Readers are concerned about the sorry state of affairs in Illinois.
Specifically, reader Mark asked about Ellen Brown’s July 23 article Saving Illinois: Getting More Bang for the State’s Bucks.
Brown says Illinois pensions have “surplus funds and rainy day funds tucked away around the state.”
That statement alone is enough place her in the looney bin, but it gets much worse.
She proposes guaranteeing the pensions, liquidating them, then paying down the state of Illinois debt. The results would then be “the pension fund would be self-funding; the state would have a bank that could create credit to support the local economy and pensioners would have money to spend, increasing demand.”
Her magic is then compounded because “Better yet, it [the state] could borrow from its own bank and pay the interest to itself. The proceeds could then go to its pensioners rather than to bondholders.”
Why stop with pensioners? Let’s borrow a trillion dollars, pay the interest to ourselves and live happily ever after, stimulating demand. Yeah, right.
If I Only Had a Bank!
As much as I hate central banks (and I do think they should all be eliminated – to be replaced by free markets), bureaucrats in the US would likely do much worse on monetary policy than the central banks.
Please consider this scary video by Ellen Brown.
The idea that North Dakota, a small loosely-populated farm state is in good shape only because it has a state bank is preposterous.
Worse yet, Brown takes that absurd position to the extreme with a proposal to end the Fed and put California and Illinois politicians (state politicians in general) in charge of printing money to support union causes.
Brown understands various problems with the Fed, but proposes a solution that is worse, putting politicians in charge of printing presses.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
The plan was to get Hillary elected so that massive state and city bailouts could commence (to mostly democrat run cities and states).
That plan is now off the table for at least 8 years.
Can Chicago and Illinois last eight more years?
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With any luck, no.
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I don’t know about city and state, but it’s getting interesting at the county level. They tried to put a tax on soda and other sweetened beverages. The retailers fought back and now there appears to be layoffs coming to Cook County.
Of course, this means law enforcement will get cut immediately in order to produce dramatic effect. Prosecutors and detention facility staff included.
https://www.google.com/amp/www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-cook-county-law-enforcement-layoffs-met-20170714-story,amp.html
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Good, its cheaper for citizens to shoot criminals than house them and feed them so they can have sex with each other.
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does eight presume a trump re-election? what are the odds of that? i suspect not high.
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You were told the odds of him being elected were not high.
Same polling methodology being used to trumpet his “unpopularity” as were used to predict a Clinton win.
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It doesn’t matter who you vote for.
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So there’s almost no problem that cannot be made worse….
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Is there a reason after years of thoughtful postings my comments are now awaiting moderation?
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Is your IP address changing?
Working on a different computer?
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…try switching to milquetoast comments and see what happens.
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We tried that one during the Revolutionary War. “Not worth a Continental” was the result.
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The determined are hard at it… Determined to throw out all honesty and common sense.
Short term, the dishonest scammers prosper until they don’t…. The time of they don’t is approaching.
If you are awake… Keep building your Noah’s ark…be in the remnant that survives to rebuild. The storm clouds are rapidly darkening.
Is it time to form committees of correspondence… stand under the liberty tree.
Purposely publishing my email: hydrorescue@yahoo.com
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won’t happen. its over, Chris.
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Have read the article of Hellen Brown (and her books). She is not a nutcase and I am very surprised to hear this from Mish. Indeed they can save Illinois and the rest of the US as they saved the banks in 2008. Although I have big doubts about giving the printing money power to politicians. But Mish, you want to eliminate Central Banks, who are running an printing our money, who do you want then to run our money system ? The bank of North Dakota is doing very well since 1919. Abraham Lincoln did very well with printing his own money, but got him killed. At the other hand history was not kind for most who started printing. So what is your pick Mish ?
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Who do I want to run the Fed – No one
I would abolish it
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Hi Mish, Sorry but you dit not reply on my question. You need to put another money system in place. Which one and who is going to rule it ? The problem is that he who’s in control of our money system, he rules the world and our money is all debt now. No debt, no money. Pitty that most people are not aware of this. To those picking on Ellen Brown, I advise first to read her book, “Web of Debt” and a few others as for instance : “The Creature from Jekyll Island” from E. Griffin. But we are discussing a very hypothetical question. The International Bankers are not going to give away their power over the world. Maybe they are right that you cannot leave this responsibility to politicians and the people ? But they did certainly dit not do a good job either. I also would like to abolish them, but who’s gonna take over, someone will have to create money. That’s all I want to say. For the rest, I love your comments.
Best regards,
Erik
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No one needs to create money.
Any amount is sufficient.
I discussed this many times. Here is one from 2009.
https://mishtalk.com/2009/12/14/thoughts-on-feds-exit-strategy-stephen-roach-vs-mish/
Scroll down to the section: What is the proper supply of money.
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No amount of money is sufficient. Money is the one, & only, thing you cannot have too much of. That’s why banks can create credit, otherwise called printing ‘money’. As long as their credit trades ‘money good’, they can create it endlessly a.k.a central banks.
When the credit created is actually junk, yet trades ‘money’, you have yourself a type of Ponzi scheme a.k.a central banks.
In a free market, banks will create credit based on productive assets that actually amortise, that is, pay off. These ‘Real Bills’ are of course amortised in something whose quality, so value, cannot fluctuate like a bankers promise to pay.
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JD, all Ponzi schemes come to an end.
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As I said Mr Franklin. To wit, ‘As long as their credit trades ‘money good’…..
For what it is worth though, the almost infinite demand for money means trying to predict the longevity of a Ponzi scheme is a fool’s errand. People will do ANYTHING, and I mean ANYTHING, for money. There is no limit to crazy.
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Maybe you can flesh out the mechanics a bit for those of us who like to test the abstract by thinking in the concrete.
The Treasury Dept. prints the money and makes sure it’s not forgery, but Congress tells the Treasury when, literally, to print more? The banks clear the transactions and Wall Street sells and re-sells the bonds, subject only to SEC disclosure regulations? Interest rates, assuming no collusion, are set by the market between lenders and borrowers, with no fractional reserve lending? No FDIC? No Fanny Mae? No Freddie Mac? And how do you transition without causing deflation and major pain points?
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Congress does not tell the Treasury or the Fed what to do. The Fed elected to monetize the debt and the result was another asset bubble blow up.
Ther have been various write-ups about how getting rid of the Fed would work. I think Ron Paul had a plan as have others. I cannot condense them here in a short comment. The key for me is getting to a point where reserves are 100% backed.
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Is there a large untapped pool of shale oil under Illinois? No?
And “doing well since 1919” is meaningless. That bank, to the progressive SJWs that are infesting Illinois, is simply a “Means of Production” that could “Condition their Minds” and prosperity would be had by all.
The faster the State fails the better off the citizens will be. I would appreciate border controls, though. It’s like Californians with progressive ideas moving away from the hellhole they created because taxes are too high, there’s no common language, culture, or people, and they can’t do business because of regulation. They’re locusts, and they work the same way as a cloud of locusts eating their way through the country.
All that matters to them is that they’ll have enough retirement until they die; then it’ll no longer matter.
But it still sucks to be the younger suckers that are picking up the tab in financial and cultural destruction.
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I think Ellen Brown does not understand economics and accounting. Liquidate the pension means sell all the investment in companies and send all the proceeds to the government. That is the same as communism, such that without invesment in companies then there are no private sector jobs. Her theories about central banking and other banking also show a misunderstand of banks’ double entry accounting. There is muddled thinking on the internet where every lawyer, chemist and SJW think themselves an expert at accounting and economics without cracking open a university101 textbook on the subjects. It is easy to be duped by it.
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100% correct… she evidently doesn’t know much about economics in general or monetary theory specifically. She sure sounds like some sort of collectivist though. As an aside, the notion that prosperity can be conjured up by money printing is not exactly new… inflationists have promoted it for a long time. Our current crop of central bankers seems to believe it as well. Funny enough, we have not yet reached that Utopia of effortless riches the printing press is allegedly able to provide.
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I think it’s very clear that she (and her mentor) don’t have the least bit of understanding opf economics. The level of economic illiteracy in America is appalling. They also confuse correlation with causation. They think that because ND has a bank, and because ND is prosperous, that means the bank caused the prosperity. ND is, and always has been a fiscally prudent state. That is the cause. The bank is the effect. Their prosperity, as you mention, comes from a combination of that fiscal prudence, and the shale oil boom. By contrast, Illinois never has been fiscally prudent, and has always been corrupt. They could have created a bank, but if they had, their corruption would have destroyed it long ago.
The concept that the pensions actually have value is hysterical. Think of it this way: Say you own a $200,000 house, and you have a $2,000,000 mortgage on it, and someone helpfully suggests “why struggle to get by, just sell your house and you’ll have plenty of money”. Umm, no, it doesn’t work that way. Sure, the pensions do have a few assets, though not nearly enough to pay the promised benefits, and if you take those few assets, there will nothing at all from which to pay the benefits.
Obviously Illinois should do something with the the pension problem, though raiding them and stealing all their assets would be unconscionable. That said, however, Illinois can never afford to pay the promised benefits, and the benefits that were promised were excessive due to corruption. Therefore, they should just let the pensions declare bankruptcy, and let the people who are beneficiaries receive the benefit of whatever assets are there, which would mean they would take a 60-90% reduction in benefits. Then, for current employees, the pension should be eliminated as a benefit, and replaced with a defined contribution plan, instead of a defined benefit plan.
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You’re wrong. I should not even waste time with you since I actually get paid to examine the assets in the pension and other funds and model public banks for states, cities, and counties. But I will say this much: the assets are all listed in the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports, as stated in the article Ellen and I worked on (full disclosure: I am a Senior Advisor to the Public Banking Institute she founded). The amount in the pension plus a few other liquid fund (no capital assets are included) is about $100b. The state pays out less than 2%/year, as she stated in the article. That’s a terrible ROR, but that’s not the main point.
The point is it is the state’s money. Not Wall Street’s. The State can guarantee that 2% relatively easily, and no one has to “move out of their house” as you put it. The state could pay off its immediate debts and still have 10s of billions left over to capitalize a State Bank.
Its credit rating ought to improve enormously, that is, if there are any honest credit agencies left (in my own article which Ellen quoted, I suggested taking the ratings agencies to court if they fail to improve the state’s credit rating. I believe they will be guilty of fraud if they don’t).
An accusation of this being “communist” was made by another commentator. That would be hilarious if this wasn’t all so serious. What is communism? It is, in part, the takeover of industry by the State. Well, the state of Illinois is the largest single investor in that state in stocks and bonds. It has with its pension fund, in essence become the largest stakeholder. It is the largest owner of things like banks and other companies. THAT is communism, not withdrawing the money and putting it into its own bank, independent not only of other banks, but of its own government (North Dakota has been doing it that way since 1919). Of course we have to worry that the state gov’t will influence a new bank with its record corrupt practices. That has to be a clean split. It has to be in the charter.
But the way we are going, the state will go broke, be unable to pay for anything, including pensions AND interest on the debt, and then sell off assets. The sold off assets will cost more to maintain in the long run, as history shows (virtually every company that has taken over and privatized public assets has gone bankrupt eventually. It’s part of the plan, actually, to make money fast, skimp on maintenance, and then declare bankruptcy and make off with the loot, leaving the taxpayers to pick up the tab for the assets they still require. We’ve seen it with roads, the subway system in NYC, bridges etc.). Privatized public works cost MORE, not less. That’s why people had gov’t manage them in the first place.
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They’re failing to manage it now, including false math and promises in their actuarial models for the pensions. How will your proposal change behavior, other than kick the can down the road longer?
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The pension fund payouts are not the problem. They represent only about 2% of the fund every year. The problem is having to keep 98% untouched, and more if the fund actuaries manage to convince the state the fund is under-funded. This is a tremendous amount of money that could be used to get the state out of its near bankruptcy, and still provide for everyone.
Managing the money so that ROI is the goal instead of just paying the pensioners on a pay-as-you-go basis is the problem. Since when was government supposed to make a profit? That’s not government’s job. It creates all kinds of conflicts of interest for government to invest in the businesses it has to regulate as well.
End the communist practice of state sponsorship through stock ownership and you’ll end too-big-to-fail too. The government will be able to let the big banks fail when they should without taking a hit on their own investments.
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Giving California or Illinois state politicians authority to print greenbacks would be as reprehensibly irresponsible as handing a 4 year old a loaded 9mm clock with the safety off.
What a ludicrous idea.
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If you meant 9mm “Glock” rather than “clock”, perhaps you should know that “Glocks” do not have safeties. You are the safety.
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Your amendment to the idea makes it more powerful, as a 4 year old ain’t safe in the first place.
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According the Constitution, states can print money, but it has to be made from gold and silver. I think that was a wise choice by our founding fathers.
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Clutching at anything but not wanting to grasp reality.
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“Let’s borrow a trillion dollars, pay the interest to ourselves and live happily ever after, stimulating demand. Yeah, right.”
Where Ben and Janet have led, why should Illinois not follow?
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I’m a simple working boy from NZ watching what is happening almost everywhere askance. If the fed can introduce funding from nowhere to bail out the banks, why can’t it do so to allow ordinary working people to make progress in the world…or as a priority start to look at restoring the ecosystems on which we depend that we are crushing beneath greedy boots
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Hi I Steve. You live in a beautiful country, though I feel badly for the residents of Christchurch.
Unfortunately, creating more money, is not an answer.
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If Ellen Brown only had a brain…..
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Forgive me, …I couldn’t resist :
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That’s what came to mind for me, too. It’s a perfect musical tribute to Ellen Brown.
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There’s a reason why a number of countries ban or limit employer-related investments being held by corporate pension schemes. As honourable as politicians are … especially US politicians, and even moreso those in Blue States like Illinois … I would have more faith in Robert Maxwell (RIP) running the pensions of the State of Illinois than this lady.
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The Fed will forgive all debts in dollars by converting them to an “official: crypto currency that will trade at a multiple of paper dollars. Over time paper will be forced to disappear and Crypto-dollars will emerge as the new currency. Don’ laugh, the Brits ended the “Tally” system in 1834 by converting to paper. States will be included in the convert future liabilities as well.
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Instead of letting state politicians run the bank, why don’t we all create our own personal banks, barrow a billion dollars and pay interest to ourselves from the borrowed money perpetually. /sarcasm
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She doesn’t want a bank – she wants a money tree.
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Unfortunately, crazy Ellen isn’t far off the mark. Only the methodology is different. Whether the Fed continues with it’s real mandate, which is to print what Con-gress spends, or not, isn’t so much the point. Even if Con-gress could print directly, cutting out the scapegoat (Fed) the end result would be the same.
As “Lender of Last Resort,” the Fed will ultimately print away the debt, under the auspices of it being a one time event, in the national interest, mind you, promising, hope to die, never to do it again. Illinois, California, Chicago, Rugby ND, Puerto Rico, Public Employees Unions, the Farm Lobby, Berkshire Hathaway,Tesla,,,all will be saved,,,except of course, the saver.
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North Dakota had unemployment above the US average until the oil boom came along.
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Mish! What’s not to like about giving everyone first access to newly printed money?
No more ‘poor people’ goo to grease the wheels of the economy would be a good thing.
Sort of Cloward and Piven for the Masters of the Universe
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Let’s print money and give it to the world on Brow’s theory people will have more money to spend.
What can go wrong?
If she only had a brain.
I should have worked that line in.
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Any “plan” hawked by any of the halfwits in the position to hawk plans, never amount too anything more than vain obfuscations of simply printing George Washington’s face on more paper pieces, then handing those pieces to someone politically connected.
After over a hundred years of Fed welfare and wealth redistribution, including the past 45 with no restraint whatsoever, the entire ruling and privileged class in the US now consists almost exclusively of, at best, half literate, zero-value-add, abject nothings. None of whom has neither the experience, nor the aptitude, to create a single cent of value, regardless of what capacity they are put in.
To them, just printing faces on paper, really makes the world a richer place. As long as the printing is simplistically cloaked in pointless babble, that only less-than-literates like themselves, and their captive indocrinati, are dumb enough to fall for.
And their houses somehow magically generate wealth while sitting there decaying. Not because they are improved in any way, but just because someone puts faces on paper pieces somewhere. These imbeciles really believe that stuff. All the way to their brainless hearts. And that is, literally, as far as economic understanding and intuition goes, amongst those being hailed as “pillars of the community,” “the elite” and “leaders” in the US these days. Pretty much to a person.
So you get this kind of nonsense. Over and over. Same old drivel. “Bad Banks”, bailouts, QE, Debt Jubilees, ZIRP……. Each and every harebrained one, of which is just the slightest obfuscation for simplistically printing more money, and handing it to those who cry the loudest. Nothing more. Ever.
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An excellent summary.
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The situation in Illinois must be a lot worse than the state is letting on if this lunatic is getting airtime.
I doubt the federal government will allow Illinois (or California where this, like most insane politicians, originates) to generate seniorage
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When supposedly “serious people” start proposing “solutions” like this, you know we are getting VERY close to the end-game.
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She’s a Greenbacker. They actually want direct money printing by the government. They think public/private hybrid central banks like the Fed are too stingy. They’re inflationists.
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God Lord Mish, I’m out here on the West Coast, and I am NOT ready for Monday morning humor – you are supposed to reserve this stuff for Friday night cocktail hour. I just can’t shake the feeling that the OZ having a brain parody is a huge /sarc.
I mean, the North Dakota economic miracle has nothing to do with the Bakken formation? The big hangover has started in ND, and having their own bank is not stopping it.
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You really have to ask where we are in the debt super cycle before you give advice. If you are at the end of a civil war and half your economy has issued money that is now no good then yes, you print the crap out of green backs and deficit spend them into the economy. Lincoln was no fool.
It is not possible for a single bank in the payment system, even a state owned bank, to go it alone in creating money. Such a bank will become capital impaired and then must be absorbed or bailed out by the central bank. Only central banks can print money into existence. System member banks in aggregate can lend money into existence creating credit driven asset bubbles. Illinois is checkmate by these realities. Especially so because Trump won’t soon be telling Janet to write any checks to Illinois.
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Take it up a notch and just give everyone their own home printing press, and voila, no more cash flow problems.
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What’s not to like about giving everyone first access to newly printed money?
No more ‘little people’ goo to grease the wheels of the economy would be a good thing.
Cloward and Piven for the Masters of the Universe
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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As the originator of the core idea, which Ellen has graciously expanded upon, I find your dismissive response unsurprising though disappointing.
Of course people like you will stand to lose millions in management fees. There is no free ride here, and the money has to come from somewhere. But private fund managers have had their chance. Wall Street was originally promising 8%/year returns for pension funds when investing with them took off big in the 1980s. That didn’t happen and after the crash of 2000-2003, that was ratcheted down to 6%/year. Most funds are lucky to get that over a 10-year period. They win awards for that kind of “smart” management.
Our own NYC Comptroller wrote a report saying the city had basically made no money in 10 years, after deduction for fees, on its pension fund. And the biggest pension fund of them all – CalPers – has underperformed for years, getting barely 1% in 2011.
What’s the logic of continuing with that?
Ellen and I are proposing a way to get Illinois back its OWN money, invest it wisely in a State Bank – and yes, the Bank Of North Dakota has had a big part to play in that state’s prosperity, even after Natural Gas prices cratered – and get a better bond rating so if they have to borrow they can do it more cheaply. And they get to pay off their immediate debts right away too, while guaranteeing the pensioners their due.
What’s not to like? Oh, maybe you want to privatize everything. Yeah, that’s worked real well in states that have such high toll road prices no one can afford to drive on them… And Chicago’s privatized parking meters are now so expensive no one can afford to park either, and the city can’t even close the streets for a holiday without paying a penalty. Some free markets…
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Hi Scott
I do not care about management fees. I make quite enough on blog ad revenue and could make even more if I allowed pop-ups, roll-overs, etc, things I do not allow because I personally cannot stand them myself. I am debt free, with no mortgage and have sufficient investments.
Illinois is broke because corrupt union leaders got in bed with corrupt governors and an extremely corrupt Speaker, Mike Madigan. 4 of the last 7 governors went to prison.
Proposing that Illinois politicians would spend money wisely after decades of proven misuse and incompetence is ridiculous.
Even the latest budget is not balanced. And it postpones more pension payments. To suggest the Illinois pension system is solvent is fantasyland material.
It is also fantasyland material top propose Illinois could sell its pension funds (40% funded or so on average), pay off the state debt and everything would be fine because of guarantees and by paying itself interest shows no understanding of money and debt.
Ellen understands some of the problems with the Fed. But her solution (and yours) of fairy tales and sleight of hand “borrow your way to prosperity” is economic nonsense.
I will respond in more detail in a blog post
Mish
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Before you write a long blog post, presumably featuring the Bank of north Dakota, you should know that since its founding in 1919, it has been scandal-free, currently has a $7 billion in assets and an independent Board of Directors. The state government rarely gets involved. The hypothetical Bank of Illinois could be similarly structured.
No borrowing required, just taking back money the State already owns.
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“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
– Benjamin Franklin
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This is the same Ben Franklin who was there at the Constitutional Convention when the founders spent a year debating whether government should adopt a Coinage Clause? They did: it’s Article One, Section 8, Clause 5. That gives Congress – and only Congress – the power to “coin Money” (case structure in the original). There is not a single word about banking in the Constitution, BTW.
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Mish, why hasn’t the Fed converted the $4T in treasuries they hold into dollars? Both are a debt owed by the U.S. government. They would eliminate their debt and create inflation with the increased money supply. After all, if you’re going to run a monetary system based on fantasy accounting, you might as well go full retard.
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Mish, why hasn’t the Fed converted the $4T in treasuries they hold into dollars?
If the Fed sold its treasuries it would acquire $4 trillion in cash. It would be an effective DRAIN of $4 trillion from the economy. How do you think the economy would respond?
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The Fed already created those dollars when it bought the bonds. The vast bulk of the Fed’s QE transactions created both deposit money and bank reserves, as the primary dealers are legally organized as non-banks.
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This “financial engineering” has been going on for too long and is part of the priblem which is no more than kicking the can down the road.
The US already did it when it co mingleed the Social Security and Mediare trusts with general funds.. Midicare and Medicaid started at same time but hy no Medicaid trust/ Becsue ther was no tax to withhold and place in separate Trust account. Same issue for Prescription Drugs and we woudl have had that issue with Obamacare but teh tax was needed now and who the heck knows what is beign spent on Obamacare?
we keep on digging a deeper hole rather than fixing the probelms before they get so far out of hand.
Idiots, all of them as is most of the voting population.
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We’ll all know when ‘this “financial engineering” has been going on for too long’
This day is not that day.
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Karl R, right to the point when you wrote: according the Constitution, states can print money, but it has to be made from gold and silver. I think that was a wise choice by our founding fathers.
Although the theories of Rothbard and Von Misen most probably are right, I think it has become out of control, a web of debt as Ellen Brown put it, of which escape has become impossible without big tragedies. Maybe a wise state owned bank which can be fully controlled by the people and work according the Constitution ? Your founding fathers were so worried that all this would happen and specially arranged the Constitution to prevent all this. How is it possible that it was put aside ? Ellen Brown at least explained how this all happened.
Mish, look forward to read your promised blog on this one.
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only solution consists of 2 paths
1) pension reform
2) sell off state assets ( highways, buildings, parks )
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and really, if we really want to know one of the purposes of redesigning a justifiable financial and economic system, we need to recognise what we are doing to the highest level of capital as well: see https://www.facebook.com/SkyOceanRescue/videos/vb.117112772118944/242560219574198/?type=2&theater
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Actually, this is a REALLY GOOD PLAN to save both Illinois and California. Let them reincorporate as a bank, get declared “too big to fail”, and then have all the other states’ citizens take the hit, while the Fed bails them out.
Meanwhile, people like Mish who moved to Montana will be standing in shock, with their jaws hanging open, wondering what happened?
Shoot, I will be too.
I’ll tell you what needs to happen: people need to drop the idea of money, period. We need to go back to being savages. This civilization thing has gone too far.
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I have noticed that the more money people control the more stupidly it is spent. Starting a business one may choose to live in sensible housing enough to stay warm, dry, and safe. Profits are reinvested back into the business. After you achieve big success money finds its way into a Mcmansion with two story entry and sweeping staircase. What’s the return on the trapped air in the lobby. Doesn’t matter as the cost is small compared to the income at that point. Never the less, greater portions of profit are going to things that produce no return as more money to spend is available.
This tendency is even more prevalent in politics looking at the quality of spending decisions as you go up the ladder of offices starting from dog catcher to president..
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Do you know, Alex, I’ve found that to be true in my own life. Even as my income went up (and I *am* debt free, though poor and own a trailer home on a rented lot), I am spending tons more. Why? Well, the city came in… said we didn’t have enough rooms for our family, and needed to move two walls including reworking the kitchen, with permits…. and the trailer park mgt came in… wanted upgrades to the outside stairs… and certain relatives came in…. demands through the roof… the CPS came in… and the IRS one year decided to tax double because they can (again, I’ve never owed money).
Moreover, medical costs have gone sky high… but funny thing: none of this qualifies as discretionary income. This is all demands by others, especially others with the power to make your life extremely miserable, fast. Kindof interesting.
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