Posted on 09/04/2012 5:37:03 AM PDT by Travis McGee
I forget where I saw the link, there are a bunch of threads here and there running this essay, but what is very eye opening is the youtube showing the “MUY” mothers at the Atlanta-area food stamp office, screaming for blood because their babies (up to teenagers) had not eaten since yesterday, cuz the EBT card was not working as of yesterday.
That’s how close it is. One day = hunger to folks who just DON’T PLAN. They eat many meals at fast food joints on EBT cards, and may have ZIP in the pantry. And clearly seen in the video, these moms believe the EBT money is their RIGHT, and they are ready to go to blows if you so much as delay refilling the card accounts.
Watch this “EBT don’t work” video and cringe. They truly believe the free food $$$ is their RIGHT, and God help us if they are not given it. Violent anger in under 24 hours.
(Banging head on wall.)
In EVERY CASE in history, when govt intervenes to “smooth out” the food and medicine delivery, get it to “the needy,” and apply cost and export controls “for the common good,” shortages are the nearly immediate result, leading to worse rationing, worse mal-investment, worse shortages, black markets, etc.
Picture Cuba, Venezuela etc.
Just wearing a Halloween or celebrity mask, or a full facial beard, would kill facial recognition systems.
That was a very irrelevant post. It presumes food stamps will continue. Matt's essay considered what happens when they don't.
Our federal government is spending twice as much money as it takes in. The debt just hit $16,000,000,000,000 - and is rising fast. At some point the spending WILL stop.
Food stamps continue only because federal "debt dollars" are still accepted by retailers; like doctors pulling out of the Medicare/Medicaid system (which they are fast) because they're only getting paid a fraction of the bill, there will come a point when grocery stores will only get a fraction of bills paid by EBT, and given that they run on tiny margins to start with they will soon stop accepting food stamps.
Worse, and the scenario more like what Matt considers, is the financial system is at grave risk of locking up fast & hard. Near the end of his term, Bush called in top financial leaders and told them "you will accept this VERY large loan RIGHT NOW." The unraveling of the "credit default swap" system was about to tear the entire banking industry apart in a matter of hours. No banks = no non-cash transactions = no food stamps.
The Soviet Union collapsed when it was unable to issue paychecks. Not just "food stamps" (or whatever their version) - paychecks. That government ran out of money, couldn't pay any bureaucrats, and the functioning body of that government simply walked off the job and went home - nobody was there to issue "food stamps". There's a "bureaucratic misfire" for you.
Every few months Congress votes to raise the debt ceiling. If, for whatever reason, they don't - spending stops. The government (at best) won't completely shut down, but with workers furloughed and automated payment systems purring unattended, there will come a point where either the money in fact runs out or the auto-payment systems malfunction and crash, stopping payments and lacking maintainers. There's a "political misfire" for you.
Upshot is that the flow of food stamps is not guaranteed. It's a system which can stop for many reasons. Momentum will keep it going for a while, but lacking money or maintenance it will stop, and when it does it will crash.
Indeed, "The ghetto will end overnight when government stops enforcing its existence." It's enforced in great part by the government handing out sustenance checks: be content and be paid. If there is no payment, there is no purpose for contentment. In our debt-driven economy, it is hard for many to conceive of a credit/debit/EBT card being denied; I assure you it will given enough economic hemorrhaging - which our current government is doing as fast as it can.
Debt-based food stamps work only insofar as someone trusts they will be paid. At sixteen trillion dollars in debt and rising fast, won't be long until creditors say "no more" and the entitlement checks stop flowing and swiped cards return "denied". At that point, nationwide, Matt's scenario comes into play - and a lot of people, for good reason, think it's coming soon.
Good point about the multiple-gun ownership of gun enthusiasts. They are like golfers buying another new driver or putter. I guess ammo will be the biggest issue, and many are stocking up.
Would you please add me too?
“When ah y’all gone come thu?”
priceless.
Which brings us back to the unanswered question: where are these well-stocked government food warehouses?
Answer: there aren't any for a scenario of this scale; the government just buys what it needs from the private "just in time" supply chain which only has enough for short-term non-crisis situations.
Under social-breakdown crisis situations, wearing a mask can become a “shoot on sight” offense.
Kinda hard to grow a sufficient beard overnight. ...especially for about half the population.
Semi-automatic weapons will fire at a much higher rate than 1 per 2 secs, the interval is mostly determined by the aiming time (Snoxall also had to move the next cartridge into the chamber with his bolt action, something done automatically with the semi-autos, of course).
Where do the troops come from? Homeland Security....
Matt, thank you for a very informative and well reasoned article.
What is your best estimation for the time frame from the "trigger event" to the SHTF going full force?
Check the evening news.....CW2 has already begun. Most just do not recognize it as such.
CW2 will look drastically different than CW1, as the enemies, for lack of a better word, are intermingled more than ever.
Most Americans are oblivious to so much. I am hopeful that those of us on FR can provide warning to our friends and families who are not so cognizant of matters.
Well, the crash-diet and riot-aerobics should help the fat-@$$ gimmee girls to attain Moochie's weight loss goals.
Your facts are not in dispute. What is in dispute is the racist notion that the ghetto will rise up in violence when the gravy train stops. That is outrageously false.
The heart of the black community is love and support. When the government stops its horrid intrusion into the life and culture of the black community it will be possible to turn things around.
The crisis of compassion brought on by government intervention to perpetuate poverty is what must end. Far from riots in the street when welfare stops the black community will pull itself up by its shoe laces and begin the process of healing its community.
Certainly true up to the mid 1960s...I think the Great Society destroyed that...just like the illegitimacy rate going from 20% to 75%.
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