Date:   1/24/2008 2:14:20 AM ( 17 y ago)
Hits:   936
URL:   https://www.curezone.org/forums/fm.asp?i=1093669

0 of 0 (0%) readers agree with this message.  Hide votes     What is this?

The first comment is for the sake of trivia as it relates to the kinds of things that have historically gone through periods treated as "money". Roman soldiers were once paid in salt, and this gave rise to the now ancient catch-phrase that talks about judging whether a person is "worth their weight in salt"... or shortened "worth their salt".

Here is something to think about for the prediction for $4 per gallon gasoline in the U.S. by year's end. There is a connection to the idea that's been increasingly circulating in the U.S. the past several months; the idea that socialized healthcare will be a wonderful thing to have.

Back in the mid 90's, there was a fellow - Hans, visiting the headquarters office. He came from our company's office in the Nederlands for an extended training visit - mostly technical training, since we worked for a computer company. He stayed about 7 months, during which I got to know him well, even took him on a late November car ride through the rolling hills and mountains of Pennsylvania, to visit my family on Thanksgiving Day. It occured to me that this too would make for a good scenario for him to make notes of and take back to tell his folks and friend. One day during the morning break period, he overheard another fellow employee griping about how the cost of gasoline had recently gone up a few cents per gallon. Hans was a soft spoken fellow, all 6 foot 6 inches of him. He sort of chuckled lightly at hearing these comments. I asked him what gasoline prices were like over where he lived, not far from Utrecht. My memory may be off a bit, but not much. They pay by the litre, and he had to do a bit of calculations and conversions before answering me. Bear in mind even though the the Euro officially started in the late 70's, it did not really have much prominence to speak of by the time of the mid 90's. Anyway, Hans said that at that time, he was regularly paying around $1.00 per litre of gasoline "petrol", or somewhere within range of $4.00 per gallon. This was 1993.

It was this particular brief conversation that not long after led me to strike up a conversation on related topics. I was asking him about some of the other standards of life over there compared to what he either knew or was able to observe during his time in the U.S. He went on to tell me about their healthcare system in comparison to ours, explaining how, by comparison, all their healthcare was paid for. I said "you mean it's all free?". To this he replied "no, and yes". I asked him to elaborate. He said "we have socialized medicine and healthcare", and went on to explain that the yes part of his answer answer only applied to people who had gotten their perception, more accurately mis-perception, about their healthcare being "free". He then explained the no answer; their "free" socialized system came at the expense of the average laborer having automatically deducted from their pay checks roughly %65 to %70 taxes. There was no opt-out from this taxation, at least, there was none for the common people. This was how it already was across vast stretches of Europe, and had been for many years before 1993. I thought about back then and considered how I and a relative few others grumble about %35 percent income taxation of the middle class. Also bear in mind that even back then, the lion's share of that $1.00 per litre of European petrol was exacted by way of even more taxation.

People may not appreciate what I mean when I say, and subsequently repeat, that people in Europe look across the ocean and see in us who they once were, before they were conquered by ________. Call it what you will; socialism; communism, fascism; Fabianism; oligarchism; fraternal brotherhood'ism; neoconroyalism, whatever'ism. It is a bit of all of these and some bits of other 'isms too, it matters not what we call it or how we are led to perceive it. For us - US, we get to look over the same ocean from an opposite perspective....like a delayed reflection, in the reverse direction and see - at least with those with a firm enough grip on reality to see what is right there in front of our faces to see, what is and has been headed our direction ever since 1913...through 1917....through 1929.....through 1933 and in part culimating in 1945....and continuing on through the Viet Nam era...and through 112263....and right on through 091101, slowly, gradually, by creep, it continues to come. It matters not how we perceive it, or what we or Fox or CBS or PBS or CSPAN or HBO or et. al. call[s] it or label it or argue over. It is coming nonetheless.
 

<< Return to the standard message view

fetched in 0.02 sec, referred by http://www.curezone.org/forums/fmp.asp?i=1093669