The OPM Of The Masses

“Here comes the metal meltdown, run for your lives
Can’t stop the metal meltdown, no one survives”
-“Metal Meltdown”, Judas Priest (Painkiller, 1990)

“Mine truly” are probably tired of me bashing hassidim and kollel yungerleit for living at taxpayers’ expense. Indeed, on a national scale, they are but the tiniest drop in a bottomless ocean. This is not an excuse, but for today we’ll focus on the ocean and leave the tiny drop alone.

Many are very angry –and rightly so- about the government’s $700 billion bailout of Wall Street gangsters, forgetting that the Government and Wall Street are practically one entity.

Time and again I am amazed at the efficiency of the age-old “boiling frog” method. For decades the government has been doing the same exact thing – only on a smaller scale – and no one utters as much as a krechtz. Millions of senseless institutions, governmental agencies, “non-profit” organizations, NGO’s and scores of other ponzi schemes are siphoning trillions out of our pockets with every tick of the clock. Yet, because there are no fearsome headlines about the involved sums' grand total, we go on as if nothing happened.

My friends, we have paid hundreds of times more than 700 billion over the past few decades. I’ll just give you one tiny little real-life example, with which I am familiar. A certain non-profit healthcare organization has about 6000 patients, serviced by over 3000 employees. A for-profit company of similar dimensions has only 2000 employees. The non-profit org’s CEO “makes” $700K a year, the for-profit’s 300. In the non-profit org there are countless bogus departments with bogus directors, all making nice six digit salaries, and do practically nothing. Of course, affirmative action quotas must be filled, and many departments need another sleazeball to reap your tax dollar. Of course, these important people have important meetings with lavish banquets, and if they go off budget, heck, Uncle Sam is but a phone call away. The for-profit org is not clean as a whistle either, but costs you much less, and patients aren’t treated any worse.
What goes on in universities and the education system is even worse. And let’s not forget the military and its sister industries – if anyone were to poke that with a ten foot pole, they’d be up their elbows in maggots.

Now multiply the above sketch by millions – school districts, child therapies, all the goodies supplied by local authorities, courts, different regulatory agencies, the luxuries you pay for prisoners, illegal immigrants and politicians. Yeah, Other People's Money... Sweet...

However, when there isn’t such a big fat frightening figure in the headlines, we’re more willing to pay. And let’s be honest, we usually successfully fool ourselves into believing that for better or worse, we do get some benefit out of the “services”. But not this time. This time it strikes us all: why should we bail out Paulson and Bernanke’s billionnnaire butts because of their own frauds? Either goyim are just unfamiliar with the phenomenon of pamphlets begging you to save this or that yungerman’s life, signed by sixty-six rabbis, all more prominent than thou, each promising you a different and more effective yeshuah for your buck – or… or they just don’t like the idea of being forced to pay for Wall Street’s magic carpet ride.

But in reality, we only get what we paid for. In truth, we’re all Wall Street, and we’re angry at Paulson, Bernanke and Congress only because they “outcrooked” us. Most of America live on Credit Card debt (i.e. those who don’t live off Mediacid, section 8 and foodstamps, or bogus tax-funded jobs etc.) in houses they can’t afford, eating food they don’t own and sleeping on beds they didn’t work for. Few are those who are really “neheneh miyegia capam” – and for the most, they don’t live large. Heck, most people even invest money they never had... in Wall Street!
And now, as the big snakes fear for their skins, they scornfully hiss at the little worms: “you must bail us out – or else we won’t bail you out”!

A long time ago, tavarish Lenin declared that religion is the opium of the masses.

And we almost agree with him;

OPM is the religion of the masses!

© Joseph Izrael 2008