1. Good News
2. Product Highlight
3. Brainpower tip
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Ours is a debt-based economy. Is this good or bad? Debt is not inherently evil. Whether debt is good or bad depends on what purpose the debt serves. Typically, it's not a good purpose. Whether it's good or bad for an economy to be based on debt is a different question from whether debt itself is good or bad. And there is one correct answer to that question. A healthy economy isn't debt-based, it's output-based. Basing an economy on debt is bad, period. What does output-based mean? Consider this example. You work X hours producing widgets. You are contributing to the economy in a positive way. But suppose you merely move money around, and are able to charge a fee (e.g., compound interest) for that. Now the economy is serving you, rather than the other way around. You aren't contributing anything to make the pie bigger, but you sure as heck are chomping on that pie. I like to put debt into one of two categories:
You won't find debt put into exactly these terms in standard economic texts (I know, I studied economics at the graduate level and over the past 40 years have read several hundred books on economics). But this way of thinking is useful when considering whether taking on a particular debt is a good idea or a bad one. Transaction-enabling debt example: My company operates an e-commerce business. We buy inventory on our AMEX (special card gives us 60 days to pay it), then sell the items online. AMEX puts us in debt to enable the transaction. We reduce the debt by selling the goods and paying AMEX what they loaned us. We never pay interest on the debt, because what we go into debt for produces a cash flow stream with which we can pay back the debt and have something additional left over. Structural debt example: ACME Corp takes a $50 million loan to buy back stock. Buying it back this way boosts the stock price, and thus transfers wealth to executives with big stock options plus it enriches the brokerage handling the transactions. But now ACME has a debt that can't be paid from proceeds from the stock buyback. If ACME had bought raw materials to make products to sell, that would be a different story. ACME has taken on structural debt.
Transaction-enabling debt can be long-term. For example, consider the 40 year mortgage. If the person buying the home took on a correctly-sized mortgage, the loan allows this person to make reasonable mortgage payments instead of paying the same in rent. Over time, this person builds equity in the home. Of course, if the mortgage is oversized relative to that person's income then that person is merely a debt slave. Structural debt is never short-term, but short-term behavior can produce structural debt. For example, the USA just spent $13 billion to build yet another aircraft carrier we don't need. It's an amazing ship, but we simply cannot afford it because the purchase adds to our already toxic structural debt. The USA should be divesting itself of costly-to-own assets instead of building more. We should be running a budget surplus, but are running large deficits instead. This puts us into the trap in which structural debt often strangles its victims: compound interest. Where does the money to pay interest come from? Cogitate on that one for a while. When you figure it out, you won't like the answer. Why do we have a debt-based economy, and whom does it serve? The answer to both questions: The Financial Sector, most notably banksters and Wall Street tycoons. There's a long history to their shenanigans, if you get time do some research. Short of imposing the Rule of Law in the USA, a task that seems insurmountable at this time, what can we regular folks do about debt? On a personal level, don't take on structural debt. If you borrow, do so for a reason that will produce financial gain for you. When you borrow, keep it at a reasonable level relative to your income. Don't, for example, borrow $50,000 for a fancy car when your income is more in line with a $20,000 car that will get you where you need to be and probably with lower operating costs. When you look at debt this way, you can readily see that most of the reasons people have for taking on debt are bad reasons. The vast majority (perhaps 99.9999%) of consumer debt would not exist if consumers used this way of thinking about debt. That is, people would live within their means instead of plopping down plastic to make debt slaves of themselves in exchange for things that really don't make their lives any better. If you look at the typical credit card statement, almost nothing on there was worth buying--fancy lattes, meals out instead of bagging your lunch for work, large phone bills, etc. What about your credit card statements? Review them this month with this kind of thinking. You will probably see how you can instantly make yourself wealthier instead of more in debt. |
5. Security tip
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The federally funded terrorist organization known as the IRS serves only one purpose: to subjugate the population through systematic abuse and terrorism. That's why IRS hiring policies slant heavily toward hiring dishonest psychopaths.
Most Americans are aware of the terrorism. Extremely few do not quake with
fear when contacted by these whackos. But what many Americans don't know is
the IRS has long been full of tax cheats. A 1985 report by the GAO revealed
that of all occupations, the greatest percentage of tax cheats are those
working on IRS Collections. This report shows nothing has changed in 34
years: The GAO also found, in 1990, that IRS employees stole 4300 computers from their own offices. At about $2,500 each back then, that works out to about $100,000 in property theft. Not one of these bandits was arrested or even fired. IRS managers also assured Congress that no sensitive taxpayer information was also stolen, as if they somehow could know that. Members of Congress, terrified of possible retribution, accepted this obviously phony excuse and did nothing.
Violating laws is SOP with the IRS. Some of the things they get away with
are beyond the pale. In 1984, a band of IRS agents descended upon a Michigan
daycare center and held the little kids hostage at gunpoint. They were
trying to collect taxes the daycare center didn’t even owe, and they chose
the kidnapping and ransom model to achieve this end. |
6. Health tip/Fitness tips
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Photo taken about one week before 40th High School Class Reunion. Note that the information provided here will likely conflict with the "fad of the moment" and other unsustainable, unproductive ways of looking at health and fitness. Article appears below. See my climbing videos here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCyb67uKOxW_TsG6BVPbBIQ/videos
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Training regimens and workout routines vary. While there is no right way per se, there are plenty of wrong ways. If a training method violates enough principles of training, it's wrong. Sometimes, right versus wrong is all relative. For example, consider the idea of working out three days a week using a full body circuit. For people who need to learn form or need to get to a basic conditioning level, this is probably a good way to go. If you are just starting out, your body isn't yet conditioned well enough for the rigors of a high intensity split routine. But the more experienced body builder reaches a plateau with circuit training because intensity is sacrificed, thus the split routine is the right way to go. So with those thoughts in mind, I will share with you my training schedule over a typical 14 day period. In addition to this, I do a daily head forward posture correction exercise.
From this, you can see several patterns.
You can see a problem or two with this (or any) approach. For example, if I climb on Sundays and then train legs the following day how does that work? Climbing is sometimes brutal on the legs. What I do is adjust the exercises. As Arnold said, "You have to listen to your body." Maybe after that particular climbing session, I need to do fewer squats but my leg extensions and leg curls aren't affected. Or if that session was heavy on heel-hooking, it's the leg curls that have to be cut back. This is far from the only way to train. But from it you can see important principles being followed. One of those is when you train hard, you need sufficient rest. That's also why I lower the intensity just before a climb (I don't want climbing to suffer) and why even the days I mow the lawn are influenced by the combination of leg training and climbing. Rest is crucial. A "principle" that would be incorrectly taken from this is you have to work those particular combinations. Some people work biceps and triceps together and get great results. Others divide their workouts into Big Group, Little Group, Big Group, Little Group. So they might do a day of all compound exercises followed by a day of all isolation exercises. That works, too. You need to find a way to maximize how effective your workouts are at stimulating the adaptive response without overtraining. That means limiting each session to a particular muscle group goal and allowing ample time before hitting it again. | |
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At
www.supplecity.com, you'll find plenty of informative, authoritative
articles on maintaining a lean, strong physique. It has nothing to
do with long workouts or impossible to maintain diets. In fact:
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7. Factoid
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Eating meat contributes heavily to fossil fuel-based pollution, mostly because of the deforestation to plant the corn for feeding the cattle and the petrochemicals used to grow the corn. |
8. Thought for the Day
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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines. |
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Authorship
The views expressed in this e-newsletter are generally not shared by criminals, zombies, or brainwashed individuals.Except where noted, this e-newsletter is entirely the work of Mark Lamendola. Anything presented as fact can be independently verified. Often, sources are given; but where not given, they are readily available to anyone who makes the effort.
Mark provides information from either research or his own areas of established expertise. Sometimes, what appears to be a personal opinion is the only possibility when applying sound logic--reason it out before judging! (That said, some personal opinions do appear on occasion).
The purpose of this publication is to inform and empower its readers (and save you money!).
Personal note from Mark: I value each and every one of you, and I hope that shows in the diligent effort I put into writing this e-newsletter. Thank you for being a faithful reader. Please pass this newsletter along to others.