This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

Check your Donald Trump Bingo cards! Do you have “Starts World War?” Yes, through clever negotiating skills, hubris and a big mouth. The Russians are now threatening a World War. It all started innocently enough; the Orange Dictator was merely trying to point out how it’s all about him. Everything in the whole damn word, is all about him.

The big Orange Dictator was simply expressing his mental illness by telling ole Vladimir. “IF IT WASN’T FOR ME, BAD THINGS WOULD HAPPEN.” Scared yet? But it takes a bullshitter to know a bullshitter. Bad things are already happening for Russia and for the United States too! Russia is on the cusp of a pyrrhic victory; she’ll never recover from. Having her hands full with Ukraine makes it doubtful she’ll start a second front with NATO. But the Orange Dictator was going to end the war in Ukraine in one day. And now, he may end all life on Earth in one day. That’s promises made and promises kept!

The other day, I mentioned the worst April home sales since 2009 (The Great Recession) But after a little research the reasons become obvious. Less than 20% of all Americans can afford to purchase a home. And if you try saving for a home. Home prices accelerate faster than the honest could ever save. Recession? Where? What recession?

McDonalds, Mickey Ds, McDeath reported same store sales which are the lowest in five years. Well gee, what was five years ago? What was going on five years ago? The Covid 19 Pandemic. McDonald’s sales were comparable to the days of the Pandemic, only without the Pandemic. That’s hard to fathom. Millions locked in their homes out of work. And yet today, the sales are worse? No recession here! Yes! We’re still open!

The problem appears to be that the Fast-food industry has forgotten who they are. The original idea was Fast inexpensive food. Not pricy hamburgers or tacos. From Arby’s to Zaxby’s, it’s everybody across the board. And a factoid which warmed my heart, people hate the hamburger Apps. I thought it might be just me being a curmudgeon. But customers find the service is actually slower using the App, not to mention much more annoying.

 I pulled into the drive thru at Dave’s house of square hamburgers. When I was asked, “Did you order using the App?” I answered, “no” and was curtly told, “Hang on, I’ll be with you in a minute.” I was a second-class citizen becoming a burden to them by manually requesting a hamburger. I answered, “Bye!” Corporate America counts their customers by the number of App downloads. They don’t count their lost sales. Sorry, but I don’t want 200 Apps on my phone for places I rarely go. But at Mickey Ds that’s where the deals are located, and the customers aren’t.

A busy mom driving the kiddies around might have her hands full when she pulls into the drive thru. The companies aren’t thinking about their customers, only about themselves. Drive thru = driving. Hands full, not supposed to be on the phone. It does so seem to illustrate the death of customer service. Talk to the machine or Go Away! Do you want this nine-dollar hamburger or what?

They used to say McDonalds was recession proof and now sales have reached pandemic levels. And according to the Administration, we aren’t in a recession! No, it’s not a recession, it’s something far worse.

After fifty years of wages not keeping up with inflation, we are reaching critical mass. Seventy to a hundred-thousand-dollar pickup trucks and forty-thousand-dollar sedans. Twenty-five-thousand-dollar motorcycles and ten-dollar hamburgers with twelve-year payment plans, but it’s not a recession and it won’t get any better next year. It is a permanent state of affairs where fewer and fewer Americans can participate and thrive in the system. Creating an underclass who can’t afford to purchase even simple (So called) luxuries. If everyone is poor and broke, what is the future for the Hamburger stands? What is in the future for the automakers?

The Real Estate market has been buoyed by the investors class who purchase homes to rent to the burgeoning underclass of Americans who will never be able to afford homes. The American dream has been drawn and quartered. Automation and computerization only makes the situation worse. I wrote a story years ago called “My Last Day of Work.” About an architect of factory automation proud of eliminating all those jobs in the factory, being laid off himself. Everything was automated, what did they need him for now? Mission accomplished! Good job!

Of course, you could go to college risking your future on paying back a hundred-thousand-dollar predatory student loans. You could learn a trade, but that is also dependent on a healthy economy. If no one can afford homes, why hire someone to build them? Maybe, if I bet the rent money on a Gambling App I can get ahead? But if you do win with any regularity, they will cut you off. If you lose with regularity, they will invite you in, chum.

The Great Orange Dictator’s plan to eliminate healthcare for fourteen million Americans is just the latest expression of their contempt. During the Pandemic, SNAP funds were made available to the states to assist with children’s needs not in schools. Floriduh’s Ron DeSantis turned down the $50 million because hungry children were preferable to big government programs. But where would that money have gone eventually? It would have gone into the coffers of Kroger and Publix and Winn Dixie. And from there into the bottom line of corporate America.

The big Beautiful Bill is the Economic Destruction Act of 2025. Where doctors and nurses and educators are unemployed. Pharmaceutical reps and Pharmacists and forklift drivers, hospital administrators all out of work. The Grocery Store Elimination Act. So, the wealthy can have more and the rest of us can eat shit and die.

Back in the days of Russian Czars. Millions of serfs lived on the steppe without owning any property at all. Lacking an education or any chance for improvement in their situation. Wealthy landowners who used them when needed and let them die when they didn’t. God loves the poor, that’s why he made so many of them.  Everybody’s gone Serfing, Serfing USA.

“But when they’ve got everything on the God-slaving earth that they can eat and they can wear and they can live in — and all that their children can live in and wear and eat and all their children’s children can use — then we’ve got to call Mr. Morgan and Mr. Mellon and Mr. Rockefeller (Mr. Bezos or Mr. Musk) back and say, ‘Come back here. Put that stuff back on this table that you took away from here that you don’t need. Leave something else for the American people to consume.” – Huey Long