sense,and almost 7 decades of watching how things birth,mature,and end ,here on earth,over and over.
I get that you claim to have some wisdom from living here a while. That might be true, but I don't know you personally other than through your writing in this thread - and what I see (including in my quote above) are exclusively evidence-free assertions. So, at this point, you don't have me convinced. And, again, since I don't know you and it's really hard to assess people's motivations on the internet, I can't rule out "agent provocateur" or, "useful idiot" - no insult intended, just an admittedly disrespectful, but in some ways accurate term for someone who has bought at least part the mainstream narrative without adequately questioning it.
I think you underestimate the degree to which we bathe in a sea of propaganda and manipulation, all intended to herd us in a particular direction.
I think you also underestimate how much your own biases creep into your predictions. For example, ivermectin will stop working, but the "vaccine" will not lose it's effectiveness or cause still undetected long term adverse effects. Sure, it could turn out that way, but perhaps more likely (evidence for that has been presented in many other threads here recently), it could be the other way around.
Just one more, but I could do this with every claim in your comment #32:
As society has had enough of demonstrations that lead to further hatreds..media stops covering them..that,eventually leads to people going back to just trying to make the best out of their lives.
Have you looked for evidence that hidden forces in the established power system are actually encouraging the hatred and division as part of a "divide and conquer" strategy?
Laws don’t make for a polite society, people following laws make for a polite society.
Money is a medium of exchange, and it’s value is determined by what people think it’s worth. Lose trust in laws or money, and things will get very interesting.
I’ve often said, this is one of the most interesting times to be alive in all of modern history.
I believe Schiff has our present economic outlook correct.
I am a fan of folks that call it right,before the carnage begins.As he has.
His take on Crypto,is interesting.
But I do think it will be part of the" basket",none the less.
Just not in its present form.
Another “aphorism” we hear over, and over, and over, is
“Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.”
Is this actually true?
Is there actually any objective evidence in favor?
Just stirring the pot.
If your motto is Question Everything
then this is something we might question.
Personally I’ve not found any correlation between the taxes I pay, and
the level of Civilization around me.
Lately, the equation seems to have a negative coefficient, if there’s any linkage at all.
– Chuck
Taxation exists as a feedback loop mechanism that forces individuals to use a specific type of currency. Taxes must be paid in USD, ensuring USD as a valid method of exchange.
I know some have posited that with MMT we won’t need taxes anymore, but half of taxation as I see it is social engineering.
Most of the price of a pack of cigarettes where I live is taxes. Some of that can be argued to pay for the healthcare that smokers require but mostly its an attempt to curtail smoking by making it too expensive.
I think we will only have more “civilization” crammed down our throats going forward.
I’m probably crazy but when I look at the covid response, the Fed’s policy, the tac of market regulators (Elon and the Silver market to take two examples), Woke politics and police defunding + barbed wire in Washington, I sometimes feel like our leaders are spending credibility at a rate suggesting they know credibility won’t be worth anything soon so they may as well cash out.
If you knew the USD dominance could be measured in a few years or even months, why not print as many as you want as fast as you can?
If you know there is going to be a failure in the silver market, why not just brag about holding it down until the bitter end?
I don’t have an example for the Covid vaccine program because its just too dark, but… seriously who is gonna believe anything from Big Pharma in 2 years time?
Maybe someone with a better grasp of history can convince me they really are just this dumb? It feels like we aren’t far from seeing the brick wall at the back of the theater that Frank Zappa talked about.
… They’d pay us in USD but tax us in silver.
I don’t know exactly what game they’re playing at.
But as WOT has so properly pointed out,
It’s starting to look like the end game.
Everywhere I look, I sense desperation.
Maybe I’m missing something.
I dunno.
I’m not an economist. Just a retired engineer who
still has some remnants of a working brain.
Thankfully.
Yes,I see this everywhere these days.Unfortuately.
Turn on cnn,you see blm folks demanding police reform,and telling of abuse for not being white.
Lots of these personal stories are filled with white hate.
Nothing is said about how society is angry about black crime?
Turn on Fox,anytime,all you see is Democrat hate,being dished out.
A way of getting back at peoples trump hatreds and the questioning of him doing the cright or wrong thing for our country.
Society went to a new level on these issues.
Both sides,went to extremes.
But who decided that was the way to go?
initially?
We have a lot of pent up frustrations in this country, because of the" melting pot" aspect,of it, imho.
Now ,we are declaring wars with each other over covid truths,vaccines, politics(much nastier then the norm),as well as pharmacology,Western medicine,and crowd control,truth in general.
We are going to extremes here too.
What happened to just working things out with common sense.
Key points ,lots of us forget or refuse to think about,are these…
Folks do not take into account the petro-dollar is a key to world stability.(at least it was).
We are not alone in this ever connected world these days,although some want and act as if we are.
Nuclear capabilities are now in the hands of the small countries.
Folks do not take into account,the changing of political parties,is GOOD for this country.
Folks do not take into account,without western medicine ,in this country anyhow,we would all die decades earlier.
What I have learned in life is that NOTHING is perfect.We take the good ,bad,and imperfect and try to improve it.
Often this leads to over reach (greed),but thats why we have laws and common sense.
Yet todays noise makers want it all,NOW.
As long as they get their immediate needs met.
My Dad told me he lived in the best time to be alive,I wish I do not have to tell this to my son,but when I see folks with their face buried in their phones 24/7,and all the hatreds ands division,I can not help but wonder.
Yes taxes on ciggs are to discourage smoking, so society does not have to pick up the cost of smoker related hospital care,true.
Some folks want taxes on the obese,because of this same reason.
The difference?
You HAVE to eat,you do not have to smoke.
Interesting gripe.
I use to smoke for 15 years,I was thin.
Now I do not smoke, and I am considered ,obese?
Yes, the world is getting trickier to navigate.
At the very beginning when everyone was calling this the China virus or the Wuhan virus, which would be the logical name(Lyme, Zika, Ebola) it all changed on a dime when the CCP complained. The mainstream media is the mouthpiece of the CCP.
Just today the Australian news has reports of “grey zone” war. https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/china-already-engaging-in-irregular-war-with-us-in-the-grey-zone/news-story/8cabbb1179b77d2845f6e700bbfad62f
Again I will point to the Bill of Rights! We are not going to agree on everything. We need to protect our freedoms because once those are gone it doesn’t matter what we as individuals think, we will be beholden to the government, which may well be controlled by China and/or Russia.
As I watch this Covid thing unfold it really makes me question all the health narratives. Remember when eggs were bad for you? Fats were terrible and we replaced everyone with sugar. Then the other side paid for science and low and behold eggs are fine and sugar is the villain.
Okay, so sucking smoke into your lungs probably isn’t wise. (Meanwhile marijuana is medicinal, so sucking that smoke into your lungs if okay, really?) If I’m stopped at the light and look to my right, I’d much prefer the driver next to me to be smoking a cigarette than a joint or drinking a beer.
So let’s talk nicotine, is it really more dangerous than Xanax, ADHD meds or antidepressants? It is self administered so you don’t need to engage with the medical community’s so big pharma gets nothing.
Was the vilification of tobacco because states needed a tax revenue stream? Or did big pharma need the self medication with nicotine to stop so they could sell their drugs?
Truth be told a life long smoker is cheaper for the system then someone who is healthy. The smoker pays into SS for years and then dies a 65. Meanwhile the healthy person lives until 85. Twenty years of SS, wellness exams and reduced property taxes costs a lot more. Add in the appetite suppressant characteristics of nicotine, thin smokers that die at 75 are also cheaper than the obese 75 yo that need knee replacement and more healthcare workers to handle daily care near the end of life.
I say all this as someone who has never smoked.
My feeling is that cigs are bad for you but sometimes I wonder. I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s when everybody smoked. People would come into your house and lite up a cigarette, they smoked in offices, movie theaters, restaurants, bars, airplanes, etc, etc.
We were told that cigarettes cause cancer for decades. Now, very few people smoke in comparison yet the cancer rates have not gone down. Based on what they told us for all those years…cancer should be almost a rare condition by now.
I agree with all your points. Cigarettes let me concentrate when I needed to; I would not have been nearly as productive in my career without them. After 35 years I quit cold turkey, mainly because of the increasing sin tax. It was not too difficult to stop although I did gain 20 pounds.
Regulatory capture drives FDA, NIH, CDC guidelines to favor whatever companies can profit from. They are presented with cooked science which is pretty much in-your-face to real scientists but governmental edicts can not be questioned anymore. Lawsuits in genuine courts could fix that but judges seem to fear tackling anything controversial. The Supreme Court should be sacked as an example, for refusing to hear the election challenges.
I too am old enough to remember the 80’s. I had friends that were smokers. That slightly odd new kid, automatically had a social group and someone to talk to for six minutes if they smoked. Today they goto the therapist, get a script for some antidepressants and still have no social group.
And you are right if they were the huge cause of cancer they were made out to be, wouldn’t those numbers have dropped?
Ironically, if someone really wanted to look at it, I’d bet school shooting have gone up as we’ve taken nicotine out of our schools.
Kathy,
I think the school shootings reflect an overall repression of the human spirit by an increased authoritarianism [ of which the prohibitions and taxes on cigarettes are just reflections ].
When I was a kid everybody over age 8 played independently without parental supervision. The kids’ who’s parents didnt let them out were weird. We got home from school, got on our bikes or grabbed footballs and were gone until dinner time.
At school we played like wildmen on the yard. There were fights all the time. After a fight the teachers made us shake hands and that was the end of it. You might punch a guy in the nose today and be best buddies tomorrow.