Copyright 2012 by John T. Reed
Last year I sent an email to buyers of my books suggesting the then-new third edition of my Succeeding book as a Christmas gift.
This year, I did it again in three ways:
• email to my real estate investment book buyers about the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to borrow at the lowest rates ever and the fact that hyperinflation would wipe out the mortgage while leaving the value of the property still standing; That email recommending buying various of my real estate books and/or my book How To Protect Your Life Savings from Hyperinflation & Depression.
• email to buyers of my How to Protect Your Life Savings from Hyperinflation & Depression as a gift—an echo of a reader who did just that and commented that he could think of no better gift this year
• same Hyperinflation & Depression email to my Succeeding book buyers; The third edition of Succeeding, which came out in December 2011, has 12 index entries about hyperinflation, mostly in the chapters titled “Investment” and “Risk.”
I got no noteworthy objection to sending the hyperinflation & depression book email to the buyers of that book or to the real estate investment book buyers. But apparently my Succeeding book has been purchased by a number of Obama supporters.
My son Dan tells me of frequently having online debates with liberals. I always express surprise because I have no such debates.
Well, not until I sent the hyperinflation & depression email to the Succeeding buyers.
One response angrily denounced me and recited alleged sins of past Republicans. Here is that email:
John,
You are a very smart guy, but my math says the problems our country is facing have as much more to do with a "rightist-agenda" as "leftist agenda":
(1) Mortgage crisis did not "bring down the banks" - they brought themselves down with their own greed and corruption and proving that regulation is indeed necessary to prevent at least some of both.
(2) Corporate welfare - banks are "too big to fail."
(3) Missing from your analysis is the cost of 3 unfunded wars by two Republican presidents (Bushes).
(4) Cost of illegal immigration that exploded after a Republican president (Reagan) gave a "one time" amnesty that turned into the greenlight for a massive influx of illegals.
(5) Cost of a failed, monumentally expensive pie-in-the-sky "defense" program called Star Wars (Reagan)
(6) Massive outsourcing of manufacturing and good-paying engineering jobs to the countries, which we have enriched to such an extent as to where they now lend our government the money to waste on (1) through (5).
Obama did not create any of the above problems but go ahead and mis-direct with Tea Party propaganda so you can milk it for your own gain.
Her reference to “leftist agenda” is from this sentence in my email:
Massive anti-business regulations related to Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and other leftist agenda items are about to descend on the economy.
I was not aware of this, but apparently the Left does not like to be called “the Left.” She was not the only leftist recipient to go off on this phrase. I thought the Left was proud of being called the Left. It comes from the left bank of the Seine River in Paris.
I guess they wanted me to use the word “progressive.” Not gonna happen. At present it is a euphemism. I do not use those.
The word “progressive” was abandoned by the progressives decades ago because “progressives” came to be hated. They started calling themselves by a new, albeit re-purposed, euphemism: liberals. More recently, the word “liberal” was abandoned by liberals, because it became so hated. Ironically, they went back to “progressive” apparently because they figured no one would remember.
See my web article “You are probably a Marxist, and that is a big problem” which is about two of the left’s favorite euphemisms: progressive income tax and government safety net. I contend that is a near identical sentiment to the famous Marxist phrase,
From each according to their ability and to each according to their need.
Anyway, this woman’s numbered points are nothing but blame game stuff, the essence of which is “How dare you criticize my Obama. To retaliate, I will criticize your Republicans and capitalists and businessmen.”
I am a Libertarian,
Big picture: the problem in America today is entitlements. Here is a quote from the Heritage Foundation:
In the past 20 years, federal outlays have grown 71 percent faster than inflation. Federal entitlements are driving this spending growth, having increased from less than half of total federal outlays just 20 years ago to nearly 62 percent in 2012. …while defense dropped to less than one-fifth (18.7 percent) of the budget.
The subprime crisis had an army of villains—businesspersons and politicians and regulators—both liberals and conservatives. I read almost every book on it. I am not going to try to reproduce them here. It doesn’t matter with regard to analyzing whether we are going to get hyperinflation and how to protect yourself.
Corporate welfare should be ended but is peanuts compared to regular welfare, mainly Social Security and Medicare recipients receiving three times as much as they contribute. It doesn’t matter with regard to analyzing whether we are going to get hyperinflation and how to protect yourself.
The three “unfunded wars” by Bush I and II were approved by bipartisan Congress votes, are not really wars but brief invasions followed in two cases by prolonged occupations. “Unfunded” or “not paid for” is a favorite Democrat claim. Funded or paid for would mean raising current taxes to pay the incremental costs of being in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Neither party advocated such a thing at the time. No U.S. war has ever been paid for by current taxes. They were all paid for by borrowing, often called Liberty Bonds or War Bonds. It doesn’t matter with regard to analyzing whether we are going to get hyperinflation and how to protect yourself.
I am not aware of any net cost related to illegal immigrants that has been established rigorously. By definition, who they are and where they are and what they are doing or not doing is unknown. They reportedly come here for jobs, not welfare. Indeed, in the current weak economy, the net in-migration of illegals has dropped to zero. They pay taxes, collect welfare, get free education. If there is a net cost, I have never heard it discussed in the media except in the most general and speculative terms. Reagan made a bad deal caused by trusting Democrats who reneged on their end of it. They did the same to him on spending cuts. It doesn’t matter with regard to analyzing whether we are going to get hyperinflation and how to protect yourself.
The “failed, monumentally expensive” “Star Wars” (Strategic Defense Initiative) programs were partially successful and in use today in some weapons. Reagan started it. Clinton shrunk its scope, changed its name to Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, but continued it. Bush II renamed it Missile Defense Agency. It cost $44 billion from 1983 to 1992—4% of this year’s deficit—not to mention the fact that Clinton took it over 20 years ago in 1992. It doesn’t matter with regard to analyzing whether we are going to get hyperinflation and how to protect yourself.
Outsourcing is called free enterprise. The jobs in question belong to the private companies who pay the employees, not to the government or anyone else. They give the work to the lowest acceptable bidder, just like a liberal getting work done on his house. It doesn’t matter with regard to analyzing whether we are going to get hyperinflation and how to protect yourself.
With regard to the last sentence,
Obama did not create any of the above problems but go ahead and mis-direct with Tea Party propaganda so you can milk it for your own gain.
It doesn’t matter with regard to analyzing whether we are going to get hyperinflation and how to protect yourself.
The word “mis-direct” refers to blame. My book title’s verb is “protect,” not blame. I have defined a politician as someone who takes credit for anything good that happens regardless of whether he or she is entitled to any credit, and blames the other party for anything bad that happens, regardless of the responsibility of the blamer. This writer is a politician. I am not. Also, the entire reader email tries to change the subject from our current federal government debt bomb and protecting yourself from it to implying that my email was about assigning blame rather than recognizing and dealing with the danger.
I do not care for the Tea Party and have said so many times. I would further comment that as far as I know they are not organized enough to even have propaganda. It doesn’t matter with regard to analyzing whether we are going to get hyperinflation and how to protect yourself.
Almost all the critical commenters accused me of pushing propaganda, panic, doom to sell books.
Before you sell books, you must first write them. Writing a book where it is not full of blank space, written by a ghost writer, or plagiarized is extremely difficult. I have written 35 of them; 96 if you count editions. Twice, I started to write a book then abandoned it because I simply was not excited enough about the topic. It is an intellectual marathon. You cannot get through it unless you are highly excited abou teh topic. The vast majority of people cannot even write a chapter-length discussion of anything.
Early in my career, I would write and write for months growing very weary of the project. But I figured, at least I’m almost finished. Then I would count the pages and find I was only one-third done. What a crushing, demoralizing discovery! Over the decades—now more than three as a professional writer—I learned to print the book out daily and put it into a binder so I could always know where I was. And I came to recognize the emotional weariness of that long slog and see it as a sort of old friend when it came along around one-third to half-way through the new book.
My point here is if you think I write books I do not believe in order to then tell lies to sell them, you have no clue about what it is like to write a real, commercial (bought by the public in large numbers) book; you have no clue how hard it is to sell books; and you have no clue about who I am as a person. When I get that sort of nonsense from strangers, I just laugh. But these emails I sent went to my book readers. They know quite well that I am an honest guy who works hard to write excellent books that are accurate and useful.
But as they say, “You can’t discuss religion or politics” in polite company—or, apparently—in an email to one of your book readers. Religion and politics cause normal people to suffer temporary insanity. “Any hint of an attack on my religion or my candidate will be met with a full retaliatory response.”
I have been through this sort of debate a zillion times. That is why I created a web article titled “Intellectually dishonest and intellectually-honest debate tactics.” There are 41 numbered, dishonest tactics in that article. There are only two honest tactics:
1. pointing out errors or omissions in your opponent’s facts
2. pointing out errors or omissions in your opponent’s logic
Nothing in the reader’s email relates to errors or omission in facts or logic pertaining to how to protect your life savings from hyperinflation or depression or the need to do so.
This writer made use of the following intellectually-dishonest debate tactics on my numbered list:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 14, 15, 16.
John T. Reed