LIKE CLOCKWORK: Pension plans to be looted nationwide as Congress okays institutional theft of funds

Natural News – by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

On April 2, 2013, in an article entitled Economics 101: Production, coercion and theft, I wrote about the coming looting of pension plans, stating:

When societies approach collapse, coercion shifts to outright theft: Stealing money right out of your bank account, for example, like we recently witnessed in Cyprus. Government also routinely target pension funds and even private retirement accounts, attempting to keep itself afloat by any means necessary.

Just like clockwork, that looting of pension plans is now about to commence. "Congress could soon allow the benefits of current retirees to be cut as part of an agreement to address the fiscal distress confronting some of the nation's 1,400 multi-employer pension plans," writes Michael Fletcher of the Washington Post. [1] The Post continues:

"This proposal would devastate retirees and their surviving spouses," said Karen Friedman, executive vice president of the Pension Rights Center, a nonprofit group. "The proposal would also torpedo basic protections of the federal private pension law … that states that once benefits are earned, they can't be cut back."

All the pension benefits that have been promised government retirees, in other words, are about to be stolen back from retirees.

This is precisely what I've long warned Natural News readers was coming. And this is merely the very beginning of the true destruction of the financial collapse headed our way. When the next market crash arrives, billions of dollars in retirement funds will be destroyed virtually overnight, and pension funds nationwide will be wiped out.

 

A "declaration of war" against the American worker

The fact that this wholesale theft of pension funds is now under way has not escaped union workers and retirees.

As WashPost also reports:

"This is nothing less than a declaration of war by Congress on American retirees," said R. Thomas Buffenbarger, international president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

Indeed, "war" is exactly how most people are going to perceive this… especially when retirement checks are the primary source of income for many retirees who are just barely getting by.

For millions of Americans, when those checks stop coming, it spells instant financial disaster. Many won't be able to pay their mortgages or rent payments, and we are sadly going to see a massive wave of new American homeless coupled with a glut of vacant homes owned by banks teetering on financial collapse.

As pension funds are increasingly looted and stolen from retirees, more and more of America is going to resemble Detroit: a city that once shined with innovation but now — thanks to outrageous corruption, taxation and the endless expansion of government — has collapsed into third-world status that even lacks running water for many of its residents.

Back in 2013, I warned about all this in an article entitled "Production, Coercion and Theft."

It's time to revisit that article, so here it is:

 

Flashback: Production, Coercion and Theft

I'd like to share a lesson in economics today, and I call it the "Production, Coercion and Theft" lesson.

There are only three ways to accumulate money and wealth in world (other than stumbling across a hidden treasure and actually finding money, that is):

#1) Production: Offer something of value in exchange for money voluntarily traded by recipients

#2) Coercion: Confiscate money (or stores of value) by claiming authority over those who earn it

#3) Theft: Steal money (or stores of value) from those who already have it

Every person in society today acquires money in these three ways (with "gifting" being a fourth way that's in a separate category because it's passive, not active). The office worker, the entrepreneur, the laborer, the weekend burglar and even the professional politician all acquire money in one of these three primary ways.

Production means offering something of value to another party who is willing to trade you dollars for it. It can include both goods and services. A 9-5 office worker, for example, offers the value of their time and effort, and in exchange they are compensated at an agreed upon pay rate.

Production can also mean adding value to physical goods. We do this at the Natural News Store by sourcing organic superfoods from around the world and packaging them in pouches and cans for retail in the USA. This is a classic example of value-added production.

Out of the three methods of money accumulation covered here, production is the only one that adds abundance to the economy. The other two methods reduce wealth and ultimately promote poverty.

Coercion means forcing someone to give you money. This is the default method of all government bodies, from your local property tax collector to the federal IRS. Coercion means extracting money from someone in a non-mutually-agreed (i.e. "non-voluntary") way.

 

Being mugged is a lot like being taxed

A mugging is money extraction via coercion. Ironically, it is almost identical to taxation: There is a threat of force stated or implied, followed by a request for a certain amount of money: "Give me your wallet" or "Pay $12,453.24." Your compliance results in the source of the coercion taking your money then moving on to their next victim. Non-compliance results in you either being shot, stabbed, arrested at gunpoint or stripped of other possessions you may own.

Theft is different from coercion in that there is no interaction at all between two parties. Theft is when someone breaks into your house and steals your flat screen TV when you're not even there. Or it's when someone breaks into your online bank account and transfers all your money to an offshore crime haven in Nigeria.

Theft is what recently happened in Cyprus, where banksters stole 40% or more of private account balances, later stealing 60% or more of many business accounts. It wasn't coercion because there was no threat of force, nor any compliance on your part. You simply wake up one morning and find that your bank account, your truck, your wallet or your laptop computers is missing. That's theft… and that's how the global banking system fundamentally functions.

Another advanced kind of theft is committed by the Federal Reserve. By printing new money, it steals the value of all the money you currently hold. This is called "currency theft" but a full discussion of it is beyond the scope of this lesson. For now, let's stick to simple theft and coercion…

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