Share it fairly, but don't take a slice of my pie

May 10, 2003 - 10:09 p.m.

Last Five Entries:
The Party's Over
July 11, 2004
The Next Day
2004-03-31
My Nervous Breakdown
2004-03-30
True Confessions: My Life as a Female Impersonator
March 15, 2004
Bite Me
February 29, 2004

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I don't have a great deal of income flow at the moment. My caseload working for Hoover is a little spotty. Credit card interest payments and prescription expenses take up a lot of what I've been bringing in. And then I have to save up for tuition for my next semester in school.

And yet, the second season of Babylon 5 has come out on DVD. It costs $79. And I am going to buy it.

To try to make up for such a luxury purchase, I'll just eat ramen for a while. That will take a long time to add up to the expense of the DVD, but I'm going to put the DVD on my credit card, so who cares when I pay it off anyway? It will make only a minor increase in that monthly payment.

Of course, I'll be screwed when it comes time to pay for my tuition, and I don't have any room left on my credit card, and no money saved up. But the month now is May, and I don't have to pay tuition until September.

As you can tell, my spending habits haven't changed since I was eighteen. One day, while in my dorm room, I received a telemarketed offer for a credit card. I might have been wary of a telemarketing offer, however, this credit card offer was being made exclusively to members of one of those national honor societies of which I was a member. I felt special and privileged to be receiving such an offer. So I obtained a credit card, and I have live in the Hell of Debt for fourteen years.

However, I'm not financially irresponsible. Actually, I'm being patriotic. My budget looks a lot like Bush's proposed budget.

I want a Babylon 5 DVD, and Bush wants to increased military spending to $400 billion. Just like I'm going to make a small sacrifice of eating ramen, Bush will be making a small sacrifice slashing education and social services. Just as I don't have the income to afford the DVD, Bush is actually cutting taxes to benefit the wealthiest of Americans. And just like I'm not going to have any money for tuition in a few months, it won't be too long before soaring deficets break the social security system.

Bush may have had a C average at Yale, but I bet he got an A in Reaganomics.

Theoretically, giving money to a bunch of rich folk, while keeping the money of poor folk like me, will help the economy. No, I'm not using the correct rheteoric. The money isn't going to rich folk, but to businesses. By coincidence, the big business that will benefit from the dividend tax break are owned by rich folk. The reason that giving money to rich folk- sorry, businesses- will create jobs is because the rich folk are selfless, generous people, who want nothing more to spend their money for the benefit of poor folk. They would never give CEOs obscene raises or squirrel the money away to hold out over bad economic times. The rich folk are certainly wiser in use of money than poor folk. While we poor folk might waste our money on frivilous things, like donations to Democratic presidental candidates, those rich folk will spend their money on wise things, like donations to Bush's re-election campaign.

It gets even better, because the military spending helps the rich folk even more. Increased military capability means more regime changes, with associated rebuilding projects. The rebuilding contracts are awarded to the rich folk, especially the ones who contribute to Bush's re-election campaign, and even more especially the ones who know Bush's vice president. The rebuilding doesn't cost American citizens, because much of it is paid for with resources stolen from the overthrown country. (Of course, you already paid for the military to overthrow it in the first place, but you should have forgotten that by now.)

There will never be a lack of countries to overthrow. Part of the new military spending is for development of low-yield nuclear weapons. This ought to scare countries like North Korea and Iran into stepping up their own nuclear programs, in a futile attempt to keep pace with ours. And when those other countries try to emulate the United States' nuclear prowess, then that's a perfect pretext for keeping the world safe by overthrowing the evil countries developing weapons of mass destruction.

This makes other countries scared, and they try to develop nuclear weapons to deter the United States. That gives the United States a justification for more military spending to go and invade those new countries, which scares even more countries, and the whole cycle continues like one wacky perpetual motion machine.

The beauty of it is that the poor folk pay for the means, and the rich folk benefit from it.

It goes on until (1) the United States' economy collapses and joins the former Soviet Union in the where-are-they-now file, or (2) Americans somehow get a clue and vote for a good president.

If that second option happens, I'll take a look at my own personal budget and try to make it sensible. Until then, Reaganomics for everyone!