Selective Shakedown

Charlie sounds a bit beat down from his comment on the last post, but it gave me an idea for this one.

Few can just drop out – too plugged in to the system to disengage without a culture shock type meltdown. But there are a thousand small paper cuts that can annoy the piss out of the Big Purple Monster..

You give them their pound of flesh at property tax time, but you cut down on new product purchases to short ’em on sales tax. You pay for your tags but limit gas consumption taking away as much fuel tax as possible. Work for cash as much as you can leaving their 1040 vacuum nozzle feeling around like a blind worm. You let the bank make their pound of flesh off the overnight float on your deposits and use Bill Pay for everything and make ’em choke up some stamp change mailing a paper statement… while depriving them of 1 1/2% on every transaction via credit card.

Religiously “tithe” by paying 10% more at a local joint rather than supplicating at Wal-Mart. I spent $120 getting my mountain bike that was down to 3 gears and a half a brake fixed at a local bike shop rather than feed the consumer monster the same money on a new one. In my opinion the Grateful Dead stickers all over it was a factor.

Every bean you cook is a burrito you don’t buy. Every dollar you don’t have to earn is 50 cents straight out of the machine’s ass. We can starve the Beast without making changes too drastic to live with. They’re doing their utmost to bleed us dry – sock it right back at ’em.