SOUR GRAPES

OVER AND UNDER

As it currently operates, the NMIRF Retirement Fund functions as a Ponzi scheme. So does the U.S. Social Security scam. The same fraudulent principals operate in both systems. If any private company or individual tried to do business this way they would be immediately arrested and rightfully so. A Ponzi scheme is an investment swindle in which high profits are promised from fictitious sources and early investors are paid off with funds raised from later ones.

Here is how the scam works. A company advertises a 30-percent guaranteed monthly return on your investment. You rush down to buy a hundred dollars worth of their gilt-edge promises as do a lot of other people. At the end of the month sure enough you ask for and are paid $30 bucks (it comes out of the $100 paid by another sucker who came by today). Word spreads and even more people rush to get in on the action. As long as the most recent payers continue to pay into the scam faster than the phony return dollars are paid out at the other end, the system works. The day the balance tips the company folds and disappears with the bag of money remaining.

In other words, a great number of people pay into the scam retirement fund. The fund in turn squirts out a trickle of benefits to a far smaller number of “beneficiaries” who are understandably happy about putting in a little and getting back a lot. The fund keeps the balance and in the case of U.S. Social Security spends it on anything and everything just like a ponzi operator in a stock scam and of course continues trickling out a bit to the current recipients to keep up appearances.

Now it doesn’t take a math genius to figure out that this will only work as long as the many slave away for the few. If the tables ever turn and the few try to slave for the many, or the promises of repayment ever get too big, the whole rusty thing comes crumbling down. That collapse is what is imminently facing the U.S. Social Security System as the baby boomers reach retirement age. That same collapse is what faces the NMI system sooner or later whether its fund is raided to pay for general account items or not. Of the two scams, the NMI system is the more honest of the two because they at least have a real fund for a part of the money collected and only part of it is squandered on other, unrelated items. The U.S. SS system has already stolen the lot and have only a sock full of IOUs to show.

So if you want to retire with an income instead of an empty promise and an empty wallet, you must take control of your own retirement destiny and learn to purchase retirement products and manage your own funds for your own particular set of needs. There are lots of legitimate companies out there providing retirement services, annuities etc. U.S. SS and NMIRF are not part of that legitimate group. They are part of the rip-off Ponzi scheme operators. The only reason they are not in jail is they have a government monopoly on force. A gun, to keep you in line when the scheme hits bottom and the bagman takes off with the remaining loot.

So use it now, or use it later; or lose it now and lose it later…doesn’t make much difference. There are simply not enough suckers to keep the scam going long enough to pay off everybody. We just can’t breed fast enough to keep up. I say…SPEND IT NOW while it is still there to spend. If we can keep the lights on, or buy a big hotel, or throw a huge party, lets do it. (Easy for me to say because luckily I am not relying on it to retire).

Underground Economy

Most of you know it exists; few are willing to admit just how big it is and just how much it damages our economy. Here goes.

There are hundreds of workers out there working at after-hours jobs, stealing customers from their employers and stealing taxes from our government. They operate many different illegal businesses and every time you use one of them to save a few bucks off the cost of the daytime job by the same guy, you drag our islands economy down a little more. The money that would have gone into a businesses coffers to pay bills (including the wages of the moonlighters) and into our government tax box to pay teachers, doctors, and all the rest goes instead to a remitter or is stuffed into a package and is sent off island back to the Philippines or to China or less often to Bangladesh. This ain’t peanuts folks. It adds up to tens of millions that show and that means a few hundred million that don’t show. Dollars that we desperately need to keep our Saipan economy afloat. I don’t mention this to make you feel guilty for using this illegal work force; I mention it so you realize that you steal from yourself when you do it.

I’m not just talking about Chinese garment workers moonlighting as hookers, gardeners or cardboard box folders, I‘m taking mainly about Filipino workers who during the day perform most of the real work done in nearly every business on the island. At night and on weekends a great number of them are out there moonlighting illegally in their own field of work or sometimes in an unrelated job description. Some are so blatant that they will steal from their employer and do the work right there on the company premises…sometimes hiding it during regular business hours, sometimes waiting till the doors close for the regular work day. Many others supply “shade tree” services at various hidden locations.

If you think it’s only some businessmen who get hurt so why should I care, think again. When those dollars fly off this island they immediately stop circulating and multiplying on Saipan, and start paying for the schools and roads in Luzon or Shanghai instead.

If you want to feel guilty, go to church. If you want to think rationally about the results of your actions, read on. Who should we blame for this state of affairs? You and me and your Senator and your grocer and your clergyman and anyone else on the island who tries to save a buck by conniving with a foreign worker to fix your car after hours or repair that leaky sink on a Sunday afternoon or mow your grass at 2/3s the regular rate without telling his boss. The next time you feel inclined to save a buck, think instead of the two bucks YOU have to pay later in taxes to make up for the lost tax revenue, the out of business, the legitimate employees who then become a drudge on the economy though welfare, food stamps etc. As the economy deflates, your children leave for greener pastures.

What can we do about it? Unlike most problems, this one is easy to cure. Just STOP using the services of these illegals. STOP today, ask your friends and relatives and neighbors to STOP too and explain to them why it is their best self interest, and yours, to just STOP today. Without you as the customer, the illegal activity will dry up right away.

Bruce A. Bateman writes Sour Grapes when the moon is full and the mood strikes. Stay tuned for each exciting episode of:

Sour Grapes
“Yes, he is opinionated.”

email to: bbateman@pticom.com