THE DISMAL SCIENCE DEPT./
ALEXANDER HAMILTON DIV.

I recently got a letter from the IRS telling me that, contrary to all the news I’d heard, I might indeed be eligible for “the stimulus.” But I had to apply, and I only had until October 15 — now extended to Nov. 21 (guess why).

Gosh, I sure could use some of that there stimulus… my computer is so damn old, it would be great to have a new one… But I’m one of the undeserving poor, aren’t I? So why were they telling me I was deserving? Maybe it isn’t Onyourownavirus, after all. Maybe I have the same right as everybody. Finally I screwed my courage to the sticking place, and applied for what everybody else got free.

The story turned into a fine illustration of the evils of debt-based money. I share it to show how the system goes out of its way, intentionally and capriciously, to lock in class structures and lock in the failure of the poor. Click, abandon hope, and…enter.

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The warning may be just a Google-not-talking-to-Apple thing, a formality, exacerbated by my old hardware. I think, I could access a safe modern browser at the public library…but — oh yeah, that resource isn’t there any more for the tech-less. A safety warning is a discouraging hassle, and I begin to calculate my opportunity cost in going forward.

Opportunity Cost (econ.) the cost of an investment (money, resources, time, etc.) in terms of its best alternative use. [Fr. opporun — Latin ob-, before portus, a harbor.]

— Chambers English Dictionary

Here the opportunity cost in clicking ahead seems low, but there’s a deeper economic law than “time is money,” specifically when it comes to red tape:

The Aborrence of Futility: Economist Thorstein Veblen perceived humans have an abhorrence of futility. That is, we instinctively avoid toxic life-sucking swindling bullshit that wastes time, wastes resources, insults you, addles your brain, wears you out, and leads to increased alienation.

So the opportunity cost just rose quite a bit, for the task seemed more likely to be futile. But ah, that new computer… “Be an optimist for once. Nothing ventured nothing gained. I may already be a winner!”

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That propensity for purposeful activity, and that repugnance to all futility of effort, which belong to man by virtue of his character as an agent, do not desert him when he emerges from the naive communal culture where the dominant note of life is the unanalysed and undifferentiated solidarity of the individual with the group with which his life is bound up. When he enters upon the predatory stage, where self-seeking in the narrower sense becomes the dominant note, this propensity goes with him still, as the pervasive trait that shapes his scheme of life. The propensity for achievement and the repugnance to futility remain the underlying economic motive. The propensity changes only in the form of its expression and in the proximate objects to which it directs the man’s activity. Under the regime of individual ownership the most available means of visibly achieving a purpose is that afforded by the acquisition and accumulation of goods; and as the self-regarding antithesis between man and man reaches fuller consciousness, the propensity for achievement — the instinct of workmanship — tends more and more to shape itself into a straining to excel others in pecuniary achievement. Relative success, tested by an invidious pecuniary comparison with other men, becomes the conventional end of action. The currently accepted legitimate end of effort becomes the achievement of a favorable comparison with other men; and therefore the repugnance to futility to a good extent coalesces with the incentive of emulation.

Thorstein Veblen, The Theory Of The Leisure Class, 1899

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Dumfounert, it took me a while to realize what they were saying. They weren’t beaming 1,200 digital zeroes and ones into my bank account, because the IRS can’t verify my information without an “outside credit card.” As if I were signing up for a ski condo. As if the IRS itself, which has all my information, weren’t able to certify my identity more reliably than any new bank. The ruse is, the claim that my bank is not a competent enough judge of my identity, for me to get stimulus. The logic is, that only people already in debt get any credit. And that’s the American System, to a T-bill.

The scales fall from my eyes. I get “stimulus” only if I sign up for a new credit card, or buy a house or boat, or take out a car loan. They want me to go irresponsibly on the hook for money I know I can’t repay. Here I thought I was being prudent, cutting up my credit cards years ago.

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Remember everyone who gets this letter is unemployed or unbanked. On these criteria alone, any credit card we’re likely to get carries a 30% interest rate.

Usury: 1) the iniquitous taking of interest on a loan. 2) Faithless lending at rates past borrowers’ reasonable means to repay, in order to force failure; often, to dispossess them of their surety. 3) Front-loading a borrower with debt with easy short terms, that will balloon quickly and force default. 4) Lending to individual borrowers at any rate that, if general, would guarantee the over-leveraging of the system. 5) Lending at any rate past a system’s natural limit of sustainable growth; estimated at approximately 3%.

— Chambers English Dictionary, definition 1. The others, VVV

Why would they encourage poor people to binge on risky credit for the sake of an upfront cash rebate? Don’t they care that they’re setting many people up to fail and go bankrupt?

All money today is digitally created. Why does the stimulus for the unemployed come with a steep price tag, when stimulus or the employed is a series of effortless *pings*? I have a bank account, but I was not eligible to offer my bank as a payment mediator. I have to take out new credit.

The key to understanding this is that when a bank issues credit for X dollars, it gets to create for the bank’s own account, 10 x X dollars on the balance sheet. Now, banks have tons of phantom wealth, issued straight from the government to the rich, but ultimately phantom wealth must run to ground or it evaporates. The way to force people to go back to work all of America’s non-existent jobs, they reason, is to load them up with credit they will work desperately to pay off. If they sign up. Then, if the citizen goes bust (like the poor always do, somehow, nudge nudge) that’s their fault and their bankruptcy. Whether or not the citizen fails, the bank gets to keep the remaining 90% of the dollars in the transaction. Banks of course, being too big to fail.

Needless to say, Patient Reader, the View is not feeling stimulated to open new Visa credit accounts, or buy a new car. Though, it’s probably the best thing I could do personally — open as many new cards as I can, grab the stimulus and run up all the new credit buying everything I really need and have been staving off –and then just default on it later, like they seem to want me to. But I won’t. I guess I must just already be a wiener.

UPDATE: Too rich NOT to repost, coming out just after I posted my blog. Awash in red ink: US posts record $3.1T 2020 budget deficit. Hmmmm….I’m glad I’m not on the hook for much of thatr. Tsk, tsk, tsk, all those stimulus checks to the rich, and tax cuts to corporations, and insane squabbling over who’s going to pay for New York’s ventilators, seems to have blown the deficit sky high. In this light, it appears my letter from the IRS, is really just a very sad scraping of the barrel, a last hustling-up of suckers from park benches, pinning carnations in their lapels, and telling them, go out and get ’em tiger, we’re all counting on you to pay off this horrible mess — er, seize the day. Let us know if you conquer Mexico and Canada and seize all their assets! Good luck! https://news.yahoo.com/us-budget-deficit-hits-time-180858849.html