-Caveat Lector-
~~for educational purposes only~~
[Title 17 U.S.C. section 107]
This Is 2002?
by Bob Wallace
Sometimes I have a hard time believing it is the year 2002. It
just doesn't feel like it. I was at least expecting levitating
skateboards, like the one Michael J. Fox had in one of the
Back to the Future movies. Not that I would ride it. My
dog would like it, I'll bet. There are few things funnier than
seeing a pug grin. I'd even buy him a little helmet, like the
one moronic adults wear when they ride their bikes on a
busy city street.
Instead, what I see are janitors on strike where I work.
These are adults, in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. They're making
$7.50 an hour. After taxes and deductions for their benefits,
there ain't much left. They certainly aren't going to be
buying skateboards, levitating or not. I saw one of the
elderly female janitors going into her apartment, located in
some not-so-hot public housing. Some of the cars on the
street were not only not levitating up and down, they
weren't going back and forth, not unless people pushed
them. It's a bit hard to keep a car running on $7.50 an hour,
even if it is an 250,000-mile ex-taxi that cost $200.
These janitors should be making $30,000 a year. My
grandfather, who was born in 1893, dropped out of school
in the 8th grade, yet was still able to raise nine kids and live
a middle-class existence. He installed and sanded wooden
floors. But in those days, taxes, inflation, regulations, and
the federal deficit were but a fraction of what they are now.
What he did is now impossible.
My father told me that when he was a kid, his father would
send him to the corner bar to bring back a big bucket of
beer for the workers to drink. My father was about ten. Let
a kid try that these days. And if you think that's bad, I saw
a 90-year-old man carded for a pack of cigars at a
Walgreens. "How old do you think I am?" he asked the
clerk. "I don't know," she replied. "I'll bet you couldn't find
your butt with both hands," he told her, and walked out.
That's when I found that trying to stifle laughter makes you
snort. She had a J-Lo "I Only Need One Hand" butt.
Speaking of butts, I'll bet mine is smarter than the entire
management of Walgreens.
When my grandfather was a kid, opiates were legal, so you
could buy Bayer heroin at the corner drugstore. But when
he was an adult, it was during Prohibition, so he was a
bootlegger. Too bad he didn't become filthy rich running
rum, like Joseph Kennedy. I wouldn't be driving a 2000
Chevy Cavilier. And I'd be in Congress, chasing Ted
Kennedy around, saying, "Here, stupid drunken fat socialist
piggie."
All people understand that when they get a tax cut, their
salaries go up. Few understand that when businesses get a
tax cut, they use the money to give employees raises,
otherwise other businesses will use their newfound money
to hire them away. (I really shouldn't say "all people."
Richard Gephardt, who is as lacking in brains as he is in
eyebrows, certainly doesn't understand it.)
Mean average wages haven't budged since about 1974,
which is when Nixon severed the dollar from gold (who
was advising him? His dog, Checkers?) In the 20th century,
the dollar lost 99% of its value through the government
inflating the money supply. Forty-five percent of that loss
has been since 1983, nine years after the Checkers-brained
Nixon allowed inflation to proceed with no brakes at all.
I believe if the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Bank hadn't
been created in 1913 (thereby allowing inflation), if the IRS
had never come into existence, if the federal deficit was a
single-digit fraction of what it is now, and if all these asinine
job-destroying regulations didn't exist, then those janitors
would be making $30,000 a year. Most people don't know
it, but half of what they make goes to taxes. Most of those
taxes are hidden. How many people know exactly how
much tax is hidden in the price of a gallon of gasoline?
Historically, people who have half of what they make taken
from them are called slaves.
I grew up on The Jetsons and the original Star Trek. (I
spent hours in front of the mirror, trying to raise my
eyebrow like Spock. And I succeeded. Even today, I can
raise my left eyebrow. But not my right.) As a little kid I
watched 2001: A Space Odyssey goggle-eyed. I halfway
expected 2001 to be like 2001. I expected Jetsons flying
cars and those little Star Trek saltshaker thingies that Bones
used to scan patients with ("You need a heart transplant."
Plop. "Okay, done.")
Today ain't even close to what I expected, and I blame it on
the State. (I won't blame it for my jumping off the barn roof
with a blanket as a parachute. At least I learned my lesson
by getting the wind knocked out of me. Seven years old,
and I was smarter than the feds. I only needed to make a
mistake once.)
In the past 3600 years there have been more than 14,000
wars. God knows where the human race would be if they
hadn't been fought. With space stations, and with colonies
on the Moon and Mars, I'm sure. Years ago I remember the
writer Philip Jose' Farmer (who is now 84 years old) writing
that as a teenager he hoped and prayed we'd be on Mars by
1940. I'll probably be dead before we have a colony on the
Moon. The only way I'll get to visit is if I have my ashes
put on a skateboard and levitated there.
I recently read an article that said it is theoretically possible
to build a graser-a gamma-ray laser-in orbit. If it was
powerful enough, it could be used to make the sun go
nova. I just finished a novel Joe Haldeman's Forever
Peace that postulated that within a few decades
nanotechnology will be so advanced we will be able to put
nanorobots next to a pile of sand and have them build a
house. The people I talk to find that dubious. They're more
liable to believe in an orbiting graser.
Such is what the State has done. They're always more
advanced in war than peace. They've got the public
believing it, too.
Now the US has turned into an Empire. I'm convinced we
are going to invade Iraq, followed by Iran, Saudi Arabia,
and maybe even Egypt. When that zombie Alan Greenspan
inflated the money supply in the 90s, it went into the dot
coms. Now his inflation is going to go into weapons
manufacturers. More advances in war, but not in peace.
Dubya the Tongue-and-Brain-Tied, thy name is Stupid. Not
only is my butt smarter than Dubya, so is my pug's butt.
Empires always fall. I don't understand why the deluded
people in the government, and their foolish lackeys in the
media the Rush Limbaughs and the Bill O'Reillys don't
know this (O'Reilly reminds me of Alan Dershowitz: a big
mouth almost completely unhinged from his brain). There
are, fortunately, people who do understand what is going
on. Unfortunately, they are a very small minority.
This very small minority is going to be the one that saves
civilization. They're the ones who are going to be a candle
in the dark. The ones who Albert Jay Nock called "The
Saving Remnant," the minority who understands the truth,
and passes it on to the future.
Who knows? Maybe one day the human race will get it
right. Maybe we'll somehow end up with government that
protects life, liberty and property, like it's supposed to do.
Maybe economists will give up the crackpot Keynesianism
and its belief in inflation, taxation and deficits. Maybe we'll
give up the Welfare/Warfare Empire. And if that day
comes, then janitors will make $30,000 a year. And,
possibly, my pug might just fly.
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