Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

Yep, THIS

We moved from Massachusetts (can’t get any bluer) to Texas to try it out slightly pre-retirement. Oldest son was in University there, and youngest was starting University in Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh area). I had just had the venture ghouls pull out of my second startup; they had a fight with my co-fonder and even though we’d just landed our second 6 figure paying customer “no more funding for YOU; you need to run the business with NO salary”. So, boom, went from fully employed to unemployed (at age 58) with 2 kids in university. Gerri’s dad had just died (drawn out, not a good experience).

We’d been in our house in MA for 15 years, and knew, because of the insane cost of living due to what I considered far, FAR, too much government costs (Taxachusetts is a moniker for a reason). That we’d move SOMEWHERE cheaper and better for my astronomy hobby. Over the preceding years, we’d evaluated other places I’d lived (Colorado, Arizona), but she didn’t like them. She liked the Hill country area of Texas. We are economically conservative/libertarian and *classic* liberal politically. I was running into classic age-discrimination trying to find a job in/around Mass where we lived, but crickets.d (“massively over-qualified”, yada….). As a slight aside because this meme came up earlier in this thread…

<<I’ve been railing against Social Security (Ponzi scheme) since I first became politically active in late 1970’s. I would have happily given up ANY benefits if they just stopped taking ANY of my (and my employers) money. Of course, I was one of those who has been paying at the max pretty much my entire career. Hell, I’d LOVE it if they refunded me the over $250K I’ve paid in - with NO interest!… but we all know that ain’t gonna happen. So, the leftist/progressive mindset (which created Social Security and other such redistributionistic programs) has now ensured that MY kids are PHUKKED. >>

So, we sold the house, and made the move; renting a nice place on 5 acres (Wimberley area) down there to see exactly where best to buy. I found a good job after about 6 months and we settled in to learn our new “home” area..

But we got mugged by reality: housing prices were exploding down there at ridiculous rates; by the end of 3 1/2 years anything decent was unaffordable. The zilliow price on the house we were renting was $430K when we moved in (Oct 18), and reached $850K at the time we left (Feb-April 2022). For a 2000 square foot single level. No thanks, no way!

Have a love/hate relationship with Texas:

Pros:
1. Proper attitude and “level” of government, low taxes (overall) and government was COMPETENT (good roads, repairs and construction were orders of magnitude faster than in Mass.
2. Extremely affordable energy costs, which rippled into almost everything else (food, supplies, etc.) This is a lesson the entire country can and should take from Texas: Low energy costs are a very, VERY good thing. The impact the entire economy in a good way, and most especially so for those on the lower end of the economic spectrum. When parties/presidents INTENTIONALLY destroy our energy-independence in the insane chasing of their religion (which cannot work anyways - the only proper approach is BALANCE, not this “net-zero” fundamentalist, dogma/cult) it seriously impacts peoples lives.
3. Weather (from November through April) - quite excellent!

Cons:
1. Greater Austin’s turning into California-lite (homeless, drugs, crime, BLM disband police nitwits, etc.). Not quite at San Francisco/Bay Area/LA levels of cesspool-ness, but getting there quickly. (Intentionally, due to the policies of the uber-leftists in charge there).
2. Summers (May to October) the weather was basically intolerable
3. While you cannot (literally) swing a stick anywhere in Texas without hitting a church; those churches were not, what we would call “welcoming and deep”. Worship services were uniformly praise-bands (which we hate) and people were NOT particularly friendly. This was the biggest surprise to us, frankly…. Leading to…
4. Speaking of friendly, yes, everyone is superficially friendly; but we made virtually no new friends in the 4 years there… if you are a “Yankee” (even if you completely fit culture-wise) you just aren’t truly welcome (in our experience).

So we made decision to move back North to be closer to Gerri’s mom, etc. (I have no living family on my side at this point). We knew it would not - EVER - be Taxachusetts. I demanded small, affordable, cheap and functional government.

So we ended up here in SW New Hampshire. Other than property taxes (which ARE high, but, for the record no higher than I was paying in Massachusetts), the cost of government is very low here; there just ins’t that much government existing. Yet the roads are phenomenally well maintained, plowing is timely, etc. Super rural in my town (Temple); literally NO traffic lights in the entire town. Got a tad over 3300 square feet in a great layout where, when nobody’s visiting, I can close off the upper story (3 beds one bath up) and not have to heat/cool it, and we call the entire first floor home…. Master bath with sauna and hot-tub en-suite. Huge living room for my stereo (26x17), nice dining room, massive kitchen/family with fireplace. 3 season porch and deck on about 4 acres with views of the mountains when the leaves are off the trees.

There are (as with anywhere) cons: we now have the highest electricity prices in the country (FJB), and winters are cold and very snowy. But still, we much prefer 4 months of cold/snowy to 5-6 months of “hotter than the surface of the sun”. The biggest “con” is that NH has indeed been poisoned (albeit slowly) from a huge influx of Mass-holes that move just across the border to take advantage of the low costs/taxes in NH, but still vote the same way that is destroying Massachusetts and making it ever more unaffordable. So, unlike the case of Californians with families and brains fleeing the cess-pool that much of California has now become if you aren’t uber rich, they DID make NH “less red”. But, we’re anything but blue at the local levels and more importantly the *mindset* of government. It remains stoically determined not to waste money (Calvin Coolidge was from nearby Hillsboro NH, FWIW).

Two cross-country moves, coupled with putting both sons through university, coupled with having no job for 10 months really squeezed us economically. I’m going to have to work until I’m 70 now, instead of 65, but that’s ok. I’m in great health (other than arthritis caused pain, but everyone’s got something), and I’d drive wifey crazy if I weren’t working… But being more economically pinched at the age of 64 is an eye-opener. I now will suffer NO politician that wants to tax ME to give something to someone ELSE. and no politician that supports destruction of our ability to be energy independent at affordable prices. (My first years electricity and oil - for heat - bill here in NH was over $8000! - PHUK JOE BIDEN and the climate-crazies).

So, much/all of what you write @purr1n resonates/rings true. (We liked Corpus to visit, there’s a GREAT Thai restaurant downtown we enjoyed very much… I bought my 2008 Lexus LS460 from an old dude down there whose wife had to take it away from him due to health (great deal, fabulous road car). That said, wife and I are more mountains/hiking types than beach/ocean types.

You wanted examples of how politics affects individuals directly. Government phukking with economy seriously impacts people who are older in many, negative ways.

/rant off

 

Not long after I moved to Florida, I had someone come up to me in a parking lot and start talking about how they welcomed "New Yorkers", but that Florida wasn't New York and they needed to realize that. I was confused for a minute, because he started talking to me like we were already in the middle of some conversation I didn't know about, but then I realized it probably had something to do with the DC plates on my car. I also had a Black Votes Matter t-shirt on, but he was already standing near my car when I came out, so I'm not sure he saw that ahead of time.

 

This sounds fun. Have you ever taken a deduction on your tax liability? Ever?

 

All posts should be like @Bowmoreman. If I had money I would go to NH in a heartbeat, but I do like Maine slightly more except for the steep cost of living and tons of low wages jobs in a high cost of living state.

Hanging out with older people who are loaded but still bitch about Democrats, I think it is due to boredom, a real dislike of left-wing American politics, and just consuming too much right-wing media. I personally don't get it either, most of them who bitch about the Democrats that I met are loaded or well off with a big house near the ocean with a good retirement. Shit, if I had seven figures in retirement funds with tons of assets I wouldn't be talking about politics all the god damn time in my golden years but instead hang out at the beach until my time has come.

Now, for the few who aren't well off the bitch about SSI not covering a lot and they put the blame on Democrats. Of course they don't like it when you call SSI a not so good version of socialism that should be repealed.

The funny thing about the situations above is all of these people who bitch about the Democrats live in a heavy red county or area, in a GOP majority state like FL, and don't have any Democrats in their districts on the state and local level. In matter of fact, some of these bums know who is AOC than knowing who is their state or congressional reps. The nationalization of American politics indeed.

Welcome to the South.

FL in this regard is the best in the South but we still have weird quirks like these:

• All Supermarkets can sell beer/wine but it requires a separate license for liquor.
  • If a Supermarket gets a liquor license, they are required to build a separate entrance just for liquor from the outside + you can't go to the supermarket side from the liquor side or in reverse from the inside of the same building.
• City and Counties can regulate alcohol sales times or even the type of alcohol sales.
  • FL still have one dry county in the panhandle-ish area that even today refuse to have any alcohol sales. And the fun fact @purr1n that the only dry county left is called Liberty County. You can't make this stuff up.
  • Counties like Duval County/Jacksonville allow alcohol sales of all hours except 2 AM - 6 PM. Of course the beach towns in Duval have different hours.
  • Miami-Dale County I think is 24/7 alcohol sales, but some counties (the more red counties) still ban alcohol sales on Sunday Mornings and Christmas.

Not shocked, people do this all the time on a mission to prevent FL from turning into a Democrat state. Shit, I talked with few people who are proud to move to FL so they keep the state read and keep the Democrats out. I think these people are coco for coco puffs, but the FL GOP don't mind, it means they keep themselves in power to do whatever the hell they want.

I have this story from my local Cigar Place in Jacksonville. The location I go to is a heavy conservative spot. They do close on some Holidays, but the only two Holidays they arent't closed are MLK Jr and Juneteenth.

 

There was a recent opinion article arguing people save too much money for retirement because they end up living more austere lives than they expected once they retire (blame the lumbago) and thus the oldest tend to be the richest segment of the population.

 

Consider the square footage of those homes though. Plus no granite countertops!

You would pay it off much faster, but it would be worth much less. I'm not sure there is a way around that basic financial premise.

 

Do people really need 3000ft2 homes?

With a 5 year mortgage you could easily buy 2 homes and build a McMansion on one property at a leisurely pace while living on the other.

 

You forgot to add states banning sales of ICE vehicles. EVs are a money racket that is partly paid by my tax income. I still don't think EVs are there yet, Hybirds are a good middle ground but only if it make sense for you. Since I do a lot of highway driving, ICE vehicles for me still.

 

I'll take an EV... as soon as they make reasonably sized & priced vehicles with a 500-600 mile range. I travel long distance quite a bit, I want to be able to drive for a day without having to find an approved charger and stop for a few hours to recharge.

All the reasonably priced sedans I see max out at a little under a 350 mile range... that just doesn't cut it, especially since I suspect that they don't get near that range in real life driving conditions (eg., 75mph highway conditions on roads that aren't flat).

 

I don't, but that is just me.

Yes, most people can't pay off a car in 5 years, never mind a house. I don't think that is the fault of the system.

 

I bought my car in 2011 on a 7yr 0% loan. Oh for those crazy times again.

 

Take good care of your dad. You will be suprised how much people appreciate that.

Maybe you are more "Alf" than human.

 

So one more “weigh in”, specific to @YMO point, because you’re throwing out stereotypes without thinking about the whole picture.

I don’t have 7 figures in retirement. I had to draw almost $200K OUT of it during my startup company phase and when not having a JOB for 10+ months. I’ve now well under $500K. Two kids in university, one of whom studying professional aviation (extra $20K per year on top of normal tuition). I also had to start all over again wrt: home equity. Could only put 10% down on this one. So think long and hard before you just assume all the old f’ks moving to Florida and democrat bashing do NOT have valid reasons from direct experience.

Let’s consider facts:
1. Government took money out of my paycheck (in my specific case well over $250K not counting what my employers paid in.). Note this is in massively pre- 40+ years of inflation (keep that in mid).

2. Currently, I’m estimated (IF I work to 70) to receive a bit over $4100 a month from SS (of course that is in today’s dollars, not what they are worth 5 more years in the future). So dividing $500K (total contribution, mine plus employers) by that amount comes to roughly 10 years, before I would be “ahead and mooching” as so many younger folks think about…

3. That does not factor that $500K could have been far more productive and valuable over time, to me, to my employers and to the economy as a whole, had it not been confiscated (to give to someone else) all along. Think about what that first $10K I paid in from 1976 to 1982 would be worth had I been able to invest it in something REAL instead of a fraudulent, leftist/progressive ponzi-scheme. So, hell yeah, any politician that stops my getting at least SOME of the real wealth confiscated from me since my first job in 1976, is going to assume room temperature rather quicker than he/she would like!

4. Social security, and the federal government also phukked our family when I was younger. My dad had a factory that employed over 200 people in the 1960’s and to the mid ‘70’s. Think of what he and his company paid in. Then he sold his share of the company to his co-founder in 1973 so we could move the family to Arizona for my mother’s early-onset of debilitating Rheumatoid Arthritis. We lived there 3+ years and then he DIED. Social security (then, and maybe still now) based widows/family benefits on the average of the last 5 years contributions. But he hadn’t worked for the last 3 1/2 years… so my mom got a pittance (yet had to support herself and her 3 kids - I was the oldest then at 17 - on insufficient cash inflow. She couldn’t work, hell, she couldn’t even do much in the way of physical house chores with her gnarled hands. So, the way I see it, the government STOLE money from our family AND breached its “promise” (ha).

5. It’s good to remember the ORIGINS of all these global, redistributionistic, Ponzi schemes. They were (and are) all driven by leftist/progressive worldviews and the economics “invented” by one particular (EVIL in my mind) economist, Keynes. The pols (both left and right) LOVED his theory that it was OK for the government to continually run a deficit, and to setup schemes which were ponzi-like because it would “stimulate” the economy and “grow it”. When critics pointed out that this would build inflation into the system, and, that in the long run, it would bankrupt the government and populace, his infamous answer was: “In the long run, we are all dead.” Think about that, they all KNEW we’d get to where we are, and yet refused to deal with it. Any politician attacking it in the 70’s and 80’s was labeled by the left as “out to starve grandma”, and “robbing from the Trust Fund”… Except there is no “trust fund”, only a bunch of “one part of the government owes another part of the government a crap ton of money. They literally borrowed against a future debt!
6. Fact. This is only possible because since the invention of the Federal Reserve, and then making THAT worse, the decoupling of the Dollar from Gold (ink 1973), the government could just PRINT or QUANTUM EASE or <insert fancy word for MAKE UP> “new money” and inject into the “system”

There’s only two “fix” categories possible
1. Continually raising taxes to fund ever growing future-come-due commitments, slowing economic growth and making the pain worse and worse over time for everyone until economic collapse and the deaths and misery that will cause. Note, this path is necessarily hugely inflationary because the the massive size of that unfunded future debt means it can only be “serviced” via money printing (as we’re getting now)…

2. Don’t raise taxes anymore and inflation gets society-destroyingly worse ever more quickly… that’s where we currently are

The ONLY “real fix” is something whereby we “plan a gradual shift” (based on age cohorts), whereby the “commitments made to younger people scale down - over decades - whilst mandating that they save for themselves in a PRIVATE manner, the amounts that otherwise would have gone directly to the fed… yes, it still means they are PHUKKED, but at least they have a way out… they have decades in which to work. Folks in their 60’s and older don’t have that option. The reality is that these unfunded future obligations MUST be brought DOWN over time.

They haven’t, and I’m not sanguine about the future on this, won’t do this because the current setup is like drunks in an unlocked and well stocked liquor store… Pols (of both “sides”) love it this way. CREATE fake money, throw it around to buy votes (and hence influence, power, and corrupt personal profits associated thereto - in collusion with the globalist Banksters all along), and LIE to the people claiming it is an “Investment”… again PHUKK Joe Biden and Democrats. That $1.7 Trillion they just printed as part of what they so cynically named “Inflation Reduction Act” was neither “investment” nor reduces inflation. It was a politically payoff to their climate buddies (again, anyone remember Solyndra during Obama?)… It, by definition, was also hugely inflationary. You and I are living that reality NOW.

So, yeah, it’s not as simple as lumping all older republicans into the rich hypocrites wanting to destroy poor people from greed.

It’s time to tar and feather pretty much every federal politician. The good news, is they KNOW it now. And THAT is the best thing Trump has already accomplished: more and more folks are waking up to the REAL problem, and it is the Deep State, and the - think about this long and hard - 10’s of Millions of people it “employs” with what is, at the end of the day, YOUR money.

So, boom. One final thought: all these comments about “can’t afford a car loan”, “mortgage”, etc. are all DIRECTLY due to INFLATION. Inflation that is intentional as, and precisely why, I describe it above.

(and that, in a short version, is precisely why MOST of the pols - and ALL the career pols both D and R out there are “destroy Trump at any cost”). He’s ripped the camouflage off the festering wound all these political maggots have been squirming in all these decades. They like their supply of free food at your expense, thank you very much.

Net: you either see this, or you don’t (alas most on the hard left refuse to even contemplate it, let alone think about it). Once you do, you can’t un-see it. I’d LOVE to be wrong. But 64+ years of experience says I’m not. Remember, I came of working Age during the Carter era, I know how much worse it can get with improper federal government policies. Also remember what it took to claw our economy back to non-inflationary growth again in the early 1980s… It’s going to hurt more this time - because the above inflationary Ponzi scheme has gone on for an additional 50 years.

 

Jesus f**k. People actually believe this unironically?

 

And some don’t? <just as incredulously>… we DO in FACT have 10’s of millions employed in federal government sucking down all our money whilst milking the “system”…

Seriously, “People actually DON’T believe this?” It’s a fact, for goodness sake… Millions for McConnel’s wife, Millions for Bidens family, Millions for Obama, Millions for Clinton, Pelosi, Schumer… pretty much all of them. Bernie’s a multi-millionaire with 3 houses… they are all getting rich selling America out, plain and simple. it’s pretty much all of them, and It is very, VERY real, but…

“None so blind as those who will not see” as the old saying goes…

Trump was in many ways a complete douche, but he is spot-on with the utter and shameless corruption and venality of our current crop of (most) R and (virtually all) D pols… It sometimes amazes me that the rabid Bernie-bro types and the Maga-types don’t see the underlying similarity of their/our issues with “the system/man” as it were…

It is important to try to not look at things from Left/Right, or D/R perspective. It really limits and blinds one to do so. (And oh so easy, unfortunately).

Both “sides” are playing everyone. (Wisdom from an ORFAS dude that has been made an OFAS dude BY government policies pretty much life-long).