09/15/10 Paris, France – Cut the deficits? Not in Zombie Nation.
As we mentioned last week, zombies took over the nation in 2008, with the election of Barack Obama. He was the zombie candidate.
Now comes word, from The Washington Post, that there’s been a sharp rise in disability filings at the Social Security Administration. People who were perfectly capable of doing their work before the financial crisis hit in ’07 have been thrown onto the unemployment roles. Desperate for income, they find they have not just lost their jobs. They’ve been disabled.
That gives them a way to get money from the taxpayer even after their unemployment benefits have run out. They become not just temporary zombies, in other words, but permanent ones.
The trouble with zombies is that they’re expensive to maintain…and inherently dangerous. Which is to say, the welfare state works fine as long as there’s enough money to keep the zombies happy. But when you get too many zombies…and not enough money to feed them properly…you’re in danger. Well, the welfare state itself is in danger.
Imagine. More than 200 million zombies. If each one ate two eggs a day it would take 400 million chickens to keep the zombies supplied.
“But wait…hold on there, Bill…you’re not seriously saying that every unemployed person is a zombie. Many people lose jobs through no fault of their own. They live on savings…then go back to work. That is hardly the mark of a zombie.”
Yes, of course…Mr. Compassion and Sensibility…
Don’t get us wrong. We love zombies. Some of our best friends are zombies…and a lot of our relatives! Heck, we might be one too if they paid us better.
We’re not saying that everyone who loses his job becomes a zombie. But that’s what makes this Great Correction actually worse than the Great Depression of the ’30s. There were fewer zombie supports back then. So people HAD to work. And they did. They worked on farms. And then, when the war started, they worked in factories.
The point is, they couldn’t become zombies because – even with all Roosevelt’s efforts to create a zombie economy – there just wasn’t enough money to support them.
This is, of course, why there are so few zombies in the emerging markets too. Not that there aren’t a lot of people who would like to zombies…and they’ll get their turn!…but right now, the emerging markets are still too poor to be able to afford a large class of leeches.
In the ’30s in America, as in most of the emerging economies today, people had to work. They might have worked cheap. They might have done work they didn’t want to do. They might have had bad backs and weak knees…but they went to work anyway. They couldn’t afford to be disabled.
If you go to China or Vietnam or one of the industrious emerging markets…you won’t even see people sit down. They don’t have time.
Work…work…work…work for wages…work for relatives…work for food…work for fun…
…it’s what you do, when you have no choice.
Regards,
Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning
Bill Bonner
Since founding Agora Inc. in 1979, Bill Bonner has found success and garnered camaraderie in numerous communities and industries. A man of many talents, his entrepreneurial savvy, unique writings, philanthropic undertakings, and preservationist activities have all been recognized and awarded by some of America's most respected authorities. Along with Addison Wiggin, his friend and colleague, Bill has written two New York Times best-selling books, Financial Reckoning Day and Empire of Debt. Both works have been critically acclaimed internationally. With political journalist Lila Rajiva, he wrote his third New York Times best-selling book, Mobs, Messiahs and Markets, which offers concrete advice on how to avoid the public spectacle of modern finance. Since 1999, Bill has been a daily contributor and the driving force behind The Daily Reckoning. Dice Have No Memory: Big Bets & Bad Economics from Paris to the Pampas, the newest book from Bill Bonner, is the definitive compendium of Bill’s daily reckonings from more than a decade: 1999-2010.
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Are the scientists now experimenting with zombie-antidote?
When are you going to bash the rich who took the majority of the wealth this past 20 years? Who on earth really believe that you create wealth by funneling most of the wealth into the hands of the few? The rich don’t spend their money and they’re isn’t enough of them to buy the manufactured goods of whats left that we make.Of course these people are fileing for SS. What else would they do? You should be glad they are not grabbing guns and knives and storming Wall Street. The French know how to handle your kind.
At MJJP. Spoken like a true leech/zombie.
Have to agree with MJJP on this one. The only growth industry left in this country is document shredding. What the ruling elites haven’t sucked out for themselves has been funneled by them to every thrid world nation on the planet at the expense of American jobs.
you blame obama for the economic problems of the usa? seriously? things were fine until he came along? was there a better choice? i cannot take you seriously.
gosh MJJP–I’ve been working 70 hour weeks for the last 40 years to attain wealth, and you mean there’s somebody in charge of funneling it? boy, did i mess up.
Can Goldman Sach’s structure a swap deal to restore the trade deficit by exporting zombies to emerging markets? This new source of export income will be funnelled to the rich and help keep banks balance sheets below 22 times gearing once QE 2 runs out.
this picture Bill is tragic but I can’t stop laughing… thank you!
BB…bad article in a bad form….Where’s your “sources” for all this “zombie” talk…?
You do yourself cred damage by writing this sort of trash…..
I’m disappointed.
BB, If you love zombie, then marry a female zombie. I will send you a wedding gift.
Love forever!!! till eternity.
doug stewart said:
“was there a better choice?”
Ron Paul
——
MJJP,
Keep in mind that there are other “rich” besides those who parasitically suck the life out of the rest of us and our economy. Without people who have money we’d have no jobs, and if there was no profit to be made we’d have no entrepreneurs.
I’m broke, my business is dead, and I voted for Obama. I know he’s not the only one who contributed to the dire situation we’re in, but that doesn’t excuse his in-your-face lies and misdeeds – he’s a puppet like all the others before him and his willing participation in the scheme makes him as guilty as the rest of them.
I was a patsy in 2008, but I’ll never play that role again.
END the FED (the sooner the better)
Yep. this article is offensive, not funny.
you really live in another reality, Bill…obviously, you don’t know anyone who has suffered at the hands of unemployment or disability….it is very easy for you to judge and create myths around what you see as a “scam” as you most likely will always have your systems in place to support you….not everyone is so fortunate…. maybe you need to talk to the real workers of this country to get a better perspective on what life is like for them rather than pontificating from your ivory tower….
If truth be told Bill,you really exist in another planet………
or your dream world………..
The people who are suffer from the job less…….
you don’t know about their pain…………