Can fire hydrants start a revolution? Should they?

This started out as a comment to something posted by Kate over at Small Dead Animals in response to this article here. She's pointing out another asinine regulation from the US EPA here.

Last American revolution it was tea. Will it be fire plugs this time?

I had a minor revelation last night while sleeping. Aka I had a nightmare, which I will now share with y'all. Some of my conclusions have been stated before by others or by myself, I've never seen it tied up in a bundle like this one. Guess the old brain has been chewing on this for a while now.

If you look at the amount of money the government takes off you, between all levels of government taxation and fees etc. it is roughly half of your total income from all sources. Including money you get from government, of course.

Now in the US, they are attempting to make people sustain even more confiscation in the form of health "insurance" which is really just more income redistribution in capitalist drag. If your Arizona "insurance" fee gets spent on mental health care for some indigent illegal in Texas instead of being invested against the day you need a hip replacement or brain surgery, it isn't "insurance" is it? It's a tax.

Please note that these "insurance fees" are being paid with after tax dollars.

Now add to this the burden of student debt incurred by every single person who wants to be more than a coffee slinger at Timmie's. Doctors particularly can carry as much as half a million dollars of debt from student loans on graduation from residency if they become specialists.  Captain Capitalism has been making this point again and again in his posts about the education bubble, and the information he reveals is extremely troubling.

Please note, also paid for with after-tax dollars, and being paid to institutions run by actual Communists and private in name only. Universities are all supported 99% by government one way or another.

Credentialism insures that the productive class lives in debt servitude into their forties. Bankruptcy does not relieve one of student loans either.

Finally, we have the nested regulations that are the subject of Kate's post. EPA demands municipalities replace fire hydrants with new, as yet uncreated parts. Municipalities will have no choice but to comply, raising taxes on rate payers to make up the shortfall from their budget created by needing the new parts.

Once upon a time I visited a pipe company in Hamilton Ontario which specialized in municipal water systems and hydrants. The didn't make the parts, they mostly just stocked them and maybe modified some things. It would amaze you how much they charge for a simple cast iron hydrant. Some of the parts for a hydrant cost over a thousand dollars. Parts, mind you. Simple castings with some machine work, like threads cut. Thousands. Of. Dollars.

Now, thanks to the EPA, the stock of parts for new hydrants is worthless scrap. Off to the scrap man or the after market, to be sold in the third world at a fraction of the price the command here. New parts to be purchased at even higher prices, because they are certified and made of pure lead-free Amazium instead of the usual cast iron, bronze and brass.

America's stock of after-tax dollars just went down another tick, didn't it? Somebody somewhere is making a boatload of money selling Amazium parts to municipalities, aren't they? No-bid contract too, bet you. Most of the money will be going to the "friends" who got that contract for the company, won't they? Donations, hockey tickets, dinners etc.

Multiply that by everything the EPA does, and the Justice Dept. and the Education Dept. and etc.

It came to me that this is the Soviet Union without the overt brutality. It's a web of regulation, tax and debt that insures nobody does anything without having friends in high places to give them a special deal.

For Canadians feeling smug I have two names: Montreal and Toronto. Or SNC  and Ontario Hydro, same diff.

Now cap it all off with the American Fed printing money. The deliberate effort to create run-away inflation in a deflationary market is the final piece of the puzzle. This is how socialism steals the last bit of your effort, by devaluing the money and equity you have saved over the years. Your only defence is debt, which you pay off with inflated dollars. Buy that house now, and use it's rising price to buy the stuff you want with a second/third/fourth mortgage.  Which worked until 2008, and left most middle class people with some semi-worthless toys, no savings and no house. They now rent. From a venture capital company which quietly bought up about two thirds of the empty houses in most markets at pennies on the dollar.

Prices are now slowly rising, as a result of this mass purchase. Where did somebody get the money to buy up half the houses in the USA? Friends, obviously.

The logical direction for this all to go is more of it. More EPA et al throwing their weight around. More unemployment. More tax. More debt servitude. More more more. It will continue until some bloated perv makes one demand too many and somebody with guts has nothing left to lose. Then it will hit the fan.

Showing once again the genius that Benjamin Franklin was: "A Republic, if you can keep it!" He expected failure, and it appears he was right to do so.

This concludes my revelation/nightmare for today.

As to the future now, given we should expect more more more regulation, tax and debt, pushier cops, more rapacious petty officials with more power and fewer scruples, and of course fewer government services, the question is:

what to do about it?

Comments section is open for your thoughts, ladies and gentlemen. My thoughts on the matter will make a later post.

The Phantom