Despite the outright lies of the White House you were a rather sucky year 2018. Our elected officials in Washington committed blatant wire fraud trying to spin a tax break for the Uber wealthy as a tax break for the middle class when the reality is the polar opposite. The stock market surged on the Krispy Kreme sugar high caused by near zero interest federal loans and the fraud marketed to the public as “tax reform.” Like all sugar highs, it lead to a crash.
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Trump Recession
The #RepubliTrumpRecession started during 2018. It will be in full swing during 2019. We are all seeing the tell tale signs. A temporarily booming stock market without significant wage growth. That great myth of low unemployment, where we don’t count the people who have completely fallen off or the people now working minimum wage jobs who had much better paying jobs before. Yes, the press is all gaga over the 3.7% rate being reported, but it is fiction and not good fiction. For it to be true, wage growth would have to be pushing double digits. It’s not.
Wall Street Fraud
During your time with us 2018, we learned Wall Street bankers are once again engaging in the same fraud game they played with mortgages only this time they are using student loan debt backed securities. Why shouldn’t they? None of them went to prison for running a scam which pulled over $1 trillion out of the global economy. Another $750,000 bribe to Hillary Clinton and she will whisper into the ear of the Justice Department to keep them out of prison this time too.
No, the pin has been pulled on the student loan debt loan debt grenade and it will detonate in 2019. SLABS (Student Loan Asset Backed Securities) are already past the tipping point. Students are graduating with massive debt only to find those supposedly high paying jobs are now being filled by visa workers at 1/3 of market rate because campaign contributions expanded a program which should have been completely done away with. If there really was a shortage of such talent visa workers would be paid much more, not dramatically less, than U.S. Citizens. The fraud has been spouted by talking heads about a skilled labor shortage for over a decade and amazingly nobody has went to prison. Perhaps that is how the Clinton Foundation gets all its donations? Well, the ones which aren’t coming from Russia for Uranium.
College students with $100,000 in student loan debt cannot possibly pay this off at $15/hr, assuming minimum wage ever hits that. Even paying off $30,000 in student loan debt at minimum wage isn’t really possible. Not if you wish to both eat and live indoors. So, default rates will spike in 2019, the bubble will burst, another amount north of $1 trillion will have been scammed out of the global economy by Wall Street bankers and their friends. The Clintons will get richer keeping the bankers out of prison and the working class will once again get screwed.
Kavanaugh
Your time with us brought the Kavanaugh Confirmation. In doing so you saddled 2019 with what will most likely be the Kavanaugh Impeachment once a full criminal investigation is performed, not the joke of an inquiry which was done to slam the vote through. Once the Kavanaugh thing happens, Clarence Thomas will most likely be sweating bullets and he should be, especially after the Dushku settlement.
#MeToo
To be fair 2018, you inherited the #MeToo movement from 2017. Like all things socially noble it became quickly perverted. During your time with us we’ve seen the evidence of that, culminating with the Dushku settlement. A year into the movement it has migrated toward #WhatsNext. Back when I started writing Twenty of Two – The Infamous They one character predicted a significant drop in marriages because guys were simply too scared to date. Well, guys which had anything to take. Now, we are seeing research proving that claim correct. Some research says 42% of Americans now live without spouse or partner. This happened during your time.
Oh, here’s the gift you left 2019 to contribute to the #RepubliTrumpRecession. Those minimum wage working for tips jobs at nice restaurants and banquet halls will all be going way because those businesses will be going under. Their business model is based on a guy’s relentless pursuit of whichever gender sparks their powder and that gender believing no expense is too high for their “one and only wedding” despite the fact they will most likely be married 3 times. Without such excess these businesses cannot survive. Bridal chains already started taking Chapter 11 while you were with us. The high end “dating” type places will be following suit in 2019, slaughtering those tips only jobs Republicans are counting as “fully employed.”
Here is the big stinky pile you are leaving for 2019
- A long and deep #RepubliTrumpRecession which triggers a global recession.
- The criminal investigation which should have been done before Kavanaugh was confirmed, most likely followed by his impeachment.
- A government shutdown which should last until August. Democrats will keep voting through budgets without funding for the $5 billion dollar boondoggle Trump just wants to hang his name on and the day care center in the White House will keep vetoing it. Most likely will take until August for Republicans to grow a pair of nads and override the veto. By then those Federal workers being forced to work without pay will be beyond financially devastated. They should also finally be ready for a Presidential impeachment by then.
- The #MeToo movement will continue to be co-opted by spiteful money grubbing people because all you need is an accusation and a social media account to cash a check. Yes, there are still guys out there who need to be punished, but, like removing spanking in school, it will devastate society. That 42% number will push 80% and the already declining birth rate will sink below “replenishment” rates.
- The teacher shortage will begin to ease, not because we create more teachers, but rather because of the dramatic drop in new children entering the school system due both to home schooling and the dramatic drop in birth rates.
- You will pass along the problems you inherited, most notably school shootings. The same people who caused this problem by removing corporal punishment from our school systems will continue to decry the NRA and wail for gun control rather than admit they created this problem allowing children to grow up without any physical consequences for their actions. Those “changes in the brain” supposed “experts” say spanking causes is actually learning, but, they will never admit to either failure.
I know 2018, you were just a year. It’s not right to blame you for everything that happened, but, you will carry that luggage.
2018 and the Diminished Attention Span
On the bright side you helped reduce the attention span of the world population. Fiction used to be at least magazine length articles, but usually novels. As the attention span of the brains not gifted with the learning brought about by being spanked as a kid spiraled downward we hear of “Flash Fiction.” Initially around 1500 words, it was basically the length of magazine articles. Then we started seeing sites looking for flash fiction of 150-300 words because that is the most people who weren’t spanked as children could comprehend at one sitting.
During your time with us 2018 you taught us the most widely read flash fiction writer in the world who has never read a book creates works of complete fiction early in the morning while having a temper tantrum in the bathroom using, initially, only 140 characters. He boasts a readership north of 50 million and only recently dabbled with the new 280 character limit. Most likely, the bulk of his readers will not be able to consume the additional characters.
Here’s hoping you all have a happy and safe New Year’s Eve.
Cherish your loved ones and hunker down for 2019. It was screwed before it was born.
