Redneck Review
No. 65 7/18/2016
Back to the items which baffle older folks like myself, sometimes called "Red Necks" for want of a better term! And incidentally, I responded to a Central Idaho Post comment that a typical red neck has "a boat that has not left the driveway in 15 years." with the remark, "Hey, my camper bus has not left in that time!" But a sharp eyed reader, Greg by name, emailed me back and said with a smirk, "Don't forget the boat, the actual boat you have sitting in your back yard for at least that long!" Well, I forgot! The boat referred to was a "gift" to me from a mountain man friend of mine, who thought it would be a good sandbox for my kids!
Anyway, you more modern folks should know that older people like myself in almost all cases cannot understand how we can so callously MURDER tiny babies, helpless in their mother's womb! Yikes! We are told it amounts to some 50 million in the U.S. alone! Just thinking of this happening to these tiny little defenseless ones, one at a time, should send shivers up and down one's spine!
And please, don't ignore the Bible, which over 80% of us in this country claim we believe! It says clearly there in places named last week that homosexual activity is abhorred by the God who created us! Hey! I did not make this up! It is there in black and white!!
But there is more, much more! If you grew up in the middle of the last century, you have a hard time understanding why our national government has become involved in so many things clearly not found in the Constitution! Prior to 1960 for example, you could go to most colleges or universities in the country for a total cost of $1000, more or less. Then our benevolent Uncle Sam got involved to "help us out," and today those same schools can cost anywhere up to $50,000! And the typical student who paid his or her own way back then is today saddled we are told with an average student debt around $35,000 upon their graduation. With a total debt of all graduates now exceeding one trillion dollars! I say that help like this we can ill afford!!
What about debt? In those "old days," we were taught that debt was something to avoid if possible, and all were encouraged to save a certain percentage of an income. And believe it or not, you could actually get interest rates that saw your savings really grow over a period of time. Contrast that with an article which appeared in our daily paper a couple of weeks ago which lamented that, in words similar to this: "Only a small percentage of families have any savings to fall back on in an emergency!" Well, do tell! What was never mentioned in that long article was the fact that interest rates on money one tries to save today fall below 1%, if you can get any interest at all! That compared to current inflation rates means that all savings accounts are doomed to lose money today!! Could that somehow be related to the Keynesian goal of spending incomes immediately with little or no savings promoted? After all, say these "experts," spending and the rapid turn over of money is what brings prosperity to an economy!! And massive debt of $19 trillion or so helps keeps the wheels turning also!
Students of history know that the depression of the 1930's followed the "Roaring Twenties," during which time economic activity was fueled then as now by interest rates near zero. It was easy then as it is now, to borrow at very low interest rates, and invest in a market that keeps going up and up, seeming with no end in sight! But what goes up will go down, it did then, and sometime, maybe even soon... it will again! What do you think?
Jake Wren

To the Editor

Home

Classified Ads