Yesterday I ran a very nice collector car through the alignment checking machine. I am not going to say what type exactly but the price tag is upwards of the 60K mark used. It had a whopping 5700 miles on it's odometer. Since business was slow I went back up to my little desk and was hanging out listening to the owner of said vehicle as he was showing pictures of his car collection to various customers. As near as I could tell he had a collection of about four or five muscle cars he was proud of. I made it a point to not get anywhere near that conversation despite the fact the owner tried to drag everyone nearby into it, because I suspected it was soon going to take a turn in a direction that would cost me my job if I gave an honest opinion.
Sure as it's going to rain on my one day off the owner of said vehicles started complaining about the legislature possibly cutting the funds to the university of Missouri and how it might cost him his job as an IT person. Not a manager or supervisor mind you just a run of the mill data entry type HTML drone who can afford two houses and a fleet of collector cars while the university he works for screams for millions more in public money every year.
Now to be fair I don't know this guy's whole story. Perhaps he is the under achieving son of some multi-billionaire family or something and in fact if this type of thing was an isolated incident I would perhaps think that scenario far more likely.....
But this type of story is not an isolated thing around here. I hear and witness one much like it almost every day. Poor mistreated public servants and retirees who moan and groan about threatened budget cuts or possible reduced government spending while in the same breath complaining about having to juggle an oil change for their new car of the year into their busy schedule of cruises and European vacations. They loudly whine about it to all the working stiffs still stuck in the private sector and believe they are finding a sympathetic ear when no one tells them what they really think. At least not if they want to keep their jobs anyway. When these entitlement whores are gone however and only the employees are left the real opinions come out.
A lot of this sentiment I am hearing maybe because of the area I live in. The suburbs have pushed out from the main education center and the main government center of my state into the rural area I have lived in most of my life. Thirty five or forty years ago one rarely ran into a government or university employee out here but these days they are buying small parcels of land and building McMansions as far out as they can to escape the cesspits they helped create. While the economy founders and continues to shrink they prance around flaunting their "promised" pensions and secure paychecks and I now perceive a real animosity towards this group growing daily.
Also it may be a more regional thing here because of the blow back caused by the UMC protests, the football team and Coach BS and the whole Click firing fiasco.
I really don't know to be honest. I admit I have had a real dislike for these government types for years but until recently I never noticed my own personal thoughts on the subject being reflected and projected out by so many of my peers without any input from me into the conversations. It's like all the under class is waking up at once and speaking in one voice around here now and a new dimension is forming in the political arena. If it wasn't for the highly complex and fractured die-versity infused political playing field that already existed prior to this change I would be looking for the guillotines to be rolled out and socialist banners everywhere but this time around the under class is as much against socialism as they are the artificial government aristocracy.
Factions within factions and sub groups within tribes and loose movements seems to be the order of the day. A lot of angry people in every group and roller coaster ride of 60+ years of victim group politics besides.
I think this is fixin to get messy folks.
Keep Prepping Everyone!!!!!!
I think you are right, things have stalled out and the downward spiral is beginning, no matter how wonderful they say things are going. The powers that have been in control are being threatened for the first time since the socialist Roosevelt took over in 32 and they won't give it up quietly but once the curtain comes down it will be seen what a small minority have been running things. The price of classic cars may go down drastically at that point.
ReplyDeleteSf - The price of a lot of things will go down in some ways but become more expensive in real goods I imagine. Once this debt fiasco falls apart anyway.
DeleteDennis
ReplyDeleteAs I read this I had the image of Paris before the revolution. The upper crust did not live in Paris but the surrounding area to keep a way from the filth of Paris streets. How long are we going to let the kettle boil is the interesting question?
Dennis - Yep. Not to mention what the revolutionaries thought of as the aristocracy was pretty broad and included hair dressers and other so called servants.
DeleteI have no interest in muscle cars, and would've happily wandered off from that conversation.
ReplyDeleteLisa - LOL I was kinda trapped tot he location.
DeleteSome of the muscle cars aren't too expensive if you do a lot of the work on them yourself. He could well be the type who puts all his spare cash, and then some, into his hobby. And then he'll go all self righteous on you when he goes to retirement and doesn't have a dime to his name.
ReplyDeleteThe middle class is collapsing, but the activities of that same middle class, doesn't always make me feel that sympathetic.
Russ - Oh the car he brought in wasn't a classical muscle car. It was a new sports car of the muscle car style with the same name as a famous Confederate cavalry commander.
DeleteMy parents were lifelong snivel servants. You have to understand that these people live in a bubble-like echo chamber and think they got their jobs based on merit and not by luck. My own mother made me so mad at times I could have choked the b**** - when I hit the job force as a young man the Alberta economy was much like the American one is now. I could only find part time scut jobs, and my parents - safe and secure in their soft, cushy gubbermint jobs - looked down their noses at me like I was some kind of failure.
ReplyDeleteThe only kind of work I could find was the kind of work nobody wanted and I had a pock-marked resume from job-hopping for years. I didn't get my first 'real' job until my mid thirties...but my parents wouldn't give me a break.
One day my idiot mother pops off and says 'If we worked in the private sector, we would probably make 30% more money and wouldn't have to work so hard...' - and I started laughing. I told her she wouldn't have a job at all because in the private sector nobody would put up with her chit and attitude! I was on her chit list for months afterward...but gawd...it felt great to knock that old bint down a notch or two. Your gubbermint, like our Canadian one - has waaaaay to much money and it needs to be pruned back.
GF - I feel ya all too well my man. These types lived a sheltered life when the government credit card was new and the interest payments were low and no way they will ever see it for themselves or know what it's like and how they set the current issues in motion. We will be paying for their easy money for generations.
DeleteMost all are in agreement with you! I think we realize at the same instant that we are not alone. We have been had ...
ReplyDelete