The Continuing Lives of Ambrose Bierce/Ambro Pyrce
Midsummer, 2094
Welcome Home!
Just a word at the beginning to the intrepid souls who have now returned to Urth from the deeps of space. Most of you are for the first time breathing the air on our beautious blue orb, and are no doubt curious to get a properspective about how your on-planet cohabizens have come to be what we are. I realize that you have not been entirely isolated, and that you have received the necessential news updates during your time away. I’m also aware that most of you are well read to the extreme, but with a concentration on those materials already published at the time of the great leavetaking which you or your forbears undertook in 2037.
Sofore, what I and some others have been assigned to do, as part of your introgradualization to Urth life, is to fill in the gaps of your knowledge concerning the manytudinous changes which have transcurred on our globe during the past century.
I have been informed that there are several dozen among the returnees who were present on the planet, pre-Arka-One, for the following events, including Captain Marburger’s parents, who are each a robust 99-years-old. Some of you may takevantage the memory-stores of these oldsters to get a more vivid picture of the first one-third of this century.
Instituting a Meritocracy
In this essay, I will primarily be dealing with the economic reforms of 21st Century Urth, but in order to do that I must first provide some detailia concerning the meritocratic voting system instituted in North America (and copied around the world, as was the economic program) because the interlationship between the political and economic is, as always, a symbiotic one. The voting schematic below becomes directly linked with the majorportant economic overhaul of what’s alternately been called “The Golden Trigger,” “The Big Fix” and “The Gentle Revolution.”
Beginning in 2018, a new voting system was initiated in the NAU, based on a citizen’s accumulated merit points. Originally authorized under the Franken-Weatherby Voting Reform Act, this became a constitutional amendment that was swept to approval in short order. It underwent some minor revisions along the way, but this is where it now stands.
Each citizen naturally gets one vote upon reaching the age of 18, the legal voting age. In the following ways they may add vote-points onto their total.
Ø graduate from high school—2 points
Ø for each year completed of college or Junior College—1 point
Ø graduate from college—3 additional points
Ø earn a Master’s degree—5 points
Ø earn a Ph.D—7 points
Ø for certified marriage—8 points (first one only)
Ø for 20 years married—10 points
Ø for each child—2 points (limit four)
Ø for each child graduating from high school—2 points
Ø for each child who doesn’t graduate from h.s.—minus 2 points
Ø for any other add-on achievements by children—one-half is added to each parent’s total (Fractions of vote-points in final total are rounded up.)
Ø for every year of employment in same company, starting with 4th year—1 point
Ø for owning main residence—5 points
Ø certified carbon-zero house—10 points
Ø for service in the military—2 points per year
Ø for military service in a war zone—4 points per year served
Ø for service in the volunteer sector, eg, Peace Corps, hospitals, nursing homes, volunteer fireperson—2 points per year served
Ø for civic service or extraordinary actions, given by state representatives or senators—up to 10 points
Ø for civic service or extraordinary actions, given by congresspersons or senators—up to 20 points
Ø for civic service or extraordinary actions, given by president—up to 50 points
Ø elected or appointed to city or county office—10 points
Ø elected or appointed to state office—20 points
Ø elected or appointed to national office—30 points
Ø for taxable income over 50k—5 points
Ø for income over 100k—10 points (additional)
Ø for income 100k to 300k—15 points
Ø for income 300k to 600k—20 points
Ø for income over 600k—30 points
Note: For income add-ons, the husband and wife each receive the full amount listed above. If no spouse, then the income-earner may designate one of their children, or any other person they choose, to receive the bonus vote-points.
The Panic of ‘08
I will concentrate my commentalysis on North America because, besides my being a resident of that continent, the economic phenomenon that reshaped Urth occurred there first, then spread quickmediately around the globe.
The beginning, middle and end of the economic story herecoming, the virtual firestorm which was unleashed into every corner of this world, was due to an income redistribution plan called, in North America, Apportionism. This far-reaching program was initiated by the Reapportionment Act of 2020.
But first some history. During the notoriously incompetent Bush II administration of 2000-2008 (which culminated in the financial distress of the Panic of ’08), the financial marketeers had engaged in many high-profit/insane-risk enterprises. Thru various manipulations, primarily the packaging of dubious debt into salable “financial instruments” and “derivatives,” these Wall Streeters made boggling sums of personal profit while hollowing out the wealth of the country. They negcomplished this with their co-conspirators in the insurance industry, quasi-public housing corporations and of course the paid-off politicians who blocked them from regulation while they gamed the system into ruination. (See further, The Casino Capitalists: How 3000 Guys in Suits Nearly Ruined the World, by Jon Blessingham.)
When this house of cards finally collapsed, most of the major banks, and the largest insurance company (the notorious A.I.G.), were left in a virtual state of insolvency, and the credit flow to American companies and individuals became virtually frozen. And the adverse effects were not only felt in the US but, in those early years of globalization, around the world as well. (Thus the old saying, “When America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold.”)
As was eminently obvious at the time, but became crystal during subsequent hearings, the major financial institutions—more specifically, the executives of these underregulated entities—had engaged in the worst sort of machinations. In their lust for obscene profits, which they did indeed derive, these greedsters ravsavaged the supine American infrastructure. The leaders of the bankitutions, mortgage companies, hedge-fund outfits, investment companies, in concert with the public/private monstrosities called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (G it online if you need to), all conspired in a loot-loading orgy of financial instrumentation.
But what allowed their nefarious undertakings to proceed was the complicity—later proven in some cases to be culpable—of the ostensibly objective credit rating services, who sanctioned sows’ ears as silk purses, and led to the system-wide crisis, as securities rated AAA turned out to be, instead, odiously toxic assets.
The unrelenting self-interest of these (foolishly proclaimed) “Masters of the Universe” led to unrepentant greed—which led to activities and results that were not only counter to the public’s interest, but to the very security of the industrialized world. Playing the financial fieldscape like rapacious v-gamers, these millionaires and billionaires succeeded in bringing the richest nation on the planet to its knees. And once there, the federal government had no choice but to give tremendous sums of “bailout” money to those very same institutions so they wouldn’t crash the country completely.
Of course, none of this would have been possible without the collusive subterplanning conducted with their paid-for cohortizans in Washington DC. The implosion which sickthuddingly followed caused a 12 trillion dollar loss in the general public’s wealth (stock market, pension and 401k losses), most of which was never recovered.
The president and elected repras who came to Washington in 2009 were, even aside from this crisis, confronted with a kind of national bankruptcy; not real bankruptcy, but an “on-paper” bankruptcy in the sense of the liabilities and promised outlays far outweighing the assets and projected income of the federal Treasury.
To broad-stroke it, this was the result of a perfect shitstorm of an overextended entitlements system, an expensive foreign set of wars, and the eight years of foolishly lowered taxes by the pandering, rich-class-serving Bushies. All of this existed under the backdrop of a mounting National Debt, a skyrocketing Trade Deficit, and steeply rising medical costs for Medicare/Medicaid. Exacerbating this wretched set of emerguations was the imminent retirement—into Entitlement City—of nearly 40 million Baby Boomers.
Many actions were taken at that time to alleviate the brinkverging financial collapse, upticluding a major bailout package to the bankitutions and major corporations totaling almost two trillion dollars. President Obama initiated a series of huge stimulus measures—from tax cuts to massive public-works projects—and was able, thru various deft implementations of the Federal Reserve System and new strictulations, to address many of the underlying causes of the meltdown. Many new and unprecedentedly rigorous provisions were emplaced which put the necessential reins on the financial industry. But for all the good that the Obama administration did, it was unable to fully revitalize the US economy to pre-Panic levels. This was due in large part to the fact that the foxes were still in the henhouse, and their money still mainly ruled the roost.
Bart Hanson’s Rectification Plan
Then, under the presidency of Patriotic Populist Bart Hanson, elected in 2016, a battle royale ensued with the corporate superclass, and the richsters in general. Having been elected by rallying the country behind him to affect sweeping reforms, and with a large majority in Congress in active support, the new president moved forward with a mandate to clean up Washington once-for-all.
Interesting sidenote: Bartholemew Hanson was the owner of a sporting goods company who was well known as a liberal blogger of the time. In 2009 he won a lottery called the Powerball, raking in nearly 200 million dollars. He used this money to launch a vast public relations campaign for his reform issues, then ran an independent campaign for the presidency in 2012, in which he achieved 18% of the popular vote. He then began funding dozens of independent, reform-minded candidates, who were the foundation of the Patriotic Populist party. In 2014 they managed to win sixty seats in the House and four in the Senate, nearly half of the winners being Democrats who had crossed over to join the new party. The rest, as they say, is history. (See further, Hitting the Right Buttons: The Meteoric Rise of Bart Hanson, by Ira Scheerer.
One memorable quote from the Hanson inaugural address was this: “The wealthy and powerful have used their wealth and power to make more wealth and power, and most have done so selfishly and ungraciously, with little heed for the public good. Ever the circle goes round and round. Well, my fellow Americans, the circle stops here.”
Within three months of his inauguration, President Hanson had signed a series of measures aimed at extracting from the wealthocrats “their just dues.” Their time of tilting the gameboard to roll extra marbles to themselves was officially over. Taken together, the package had been a major part of Hanson’s campaign centerpiece, umbrellized as “The Rectification Plan.”
Corporate taxes and income taxes on the upper class were steeply raised to 40%, and most tax loopholes (including the chicanery of offshore accounts and various tax havens) were abruptly closed. The capital gains tax, long a political football, was precipitously re-raised (from 18%) to 30%. Then, in a clean sweep, the over-$5 million estate tax was likewise raised (from 15%) to 30%.
Lobbying, in which corporations paid former legislators and high-impact individuals to influence legislators, was outlawed. This practice had become a major institution unto itself, with over 30,000 registered lobbyists in Washington by 2016, and was the cornerstone of the corporate class in their fevered pursuit of getting their priogenda into law. But their rank influence peddling had demonstrably weakened the country with many bad pieces of legislation. Many outrages were revealed in the nationally televised Garafolo Commission Hearings on Lobbying, to the extent that public sentiment was strongly opposed to their continued existence.
So, in the cruelest blow to the corporate class and the suit-and-tie leeches of Washington, their pipeline to Congress was shut down. Direct contact between corporate hirees and repracrats was severely curtailed, then forbidden altogether, thus ending the excessive co-opting and corrupting of legislators and the national interest by their activities. In the new protocol, any corporation, special interest group or other entity that wanted to state their case to Congress had to do so in writing –- either by delivery of reports, or by e-transfer.
The Congress tried to go all the way with these reforms and enact a virtual halt to campaign contributions of over $200, and only from individuals, but these attempts were always defeated by the still-receiving members of the House and Senate. But that all changed in 2017, with the tidal wave of freshcoming legislators swept into office by the Bart Hanson landslide.
Under Hanson, public financing of campaigns (for president, senators and congresspersons) was finally passed, altho in a modified form. Candidates could collect whatever they could from private contributors, limited to $1000 each, but nothing from any groups of any kind. Also, the very large loophole of “soft-money contributions” (money given to the parties instead of a specific candidate), was no longer allowed. Political Action Committees were banned, as were the so-called 527s (paid political advertising by independent groups). The government then duplimatched the legal contributions dollar for dollar.
Not done, the Hanson Justice Department went after what it termed “boardroom racketeers,” especially the Wall Street and corporate officers who had criminally twistipulated the country’s economy to amass hundreds of billions of dollars for themselves and their companies while paying (thanks to loopholes written into law by their client congressmen) an inordinately small tax bill. This initiative led to the convictions of dozens of them, including some of the most prominent of that era. At the top of this list were the infamous Wall Street Seven—these being CEOs and CFOs who were convicted of various financial crimes and sentenced to serve 10 years in prison for their misdeeds. This included two of the richest men in the financial world, Sol Berkstein and Buzz Edwards.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, the financial market watchdog, had been nearly doubled in size during the first years of the Patriotic Populists’ reign, leading to tremendous pressure on business to play by the more tightstrictive rules. Those who continued to illegally game the system, and in the case of Berkstein and Edwards, ransack the system, were perp-walked out of the corridors of power and into the halls of justice, then found themselves locked up in the cubicles of punishment.
The other area of criminal investigation centered on the food and drug manufacturers who knowingly placed dangerous products on the market, despite their own internal testing which indicated the great harm that would result. Also finding themselves indicted and convicted were former officers of the FDA, EPA and other agencies for accepting bribes in the form of cash or, more often, ridiculously high-paying jobs at the companies for a friend or family member, or for them after they left the regulatory agency.
The culpacriminality that came to light involving corporations and special interests which did business with government agencies was sickening to the max. These involved unwarranted (but “paid for”) food and drug approvals, and illegally overlooked ecovironmental violations, among other abrogations of the public trust.
After several hundred arrests the president issued an amnesty for anyone else to come forward with confessions of wrongdoing, or information of same, “to excise this cancerous growth on the American body politic.” This resulted in hundreds more exposes, including several dozen skewed “scientific studies” financed by various industries. One of the most shocking aspects about these revelations was that many universities were corrupted by the filthy lucre of private business, as college presidents, deans and faculty members fell prey to the temptation of dangled money.
To give some historical perspective, since the inception of the United States (the core country in the North American Union, and during the 20th Century the undisputed most powerful nation on Urth), the wealthy had maintained their hand on the controls. True, they had lost a few battles with the likes of strong-willed presidents like Andrew Jackson, the two Roosevelts, and Barack Obama, but it wasn’t until the Hanson administration that they lost the power of being the governing centerstablishment.
The Demise of the Conservatives
On the subject of the politisphere, I’m rememberminded that when the dealmediation was still in the works, there were those conservatives (this term later become a pejorative) who insisted it would only lead to disasterclusion, and used what shortlived influence they still retained to aim potshottery at the program, and be fearcausative at every turn allowed them.
After being shockingly wrong on so many other major policies—domestic, foreign and financial—they were thus wrong on the most important positive development in the country’s history, one that turned the nation into one big boomtown, and its citizens into recipients of unprecedented plentitude. The conservatives faded quickly into oblivion, the abyss of nonexistence that myself and others thought it better that they would have disappeared into many years earlier, before the debacle of the Bush II years.
The conservatives of that era, masquerading as a political philosophy/party (the Republicans), were in reality the paid instruments of the monied class and the powerful military-industrial complex. To garner enuff votes to win elections, they cobbled together a crazyquilt coalition of Americans: educationally challenged working-class whites (disparagingly called “rednecks” and “white trash” by the people of that time); evangelicals, the fundamentalist Christians who believed a lot of wholesale bulloney, including (before the Exoterrian influx set in motion their re-education) that the bible was the word-for-word Godspoken truth; military families (who they exploited unendingly with phony patriotistic manipulations; old folks who were raised Republican; and incorrigibly selfish types who wanted lower taxes and resented any government programs they themselves weren’t the recipient of.
The Republican Party then, after their role in the fraudulently perpetrated and horrifically mismanaged Iraq War (and the attendant war-profiteering scandals), the implosion of the financial-market bastions in 2008, and the revelations of the lobbying/bribery misdeeds revealed in the congressional hearings of the Obama administration (among many other violations of the public trust), went into a death spiral in the early years of Reapportionment, and disbanded altogether before the 2028 elections. The predominant political parties and corresponding philosophies became the Patriotic Populist party (neoliberals), the Green Democratic Party (enviro-labor liberals), and the American Centrist Party (moderate conservatives instead calling themselves centrists).
Negotiating a New Era
But, by 2019, a backlash against the Hansonites had occurred. The economy was sputsputtering, and the massmedia (ownoperated by the targeted corporo class) had led the countercharge against the “overreaching” and “semi-socialistic” Hanson administration.
But President Hanson still had one large item on his agenda, one he was saving for possible implementation in his hoped-for second term. Outside of his wife, an economist in her own right, nobody had heard mention of this radical plan. It constituted the primary wave in the sea change of Apportionistic Social Capitalism, or ASC (but more commonly called Apportionism), the central tenet of which was a tax on the assets of the wealthy, used as distribution money for the working classes of Americans.
A series of secret meetings were held, starting with a conclave involving Hanson, his consulteam, and the major leaders of Congress. After they established the goals they wanted to accomplish, and some parameters of what they might offer to secure it, they getgathered a bevy of top corporate officers and wealthocrats. The unofficial leader of this group was Bank of America head Rico Sasparelli. Acting as “referee” was the Federal Reserve Chairman Timothy Geithner.
It was out of these meetings, which featured Mandy Hanson, the president’s wife and chief economic advisor, that the Reapportionment Act of 2020 took initial form. But the path to actualization was still a rocky one. What the richsters were told was that the executive and legislative branches were determined to establistart a plan which would require a tax on the net worth of the wealthy, and that they wanted to have talks with representatives of the monied class to work out some kind of dealmediation.
They asked the richsters what their “wish-list” was. The answers came back. First, they desired a return to legal lobbying. They would accept some regulaws on it, but argued that this direct access to lawmakers was the best means to get their interests heard. Also priocentral on the execuheads’ list was the 40% top tax rate on income, capital gains and estates, which they felt was punitive. In addition, they wanted reduced sentencing for financial crimes, and a sentence reduction for the corporate officers who had recently been sent to prison.
The polcrats listened, but Speaker of the House Wagner said that altho there was probably little they could do about the lobbying issue, they would consider it “on-the-table.”
It turned out that this last response was merely a ploy because he and the other legislators, along with the president, were already cooking up a substitute lobbying system, and not a pale imitation either; it would be a fully powered voice for the corporations and other power centers and special interests.
As for the capital gains and estate taxes, they realized that if, if their master plan worked out, they would be able to garner and redistribute enough tax revenue from the wealth centers to triggerstart a fired-up economy. Then they would no longer need the estate tax and capital gains tax to be at such high levels. The reason those rates were jacked so high to begin with was to try to slow the country’s massive indebtedness, a National Debt that was costing the country an absurdiculous 20% of their gross revenues per year in interest payments.
The legislative leaders and the presidential couple held several closed-door conferences, and settled on their proposals, which they then presented to an expanded conference of around 150 wealthocrats in a conclave held in Boston. The federal government would agree to lower the capital gains tax to a super-low 5% and the estate tax to the same, institute a legitimate and effective replacement for political access (lobbying), and sharply reduce the sentencing structure for financial crimes, and those only served under house arrest.
In exchange, the federal government would exact an annual 5% Assets Tax on fortunes over 10-million and add a 10% surcharge on corporate profits over a billion dollars. These were packaged as a “Partnership Tax,” as the megawealthy individuals and corporations operating under America’s aegis perforce were reliant on the government for the regulation and protection of the playing field, which included, among other things, the country’s transportation system, educational system, and law enforcement. All of these made the acquisitioning by these successful entities possible; thus they were in partnership for their mutual benefit.
For the sake of perspective, it should be noted that there were some nations who had a wealth tax, most notably France, but these were generally set at under 2% of net worth. But it made eminent sense that the US would be the first to fully mine this resource, as nowhere else was the disparity between the haves and not-haves so glaring; nowhere else in the industrialized world had such a scant few (1%) managed to hoard control over 93% of a nation’s monetary value—in the US’s case, an amount equal to 60 trillion dollars. As Mandy Hanson herself said in an early press conference explaining the Assets Tax (echoing bank robber Willie Sutton’s famous line), “Because that’s where the money is.”
These increases in revenue acquirement by the IRS would be for the stated purposes of putting in place a national redistribution plan, while continuing the necessary process of paying down the National Debt. Every year starting in 2024, a percentage of gross revenues was mandated to go toward paydown of the country’s enormous debt, a monstrosity that had skyrocketed to nearly $20 trillion by that time, accelerated during the Obama years by the need to save the faltering economy from financial calamity.
In his memoir (Inside the Gentle Revolution) Speaker of the House Rahm Emanuel revealed that he had said to the assembled CEOs, CFOs, Chairboards and family scions: “The administration is committed to making this thing work. If all goes as planned, everybody will win, from the little guys to the richest among you, and certainly any business worth its salt, what with trillions of additional money being spent by the people every year. And what that translates to is that the federal government won’t be inclined to upset the apple cart. What will keep that cart rolling is giving you guys favorable conditions to operate with.”
At that point in the proceedings, Mark Cuban (a sports mogul worth around 20 billion), stood up and declared, “I’ll be goddamned if I’m gonna write you bastards a check for a billion fucking dollars!! You might as well put the handcuffs on me right now!” Echoing his sentiment, the room was filled with similar declarations of “Me too,” and “I’ll never pay it,” and even a few yells of “I am Spartacus!”
The calmcollected Hanson replied: “Mark, if you don’t pay it, you will go to prison. Real prison. I’m hereby amending the house arrest part to exclude tax evasion. Unless they put you in fucking debtor’s prison first—you with only a measly 19 billion dollars to put bread on your table. The thing of it is, Mark, that 5, 10, 15 years from now, you’ll be making much much more, and won’t even miss the money that you send to us bastards. With trillions of dollars being put into the consumers’ hot little hands, they’ll be spending it as fast as we dish it their way—buying the products you gentlemen and ladies sell. In fact, any of you who don’t double your worth in the next 8-10 years will lose my respect.” That cooled off the room and, after a short break, the negotiations started in earnest.
It’s worth noting in regard to the originally disgruntled Mark Cuban that he did indeed double his net worth in the following 10 years—at which point he organized the World Allball League—and he commissioned larger-than-life marble statues of President Hanson in the downtowns of Chicago, Dallas, New York and San Francisco.
Among the richsters, the main supporters of the Assets Tax/Redistribution scheme were Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Paul Allen, the Google guys Larry Page and Sergay Brin, and a few of the Wal-Mart Waltons (who split off from their adamantly opposed siblings).
Arguing instead for an across-the-board implementation of a 3% tax—capital gains, estate and assets, real estate baron Donald Trump had a large minority in his corner at the outset. A vociferous, but much smaller contingent, was a group led by Larry Ellison and members of the Waltons (along with Mark Cuban) who stood in defiant opposition to the new plan and who called for a rollback of the overall tax structure to the Bush II levels.
In this last group also was beer heiress Cindy McCain, who was nearly apoplectic in her negreaction to the Asset Tax, and had to be led from the meeting by her assistants. In contrast, another “political wife,” Teresa Heinz-Kerry, became a strong advocate of the plan and later served on the Presidential Implementation Commission set up to smootherate the transition to Apportionism.
Probably the most interesting individual at the conclave was the quixotic Ralph Nader, a longtime consumer advocate and erstwhile presidential candidate who had been left $14 billion by Warren Buffett. He made an impassioned speech from his chair to the gathered wealthocrats that they should up the Asset Tax to 15%, as that was the average annual rate of assets growth of the super-rich. He was met with cavernous silence, but his exhortations did serve to put the opponents of the tax, and the advocates of a 3% AT, more on the defensive.
The final item presented to the wealthocrats was described by House Majority Leader Stoyer in his memoirs as “the blue ribbon we wrapped the package in.” It was an immediate presidential pardon for the Wall Street Seven CEOs, as well as around 300 other corporexecs incarcerated under the SEC crackdown.
The gathered elite were at first stunned when they heard the announcement, then as a group stood in loud applausovation. The Wall Street Seven were their compatriots and friends, and their convictions had sent a cold chill up the spine of every man-wom in that assembly. It could have been them caught in the dragnet, many of them realityized, and the next time it maybe would have been. The day that the Wall Street Seven were sentenced, three years previous, had signaled the death knell of an era of rampant business exploitation in North America, where big money greedsterism ran the game, devil take the hindmost.
The Five-Percent Solution
Most of the executives and wealthocrats were open to the outline of the new initiatives, and entered into backforthing negotiations with the government repras. The haggling which ensued was thornacious and lasted several days, but the fiat accompli was finally announced. A formula was produced which was satisfactory to both sides. Widely known as The 5% Solution, the main components were as follows:
The Assets Tax would be set at 5%, but that rate would only apply to fortunes worth over $50 million. For those families with a net worth between $8 million and $50 million, the tax rate would be lower, but would exclude a family’s primary residence and two most expensive land vehicles. The specific numbers were:
Ø $8-15 million net worth—2% Asset Tax
Ø $15-25-M—3%
Ø $25-50-M—4%
A late-minute addition to the formula was that anything over $50-billion net worth would be brought down a notch to 3.5%, altho the 5% would obtain up to that point. This level of wealth only applied to 16 families at that time, but it’s believed that, like most people of that pedigree, they were scrappy negotiators to the last, and extracted what to them was a victory in the proceedings.
Continuing:
Ø The capital gains and estate taxes would be brought down to 5%.
Ø The proposed corporate surtax was likewise set at 5%, while the corporate tax top rate was lowered to 35% Additionally, there would exist liberal provisions for reinvestments, depreciation of property and factories, tax write-offs, and “mercy years” during which a company would be granted tax relief to have the capital to retool or make a large purchase or expansion.
Ø The top income tax rate would also be reduced from 40% to 35%.
The lowering of the top income tax rate wasn’t in the original drawplans, but was added to finally secure the stamproval of the wealthiest of the wealthocrats in the negotiations, who were balking at paying both the Assets Tax and Income Tax during their larger income years. These were men of great power, with direct influence over other vitally important individuals, and who themselves controlled major branches of the mediastablishment, linchpins who had to be placated before a comprodeal could be signsealed.
Additional Taxes
Because of the compromises that the administration had to make to get the tax plan thru, especially the new 35% top rate, the expected revenues were coming up short of the original National Fund projection. So, in a separate piece of legislation, President Hanson proposed and had passed (but narrowly) The Religious Institutions Tax Act. Amidst vociferous protests from some churches, especially the pesky evangelicals, the Act called for a semi-annual two-and-a-half percent tax (a quarter-tithe) on religious institutions with a net worth between $25 million and $100 million, five percent (half-tithe) on those with assets over $100 million. All of these proceeds were to go into the National Fund (commonly referred to as “The Big Kitty”) for disbursement to the working people of the country.
During the rest of his presidency Hanson couldn’t show up anywhere without seeing signs saying “God Hates You,” and “Hanson Will Burn in Hell.” The one “giveback” in the bill, however, one that the over-politicized evangelicals made full use of, was that it became legal for churches to endorse candidates from the pulpit.
The tax on churches—which netted around $900 billion in its first three implementations—was something that Hanson had long felt was a fair and necessary step, but he had uttered nary a whisper during the campaign regarding this subject. The target of this tax initiative was the larger religious institutions, which had built themselves into virtual money-collecting machines, and invested in stocks, bonds and real estate, all for the purpose of increasing their wealth. They were the beneficiaries of the same services as were the tax-paying corporations, including police and fire protection, and the building and maintenance of the roads which their parishioners used to travel to their doors.
Almost as controversial as the church tax, at least during its inception, was the Food Substance Tax, which squeaked thru Congress in 2022, as a trial program, and was later made permanent by a large plurality.
A formula was put in place in which fat, sugar, salt and artificial ingredient levels were subtracted from whatever nutritional content the food had (protein, vitamins, fiber) to come up with a number (the Food Value Total, or FVT), which determined the added tax on the product. This initiative, fought tooth-and-nail by the food industries and the conservative politicians they had bought, had three major effects.
First, some products were removed from production, as their FVTs were embarrassingly high. Second, many products were modified to be less unhealthy. Thirdly, companies had an added incentive to put out less-damaging foods. And fourth, lower income people found that they could no longer afford their previous junk-food-laden diets, and were forced to eat better. This led to substantially lower obesity and heart disease in this segment of society, which had the ripple effect of more workplace productivity and less strain on the medical-industrial complex.
For the county’s fiscal picture, this taxation scheme also had a very positive effect, as it raised tens of billions of dollars a year. In combination with the other “vice taxes” (alcohol, tobacco and, later, marijuana) these taxes meant over 200 billion a year in revenue by 2040.
Other Factors
Between 2015 and 2020, due to various foreign situations, from steeply raised taxes to civil wars, there was a great influx of billionaires who came to North America. From Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Mexico, Russia, Singapore, India and elsewhere, these individuals fled the financially stifling or domestically uncertain conditions in their homeland to make a new home in America, a country most of them were familiar with from their periodic business/gambling/shopping jaunts. It is estimated that their addition brought the net wealth of the top tier (Asset-Tax eligible) from 62 to 68 trillion dollars.
Around this time also is when the federal government finally broke even (plus a tidy profit) on their bailout/buyout monies from the 2008-09 financial crisis. Selling back their shares in several major banks, A.I.G., General Motors and sundry other enterprises they had propped up with federal money, they gained back a full two trillion on their $1.7 trillion outlay. Derided by some at the time as “the slippery slope to socialism,” economists eventualater agreed that the radical bailout/buyout measures were a necessential action to save an imploding economic structure—in particularly the capital-market institutions and manufacturing sectors. Half of the collected $2-T sale money was used to pay down the National Debt, and the other half was emplaced in The National Fund, for redistribution purposes.
This brought the total in the Fund for that first year to $5.7 trillion, which exceeded slightly (if you can call 200 billion dollars “slightly”) the original goal of $5.5 trillion. With 168-million people receiving payout checks, those came to an average of around $34,000 per recipient.
The Reapportionment Act of 2020
President Hanson laid out his plan in his State of the Union Address in January of 2020. The debate over the RA20 legislation was perfunctory, and the bill passed by a wide margin, with only the stone-cold conservatives in opposition. The major media outlets, controlled as they were by the vested interests of the wealthocracy, were for the most part supportive, their ownership having been satisfactorily mollified by Hanson and his cohorts.
After the Treasury took what it would need from the Assets Tax haulage to balance the budget, and pay down a portion of the National Debt, the rest of the money went into The Big Kitty.
The main component of Apportionism was that anyone making between 18k and 400k would have a percentage of that amount—.2, .3., or .4—matched by the federal government and paid to them (subsequent to their filing of a regular tax return). The principle of stimulus monies at the core of Apportionism was not a new one, except that it was now writ large. During the previous few decades, in circumditions where the economy was lagging, the US government disbursed what were called “stimulus checks” to taxpayers. Altho in meagerparison to the levels employed after 2020, these efforts did help the economies of their times enuff to ratify the principle at hand, ie, a stagnant economy is benefactored by the mass citizenry suddenly having new cash to make purchases with.
Here was the original schedule of payouts:
18k to 30k .2 matcher
30k to 60k .3 matcher
60k to 200k .4 matcher
200k to 300k straight 75k
above 300k no matcher
Note: The upper line for payout recipience was moved from a ceiling of 200k to 300k because it was realityized that many opinion leaders were in that category: media people, business managers, politicians, doctors, lawyers and other professional types. Having them onboard in support of the program meant a lot in terms of having RA20 actualized.
Forxample, a person who made 26k would receive a benefit of $5,200, and someone who made $120k would be eligible to receive a payment from Big Kitty of $48,000. The theory behind this was simple: If you just gave everyone, allasudden, 25 or 30 thousand dollars, or whatever it averaged out to if distributed equally, then you’d have a lot of people in the lower reaches (less educated, more psychoproblemated) who would be overwhelmed by it.
Concomitant with the line of reasoning that directed a higher matcher to the more well-to-do was the built-in incentivization for those who invested wisely; they could increase their income and climb the ladder to larger payouts. Those who frittered away the money on gambling, or filling their house with merchandise, or pursuing mistakeful investments, would end up (assuming they kept their jobs intact) continuing to receive the same federal payout checks. But either way, and this is the true genius of ASC, the money was quickly circulated into and thru the economic system. With this massive program, President Hanson became popularized as “The Great Redistributor.”
The redistribution scheme was based on an alternating-year format. In even calendar years, the people would receive a full benefit, as outlined above. In the in-between years, called the adjustment years, they would be given whatever amount remained after 10% of the Fund proceeds went toward the paydown of the National Debt, the federal budget was balanced, and any shortfall from the previous year’s payouts were rectified. In most cases, the adjustment-year payouts were a solid one-half of what they were in the full-benefit years, and during some years exceeded three-quarters of the full payout.
A quick example of how the program stimulated the expansion of the country’s economy is the aforementioned $120k earner. He or she was obviously the recipient of a huge boonanza from the program (tax rate lowered from 40% to 35%, plus the .4 match-out), but the planners expected that they had the qualitraits to know exactaprecisely what to do with an additional $48,000 every other year. Typically, they would make conservative mutual funds investments, then they’d find some venturestake with a chance to majorly multiply. Following that, they’d start car shopping. And big-appliances shopping. And house shopping. Andcetra.
So things were bought, stores were busy and needed many more employees. Factories needed more workers to make the products, and companies needed more truck drivers and delivery persons. Housing starts multiplied. The stock market went up and up. And start-up companies abounded, as, of a sudden, any person and their circle of friends could put their bundles together to total, say, a half-a-mil. They’d then have to figure out which of their hair-brained schemes, er, sure-thing dreams, to invest in.
Simultimely with the enactment of RA20, a new income tax schedule came into effect, based on a person’s pre-payout income:
Under 25k Zero
25k to 40k 12%
40k to 65k 22%
65k to 100k 27%
$100k and up 35%
The Hall of Advocates
The highly regulated institution which was designed to replace the previous, semi-regulated institution of lobbying was called The Hall of Advocates, or as it has come to be termed, HOA.
The president chooses the Chief Advocate, who in turn picks the twelve committee chairs. The Speaker of the House has to then give his OK to these selections. For the most part, these have been popular ex-legislators who have turned to professional advocacy after their time in the House or Senate. A generous allowance for staffing is granted, and thousands of out-of-work lobbyists returned to the scene of their… prior activities.
A major promise made by the govficials regarding HOA was that it would be allowed 120 hours of floor time on the House and Senate floor, 10 hours per committee, to state their case for specific pieces of legislation. This promise was kept, and has become standard opcedure down thru the years.
But one tightstringency of the new agency was that its members were to have no direct business contact with congressmen, senators, or their staffs. Requests for information from HOA are processed mostly by computer, and it is common to have the committee presentations on the floor preserved on whatever audiovisual format is current, along with other pertinent data, for later study and review.
The committees as originally formulated were Manufacturing, Fossil Fuels, Alternative Energy, Transportation, Aerospace, Industrial Labor, Non-industrial Labor, Agriculture, Education, Stocks and Financial Markets, Human Rights, and a catch-all for whatever else needed advocating, called the General Issues Committee. Since then, Fossil Fuels was dropped (altho it was in 2020 one of the most important), Alternative Energy became simply Energy, and two other committees were added—Exoterrian Products and Space-Related Industries.
The Advocates work thru their internal committees and come up with fully written pieces of proposed legislation. These are forwarded to the office of the president, to be included in what the execubranch will send to Capitol Hill. No changes are made by the president’s office on any of the bills on the Advocates’ priogenda, at least not without the approval of the Chief Advocate.
While HOA’s main function is to generate new legislation, they also play a strong role on the back end of things. After a (non-foreign policy) bill has been passed and sent back to the White House for signing, it goes to the Assembly for a review-and-recommend vote. By majority vote, the Advocates give the legislation a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down, and send a report to both houses of Congress and the president. This report is in the form of a majority opinion and minority opinion, as is done with Supreme Court decisions.
Altho the rulings of the Hall of Advocates are non-binding, the president duly gives the Assembly’s wishes full primesideration, and often vetoes the bill if it is something they oppose, sending it back to Congress for a possible override. The record shows that, over the years, there has been a 78% compliance on negatively voted (by the HOA) legislation and presidential vetoes, with less then 15% surviving as overrides. (But if you take out the disputacious one-term administrations of Randall Maynard and Pistol Pete Washburn, that centage rises to 87%.)
One might inquire as to why the federal government allowed itself to become so handnhand with the corporos, why it allowed the proverbial fox to patrol the henhouse, but the upside result far outweighed the negpurcussions. So the answer became a readily accepted one. Their wealth creation was the basis of the economic compact; their “work” enriched the masses and led to the dissolution of the vastjority of the social problems afflicting North America.
Addingly, while no explicit promise of indemnification or “looking the other way” was made as part of the agreepact with the corporate leaders, the watchdog Securities and Exchange Commission was quietly defanged and figuratively put into the backyard, away from the people busy with business. Their barking was still heard, but they rarely again did much biting.
In the first 10-15 years of the Hall’s emplacement within the centerstalishment, the corporos used their newfound leverage to overturn environmental laws, labeling regulations, inspection protocols and jobsite safety guidelines—and skirt the ones they couldn’t overturn. But eventualater, perhaps realizing that they and their children had to live on the planet (or perhaps, as some have suggested, out of a sense of innate decency) they seriously began to regulate themselves.
In the area of pollution, this led them to clean up their emissions and spilloffs, investing some of their profits in cleanbreed tech, superfilters and the like. This was around the late 20’s, early 30’s, when alternafuels were kicking in. Also coming into the picture around 2030 was the Nanobug Revolution, in which microscopic bacteria were programmed to eat everything from oil slicks to nuclear waste. By 2060 it can honestly be said that the air, water and food were of a higher quality than they had been for a century.
Wealthocrat Justice
As morally dubious as some of the following may sound, it was an intrinsic part of the formula that helped bring about the regenerative transformation that followed. The smartelligent leaders of the time realized that this schemario was a necessential aspect of the overall plan, in that it kept happy the goose that laid the golden eggs. They made the argupoint that it wasn’t that different from plea-bargaining or “turning State’s evidence.” In those cases, when it was deemed for “the greater good”—like capturing higher-up criminals—law enforcement would let a person off with a light sentence, or probation.
Under the new law-enforcement format, those with a family net worth over $25 million were guaransured that any first-offense financial crimes they might be convicted of would be minimum-sentence house arrest—and those minimums were roughly half of what they previously were. For repeat financial offenders, or non-violent felonies, a new kind of detention was initiated.
Called “curtailment centers,” they were large houses, simply appointed but with modern conveniences and an entertainment center. Between 10 and 15 men would be incarcerated in them, with the guards and prisoners non-uniformed. They had liberal visiting and furlough policies. Only those convicted of capital crimes or despicable dastardeeds (like bilking a widow of her savings) would be sent to “the slammer.”
Some protested this mollying, but it was an integral piece of the package which gained the cooperation of the uppclass. The richsters had all heard of the indignities suffered by the Wall Street Seven, and others who had been sent to regular prisons during the crackdown. They were all justifiably tremulous of such a fate, to the point that their nervejumpy attitude affected their operating modality, ie, they had to moderate their ruthlessness, which was often their mostfective business trait.
A person could only use this prerogative, this semi-pardon-in-advance, once every 10 years, so they held back on the option, perhaps studying and weighing which financial crime would yield them the biggest payday. But, it would seem, much more often than not, that they ended up not utilizing their option at all.
So despite predictions that there would be an awful crime wave as the hyper-rich took advantage of the lax sentencing, there was actually a net reduction in financial-crime convictions by this group from 2025 to 2090, and most of those were by the athletes and performers. (See further John Beckley’s The Crime Spree that Wasn’t: Life in the Gilded Cage.) This was extremely remarkable considering the number of individuals who were thus covered in any given year.
Of course, we’ll never know how many crimes were committed by these folks that went unsolved by law enforcement. Wild claims have been made by some, based on the fact that by 2080 law enforcement personnel were reduced to 25% of their pre-2020 levels. Many have also made the point, perhaps valid, that no one wanted to overly enforce the law against the wealthocrats, as that would endanger the foundation of everyone’s burgeoning income and newfound prosperity.
Still Rich, But Now Also Popular
For all the tax money they delivered into the nation’s coffers, the hyper-rich did not suffer anywhatsoever. First of all, any top-drawer wealthocrats who weren’t making more than 5% annually on their investments were revealing their incompetence. Some families that mostly sat on their wealth in conservative fashion were theretofore spurred to more venturesome activity (and now less deterred by an exorbitant capital gains tax). Secondly, there came to be much more money “in play” in the economy, readyvailable to be siphoned into any business entity that had the goods and promohype to attract it. So, any enterprise worth its salt and pepper did much better after RA20 than they had before.
Further, because of HOA, the overfluence of the wealthy meant that they could keep conditions in their general favor, eg, loose regulaws, high tariffs where possible, and minimal congressional meddling. The statistical fact is that under the New National Order (as it was sometimes called) the assets of the top tier climbed steadily upward. By-n-large, the rich continued to get richer year after year, the contradistinction being that, with the sheer expansification of the money creation that occurred, it was not at the expense of the rest of the population. For the people, this meant that their payouts remained at peak levels throughout the past seven decades, nullvoiding any remaining resentment for the augmented powerthority of the overclass.
In the early years of ASC (and even to this day), it was not that unusual to have the employees of a large business—as the owner made his way into the building, or was touring thru a workspace—stop and give him or her a round of applause. Sometimes even on the street, as one of these richsters exited their hover-limo to do some shopping, grateful citizens would clap and cheer for them.
This was of course very gratifying for these people, if at first a bit unnerving. They had long been accustomed to receiving phony smiles of propitiation from their employees and minions, and the occasional harsh glare from people on the streets who recognized them as a business baron or industrial mogul.
And, owing to America’s obsession with sports and entertainment, athletes and entertainers who were part of the uppchelon numbered over 14,000 in 2020, and problikely triple that now. These people were already heartily hailed by their multitudinous fans when they went out in public, and now those adoring fans had another reason to idolize them.
How Paris Hilton Reinvented America
The protorigin of the redistribution concept came from an article by wildbilly99 first posted on the online zine, Awesomistic ThinkStuff, in 2011. The author of the article, entitled, “Don’t Bogart that Loot,” based the idea on something the socialite Paris Hilton said in one of her legendlory mock political ads: “People like me and my friends have way too much money to actually spend, so we stash it in dusty places called investments and securities. If I am elected, I will give the people most of this money to spend and have a good time. Not all of it, but enuff so that we’re still rich, and the people have a lot of moolah to party hearty with.”
This concept of an income distribution program based on an assets tax on the super-rich circulated thru the Internet, taking difvarious forms by the many bloggers who weighed in on the subject. This is where it first caught the attention of Bartholemew Hanson, himself an active cybernaut, who outlined his own concepts in a privately held monograph, seen only by his wife.
Further incentive was instigated by the Exoterrian influx of 2018. From the generalized outlines we were given about life on their homeworlds, Urthians saw a stark contrast. The peoples on the other techveloped worlds had one major thing in common: Their social classes could be trisected as those living in a) near-abundance; b) abundance; and c) super-abundance. With the minute exception of renegades and miscreants, everyone on these worlds had escaped the shackles of poverty and want. What then was wrong with Urth?
While making no specific statements or recommendations, the examples of the Exoterrian economies spoke volumes. (See further, Suddenly Here: The Exoterrian Arrival, by Andrea Smithson.) On their worlds, with only a few exceptions, the richest people made 15-30 times what the regular worker made, and their rich families had a net worth usually no more than 60-75 times that of the average family. When side-sided with the Urthian economic structure, the problem came into focus. Here, the top corporate greedmongers had become as Leviathons some of them consuming salaries and bonuses thousands of times more than that of the workers in their companies. Even more astounding was the fact that there were some American families worth over 100 billion dollars.
This last statistic represented that the top mega-wealthy families had accumed assets worth a staggerful ONE MILLION times that of the average US family.
The Rich Get (a little) Less Rich
Upon examination of the moneysucker-class families, who were allowed to growcumulate at cancerous levels due to lax 20th Century estate tax policies, the situablem became even more clear. The most telling trendalysis in this regard, and why something had to be done to pendulumize the continued encroachment of the richsters, was that from 1975 to 2020 the top 1% went from owning 77% of the wealth to an astounding 93%. The only real solution to this threatacious trend was to devise some sort of ground-up reform. Thus, Apportionistic Social Capitalism.
While not nearly stripping from the super-rich their gargantuan proportion of the wealth-pie, it did prevent them from a further glutgorgement which would have left the masses with an even tinier sliver. (See further, Hogs at the Trough: The Monied Class from 1820 to 2020, by David B. Simms.)
From another angle, the gross income of the top 2%—in real dollars, adjusting for inflation—had gone up a stunning 760% between 1975 and 2020, whereas that of the middle 80% declined by around 11%—thus refuting forever the mythceptive canard of “trickle-down economics.” It was referred to as middle-class stagnation, but in actuality what was occurring was a wholesale plundering by those with the power and position to orchestrate it.
When fully implemented, Apportionism demonstrated once-for-all the real engine of wealth circulation, which is, to cite the Obama administration mantra, “Build it From the Ground Up!” So-called disposable income in the hands of the bottom 98% of the citizenry tends to be disposed of rather effectively thru product, services and home purchases, with a significant portion of that “trickling up” to the 2% wealthocrat ownership class in the form of profits.
By ruthlessly manipulating the political and economic levers, this uppclass ilk took way more than their fairportioned share of the country’s production, while exploiting the labors of those middle 80%. Among the most unconscionable ways this was done was for corporate officials to deny health insurance to their employees, outsource certain jobs, relocate factories out of the US, and “downsize” employees with many years of service in favor of new workers or two (no-benefits) part-time employees. All the while they would be doing this, they would be modeling (ie, rigging) their own pay/bonus packages to audaciously obscene levels.
Studies by leading economists of the available Exoterrian economic formats, including the historical development which led to their current systems, was very revealing. In compare/contrast mode with Urth’s countries, it could clearly be seen that practically all economic problems had a root cause in the unrelenting greediness of the rapacious elite. (See especially, They Came from Afar, by Jon Hammerstein.)
A further hardalysis revealed that these exploitations led inexorably to most social ills suffered by societies, as the mongers who had a hundred or a thousand times more than they could ever need continued to engage their avarice in pursuit of morenmore excess wealth, thus squeezing the weaker members of the populace.
These neurotic/psychotic effortings were usually to the disbenefit of the average folks who were subjected to extra pollution, or were sold substandard food and drugs, or were “downsized,” or were deprived of their health benefits, orcetra, in order for the richies to gain and hoard even more wealth, and further assuage their insatiable egos. Several economic studies between 2015 and 2020 made the case that there was enuff capital existent in North America to sustain a very comfortable lifestyle for all working citizens, even allowing for the upper class to continue in relative glutsumption.
But when those with the power to manipulate the economic and political gameboard chose not to moderate themselves to allow for some semblesense of fairness, but instead piggishly accrued far, far more than they could possibly ever utilize, the country’s people were subjected to the sufferquences. (See further, The Game they Played: The Economic Elite in America, by James Thurgood, and A New Strategem: The Assertion of Income Fairness in North America, by Marianne Bosley.) Even after they bought all the houses, cars, boats, airplanes and expensive art they could, they still had wheelbarrows full of excess dollars, while millions, working tho they were, lived thru the daily stress of trying to make ends meet.
For the corporatists, the concept of profit-sharing, suspiciously communistic, was generally a taboo, and not in their working vocabulary. The closest most of them ever got to this was in the giving of stock shares to longterm members of management.
To attempt an analogy, it was as if every person in the world was granted three apples, but a tiny minority of over-aggressive, manipulative types worked the system with their bullying and deceptions, until they had hundreds, and even thousands of apples, leaving most everyone else with one apple, or a fraction of an apple. These greedsters then would store their accumulated apples in sheds with barbed-wire fences around them. To top off the analogy, they would then hire glib talkers and writers who would justify such a system of distribution as the best way of conducting business.
By far the worst part, in retroflection, was how beholden-to-money politocrats, society-at-large, and the advertising-based mediastablishment supported and sanctioned this human travesty of monstrous disproportion. There were of course some who tried to sound the alarm bells and grill the guilty, but theirs were but lonely voices crying out in the foggy wilderness. During the heyday of corporowned massmedia, their complaints and solutions were rigorously ignored.
You know how at the end of some movies it gets posted that “No animals were harmed during the making of this film”? Well, that’s the way it was, and still is, in regard to the rich: “No richster was harmed during the making of this economic transformation.” To take a not-untypical example, an uppclass family would be affected as follows. Before the first year of the Asset Tax, they had two mansions, a Malibu summerhouse, six cars, a yacht, $12-million in liquid assets and $760-M in their investment portfolio. After the first year of the asset tax, they would have two mansions, a Malibu summerhouse, six cars, a yacht, $10-million in liquid assets and $725-M in their investment portfolio. After the second, third, fourth, andcetra years, they would have progressively a little more each year, as their investment returns outstripped the measly 4.5% reduction caused by the tax.
Which is not to say that every wealthy family maintained their previous level, or improved their status. Studies of census data revealed that less than a thousand families in the US had a substantial reduction in their wealth since ASC enactment, and those were generally ones that were living off inherited riches, with little or no ongoing enterprise. Looked at another way, no family worth over $100 million in 2030 was worth less than $40 million in 2050, with the same being true of every 20-year scorecard thereafter. The inescapable conclusion is that these minor reductions in the lot of the few were minor ripples compared to the tidal wave of income improvement that ensued since 2020—as tens of millions of families experienced a substantial increase in their standard of living.
The War on Poverty
There is still some residual poverty in the NAU, and some in most countries around the globe, but it is not the endemic poverty that existed in the early 21st Century. Thanks to the Apportionism, millions of Americans (and billions around the world) were pushed out of the morass of hopelessness and abject need.
This occurred thru several applications. Firstmost, the fact that a person who could get their income up to the minum of 18k would receive a check early in the next year for $5,400 was an inspiration not only to those afflicted with the low or nonexistent income, but to those in their environ who became inclined to assist them.
I did some reportage on the effects of the Big Kitty payouts and I discovered that, while doing the least in economic terms for the country, the money distributed to these lowest-class workers did the most in human terms. Not overnight, but within several years, millions of formerly hardscrabble types had moved upyond their lowly stations into a modicum of respectability. And, what’s more, a fairly high centage of them continued their progress (by dint of better transportation, better clothing, less daily stress, money for night school, etc.) and climbed up to legitimate middle-class status.
Plusly, there were those previously poor folks who took their newfound nest eggs, startstablished a company, and leapbounded into the higher income divisions. These-such tales of the new enterpriseurs were much ballyhooed by the massmedia, which in turn acted as further impetus to others to turn their lives of lackchievement into success stories.
For those who befeel that the minumum redistribution matcher of .3 is lowficiently effective as a remedy to poverty, let me spin a story, not strictly true, but emblematic of many actual cases. Picturemagine a couple living in a trailer park; they’re not actually yet a couple, as they live in separate mobile homes, but they’re falling in love. They each make around 20k, and live a semi-shabby life in the park, surrounded by noisy squalor. Their unease about their situation, and their future prospects, make them both reticent about discussing marriage, let alone having children. About the closest they’ve come is her saying, “Maybe we can get a double-wide,” and him laughingly replying, “And live in the lap of luxury.”
Then came Apportionism, and the attendant economic boom. His commissions from World of Lawnmowers doubles and soon he’s taking home an annual 30k. She gets promoted from reception to phone-order taker at the tile company, so now she’s also earning 30k. They get hitched and receive a total of $18,000 from the Fund that first year together. Combined with their raises they have enuff for a down payment on a nice house.
The tears at the housewarming are real and plentiful from them, their families and friends (and suddenly a lot more friends!). A few years before that party they had shed different tears, from sadness at their debts and less-than-humble estates, and the kind of malaise that people like that often sink into. But now, on the road to restitution and renewal, they are genuinely grateful to the forces that be, and plan to make the most of what to them is a marveltastic new life path.
Since people who were previously doing menial jobs were constantly moving up the ladderchain in the opportunity-rich economy, and many middle-class breadwinners were out bringing home additional bacon to qualify for a higher tier, the lower-paying jobs were in great need of employees. Jobs like dishwashers, busboys, childcare workers, domestics, janitors, lawn and pool personnel all became readyvailable. The very young, the very old, and those with only slight disabilities helped fill these positions and made, after the Big Kitty payouts, a livable income.
It’s worth noting that the economies of the countries after redistribution were so heated that 14-year olds were allowed to work (at certain jobs, part-time) and some people in their 80’s were pulling in a paycheck. Those previously considered infirm were applying and getting jobs, even many with mental-challenge issues. This was even true of thousands of people with Tourette syndrome, who proceeded to enliven the workdays and customer experiences of many stores, offices and reception areas across the country.
Service androids were utilized by those people and companies that could afford them, but practically anyone who could walk and talk (not even necessarily at the same time) could secure a job. And employers were aware of the $18,000 threshold, so they would try to structure the pay and work-hours to accomplish that level.
Additionally, to help fight poverty, the federal government initiated several programs. One was the sending of the annual payout check with a personal counselor to anyone in the $18-30k income zone, to offer them not only advice, but some augmentative assistance. Forxample, the low-income worker could buy a used car from the government, as they were continually upgrading their fleets. These cars would be priced low, often in the $3-$4000 range for a nice 5-year-old sedan, and their acquisition by the formerly poverty-stricken made a large difference in their lives. They were no longer limited to workplaces near their residence, or adjacent to a masstransline. As simplistic and sapathetic as it sounds, there were those who couldn’t afford a car because they didn’t have a decent job, but couldn’t get a decent job because they had no reliable transportation.
Also, due to a mass exodus from government housing by those who now had lottamore money to afford better, there were many openings in those buildings. Rents were scaled even lower than before, and became a means for formerly poor people to afford to buy other things with their money.
A third program, mostly dealing with single males with a drug and/or prison record (but who had remained problem-free for several years) involved professional counselors, with no children at home, taking these types into their residences. The federal government paid all expenses, plus gave the couple a fairly large sum as payment, plus one extra vote-point per month. In case things went wrong, the government would pay for any damages or stolen items, and foot the bill (in the rare worsecasio) for any post-traumatic-stress-syndrome therapy that was needed.
A Continent Reborn
The positive psychological impact of this federal program was nearly as significant as the economic boostlaunch, as people became thoroughly energized by, not only their newfound ability to buy the products, cars and houses they craved, but the funcitement of planstorming with their friends and associates to cash in bigtime. For so many people, no longer living their lives of quiet desperation, ASC was a phenomatasic windfall which forever lifted them from their rutholes. If you walked down the street of any city on Urth where Apportionism had been activated, you’d see happy-faced people hustling about, their eyes alight with the fire of their thurojoyed new existence.
In the first three years after full implementation, the average family’s total income rose from $61,000 to $107,000, mostly from the addfactor of the payouts, but also from newly derived investment returns. This sudden increase of people’s disposable income truly signaled a radical change in their lifestyles. Family incomes would continue to upspiral, up to an average of 157k in 2050, 187k in 2070, and nearly a quarter-million now.
(I heartily recommend the tome on the subject of North America’s rejuvenation, Jason Wilhelm’s The Economic Imperative: Hope and Wealth in a Reborn World.)
For a person in the lower-middling salary class—say $37k per annum—to receive a check for $15,000 every other year (and 7-10k in the alternating years) was a total bogglesum to them, and meant a turnvelopment of their life from pinching pennies to a certain amount of breathing room. They could even then afford a few “luxuries,” like a newish car and a health club membership.
But the real grist for the economic mill occurred at the upper-middleclass and lower-upperclass levels. For those making $150,000, to suddenly have an extra $75,000 in their budget was a cause for stunmazement and haplaughter as it meant, on top of increased security for their family, more and better . . . everything! And—the plusfactor which became the hot lava of the volcanic resurgence—in almost all cases people sought out a better house! (I’ll deal with this majorportant aspect in a separate section.)
Sharing the Wealth to Create New Wealth
The majormost indicator, that which would be the pudding-proof of a well-planned program, was the continued incentivization of the wealthy class. In the NAU and the subsequent elseplaces, no perceptible dropoff in the hard-driven activities of these enterpriseurs, the engine in the locomotive of the economies, was ever detected after Apportionism was startstablished.
The end result was that that most everyone in the NAU became, at the least, comft. When the other nations saw that the wealth-creators, both as individuals and corporations, were not dissuaded from their active profit pursuit into sullen lullplacency, were in fact hammertonging their way to even greater amassments, then they too enacted similar legislation. Quickly following suit, but with less dramatic results owing to a smaller centage of super-rich, were the European Union, South American Union, India, Russia, Asian Alliance and Africarabia, in that order.
Sure, a lot of the wealthy were crassholes, but now they were the people’s crassholes. There was an old American maxim, made famous during the Cold War between the US and the old Soviet Union. When referring to a dictator who was US-friendly, it was said, “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” That saying was resurrected in North America and translated to other languages as the populistic Reapps transformed the world: “They may be rich SOBs, but they’re our rich SOBs.”
Apportionistic Social Capitalism repurcussed through Wall Street and Main Street, through the avenues and boulevards and back roads of North America. The Kitty grew larger with each passing year, until it stood at $24 trillion in the NAU in 2090, and, in its various incarnations in other parts of the world, over $160 trillion.
The rich had generated a lot of wealth, and much of this eventuated in multivarious values to society, such as jobs created and products bought, but most of their money, if not spent on vain luxuries like multiple homes, insanely high-priced clothing, jewelry and art, went into the financial markets. There the capital, while obviously not misspent, was operating at a slow boil, helping a bank or a corporate stock maintain its quarterly reports in good standing. But put instead into the hands of the teeming masses, who had countless immediate usages for cash-on-the-hoof, these monies morefectively became flammable liquidity, and fueled a fire that warmed a previously (for most) cold, cruel world.
The boon that Apportionism caused in the marketonomy of not only North America, but internationally, was beyond the wildest dreams of the money managers of that era. The primary stock market indicator (cumulative indexing of major public companies) was called the Dow Jones. This went from a ranking in 2020 (in roundisms) of 14,000 points, to around 35,000 in 2040, 50,000 in 2040, 63,000 in 2050, and an astoundingly lucratious 78,000 in 2060, when InterStock was started. (InterStock was, and remains, the worldwide stock-trading exchange, combining the NAU, European, and Asian stock markets.)
Various Ramifications of Apportionism
As could be expected, there were a number of individuals who used their extra money in a rashfoolish manner, but this only served as object lessons for the others, many of whom became richcessful, and some of whom made their way from receiver of the revshareplan to benefactor, as their net worth soared above the A.T. threshold.
Of course there was some resulting inflation, especially in the initial decade, from such a rapidspansion—as the overheated infusion of capital made prices rise. But it didn’t matter much as, unlike previously when inflation would squeeze a person’s meager income, now they had the money to cover the extra expenses. (Due to inflation, in combination with a general prosperity, the low end of the scale went from 18k/30k to 30k/50k in 2090. Likewise, the upper end for the income matcher was adjusted over time to be 500k.)
One of the better side-consequences of RA20 (and there were many), was that people were only eligible to receive the federal money if they had no felony convictions, and less than three misdemeanor convictions in the previous four year period. This led quickmediately and permanently to a huge reduction in the crime rate. Why mug folks on the street or break into houses, taking the chance of being shot at and/or beaten (or even worse, arrested) if you could hold a regular job and receive a large bonus check at the end of the year?
Added to the trendvelopment of less crime which was already underway (from a combination of the brain-fingerprinting lie-detection tek, near-total surveil systems, and certified psychics as judges and jurors) Apportionism helped decrease the crime rate to the point where police departments were eventualater reduced to one-fourth their earlier size.
Fear of a laxplacency in the workforce (because people had extra income) became groundless, as people strived even harder, as every raise was a significant step toward higher earnings. People were even happy to work part-time second and third jobs, especially in the explosively burgeoning house-building market. Many men, and some women, spent their weekends pounding nails and carrying lumber for the employee-hungry builders, and smiling thru their sore joints at the thought that those weekends were earning them over $2500 per month, after leavening by the matcher.
But the way the system was set up invited the less-than-honest to try to cheat. Because the payouts were only for people making less than 400k a year, an area of malfeasance was centered on those who artificially minimized their real income, often by setting up dummy corporations. The Feds used undercloak operatives who would ferret out such behavior. Anyone convicted of thus trying to cheat the system was heavily fined, and never eligible again for a payout from the National Fund.
What the Internal Revenue Service also had to be on the lookout for, in contrast to what they were used to, was the prevarication of “income inflation”—those claiming they made more than they actually did. Anyone caught thus exaggerstating was penalized by becoming ineligible for payouts for three to five years.
The Entitlement Programs
One pronouncedly major impact was that the Social Security System, long a necessary albatross around the nation’s neck, was utilized lessnless, and eventualater became a source of so much excess monies that it was used to pay down the National Debt all the way. (And the NAU is now running a locksolid surplus every year.)
That Social Security could go from a major liability to a huge national asset was due in large part to the fact that, in 2016, a national dramacrisis had occurred in which it was announced that the federal government was about to make a sizable downjustment in the retiree’s monthly stipends. This at last got everyone’s attention focused on the malministered program, and a rectification was worked out.
In that boldacious move to save Social Security from insolvency, tripartisan legislation was signed by the president which, 1) removed the cap on pay-ins to the system, ie, no matter how much one made, they still paid the SS tax on their entire income; 2) made the retirement age 70, from 65, over a 10-year period; and 3) disallowed anyone making over $85,000, or with a net worth of over $1-M, from receiving Social Security checks.
This last revision was long bogmired in contentious debate, but the argupoint that the SS system was intended as an insurance plan, not as a loanvestment, finally won out. People were made to realize that, just as with their car, home, flood and fire insurance, if things went well for them, they never collected a cent, despite all the pay-ins. Along with RA20, it was this maxiportant administrative victory which became a majorcausative reason that the budget could finally be brought under control, as the govgenda was no longer held hostage to the looming behemoth of Social Security IOUs.
I should probably mention that, in return for saving the country from sure bankruptcy, and finally making the necessential reforms that president after president, and congress after congress had neglectfully postponed doing, most every congressperson and senator who voted for the SS changes were forthwith booted out of office in the Bart Hanson landslide—thus proving the previous officeholders correct in their aversion to reform. In contrast, everyone associated with ASC’s passage gained reelection, and the Patriotic Populist Party held unmitigated dominion in Washington over the next quarter-century.
As well, so many people had their incomes rise with the aid of Apportionism that people reaching retirement age were increasingly above the income and/or net-worth line, so they didn’t receive any checks, and instead continued to pay into the system.
Another big thing worth noting regarding how the Reapp Bill affected the North American domestigenda is the Medicare/Medicaid turnaround. Due to unendingly raised price increases from the conscienceless medical and health insurance industries (an average of almost 10% a year for 30 years!) healthcare costs by that time had reached stiflingly high levels and were threatening to break the back of the federal government. (These costs had already played a role in bankrupting two of the biggest automaker companies of that era.)
Healthcare expenditures had increased from being 5% of Gross Domestic Product in 1950 to a startling 18% of GDP in 2011 (double that of Europe, which covered everyone, while the US had 50 million uninsured). But one of the great accomplishments of the Obama administration was to institute the “Two-Tier Flex-Cap System.” This allowed people to keep the insurance plan they already had, but set up a government-run insurance program for the uninsured. At the same time, a semi-cap of 3% was placed on medical cost and health insurance increases. The “flex” part was that it allowed for higher increases in some areas if these were offset by equitable reductions in other products or services.
But to get back to the entitlements programs: Similar to the SS program, and in the same 2017 Congress, the medical entitlements were put on sure footing. This ended decades of muddlemanaged politicalization of these programs by the pandering polcrats.
The reform was accomplished by disallowing anyone making over that $85,000 amount, or with a net worth over $1-M, from being eligible for the mundane aspects (doctor’s visits, pharmaceuticals, routine tests) of the programs, altho they would continue to be covered for the safety-net features of hospitalization and catastrophic care. Any individuals who felt unduly pinched by the limits could apply for relief, and these were generously handled.
A tremendous side-benefit of the Reapp, therefore, was that it gradgradually obviated the preponderant need for most entitlement payouts. These went from $3 trillion to $860 billion in the first 30 years of the new system, and $650 billion currently (despite a 39% population increase in that interim).
The Seniors’ Revolt
Perhaps the biggest probloversy of RA20 was the buzzstorm that dealt with the senior citizens. Any income they gainfully made was multiplied the same as anyone else’s, but their Social Security income was not included in the toting-up of their income. So, if they went out and made $15,000, it wasn’t enuff to qualify for a matcher, or if they made $20,000, it was only counted as first tier. This was justified on the grounds that, with earlier changes in the system, they were already well taken care of with fair cashpensation and, besides, there were so many of them that any augmenting of their SS benefits would break the bank.
Well, such a hue and cry! The American Association of Retired Persons, the political lobbying arm of the seniors lamblasted the country thru billboards, magazine and online ads, as well as countless television spots, with a demand for a larger share of the pie. Actually, not so much a demand, as an appeal to guilt and sentimentality. One heavily used slogo I remember was headlined, “If That’s the Best You Can Do . . .” and featured oldsters making bathos-drenched statements about how they served in Iraq, or Venezuela, or worked 50 years in a laundry to send 5 kids to college. The senior would then pause and add, “But if that’s the best you can do for us . . . well, we’ll understand.”
On the other side of the dispute were those with the harsh judgevaluation that the seniors were already on the dole, and no longer contributing to the economy, that they were in the “home stretch” of their lives and should let those who “still had a life” live it to the maximum, without the seniorzens sucking even more money out of the system. To say the least, this sort of meanspiritedness did not meet with much approval, with the anti-oldsters being branded as “Granny-haters.”
The AARP diatribes went on for a full year until Congress relented and lawulated that their SS income would be given half credit toward the matcher. This put a strain on the Kitty, especially with many of the formerly retired going out and getting part-time jobs in the proliferating economy, and it meant a smaller return for the people in the intervening adjustment years. But the moodstate of the country was high, and people felt satisfied that they were showing the elderly a fullpreciation for what they had contributed. (And those whiny promocasts finally stopped.)
How the Housing Market Went thru the Roof
Within 20 years of RA20, most of the blightacious portions of the American landscape had been removed. Demolition companies proliferated and worked nearly 24/7 to keep up with the tear-down orders of these unsightly swaths of deteriorated neiborhoods. Old-fashioned strip malls became a rarity, replaced by mega-malls and luxury centers. There were no longer cheap motels infesting the highways, byways and urbareas, as these were replaced by higher forms of accommodation. And on and on and oncetra, the visual eyesore which was once Middle America became an architect’s mindgasm, with gorgeous buildings abounding from coast to coast.
Slums and trailer parks and low-cost housing complexes became an everdecreasing portion of the housing equation. These were, over time, unceremoniously torn down and replaced by shiny new condoplexes, high-rise apartment towers and decent-sized starter homes. And that was for the previously lower class. The rest of the country, having finally experienced their “need-to-succeed,” wasted little time in moving to bigger and much better digs. These houses soon filled the land vacated by the torn-down homes of the previous era, but owing to the acreage of the new estates (generally referred to as “Nouveau Giganticus” lots) much more land was required.
As it so happened, there was a tremendous amount of land coming available around the same timeframe. This was because, starting in the 20’s, there were constant techvancements in two areas of endeavor. Firstly, there was the proliferaboom of Cloud Nine floating domes. (Based on a Buckminster Fuller premise, geodesic domes of a certain large size would float if the air inside was one degree warmer than the air outside, regardless of content.) These massive geodesicas were primarily used for housing, but in addition to the exquisite skytowns and extravagant entertainment centers that garnered most of the attention, many thousands of multi-leveled farms and hydroponics factories were also put into the air. (I heartily recommend Leonard Billingsley‘s wonderful book, The Sky with Diamonds.) The Cloud Nines not only cut food transportation costs and removed the roulette of weather and insect pestilence (and harmful spraying techniques), but also made a substantial portion of the vast acreage of farmland available for new housing developments.
The second advancement, perfected by 2025 to 99.9% purity, was low-cost desalination of ocean water. Much of that desalinized water was utilized for the manyious housing tracts, with spacious lawns, which sprang up in the abandoned farmland of the Plains States and, even more dramatically, in the desert expanses of the Great American West. By the by, between these housing projects and the water sold to the Exoterrians, the rising seas were kept somewhat in abeyance, at least for that timeframe.
In the five states which saw the biggest population boom (Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Idaho and Arizona) a yearly yield of over 200,000 new houses were built every year from 2030 to 2090, resulting in around 15 million homes, mostly in the $750k to $2-M range. (See further, Nouveau Giganticus: Living Large in the American West, by Bert Sellars). Altogether nationally, approxly 45 million single-family residences were built in those years, in addition to over 30 million other housing units, like apartment buildings and condoplexes.
In those western states and elsewhere, one can walk or pedal for hours and view the seemendless parade of sprung-up McMansions, large-scale properties with huge front lawns. The majority of which are ornamented with some kind of sculpture and are a study unto themselves, and it would seem that the intent of the homeowners is to out-do each other in terms of the strangeness quotient of the shapeoids.
But the houses themselves make for spectacular viewtouring, as one seems to outshine the next as you drive down the long suburban streets of the new neiborhoods. Ranging from Victorian manse reproductions and Frank Lloyd Wright knockoffs to geodesic domes and pyramids (and many innovative combomerges of those two forms), it is a dazzlelicious experience to those who appreciate art in the form of architecture. And for those who pass above in planes, discs, zepps and flytowns, the myriadica of glittering designs below sparkle like splayed jewel cases.
My favorite houses are probably the chamelios, brought to our shores by the Raspillians. For those not familiar they are built with see-into brick casings filled with sand. This sand is chemically treated so as to be re-programmed — via a special keyboard remote — with different color schemes and patterns. You can also order the roof tiles with the same technization, and change your house’s top-to-bottom coloration at your whim and whimsy.
Also dotting North America, and the rest of the world by now, are what’s called “fullscrapers.” These tall structures (80 to 175 stories high) are primarily housing structures, but offer on their lower 20 floors or so a full assortment of shopping, entertainment, recreation and workplace opportunities, so a person can, if they so choose, rarely leave their immediate environ.
These were first built in the 2015 to 2020 timeframe, when high fuel prices and The Poison Spore Panic made them a viable concept. But even after the PSP was proven to be a media shamfiasco, and alternative fuels took over, they continued to be pop, as people liked the easyvenience.
Three Basic Changes Improve the System
A core change was made in the way the matcher was applied in 2036. As part of a push to create more conscientious citizens, the three-tier taxable-income plan was changed to reflect “Citizenry Status,” based on the political vote accumulation system. In this congressional enactment, those in the 61-100 vote-zone would receive a matcher of .5. The second tier, with 16-60, would receive the .4X, and the lower level, those who were in the 1-15 range, received a payout equal to 30% of their income.
The reasons for this were logical and obvious: to act as a spur to education and volunteerism, and to shore up the faltering marriage institution, as many of the vote-points were based on certified marriage and the children therefrom. But the backlash viohavior that ensued upon passage of the revision was unrelentingly vicious, resulting in the deaths of dozens of protesters, not a few National Guardsmen and the burning of several building in Washington DC and elsewhere.
The trouble came from those in the second and third tier in the original system who were relegated, due to being single, without children, without much higher education, and without community service, to a lower spot on the totem pole. The country shook with their vitriol, even tho it was only about 7% of the population that was thus affected. IOW, in 93% of cases, there was a direct correlation between income level and vote-point level. But the angry minority suddenly found themselves losing tens of thousands of dollars a year under the new plan.
This situablem was soon rectified by a bill proposed by the president and rushed thru Congress to “grandfather” in (for ten years) those of the higher echelons so that they would not be immediately demoted to a lower income. That caused things to settle down, and soon people univoicedly agreed that the new system was indeed a more proactive and fairportioned way to run the program.
Among the positive reverbs of the change were these: a sharp increase in the dwindling marriage rate; more enlistees in the military; a steep rise in people willing to voluntribute service to the Peace Corps and AmericaCorp (both of which had been in decline); many more volunteers in nursing homes and hospitals; and more students staying until graduation from college, breaking the trend of them quitting school to rush into the workplace or investment arenas to cash in on the Big Kitty payouts.
One unforeseen consequence of the move to citizenship points as a basis for the payouts was that gay marriage, allowed in only around fifteen states to that point, became sanctioned everywhere. In a case which went to the Supreme Court, it was decreed that equal rights protection dictated that homosexuals be given the opportunity to accrue points (very many of which were marriage- and children-based) at the same rate as heterosexuals. So, thereafter, the gay population utilized marriage, adoption and surrogacy to benefit their voter status and monetary incomes.
After the 2056 national election, in which only 38% of eligible voters registered (even tho both registration and voting were lickety-fast by computer) legislation was passed which made voting mandatory to be eligible for the Fund matcher. This set off another ugly wave of protests and sturmdrangy venting by a segment of the spoiled-to-the-gills inhabizens of North America, but that passed in a shortt, as everyone was way too busy setting up investments and hastening to takevantage of the multrillion shopportunities now afforded them, especiallymost from the fantabulous Exoterrian catalogs.
(This civic apathy truly was a pathetic state of affairs, as voting by that time was merely a two-minute process on the computer, which the average person owned 8-10 of—from desktops to laptops to notebooks to i-hooks to c-phones to palms to e-pendants to wristos.)
The unintended blowback from this increased voterhood struck the country in 2060. Elections that year resulted in a very odd assortment of incompetents and fringe candidates, so legislation was passed and signed by President Gilliland, to have a short test given during voter registration. The purpose of this measure was an attempt to ensure some level of civic cognizance by the citizenry.
Surveys at the time found that people knew the names of over 1600 celebrities from the worlds of performart and sports, but barely a dozen(!!) from government, science and the non-performance arts. Also revealed was an alarming lack of knowlism of history, geography, and the rudimentary workings of government.
The test, and there were dozens of difvarious versions randomly given, was composed of ten fairly simple questions, three from basic civics, three from history and four from currenthenly national events. One of the latter was a multiple choice on a popular culture item, so that the truly dumwitted wouldn’t be skunked into total embarrassment. But people could take the very same test until they passed (getting eight correct), so it wasn’t that onerous.
However, to the portion of people who were not “intelekshuall” (I copied that spelling from an actual smail letter I received), this was Crossing the Rubicon into the Battle of Waterloo. Outraged protest rallies again sprang up everywhere, especially in the larger metrocities. The “pollitishins” (again, but from a different letter) were screwing with their money!
Sidebar note: The qualifying tests for being registered to vote were in English, and didn’t shy away from using big words, so an additional positive result was that those whose English was poor or nonexistent had to improve their language skills pronto. Just like with people stopping their criminal behavior or drug abuse, not passing the test would be, for the average worker, a multi-thousand dollar blunder.
To get to the punch, President Bert Gilliland, widely perceived as a buffoonocrat and sitting low in the approval polls, had his most wellceived moment when he confronted the huge crowd of protesters at Washington’s Reflecting Pond. Getting up on a car, he spoke into a mega-mic, quoting Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy on the responsiduties of citizenship, highlighted by his famous closing line: “If you receive from a government, but do not give it back your support and recompense, are you therefore a part of that nation, or merely a bloodsucking leech on its exposed bottom?” As he began to climb down from the auto, someone yelled out, “Suck my ass, Gilly!!” The president stood back up and said, “If I did that, I would be doing the same thing that you, and people like you, are doing to this great nation.”
The crowd, suddenly self-conscious and humbled, dispersed within the half-hour, and the opposition movement fizzled in short order. Gilliland gained reelection in 2064, a result generally attributed to what came to be called his “ass-sucker speech.”
From Stockshares to Plowshares
It was in the time after Apportionism was proved to be an acrossboard success, and had spread to the entire globe (ie, 2050), that the decades-long War on Terror ended. The last of the dead-enders who chose to fight on against the Western powers finally just quit their evil dumfoolery and faded away, perhaps opting instead for a new course, that of getting themselves on the global gravy train.
In 2076, at the Tricentennial Celebration at the Statue of Liberty, President Marcus Goldstone announced a major peace initiative. The US would immediately and unilaterally reduce its warmaments and military personnel by one-half, and use the money and manpower for humanitarian purposes. For those who would still consider America an enemy, he said this: “If you oppose us, you will do so at the risk of your people, and the populations of the world, opposing you. I declare the True Pax Americana, commencing immediately.”
This was one of the really important turnvelopments of the highly transitional 21st Century, as it spurred the world toward the permanent peace that unfolded during the following decades. North America, long the supergiant of militaristic might, signaled to the rest of the world that the Age of International Militancy was finally and forever winding down.
The NAU military budget, which had already downspiraled from $590 billion in 2020 to $320 billion in 2040, and was at 210 billion in 2076, now stands at around $80-B, as the remaining tensions between countries lessened considerably. To reiterstate, the masses were all too preoccupied and biz-busy to get hotbothered about foreign affairs, and as much as the brasscrats continued to try to stir things up, global amity reigned.
As Urth faces into the 22nd Century, the world landscape is for the most part calmacious. No arms races between potential combatants, no border problems. The disputes over the Arctic region, the ocean floors and Luna all have all subsided into mutually satisfactory comprodeals. The planet, long shackled to the devastation of wars or the threatuations thereof, its peoples for millennia scared and scarred by horruglious violence, has finally set its course on the path of peace. With the exception of some civil war action in Russian territory, the orb known by Exoterrians as “Blood Red Blue World” is finally maturing into full civsocialation.
What has developed militarily in the last dozen years, with the aidsistance and cooperation of the Exoterrian contingents here, can best be described as an exquisite parity. The seven blocs—NAU, SAU, EU, Russia, India, Asian Alliance, and Africarabia, all have been mandated by the WorldFed to maintain the exact same military strength, from number of portable death-rays to the size of standing armies.
This freeze has been monitored and exactified by the visiting races, and double surified by the psychic talents of certified seers. The next stage of this WorldFed-directed de-weaponing process will be for a 10% reduction in military strength every three years for 21 years, beginning in 2096.
Another stratagem employed by the WorldFed is to have all seven blocs send their top commanders to a vacation/retreat twice a year at a recramusement resort. During this long weekend spent barbecuing and dancing and attending sensitivity seminars, they are forbidden to wear their medal-bedazzled uniforms, and only allowed to speak Unilang. Altho resisted mightily at first (with casualties numbering in the dozens in the first year’s attempts at peacenikitude), by all accounts these jaunts in Hawaii have definitely softened the militaristic hard-asses. This new spirit of cooperation is best examplified by the formation of an I-Net hero band called The Bombers, with members from five of the blocs.
The military-industrial complex, grown so massively muscular from 1940 onward, had to gradgradually adapt to the New World Order, and switch from warmaments design and manufacturing to non-death-inducing consumer products.
Working for a Living
Let me walk you thru some typical Urth job scenarios, circa 2020.
The policeman drives thru the urbarea five nights a week, watching for suspicious activity and waiting for radio calls of crimes in progress. He gets shot at least once a year, and three times in his thirty-year career, a bullet will find him, one of those times serious enuff to warrant intensive care at the hospital. For being consigned society’s badhavior, his annual salary starts at $42,000 and goes up as high as 85k if he gets promoted to captain.
The eighth-grade teacher, when you include her “homework,” puts in a 10-hour day 5 days a week, plus some further weekend time grading papers and organizing upcoming classwork. (Since the American Education Act of 2015, she has a school-day which runs until 5pm, and only four weeks off in the summer.) Her students are hormonally rollycoasty and full of unresolved anxt, so her job is about 50% psycounselor. She soldiers on through the stresstensive moments that unruly youth can create, and despite the occasional traumasode, continues to love her vocation, and continues to gearprep young minds for their future. After 10 years at the high school, she pulls down an annual salary of 66k.
The big-league ballplayer hones his talent over the course of many years, starting at a very young age and on thru the various levels and minor leagues of baseball, until he finds a team that will pay him millions of dollars (as much as $32-M) per season to pitch a ball so others can’t hit it, or hit a ball so others can’t catch it.
The corporexec is up at 6am five days a week, goes into his private gym for a brisk workout, then is chauffered to his midtown office. There he exercises oversight of a 25-billion dollar business with thousands of employees and dozens of field offices. His hair is prematurely white from the constant stress, but he pulls in an average of $30 million per annum.
The assembly-line worker diligently arrives to the factory at 7am five days a week, goes to his position, and hundreds of times during the course of his shift pulls the engine part close to him, welds the requisite parts together just so, and places it back on the line to be moved to the next station. The workplace is poorly ventilated and he has a persistent, year-round cough. His annual wage is around 60k.
The supermarket checkout lady exhibits a kindsiderate attitude during her entire shift, inquiring sincerely as to the wellbeing of her customers, the majority of whom are regulars who share some tidbit or other of news and small talk with her. The occasional few use the opportunity of a sympathetic ear to ply her with some tale of personal woe. With these she always gives a calmcollected reply as to how things are bound to get better. She’s overweight, so her feet swell up and start to hurt halfway thru her nine hours, but she smiles pleasingly until the last customer has left the store. On her two offdays she works at the library, also on her feet, behind the checkout desk, where she develops a similar rapport with the patrons. She does this second job to save for her twin daughters’ college funds, altho it looks like community college might be in the cards for one of them. Her combined income is around 45k.
The stock broker juggles his time between buying and selling stocks, talking to other traders, calling his clients, and urging any who might be interested to go heavy on Stock A and Stock B, which his company and he himself are heavily invested in. He barks and wheedles and cajoles his way thru a 50-hour week 47 times a year, and his bastardesque routine nets him two-and-a-half million dollars annually.
The professional basketball player suits up his seven-foot frame and goes out onto a hardwood floor, in front of upwards of twenty thousand fans, and millions at home watching the game. He lumbers back and forth across the court, occasionally moving close to the basket and receiving a pass from one of his teammates. He then spins, affects a little jump move, and puts the ball through the metal circle with the strings hanging down. His wife and two girlfriends all appreciate the fact that he is paid handsomely for this exercise—something in the area of $20-million per season.
The famous actress makes two movies per year, each of which takes up approxly two months of her time. (The other eight months she spends keeping the tabloid readerships titillated with her affairs and breakups and weight gains and weight losses.) She spends 80% of her “work time” in her trailer, usually with her paramour of the moment, and every so often enters the set to emote a momentarily assumed alter ego for the cameras. For this she makes $25-30 million per picture. Her bankcount is also billowed by $10-M per year for appearing in a commercial where she claims to love a $3.99 shampoo product.
The property investor gets on the phone Monday morning, discusses the purchase of a large building with the owner. Over the course of three naggling conversations, he downtalks the intrinsic value of said property, inserting a lie or two about what he and others in the property business are currently looking for, and finally agrees on a price. Within seconds he is back on the phone to a prospective buyer, then another, and another. To them he talks the property to the latitudes of Heaven, and finally gets a commitment to buy from one of them. In a very short duration he has secured a profit of 12 million dollars.
One could give many other examples of the uneven hodge of work-earnings. On the face of it, the people who seem to work the hardest, doing honest labor, make far less than those who wrangle on the phone while making dubious claims in a moral vacuum. And far, far less than those with the looks or athletic ability required to be a star in a celebrity-drenched, sports- and entertainment-mad culture.
There’s something to be said regarding people’s visceral need to do what they do. I would venture that the majority of teachers, doctors, architects, policepersons and firepersons would be hard-pressed to think of something else they were cut out to do. Of course this is not true in all cases, but it would seem true that those who thrive in the highest paying fields derive a real satisaction from it, as if it defines who they are, in much the same way as the above-mentioned professions. My point here is that, aside from the question of whether this ilk deserves to make so much more than everyone else, they have, since RA20, been willing to do so for a bit less.
Miscaneous Comments
Allow me to provide a metaphor for the Assets Tax. Just as in so many other instances, the observation of nature is instructional. Few better paradigms exist for such fruitful analysis than the human body itself, ever sagacious in its utilization of resources and deployment of defenses against dangers. When confronted with the problem of diminished nutrients, the body wisely goes to its reserves, ie, the fat which it has sequestered against just such a circumdition. The massive accume of the wealthocrats is nothing if not the fat reserves of a society. The usage of this stored-up plentitude is ultra-obviously the solution to a dearth of nutrient-fuel (ie, wealth) in a nation’s body.
The widescale reforms just outlined wouldn’t have been nearly possible from, say, the perspective of 1990 or 2000, when the fat cats were still riding high, and deflecting most attempts to trim their sails. It was only after the severe tightening of the screws (the set of 40% taxes and the outlawing of lobbying) that they would accept The Big Fix, as it allowed for some immediate relief from their cornered position.
Seeking to forestall any repeat of the Panic of ’08, the government retained a member on the board of all the financial institutions that it had helped stave off collapse. No more would they be allowed to take extraordinary risks like they had done previously, gambling casino-style with large sums of money to gain short-term profits for themselves. The government representative voted as normal at board meetings, but had a “freeze” capability, in that they could choose to temporarily suspend action on something the bankitution was planning to do, until the matter could be discussed with the Secretary of the Treasury and/or whoever was the Fed Head. This was not exactly a veto, but the everpresence of the threat (being forced to meet with government honchos) led to a new risk-constraint on the part of the bank executives.
The most glaring example of their previous activity, repeated many times by most of them, was to “leverage” (borrow against supposed assets) huge sums, then give themselves grossaciously high bonuses and pay increases based on this new “revenue stream.” As became apparent during the crash, these companies had ratcheted up this Ponzi variation to the extent of creating 15-30 times more debt than assets. Thru that schemario and the unholy maxation of “derivitaves” (this I won’t try to explain) a few thousand Wall Street cowboys screwed up the economy of the US, and caused a serious teeter everywhere else. Acting for all the world like they fully believed in their (ridiculous) “Masters of the Universe” appelation, they came within a hair’s breadth of creating a worldwide depression. As it was, their carnival antics (for which they were paid ludicrous sums, monies they were not made to return) did cause a severe worldwide recession, and stall for several years the process of globalization and progressive economic development.
One sidebar of RA20 was that the government agreed to pay for a mainmedia campaign with the slogo, “Be American—Buy American.” This media blitz, sustained for several years, may have been unnecessary, as everyone realized that the more profits the corporate ownership class made, the more that would come back to their pocket. (Not that this had eliminated entirely the Benzes and Beemers to be seen in family driveways next to the Cadillacs and Camaros.)
Due to the large-scale foreign policy and financial debacles under the Bush II misadministration, America had largely lost the respect of the world, as well as its investment money. Before the Panic of ’08, around 80% of the world’s investment monies went to the US (which allowed for the gobblemouth excesses of a nation consuming substantially more than it produced) but starting in ‘10 that centage was reduced to between 35 and 40%. With the resurgence of America’s wealth generation, the capital flowed back, and by 2035 around 60% of the world’s investment monies came to rest in the NAU.
Totalitism, after its last outposts in Africarabia became fully democratized, has fallen into the dustbin of history, along with feudalism, communism and market capitalism. A major spur to this transition was that the people in those nations wanted what the others in the world had, and were verging on revolution before redistribution and attendant democracy were ceded to them.
The budget surpluses of the NAU are added into an annual lottery which has a top prize of 100 million dollars, fifteen 10-million dollar prizes, and as many one-million dollar prizes as the remaining money allowed. Each taxpayer has an equal chance at the big prize, and the other awards are ticket-allocated by a per-$1000 basis, ie, if you paid $8,000 in income tax, you were given eight lottery tickets.
Back around 2060, a man I had some business with had the nerve to say to me, “Why should we give our hard-earned money to people who haven’t worked for it?” Instead of punching him, I said, “Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute there, Sonny. Your daddy left you a half-billion with a freakin’ B, and you spend, by your own description, less than 30 hours a week on the job, and half of that is on your c-phone or i-hook while you’re flying or coming back from some fancy-ass party place or resort. You’re gonna stand there and tell me that you deserve that 40-50 mil you make a year and someone who’s a teacher or a fireman or a science researcher, people doing real goddamn work, are making a measly one-thousandth of that, and don’t deserve any more!?”
He just pretended to get an urgent phone call and quick-walked out to his waiting diskcraft. But there were more than a few among the upstrata who felt that way, as if they were entitled to having glutaceously more than most others because their family was rich. Or their manipulating of deeds and stocks and commodities futures was not only real labor, but way more valuable than the contributions of people who busted their backsides making things work, or fixing things, or teaching kids. The richsters who were like that were just odious, and left many people angrifried with their vainglorious attitude. But they were in the minority of the uppclass, and the wiser heads among them agreed that Apportionism was a great concept that worked to the benefit of the masses while not actually harming the wealthy.
There is an old saying that “Money can’t buy you happiness, but it sure can rent you a good time.” Well, if there was a motto hung over the door of the mid-21C, that was it. But I would add that it became a situation of “rent-to-own,” as the vastjority of people in North America, materialistically geared as they already were, plowed the fields of their consumptoglut all the live-long day, month and year. And, as the rippleffect of this politico-economic paradigm circled the globe, they were joined in their pursuits by an increasingly money-drenched planet.
Not to throw too much cold water on this mass celebration of excess, I couldn’t help but perceive the further diminishment of all things intellectual during this timeframe. For most people, mindalrichment became purely a backburner concern, an attitude fueled equally by productism and screen-media. But some return to an appreciation for hightelligence has recently been affected by the “New Rennasonce,” as proven by the resounding poppop of the recent internationally seen Encyclopedia Games in London. In that weeklong exhibition, the mentacuity of the competitors was rewarded with medals, large cash prizes and even some massmedia mentions.
After Reapportionment, unemployment insurance became a rarely used program, altho workman’s comp was still used a lot, due to the high number of injuries among people working longer hours, or in the building trades where they were neophytes (read: were constantly falling off the roof).
Rightly or wrongly, the federal tax code had a long tradition of being utilized to influence behaviors, mostly thru tax exemptions. The biggest example would probably be the tax-deductible contributions given to charities, which were never questioned as not being a laudable use of the IRS. Other instances were the increasingly high tax on tobacco products, successfully used to discourage that stinkburn habit into near oblivion, and the tax credits given to environmentally proactive products.
It became a standing wisdom that Apportionism was merely giving workers what they should have been getting in the first place, were it not for the piggishness of the ownership class. But of course one can easily cite exceptions. Forxample, almost all would agree that midnite shift hotel clerks are generally a lazy lot who loll about reading or browsing the I-net when they’re not stealing a nap. Hardly anyone could make the argupoint that they deserve more than the pittance they are paid by the very tolerant hotel owners.
As for the Constitution, a late 18-C document, it served well what was called the United States of America for almost three centuries, from its inception as a nation comprised of 13 states to its growthcumulation to 50 states in the mid-20th Century (reduced to 49 by the later secession of Alaska). It even continued to be the guideforce document on through the first half of the 21st century, after the incorporation of the “The New Thirteen” states, making it the North American Union. The addition of Puerto Rico, Cuba, Canada’s 10 provinces, and the one glomerated state made from the disparate territorial entities of the US and Canada, were all done under the umbrella of the original Constitution.
But, eventually, it was time to call for a New Constitutional Convention, which occurred in the spring of 2072. This had become progressively necessary, and the consensus of the cognizenti by the late 60’s was that it was approaching an overdue state, as Apportionism, technization, meltpot immigration and the Canadian Incorporation continued to transform the country from its nascent parameters.
The concept of one-person/one vote was a hallmark of the Constitution, but in the early days, that one vote was solely reserved for a white landowner. What became amended onto the document over the years was the inclusion of the non-propertied, and the elimination of the disclusion of blacks and women. This seriously skewed the Founding Fathers’ intentions, which can best be described as the establishment of a democracy run by Anglo-white aristocrats.
As one surveys the historical stretch, and it can readily be agreed that the NAU, in this presentt, has never been stronger economically, its governmental institutions never more respected, and its people never more devoted to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
An Overview
So then, to review: The poor became middle-income, the middle-income became the lower upper class, the already upper class became the gilded rich, the already gilded rich became mega-wealthy, and the already mega-wealthy, by-large, stayed mega-wealthy. This was achieved by officially sanctioning what the uppclass believed was their God-given right—an added say-so on who was elected, a tangible powerbility over the government’s decision-making apparatus, and the prerogative to stay out of prison with the general rabble. That, and the removal of most taxes on capital gains and inheritances, things that they considered to be the lifeblood of their way of life, were enuff to set the economic apparatus into motion, with its resultant domino effects.
Relieved of the daunting 40% capital gains tax, people with money became inclined to increase their buying and selling of stocks, properties and other investments. In fact, there was so much capital-gainsing going on post-2020 that the tax revenues from that source maintained at nearly what they were earlier, despite the tax being reduced to a one-fourth level.
The same was true of the estate tax. Before, the wealthocrat families would splinter their holdings and use various divestiture dodges so as to pay less estate tax in case of the death of the family patriarch. After RA20, with the tax at a miniscule 5%, they no longer had to go thru those machinations, but the estate tax receipts from 2020 on were 75-80% of what they previously were, with a lot less IRS investigation and litigation.
The powerthority gained thru the Hall of Advocates removed from the richies any stressure they may have previously felt about government overregulation of their enterprises. Also-factor, it assuaged any guilt they may have felt for the co-opting and corruption of legislators and regulators. Whereas previously they had to use every hook and crook while manipulating the system in their favor, now they could have mostall of what they wanted, on a silver platter, without all that hooking and crooking. Furthermore, to their relief, they no longer had to give jobs to the relatives of those in power whom they were trying to extract favors from or, sometimes worse, hire the bozo himherself at some absurdiculous salary after their term in government was over.
To further review the timescape between 2020 and 2094 resulting from Apportionism and Political Meritocracy: Crime in the NAU was reduced by 70%; government entitlement outlays were reduced by a likewise percentage; drug addiction was brought down to negligible levels; and suicide became almost nonexistent. The National Debt, once a burdensome 18 trillion dollars, has been zeroed out since ‘82. Voter participation for major elections has generally exceeded 97%, and the unemployment rate has maintained at below 2% every year, those mostly being the seriously disabled or injured.
This number also included the relatively small but everlingering “grid renegades,” what were once called hoboes. The entertainment media delights in romanticizing their squalid but ”free” existence, which I believe has led to much of their popularity among the too-easily-swayed youth.
What was achieved in North America, a full-tilt reshaping that triptriggered not only an economic revolution, but a social and political one as well (and not only in North America, but everyelse around the globe) was unprecedented in human history. (See further, Another Door Opens: North America’s Remaking of the World Economic Superstructure, by Henri Mitterand, and Catalytic Conversion: Riding the Money-Go-Round of Redistribution, by Turk Elliot.)
In summ, every social gauge and economic barometer that one could cite was affected to the positive. All of these effects held true eventualater in the other sectors of the world, morenmore brought together by steeply increased trade and travel, which led inevitably to a heightened comity between nations. Major wars have become a thing of the dusky irrational past.
I am reminded of the axiom of the long-deflunct communists (an economic system which misunderstood inherent human nature): “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Oldstyle market capitalism certainly took a radically different course from that naive pronouncement/plan of income distribution. But the Reapportionment Act of 2020, and its later improvements, along with its brothers and cousins around the globe, had finally hit upon the right combination of economic, political and social levers. In its internal genius, it accurately assessed human proclivities, threw open the locked doors of profit generation, and presented the people at large with a perpetual wealth machine, one that was self-replenishing and produced prosperity for all. (See further, The Perfect Vision of 2020, by Lester Munson.)
It was neither liberal nor conservative, but intriguingly transcendent of any ideological faction, satisfying the agendas of both business and labor, as well as the formerly intransigent polarities of right and left, conservative and liberal. Such divisions were long at cross-purposes with each other, to the point that many stalemates had preceded the new era—literal blockades of progress as each side in the political wars dug in their heels so as not to give an inch to their despised political enemies.
Nor was The Golden Trigger something that satisfied one segment of society over another. Men were not afforded extra privilege over women; rural citizens did not get the short end of the stick as compared to the urbarea-dwellers; white-collar workers were not treated better than their blue-collar counterparts; the West Coast was just as pleased with ASC as was the East Coast; the northern and southern states both had their economies grow and thrive. True, the young were relegated to a lesser position by the vote-point system and the payout plan, but that was remedied in due course by their continued pursuit of education, families, volunteerism and promotions at work.
The creators of Apportionistic Social Capitalism took the disparate subsystems of the macro-economy (high tax structures on income and estates, business’ interest in keeping wages low, the hoarding by the wealthy, etc) and remolded them into a productivity machine. Then, combining this with the self-interest aspect of human nature, they created a symmetrically balanced, synergistic economic system. When the jets were turned on, the engines roared, and propelled the US, and later the world, to new heights. This symmergistic economic macromodel has proven that it is not prone to the previous bust-and-boom cycles, and has a resilience and self-correcting ability hitherto unimagined.
So, in the finalysis, it can be seen that the probsolvation of The Big Fix, from its meritocratic vote system to its spread-the-wealth economics, dissipated the shadows of poverty, crime and other social ills with the light of its common-sense beneficence. This subsequentized into a flowering of a world where lack of want was a given, and the fulfillment of human potential the one vitacritical goal.
Well, that’s about enuff for now. I’ll let you all digest this for a shortt, and be back with some more material later. What I’m outlining in this regard is a one-volume exposition, providing a quickthru accuscription of the farvancing timeline as I experienced it. Title: The Future as Prologue. It will be composed of a combination of my “non-fiction” thru the upcoming illustrioventurous centuries, plus new infoterial that I add to interweave it into whole cloth. TFAP will allow a peekview into the occurstances that lead husapiens toward a future blissvana, a time when peace not only reigns, but the planet blossoms into a full-bloomed creatosphere. In that era, hopefully duplimatched this time around, philosophers, artists and imagineers rule.
My writerial may turn out to be a futile sketchario of a fullrichified tomorrowland that never comes to pass “again,” but at least it will give the world some sort of referframe to compare their unfolding events to. While a full chronaccount of how things went down over the next eight centuries may be beyond my scope, I will attempt to illuminate the stepstones along the path to the fully realized uniworld of 29-C. Until I can accomplish this projected “retrolook,” I’ll leave you with these tipbergs, as a whet appétit.
The two pieces of mine that you’ve just read hopefully served as an overview of the next 80-some years as they occurred in the original panoply, touching on some of the woolywild developments—cultural, social, political and economic. There is a whole lot more whatcome to tell concerning the betaleful 21-C, and I’ll cover some of that in The Future as Prologue.
In broadstroke terms, the 21st Century was a time of great challenges and triumphant surthrival, a hingeturn transition era which cycled the planet from its previous condition as a diverse hodge of competing economic systems to the basic uniformity of Apportionism.
As well, the century saw the seemingly insurmountable chasm between “developed” countries and the “Third World” all but disappear into a new prosperity brought on by a stunning era of fertilemaginative technovelopment and the elimination of the wastefulness of wars. Speaking of such, one of my stored monographs which I’ll be sure to include in TFAP will be on what came later to be called “The Last War,” which started (and ended) in 2099.
But under the category of the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same, much, very much, of life as it is lived at the end of our current century remains recognizable from life here at the beginning of it. Sure, there will be over 20-million Exoterrians resident on our planet, and space travel within 60 lighties became humm-humm for Urthians, and there will be flying cars and buses and whole towns, but most of the basic constituents of everydayness maintain the same.
People still loved to barbecue in their backyards (even those who were several-thousand feet up); lovers still held hands and strolled in the park, whilst some oldster dutifully fed the pigeons; men still got down on one knee to stutter their proposals to their prospective brides; teenagers were still readily embarrassed by their square parents; singles still congregated in nightspots with a karaoke machine (albeit with holographic effects); people still saved their money for their children’s college fund, and/or a bigger house; Girl Scouts still sold their cookies (and the thin mints were still their top seller); sisters still squabbled and resented and loved each other; brothers still squabbled and wrestled and loved each other; and the New York Yankees still had the highest payroll in baseball.
There’s one other thing on 21-C that I should mention now, lest you be left with the impression (from the cultural complaints section of Dances with Droids), that America’s vidiotic entertainment culture continued to downspiral. The pendulum did finally manage to swing back in that regard. By about 2040, the country was sickntired of the vomitously violent and abhorrently trashawful media presentations, and firm measures were finally taken to change that. In TFAP I will share an e-zine article I wrote on the subject, on how a protracted 10-year “censorship” battle remade the terrain of television and the I-Net, away from the wastescape of vulgarudity it had devolved into.
On another front, Urth finally achieved full membership in the Astanian League in 2110, but not without some bumps in the road. For one thing, the last requisite—a totally sovereign worldministration—breaks down within a few years of its startstablishment, and we are suspended until a new negotiopact can be emplaced. (Short explann: The Russians are an exceedingly obstinate, exgasperatingly egocentric and extremely paranoid people, and deserve the bulkblame for the botchmess.)
But that all comes to a settlecision within a few torturetwisted years, and Urth gets reinstated. At first, we’re looked down upon and barely tolerated as the scruffy new neibor (a metaphor would be Albania being allowed into the European Union), but the member orbs come to accept us, then respect us, and eventualater to actually like us. It helps immensely that we have such a funtastic recramusement planet, with a constant influx of offworlders coming here to sightsee, fish, hike, ski, surf and “do Vegas.”
The biggest event of the 22nd Century (and this, I’m assureful, will come to pass again) was The Great Migration. A planet 30-some light years from Urth resettled, en masse, to a planet about 20 lighties in the oppdirection from us. (They blew out their envirosphere.) There were 345,000 (!) passenger ships, carrying 15 billion inhabizens to their new home, and they contracted many years in advance to pass by this oasis of ours (in 2113) to pick up supplies, mainly water and meat, but also fresh produce, especially apples and strawberries.
Their vehicles were huge saucercraft with water reservoir nether-tanks. In a well-choreographed procession, around 15,000 ships at a time came to our surface, and were met by our food-bearing refrigerator craft. Then they hovered over the ocean and, like honeybees sucking nectar, drew the seawater into their parched tanks (which they desalinated in transit). When the process was done, it had lowered the oceans by nearly two feet, which was fortuitous since icecap meltage had caused an encroachment of just over two feet by 2110.
At the time, I was transtationed at an elseplace near their route, and took a speedcruiser out to view the procession on its way to migrasettle on Berria. I was muchly flabbered by the spectacular sight. The convoy, arranged in groups of 100, passed by quickly, their fat underbellies full from Urth’s replenishments.
Fortuitous in its timing was the amount of gold we received, as we used it to pay restitutions on the Marsibiru Settlement (which I’ll explain in TFAP), as well as pay the balloon membership dues to Astania, and some stiff Sector Enforcement Agency fines we had racked up right out of the gate.
Oh, and I have to tell you about Global Warming. It turns out that roughly half of this effect is caused by greenhouse gases, but the rest is due to increased solar activity triggered by the solar system’s current passage thru a particle-laden portion of this galactaregion. All this warming was actually masking a cooling trend—the planet’s normal cycle. So, around 2130, having passed thru the dust-zone, and having gone completely carbon-neutral, Urth experienced steeply colder temperatures and the threatuation of a new Ice Age. To remedy this (I know it sounds ironikarmic), the planet returned to carbon-emitting vehicles, coal-based electropower plants, and methane-producing cattle farming on a massive scale. (Details to follow in TFAP about how this all played out.)
Among the otherings I’ll be covering in The Future as Prologue will be these items from the time trail:
Ø The personal electronic boom continues until it becomes, with stunning new wearable/implantable product lines, the “Hyper-Personal Electronics Revolution,” generally termed The Hypertronic Revolution.
Ø Plastisurgery gets progressively more popular and affordable, until by the 29th Century, in combination with DNA tinkering, most people are gorgeous and slimntrim, similike today’s top models and film stars.
Ø Admixture of the races proceeds unabated thru the centuries. In 2800 the racial constitution of Urth is approxly 20% yellow, 15% “native brown,” 10% white, 5% black, and 50% mixed.
Ø Weather control becomes a reality by around 2025; not completely, but in terms of dissipating hurricanes and tropical storms, and creating rain for drought-stricken areas.
Ø Natural Treatment Mediplexes, employing holistic therapies, pure foods and what is today called alternative medicine, become the new standard, largely replacing regular hospitals by around 2075. People who are ill or injured are treated, but many others check in for a day or weekend just for a tune-up.
Ø The android population numbers almost a billion units by 2800. This is after a stiff backlash against the multiquipped servoids occurred between 2030 and 2040, due to their taking work from the citizenry and usurping the role of love-mate away from millions of people. Addingly, they were used as criminal perpetrators by gangsters, and soldiers by the remaining militaristic nations of the 21st Century.
Ø I won’t comment now about religion in the future, and plan to tread softly in TFAP on this subject, but the revelations and transformations in this area are certainly a maxdramatic part of what transpires in the Third Millennium.
Ø Urth’s movies and music are wellceived around not only the Sector, where they had been pre-sampled, but throughout the Quadrant. Obversely, starting in the 22nd Century, we are allowed access to promulcasts from Exoterrian planets. This begins slowly, with about a dozen educational and docustory stations, but builds in rapidspansion to over 8000 channels by the time of my leaving in 2812. While I found this plethora to be a source of much viewjoyment while on-planet here, it can also be said that there’s such a condition as having too much of a good thing. When added to our 6000 or so domestic outlets, and most everyone having portable and/or implantable tv units (plus plasma-wall houses, plus-plus androids with full-station reception), the average citizen was in a spindizzy state of nowgratifism, with a very meager attspan indeed.
Ø Over the next several centuries, the age of sexual consent is ratcheted down almost everywhere to fourteen years old. This was merely an exercise in reality, as, to bluntstate it, teenagers of the future, even by 2200, are much more sexually aware/active than twenty-somethings today. For one thing (as parents are finding out currently, to their increasing chagrin), there is no such thing as a successful walling-off of “adult” media from inquisitive youth. So, by 2350 or so, the average 14-year-old girl had been popping pornchips into her neck-socket for at least two years. Consequently, they become super-revved for connubial launch, and are needmustingly bursting to “feel the real.” Before the laws were changed to acknowledge this new paradigm, the courts had become over-clogged with statutory rape cases, usually with the young female acting as the aggressor.
Ø The institution of marriage underwent some radical changes in the 22nd and 23rd Centuries. Homox marriages became legal everywhere, and multiple marriages of up to four people became not only legal but popular. Of course there were the “deviants,” those who habitated in civil unions—and in a few states and nations, legal marriages—consisting of five, six, and even seven people. In the NAU, the centrists (the term conservative fell into disdain and disuse) were constantly caterwauling about the need for a constitutional amendment to define marriage only as an institution binding two to four adults.
Ø Political battles continued unabated in America and elsewhere, with progressives pitted against centrists. One major advance toward political comity occurred before the 2012 elections in the US, when a law gets passed requiring candidates for national office to take an oath of truthfulness, similar to the one administered in all courts. Stiff penalties are proscribed for offenders, from fines to prison to being barred from running again. This legislation, which leniently allowed for the usual twistacious exaggerstatements about one’s opponents, forbade outright lying and fearmongering. This was spurred into creation by the despicable McCain/Palin ads and malmouthings of 2008.
There are so many, many things I want to tell you about the times hopefully to come, but I will desist for now, gather my thoughts and notes and “previous” writings, in preparation of a proper volume to fulfill the task.
But… I just can’t resist adding this one other thing. I’ve restrained myself from much commentalysis on current or sooncoming historical developments, but the last item above has re-riled me into making an exception regarding the dumbquackery-spewing Sarah Palin.
I’m not sure it’ll happen exactly the same way this time thru, as, for one thing, I remember that election as being even more of a muddlemangled Republican trainwreck the first time around (411 to 128 in the electoral count). The mockworthy Palin never being seriously mentioned as a future Republican contender, as she shakeheadingly is this time. This latter fact may be a consideration that will prevent her from taking the precipitously mistakeful actions I’m about to describe.
What happened, in a nutshell, was this: After her inglorious defeat as the Veep candidate on a ticket that garnered only 41% of the popular vote, she returned to Alaska, a land of enormous oil and natural gas reserves. There, she greased the rails for the secessionist movement, and in 2011 Alaska declared its independence, with her as president.
The vastjority of Alaska’s well-armed populace and National Guard members supported the declaration and fought against the US government’s soldiers. This went on for three days, until President Obama, seeing the potential for a uselessly protracted bogmire, withdrew the troops, thus ceding Alaskans their independence. His basic message, in acknowledging the irreprabreak, was, “We won’t force you to be part of the greatest nation on the planet.”
Three weeks later found the Alaskans still crowing about their “defeat” of the accursed USA, and President Palin still on a victory tour—babbling in town after town about Alaska’s newfound place in the world, and how it would be “a shining city on a hill.” Then, in a stunning reversafortune Russia landed an occupation force and took over the new country, lock, stock and gun barrel.
Claiming the land was swindled from them in a dishonest 19th-Century land deal, the Russians wasted no time in carrying out and consolidating the operation. They incorporated the Alaskan territory, with its many riches, into its economic grasp (leading, for a while at least, to the global preeminence of the Sino-Russian Alliance).
The US, justifiably bitter over the secession, stood idly by. The UN likewise did nothing, as Alaska had not yet applied for membership. The majormost strategerror of this stupidiculous excursion onto the world stage was the failure to establish any alignpacts with military powers, leaving it without any allies or powerogatives.
Sarah Palin, meanwhile, after a short stint in jail for going on pirate radio to call for armed resistance to the invaders, returned to her first vocation—before her misfortuitous detour into politics—and took a job as the requisite big-breasted sports-gal at an Anchorage TV station. When her declining looks finally caught up with her, she and her husband opened a very successful moose-hunting lodge that catered to rich Russians.
Okay, that’ll have to do for now. Until we connect again …
APPENDIX ONE
The following are the appendix chapters from the original Dances with Droids.
— A.P.
ONE
The Exoterrian Connection
The Interworld Trade Agreement of 2019 was mostly about medical equipment and transpo vehicles (from flying discs to interstellar craft) from the initial fourteen Exoterrian races who landed en masse in 2018. These products were in exchange for seawater, gold, diamonds, wood products, and all of our nuclear weapons. (The latter set off the famed “All-or-None Debate,” finally settled in the affirmative).
But we in the robotics industry were able to score two very important items. The perpetual battery, the size of a bar of soap, saved us (and the owners) from the problem of ever recharging the units, and the ocular multiviewer tech we received meant that the mechoids had human-level eyesight that could switch to high-powered microscopical or telescopical as needed.
I’d like to add a sidenote on the agreepact, which I was honored to be a part of, serving on the language committee. It’s been 10 years now, and they ain’t eaten us yet. Or conquered us, or annihilated us, or abducted us off as slaves, or any of the other bulloney the Righties hysterically warned us about.
My enduring image from that dust-up is Sean Hannity setting his hair on fire in front of the US Capitol Building in protest of the impending treaty under a sign that read “PATRIOTS USA—WE NEED OUR NUKES!!”
Alien Retroflection
On this, the 10th anniversary year of the Contact Accords, I’d like to review the events which led to this historichange and give you my judgevaluation of the Top Ten List of Trader Combine products. (Not including their best products, the flysaucers and dynadiscs, which they exchanged for stockpiled warmaments and/or nukebombs with over 90 nations as part of the initial accord.)
First, a comment on the manner in which the process of Openization was handled. As an advisor to the First Contact Committee I have to note that the malcritical mouthings of those in the main media who were braying for a more boldistic approach (“Let them be seen!!”) have all but ceased. I think it’s safe to concede that the inchremental business-based procedure—letting their products and services “do their talking” at first—worked out just fine.
This conservative protocol, which prevented all but a few people from personally seeing the aliens—excuse me, Exoterrians—up close is now recognized as the prudent path. (Especially considering the size of the Garkors and the gnarliness of the Raspillians.) This was done with studied purpose, to avoid a circusphere, and to lessly upset those with deeptrenched phobias about Exoterrians. And tho, aside from the UN proceedings last year, they still haven’t appeared in public, everyone’s seen pictures of them, and viewed docustories of their home orbs.
Now, as for my opinion on the best products being offered by our new neighbors:
10. HaiRestore®, from the Oxillians. It’s so strong that women having regular sex with a user have to double their own shaving schedule.
9. Chameleona’s House Alive® products. From the Raspillians, the sand in the see-thru casings of the bricks and roof tiles is chemically treated so as to be re-programmed — via a special keyboard remote — with different color schemes and patterns. (And since the kids are so much better at the cyberstuff than the parents, many of these houses are quite the visual adventure.)
8. Pyra-Pure Home Health Pyramids®. I haven’t used this one, but the reports of cancer and AIDS remission are nothing short of fabtastic. They also offer a less-expensive model (with a smaller sonic wave chamber in the base, and without the gold plating and diamond buckles) for anti-aging and re-energization purposes. I may get one of these, as they’re supposed to also be good for arthritis sufferers. (These are manufactured on Baza.)
7. ProtectoGear®, the lightweight bullet-resistant bodysuits from the Ezorians, for use by the police and military. (But in this rather quiescent product-gorging era, with street crime down over 50% everywhere, they’re more a precaution than a grim necessity.)
6. Moodshine Products®. Sold by the Zinks, these are a total blessing. First tested on the prison population, these anti-aggression capsules and drinks seem to have no side-effects or dependency issues. (I take a small dose of Clear Breeze Plus® with my morning cappuccino and find myself suddenly nicer than anyone ever remembers me being.)
5. Ectojuve Lotion®, also from Oxillia, which is reportedly the top-selling product in the Trader catalog. Thrice-a-week applications give women (and some men) a silky-smooth skin texture while nearly eliminating wrinkles, large pores, combination skin and cellulite.
4. MoonShoes®, of which I own two pair, the seemingly gravity-defying footwear from Garkor. The contents inside the impregnable soles are a secret, but I’m told it’s a kind of gas that expands when weight or pressure is exerted. Even with my arthritic legs, I can now stride a good 10 feet on an open track and do a three-minute mile.
3. Aphrodelite®, the outrageously effective aphrodisiac fruits of Varilla. Coming in both male and female variants, they substantially increase their potency if the juice is also applied to the skin. (Been and Done!) Well worth the 3-year wait for the World FDA to approve it.
2. The jewelry division of Injectofine®. A product sold by the Axbaria contingent, this combination vita/min supplier, immune-builder and free-radical cleanser was also subjected to a long WFDA process. Their gorgeous line of rings, necklaces, bracelets and earrings have tiny injector pins for time-release action. I’m so glad to no longer be taking two dozen pills a day, and I feel terrific on them. (I have 2 rings and 2 ankle bracelets.)
1. FlyCycles!! As the adcast says, “The world is alive with FlyCycles®,” also from the Garkorians. A bit pricey, but still selling over 10,000 units a day, and reaching elevations — if you peddle hard enuff—of 20-25 feet. These floating bicycles are remaking the urban and suburban landscape with their colorful parabrellas. Why take a car if it’s under 5 miles away when you can experience the sensation of flying thru the air at 30-40 MPH—airsailing over fields and car-glutted traffic jams? (And they’re carbon-Z!)
The latest figures I’ve seen show that we’ve sold over 800 billion (in Euros) of goods back to the Exoterrians last year. More than half of that figure was for music, movie discs and UDD players, video games, fish, and anything made of wood. Since I’m still a member of the Interworld Liaison Committee, I have some early infodata on the next wave of Exoterrians (and products) coming to these shores. As we used to say when I was a lad, “You ain’t seen nothin yet!!”
As for the larger scheme of things regarding civilized and governmentally organized planets, the Exoes haven’t said much, and even confided that after the 10-year “cone of silence,” they wouldn’t be allowed to add that much more.
Among the few things they’ve told us is that, although there are only 28 planets officially in contact with us now (planets the most similar to us, apparently) that the Sector government to which they belong has over 600 members, on its way to around 1000. (One thing that tells us, reading between the lines, is that we’re still in a relatively young, still maturing starzone. As most people know by now, they have only told us that there are over three trillion spheres across the galactic expanse that have evolved to the point of civilized, or “universe-ready” status, and that this doesn’t include a trillion or so planets that have biological or sentient life in its earlier stages.
The other fact, which I found rather gasp-inducing, is that those three trillion plus worlds are only in around 110 galaxies, and that the others (billions and billions) are not yet inhabited. Perhaps the most salient thing that the Exoterrians shared is that life is purposeful, nurtured and fostered toward sentience by an entire hierarchy of beings, physical, “semi-physical” and “paradimensional.” Of these latter two, they will say nothing further, so I guess we have to get into the club to learn the secrets.
TWO
Hodge and Podge from the Exoterrians
I think you’ll agree that these tidbits I’ve gleaned from my conversations with the Exoterrians are worth a few extra pages in this treatise.
As someone who loves any form of incisive wordplay, and one who lived thru the culture wars of the 90’s, I was amused by the following, voiced by a Plaxan operative in the Service Corps.
“One of my assignments which ended in total failure was the Jeff Goldblum project. We thought we could get him to act as a liaison to other opinion leaders, in Hollywood and elsewhere. His mind, facile as it was, couldn’t get around any large concepts — ie, anything beyond his immediate pursuit of pleasure, or his career. I did eventually recruit two Hollywood types, one an actor and one a director, and they both proved useful in spreading the concept of global peace and positive offworlder contact.
“My experience with Goldblum did have one good, albeit minor byproduct, a little game among the crew. Incited by my short description of him, worded in a pseudo-mathematical formula (“mental density and emotional warmth multiplied by insouciant charm”) others began passing around similar formulas of celebrities and politicians, and even fellow crew members. A few I remember are: Madonna — “prescient talent and utter whorishness multiplied by raw ambition,” and Bill Clinton — “youthful idealism divided by crass pragmatism multiplied by the need to be loved, with an active co-efficient of sexual satyrism.”
Ellio, a member of the Service Corps who has been coming to Urth for over 100 years, is a musicologist by training. Due to his humanlike appearance, he often worked undercover on the surface, where he studied humanity, and attended every musical performance he could. A wordsmith of the first degree, I heard him give the following recitation at a small gathering between negotiations, and later asked him for permission to record him saying it again.
“I’ve been a music-hound for over a century here. Along the way I’ve sat in the audience with many types of music fans. In the late 19th-century, there were the Operaholics, the Classicalians and the Wagnerian Wagdogs. In the early 20th, you had the Jitbugs, Tin Pan Alleycats, Scatbrains and Jazzers. Later came the Swingmeisters, Bobbysoxers, Blues Blathers, and Brassholes. Around mid-century there were the Torchettes, but that soon gave way to the early Rockrollers, followed by the BritRocks, Punkers, Metaloidiots and Goth-Ghoulies. After that we were subjected to the Hiphoppios and Rapheads, which I distinctly disliked, but soon enuff I was blessed with the Yannios, which reminded me of home. And all throughout the past 50 years an endless array of Popcornies. And how can I not mention the femcake angstathons, with their long nights of whine and roses. Of late, there has become an infestation of Shockrockers, Screamies, and Technobrats, but the absolute limit, we would hope, has been reached by this latest thing, the Wrestlerockers, an unfortunately conceived but apparently popular phenomenon now filling arenas across the world. But despite the appalling visual of their beards and thongsuits, I do rather like the way these groups handle their portable laserchorders.”
I was on fairly good terms with a member of the Telorian delegation, with whom I would on occasion imbibe various liqueurs; I would treat him to Triple Sec, or absinthe or Kahlua, and he would give me something unpronounceable which would make my insides smolder, and the room strobe. I asked him what the most amazing thing was that he had seen in his space journeys. He laughed at this, aware I was trying to get more info from him than he was supposed to give, but he told me something of note:
“I’ll share this with you, because your race already believes in its feasibility, and I’ve seen it written about in science journals and science fiction stories.”
He then went on to tell me that he had seen what we call a “Dyson Sphere” several hundred light years toward the galactic center, where some older races live. It was constructed around a smallish sun that never developed any planets, only an asteroid belt. The structure, even with millions of workers (and androids, he was keen to tell me), and their tremendous technology, took tens of years to build. It completely enveloped the sun at a distance of several thousand miles around the entire circumference. The interior of the shell was honeycombed with solar energy collectors, which were used for all the energy needs of the inhabitants on the outside part, with plenty left over for export and sale of fuel cells to other planets and ships in transit. They also grew food in abundance, and sold most of that.
The peoples who lived on the outer surface were two separate races, each of whom had to move from their original homeworld due to environmental degradation. In total, they numbered over 80 billion, but they barely used one-tenth of the available space on the outer surface. They could never have the kind of natural beauty they once enjoyed, because of their ancestors’ foolish depletion of the atmosphere, but they both did what they could to make parts of the artificial world resemble what their previous homes looked like. They had no atmosphere, but subsisted within domes and other artificial structures.
“How’d they get along with each other?” I ventured.
They habitated on opposite ends, so it was a very long voyage for visits, but I recall that they were cordial, if a little competitive on things like export numbers and energy efficiency.
THREE
Living on Cloud Nine
Very few people outside of my friends know that, not only do I live 8 months a year in one of the dome float-towns, but that it is the first one ever built, and I was an initial investor in the enterprise.
So, from my inside perspective of the phenomenon, which has led in 10 short years to over 200 such geodesic domes flying above the planet, I shall now provide some spintale on the skypearls. This may be especially relevant for the younger readers—those who have been born into a world of marvels, and believe it to be the natural, perpetual state of things. (Or as a man I knew used to sayto his son: “Born on third base and think you hit a triple.”)
[As I did previously in the “Sales Pitch for Androids” section, I will attempt to deploy a great number of Newvo words, as a further demonstration of their efficacy and funtastic quality. The subject matter easily lends itself to such a treatment. For more on the Newvo phenomenon, please refer to the end of this volume.]
It was the great Buckminster Fuller who originally figurized that a properly tensiled 875 meter geodesic dome, if the air inside were just one degree warmer than the air outside, would float like a balloon. But it was Leonard Billingsley who bet his bankroll that those numbers would fly.
To background, Leonard (a second cousin once removed, or maybe a first cousin, twice removed; I always forget) was the proverbial Big Buck Luke in 2016. He had just midmanned one of the first interworld business deals—the one in which the Pladorian Traders bought most-all of the South American coca crop, and the purchase rights into perpetuity. They made a bundlemint (and still do) in overspace tea and gum-bar sales, and not so incidentally broke the back of a well entrenched Colombian thugocracy who used the coca to make stimdrugs. With his ten'cent, he initiated some venturegains, the uno being Cloud Nine Condominiums. (Cloud Nine was Fuller's name for the floating domes.)
The Pladorians were so pleased by the deal that one of them gave my cousin some advice on a scientific matter. Seems Leo was a big Bucky Fuller devotee, and had even attended World Games events at Southern Illinois, where he had met and spoke to the old man himself. Leonard, a real estate tycoon and wheeler-dealer par excellence, had always planned to build a “Cloud Nine” at some point, and had been trying to get approvals and such, but ran into a wall of skepticism. After all, something that big and heavy shouldn’t float, no way, no how. But the Pladorian, knowing cousin Leonard’s desire, informed him of the fact that yes, such a massive dome building, with all that air inside it, would float, and indeed existed on many advanced worlds.
He also gave Leo some practical advice, in particular to keep the housing in the lower third, and separate that area with a plastic divider. This would allow for the heating of the upper two-thirds, so the dome could stay afloat even in hotter climes while still providing a starry view for those in the housing section.
So there he was in 2018, invested up to his neck in a theoretical premise, without enuff to finish the project—which was a 990-meter dome with deluxe housing for 6000. The thing had been insured against groundlock by a Lloydsdon for 600 million dollars. (They were the only ones happier than Leonard when she finally kissed the sky.) The policy alone cost him 80-mil flat-fronted, a fact I remember because that was when he approached me and several other family members. (Me actually last, as we weren’t that close, but he was chasing down all the available money in the Winger and Thompson clans.)
Long story short, I and seven others each bought a 20-M share. I had received my inheritance the previous year, a sum I had nearly doubled gambling on the I-Net (not recommended, kids) and let Leo convince me of the surety of his floating dome-home scheme. After myself speaking with the Pladorian, I wrote the check, and became a one-fifteenth partner in CNC.
What followed then was pure torture. I had left my job at Tulane the year before, and so was available to accept a manager’s position at CNC (me a linguistics professor; not a good match), but found myself so stressed by the day-to-day dealings at Cloud Nine that I applied for and got the job at ARC, just to get away from all the craziness. (Not to denigrate my directorship, as it obviously became my true passion.)
The project was many times stalled and seriously behind schedule. The insurance companies had doubled their original high premiums, and the govcrats had assailed us with endless fees and regs. Sixty days before completion we were still fettered with uncertainties, lawsuits, investigations, and a strike threat—all exacerbated by a rampacious, vulturistic mediastablishment who were treating the thing like the biggest boondoggle and/or mass suicide in history. Poor Leonard, when I would go out to visit the site, could barely speak without sputtering and waving his arms.
The way he was building it tho, the Cloud Nine was safer than a baby at its mother's breast: double backups against any contingency. Even if a hurricane hit during a meteor shower, we were ready-freddy. (We still haven’t had to make any significant repairs on the thing.)
But those damn burrocrats were putting us thru hellsbells on every detail. Keep in mind that we had to contend with a nightmare of overlapping agencies and cabinets—Housing, Transpo, Occupational Safety, Aviation, Interstate Commerce, to name most of them. A day hardly passed without some agency boys sniffing around the premises, looking to stir up some trouble or paperwork. That was during the Perry administration, when the damn government was a bloated cacophony of corrupt excess. (Not that it’s improved that much since.)
Forxample on the FAA: They declared the whole kitboodle an aircraft!! This meant that we had to redo the base-level to add 90 parachute exits and that all the prospective residents had to have one real, or three simulated, practice jumps before agency stamproval. We lost about one-third of our signees at that point, mostly the elderly. Luckily, we still had a waiting list to fall back on, even tho it was dwindling each day due to the sulfurous media reports.
The crats would say that they were just doing their job, but some of it was obviously bitchback for the many years of scathe Leo had dished out in the government's direction. (And, his biggest “crime,” he never put a dime in their coffers, above or below the table.)
One anglehedge we had on that protoriginal one was that most of the buyvestors had "Urthbound clauses," whereby they would maintain ownership in case it didn't float, but would get their unit downcosted by 40%, and maintgreement fees in half. That way, as a justncase, the company would still maintain its deposit-money and residency base. The reason that plenty of people were willing to go it that way was that, not only did the complex have matchless facilities for that era but, as a further hedge (and at a property cost of 170 million) we had it assembuilt on an uptrendy Yucatan waterview. Back in that time, just after the Mexican Incorporation into NAU, that area was all the buzz.
If the whole thing had just sat there like a frog full of buckshot, we would have just taken the sidings from the outerdome, only excepting some portions of the rooftop over the picnlc/ballgrounds—for a rainless area. So even if it hadn't risen, addfactoring in the insurance, Leonard problikely would've been able to return to square—instead of the hand-fisted loot-loading that he did do. But it would have been a long time, if ever, before another try at a Cloud Nine was attempted.
Well, the must-or-bust day finally came, and she was sealed for take-up. On that initial run, only Leonard, the investors, and about a dozen other brave souls were inside the magnificent skyship. But many thousands of people were onsite, plus every dishcast outfit and live-feed brokaw in the world. So with a Dom Perignon '99 and a "This one's for you Bucky" Leonard christened it "The Buckminster Express" and sent all 990 crossameters freesailing into the expanse, trailing a festoon of streamers. Such a joyful celebration! My heart was pounding like a gyro-hammer as I looked down upon acres of people jumping, shouting, waving and weeping. I deeply cherish that moment to this day: In the nine years since, I've never failed to tip a toast on December 2nd.
No matter how many times I’ve re-watched the disc of the event, I doubt if I ever saw anything as being more gorgeous than the Bucky One as she was ascending that day, but #1 would be comparatively plain next to the colorlucent mod-mods CNC and some of the other companies have in the sky now. During this past decade, aptly named “The Soaring Twenties” for the sudden proliferation of floatdomes and saucers, Cloud Nines have truly become worthy sky ornamentation. One big step in that development, as well as increasing their general pop appeal, was the concept of connecting several condoplexes around one large entertainment dome. Especially at vacation time, when up to seven dometowns travel along together, rondavooing for a season with other communities—all linked to some fabtastic central dome.
The Bucky One’s usual sky-hover is around the New Brunswick Coastal: rugged mountpeaks, blue lakes, green rollhills, the St. Larry Seaway mouth—all very colorlovely from 4 kilometers up. From that northerly position we're usualikely to crosspole for our annual winter trip (we're partial to European locales). I never get tired of looking down at the glacier patternings. This is much, much better than ocean-crossing, which becomes boredacious at those low speeds.
The Buckminster Express was equipped with over 60 completely refurbished jet engines from the prematurely retired Boeing 787s (Rolls-Royce Trent 1000s) for when we wanted to relocate or go on vacation, which was usually twice a year. We could do 200 MPH with a headwind, but the new ones coming out now, assembuilt with those huge engines from the 987’s, can do almost triple that. But what’s the hurry? You’re already home, and the scenery at 200 is plenty pleasant. I’m hoping to be onboard for the upcoming summer trip, which they’re calling "Alp-Me-Ronda," with stopsees at Vienna, Innsbruck, New Lyon and Copenhagen.
The first entertainment dome to open was Spielburg's Pathway to the Stars: 9 ultrascreens, 3 stages, and that famous spiral staircase. The Bucky One has hooked up with it three times. It’s only been ten years, but it’s already hard to picturemagine a world without the float-towns and travel formations (I'll include a favorites list of entertainment centers at the end of this chapter.)
Youngsters I’ve met seem to take all this skysailing as par'course, but folks were thrilljoyed out of their skins back in those initial few years to be a part of it. I doubt if we’ll ever see that level of excitement in the world again, unless they finally solve how to put an atmosphere back on Mars. I know they’re negotiating with a few of the Exoterrians for terraforming technology. That would certainly open up many adventures—the colonization of an entire planet! And that sure could be a terrific venue for skytowns, or at least flotillas of floating resorts.
For those of you who want to read further on the subject, I recommend Leonard Billingsley’s book (which I wrote the preface to) called “The Sky with Diamonds." You’ll find much there that is interestworthy, and the pictures—interiors, exteriors, design diagrams—are a pleasure to peruse. You’ll also see a few pictures of me, the best one being me in my role of condo board president gaveling an unruly meeting to order. (I’ve been asked why I haven’t moved to one of the fancier new skytowns, and my answer is that there’s no power like condo board power.)
Speaking of Leonard, he is now busy expanding the utilization of the floatdomes to ultra-mall retail chains (with free fly-ups in a disc or helicopter for customers), the make-and-deliver factory outlets, and the very profitable hydroponic farm-domes, which have done so much to ease the African Scourge.
As for myself, I kept my money invested and reinvested in CNC, and did very well, thank you, which is another way of saying that I stayed at ARC out of love for what I was doing, not because I needed the job. But I think that should go without saying for anyone who has been reading these pages.
MY FAVORITE CENTRACTIONS
1. McCartney’s Music Box
2. Spielburg’s Pathway to the Stars
3. Disneyworld AmPark
4. WOWS (Weinstein Open-air World Showcase)
5. Andrew Lloyd Webber's Broadsky Playhouse
6. Nachtmusik Hall (Mostly Mozart)
7. Lorne Michaels’ Comedy Tonite
8. Garrison Keillor's Storient Express
9. Universal-Sundance StudioTours
10. Arnold'n'Sylvester's Movieplex 7
11. Diamond Sky Lucy (First LaseRock Amplitheatre)
12. Hayden Galaxareum
13. The Smithsonian Space Museum
14. Jay Leno's Star Cavalcade
15. The Air Jordan Resort-Casino
APPENDIX TWO
Newvo Notes
This is not the place for an over-long discourse on language, but, as a linguist, I do want to make a few comments, and place into the consciousness stream some of my own Newvo creations.
First, and most importantly, wordal communication is the basis for civilization itself. This requisite, especially as practiced in reading, has taken a beating during these past 40-50 years, due to the ever-burgeoning growth of the various passive-eye media formats.
The syndrome in a nutshell is that the mainmedia gears towards the lowcommonator (bigger numbers, ratings), with folks receiving morenmore of their mindal input from this mediastablishment. Due to the obviously more colorful, exciting and viscerally pleasurable experience of the screen-media presentations, people’s reading time continues on a proglessive trend, and that on simpler levels. The scary part is that they are not able to read more, due to not only shortened att-spans but brain hemispherics retuned by passive response mechanistics.
Researchers are finding this out now, especially in the 12-25 year-old agegroup, hooked on screenies of one kind or another, from TV to video games. Consequently, to return to point, “vocabulary words” get left by the wayside. Why do you think the biggest boom in publishing is in “graphic novels,” glorified comic books.
In general terms, there’s more excitement, entertainment and viscerality going on, which is a good thing, except for the fact that intellectual levels are getting lowerized, and people are hooked on, not phonics, but color effects, motion effects and sound effects. Sensation Effects. Sensation has become the dominant modality of the masses, as I get now to the core truth of it. People are attractivated by the oomph/pizazz quotient of their favorite screenies more than, in many cases, even social contact. Sadly, the viewing of entertainment media, and the playing of various electronic games, has mostly replaced reading, just as emailing and texting mostly replaced letter writing in the bygone years.
Disturbing Fact: In 1945, the average 18-year-old American had a working vocabulary of 40,000 words. After three-quarters of a century of TV andcetra, it’s down to under 10,000!! If you ignored every other negative trend in this country except that one, and took a coldeye hardalysis of the American culture, that atrophy alone would signal a clear and present danger, if not a country brinkilating on cultural demise.
As for the Newvo, some might say, “There are enuff damn words already!” but a simple perusal of a dictionary will prove otherwise. Countless words have multiple meanings, which is to say their meaning can be variable, and confused one for another. Quite many of the newvoisms are exactly that, antidotally, the new repository of a particular meaning an old word might have covered, but a word that also had other slices and shades and variations. A good example is the word present. It has a wide range of uses, including a gift, or the now, or as a verb it can mean to give. Why not differentiate it by having presentt denote the current moment or period, the added t signifying time?
You don't have to buy the whole package; just use the ones you want And know that you have the right to make a word wherever you so choose. Does society dictate to you how you must walk, dress, cook, etc.? I’m just advocating a loosening of the ties that bind.
Most everyone will agree that art became much more enjoyable and fulfilling, for artist and viewer alike, when it became unbound from it’s chains of strict repesentationalism. And that clothing and fashion took a quantum leap from when there were only a pre-set number of choices of fabric, style and pattern. And a person is free to further modify the clothes and accessories they have purchased into what, literally, suits them best. The same can be said of music, and other forms of human expression; there’s always change and progression, and the best of the changes become part of the continuing paradigm. Likewise, it’s time to free up the language somewhat, to make it a more vivacious tool of our expression.
Quite most of the Newvoisms are simply a combomerge of two words, or an abbreved version of a long word, resulting in sharper diction by the dropping of one or several syllables, eg, “At your earlyvenience” instead of “At your earliest convenience. Or, “let me emphastress . . .” instead of “Let me emphatically stress…” I like to use overhearsation for an overheard conversation, and uproarium for an excessively loud public place.
Other Newvoisms just serve to intensify the meaning, words like the very expressive new adjectives, quirkquacky, sleepgroggy, nervejangly, and spindizzy. (After the latter, one is left in a state of dizorientation.)
Newvoisms can also be used to avoid the usage of a vulgarism, while still imparting the original meaning; a “sanctimonious asshole” becomes a sancthole.
Many of the Newvoisms perform a useful function, linguistically speaking, and that is to allow one word to have a meaning that only a bevy of words could previously impart. One of my favorites from the Ambrose Bierce (nee, Ambro Pyrce) batch of neologisms is unforturn, which signifies an unfortunate turn of events. One of my favorites from my own collection is the word discermine, which means to determine something thru discernment. Another of my coinisms I’m high on is preminisce: to talk in advance about an expected good time.
Let usage dictate. What we need to do is open the doors, break down the barriers of langcomm, just as it occurred with art at the beginning of the 20th Century. Write it as you sense it/want it and let the chips fall where they may. Final point: In the past 40 years, there have been upwards of 35,000 words added to the officially recognized lexicon! This includes many along the order of guesstimate and glitterati, purely coined words that fill a recognized need, and immediately stick.
Which brings me to another purposing of the new words collection: Sometimes it's just a more fun way of putting something. Instead of writing "hell of an outdoor concert" or even "lollapalooza of an outdoor concert," you can write "hellapalooza of an outdoor concert." If you don't lose meaning, go for the fun; make up a new word to fit the moment. Get whimsilly sometimes.
In the interest of getting words to flow better, we need to pare down some of the Latinization—the excess vestigial syllables like ment, ation, ification, arian, etc. (On this score, a favorite word is antidisestablishmentarianism.) This will be an ongoing example of how usage dictates languism. Let’s see in a hundred years how the lumbersome words have survived. My bet is that they’ll be pared down, many words losing their excess syllables. The gh has already, for the most part, been dropped from though, through and enough and will probably not survive the 21st Century in words like straight, freight and thought. (This once represented an actual pronounced guttural sound, from the German influence on the English language.)
Here are my entries for the Newvo bandwagon:
administor—Let’s take the ‘rat’ out of administrator. (In some cases, easier said than done.)
aggressattude—To me a useful addition to the attude list (helpattude, smartattude, vulgattude), with attude being a shortening of attitude. This one can be positive, negative or neutral depending on context. A footballer can be praised for his late-game aggressatude; a dancer can be faulted for her unwarranted aggressattude during a delicate section of the performance; a person just being met can be described as having a zesty aggressattude in his handshake and demeanor.
angrifried—burnt out from anger
baldacious—as in a lie.
banalia - minutia of the banal
barewareness—being barely aware.
blithiot—blithering idiot
bogglesum—A mind-boggling amount of money.
caster—broadcaster; specifically, an on-air journalist.
charismer—a person who affects people with their charisma.
charmismer—a person who gets by in life with their charmisma.
chronaccount—chronological accounting of something.
coinism—neologism, the coining of new words; what we’re herein doing.
corporohead—upper echelon members of a corporation, synonymous with the already in play execuhead.
compressence—refers to anything which is a compressed essence, like a pithy aphorism, or even a haiku.
comprodeal—a deal which is a compromise
computype—typing on a computer keyboard.
cybermentoid—a truly proficient computer genius.
detailia—akin to minutia, but concerning somewhat more substantial subject matter.
discermine—to use discernment to determine something.
discomboobalated—the way most men behave at strip joints.
egosaurus—headed by the quite-territorial E. rex.
egosumed—egocentric in the extreme; consumed by the need to be the center of attention.
endquel—the last sequel in a series of books or movies.
evokelicit—Both root words (evoke and elicit) fully pronounced; to bring out a reaction in another, especially a looked-for response.
fiat accompli—A decision or decree so powerful that it is as good as done; unable to be resisted or reversed; as if destined to be.
forn—(also, forning, forned) instead of that other f-word which, by the way, stands for “ fornicate under carnal knowledge.” Admittedly, “Forn you!!” just doesn’t have the ring of the original.
fruck—As above, but maybe with a little more zazz appeal.
garbagio—high-winded but phony excuses and alibis.
googlymoony—the funny, pathetic manner in which those freshly in love act.
imaginate—to creatively originate something from one’s imagination
instaneous(ly)—(pronounced with a long a.) Instantaneously is way too long for what it strives to describe. This would be a companion word to Bierce’s (nee, Pyrce’s) speeding up of immediately to immedely.
masseller—A book or other product that sells massive quantities
mentoid—extremely brainy person.
men-wom—men and women in a group (wom pronounced like mom).
metapathic—both telepathic and empathic
molly (v)—shortening of mollycoddle; pamper.
motherstone—something that is the mother lode and the lodestone.
parentha—parenthesis.
pastique—very old-fashioned, but not yet antiquated.
pastt—past time, to differate from "past his prime," “the ball got past him, etc." Refers specifically to a previous period of time. “In the recentt” would refer to the recent time. The word present is over-stretched, meaning a gift, or to give something or in the room, among other definitions. Let's segdifferate presentt to refer to present time. shortt is short time or short term: "We'll follow that strategy in the shortt," or “I’ll be gone for a shortt.”
picto (v)—to take a picture.
podge—shortening of hodgepodge, meaning something mixulated or unsettled.
preminisce—to talk in advance of a good time you’re going to have.
proglessive—progressively less of something, a downward cycle.
quabble—that which is quibbled and squabbled over; object of dispute.
rankattude—utilizing both meanings of rank, use this to describe a bosshole or military superior whose demeanor is odiously arrogant.
recognizant—to recall an earlier awareness.
schedgenda—scheduled agenda. In the eventualcome, this will problikely be skedgenda.
screenie—anything viewed on a screen, including TV, home videos, movies, video games.
scur—noun for a scurrilous person; echonym of cur, which is a lowly dog.
sh’he—used when referring to two individuals, a male and female; the generic usage in a hypothetical example, when the gender is not known and could be either.
sametimely or simultimely—Which is a better substitute for simultaneously? Or: Forget about it, Winger, I just learned how to spell simultaneously.
simplanation—a simple plan/explann of what needs to be done.
stumbleblock—a shortening of stumbling block, an impediment. (This will eventualater become shortened further to stumblock.)
sturmdrangy—from German Sturm und Drang, translameaning storm and stress. The way a person feels under the influence of turmoil.
surattude—state or attitude of being sure.
symbiotico—combomerge of symbiotic and simpatico, meaning thinking with very similar thoughts and emotions, very much on the same page.
technovanced—technologically advanced, but without all the letters and syllables. (This will, in due time, become techvanced, then tekvanced.)
tipberg—for tip of the iceberg; only a small portion of the total.
toob—television, the boob tube.
totalitism—totalitarianism, leaving out the ‘arian.’ (Irony noted.)
translaquivalent—shortening of translation equivalent. (“In your language, how you say it . . .?”)
troublacious—more than just some trouble, which is troublesome, but loaded for trouble, trouble on the hoof, audacious trouble. (An example would be that twice-divorced stripper who just moved in next door.)
troublems—a persistent, rather complicated pack of problems.
trubs—as in, “Got the trubs.” A condition of pernicious troublems.
uglumstantial—under ugly circumstances.
unmitigall—Unmitigated gall is a classic old expression, hardly used anymore, even tho the referred-to behavior seems to be on the rise.
verybreviated—very abbreviated. May eventualater become verybreved.
waxball—the whole ball of wax; a complicated problem or problarea.
whatcome—An outcome which has not yet occurred, ie, what may come. Example: “John didn't care about the whatcome.”
wholecome—the entire outcome. “Pete assessed the wholecome.”
worscario—worse than the worst-case scenario (worscasio); what’s used on kids by exgasperated parents, and on the public by exploitive politicians.
Let me recommend some of the Newvo volumes out there, the majority of which are sci-fi. The first one, of course, was the returned Ambrose Bierce’s memoir, Newly Found, in which he introduced several hundred new vocabulary words, and invited others to try their hand at helping to, as he put it, “revivify this language, this proud stallion English, so we can ride it with gusto another few hundred years. As of now, it’s badly bleeding from its spur wounds, and panting for a cool pond. Between the politicians, adverhucksters, news typers, twittertexters and an ever-descending lowcommonator of verbal intelligence that these play and prey upon, it’s a sadly damaged carrier.”
1. Newly Found—Ambro Pyrce
2. Death in a Hurry—Bill Phillips
3. A Dolphin’s Cry—Penelope Crenshaw
4. Business as Usual—Jake Savage
5. A Further Shore—Johnson Rigglestein
6. Quantum Love—Kelly Canova
7. Let Them Eat Fortune Cookies—Rod Cain
8. Philadelphia Krunk—Perth Burtkowski
9. Sideshow Puppets—Robert Saroyan
10. Betting on Black—Jane Hathaway
APPENDIX THREE
Here are the current inclusions that I’ve selected for the first edition of the Webster-Johnson New Americana Dictionary edition. By now there are hundreds of Newvo words in recent dictionary editions, but I hope to have my WJNAD project include not only them, but the curent crop of neologisms (plus mine, of course, as listed previously). In the upcoming edition, the Newvos will be in blue, new scientific or tech-jargon words will be in green, and new “urban slanguage” will be in red. There’s even discussion—in the interest of presenting a replete compendium—of including “Teen Talk” words (purple?) but that issue has not been decided.
The following words will have regularized definitions next to them, but I am still assembling data on their manner of usage among the populace. For that reason I have concentrated the list on words that are mororless selfsplanatory. The reader will recognize many of them from my monograph and some recent popular novels.
(I originally wanted only three per page, to emphastress the individuation of the words, but my publisher wouldn’t cooperate. So we came to a comprodeal of eight per page.)
absomandatory
absotruely
absurdiculous
actioncitement
adverhuckster
aficionerdo
agreepact
allasudden
allthingsidered
alphaquence
andauseum
andcetra
anecjoke
angeruption
angstathon
anonydentity
anxt
applausovation
arraymix
artspression
assembuilt
attspan
awetimidated
badattude
badministered
basistablish
bastidiot
betterficient
bizarrattude
blahblahcetra
bluffshitting
bogmire
boldventurous
botchmess
brasscrat
briefagraph
bulloney
bullquackery
burrocrat
calmplacent
calmsurative
cashpensation
catastroclysm
chronorder
churchitution
circumdition
circusphere
cityvironment
civsocialation
cleverguisedly
colorlovely
combomerge
comdenominator
comft
commentalysis
constermazement
consumptoglut
contemptattude
cooltrol
costfective
costficient
creatosphere
crisisflict
criticalportant
cruxcore
dangerventurous
dastardeed
dawdledrag
dazzledazed
dazzlelovely
difvarious
disasterclusion
dispeliminate
dizorientation
docustory
doublesurative
dramacrisis
dreadawful
dumbfoolery
duplimatch
eachnevry
easyvailable
easyvenience.
ecocatastrophic
ecoclysm
ecospoilation
ecovironmental
elseplace
emotiopathic
empafeel
emphapoint
emphastated
emphastress
endlessetra
energyficient
enterpriseur
enviroclysm
envirosphere
errrogant
errorclusion
especiallymost
establistart
evacugee
eventualater
exactaprecisely
exaggerstate
exaggerstatement
examplify
exgasperated
exhibeum
explaterial
factactual
factbasedly
factoralysis
factorfluence
famcestor
fammember
fearcausative
feelieve
fertilemaginative
finalysis
firmstablished
forxample
frictostrain
frightmare
frustravexation
fullficiently
fulljustified
fullpreciated
funcitement
funtastic
furfurther
gawkward
geograrea
ghasthorrific
giztronics
gizvention
glibshitter
glibspoken
glutgorgement
glutsumption
goadfly
goalgenda
gorror
govcrat
govficial
grabgetter
gradgradual
gradmoringly
grandcomplished
grandmasterful
gratifix
greedmonger
greedster
growthvelopment
grudgeattude
guessvaluate
guiltgret
halfsmartish
hammertonging
hamperstrings
handlehelm
haplaughful
hardnfast
harshsessment
helpattude
helpguide
hesistate
highcentage
highvelopment
highficiency
highlarious
highlarity
highq
hightelligence
highteligent
highthority.
historichange
humorsense
identiname
illustrioventurous
imagineer
inapproprehavior
inhabizen
insinuendo
intricaweb
introgradualization
intrototerial
investorstake
ironikarmic
irreprabreak
jagragged
joax
journiary
joyebration
joyventure
judgevaluation
juggergiant
jumpclusioned
kaleidoswirl
kidiot
kindalike
kindsiderate
kindsideration
kitboodle
lacklucky
lawulate
laxplacent
laxplacency
legendlory
lickety-fast
liesurejoyment
likesemblance
llong-awaited
loadladen
loanvestment
locksolid
lorestory
lottamore
loveationship
lowcomminator
lowtelligence
lucrabig
lullplacent
lullplacency
majorcausative
majorportance
majorvelopment
manufabricated
manumakers
manycetra
manymost
manytudinous
marketalysis
marketonomy
marveltastic
marvmarvelous
marvy
massmedia
massmedia
masstransline
massufactured
maxdramatic
maxdramative
maximpactful
maxiom
maxiportance
maxiportant
maxploitative
meanattude
mediafluential
mediastablishment
medicalstablishment
medicedure
medicique
mentacertitude
mentacuity
mentalibrium
mentalsessment
mentapicturing
mentattude
mergemanteau
messagestruction
methique
midmanagementarian
migrasettle
mildquerious
mindalrichment
mindgasm
mirrorflective
miscaneous
mockworthy
monuportance
moodmode
moralattude
moralquation
moralquence
moreficiently
moreganized
morely
mororless
mostjority
muddlemanaged
muddlemangled
multrillion
mussfuss
myriadica
myrillion
mythtale
naggling
narratext
necessential
negcausative
negfluence
negpurcussion
neervejangly
nevever
normalhavior
notncluding
notxcluding
nowgratification
nucleobomb
numbercentage
numbrained
numbstruck
occurstances
oldasaur
opinionalysis
optionalysis
optiplan
otherelse
outblurt
overconception
overhearsation
paralstymied
parameteralysis
pausidering
peakficiency
peekview
perfectpropriate
personalysis
pertinentrue
pessimario
phenomatastic
phototunity
picturemagine
pinnaclepeak
pithcore
planalysis
planmotivate
planstorming
plusvantage
pointsideration
pointtime
polcrat
politisphere
ponderflect
ponderflection
pondersider
pondersideration
potshottery
poverstricken
powerbility
powerogative
powerstablish
powerthority.
pozfluence
pozoriented
pragmahavior
precaristate
predicapickle
preginning
premagine
presenterial
presentime
presstablishment
primesideration,
priogenda
priorsperience
problemire
problikely
probloversy
productdorsement
prohiblaw
proliferaboom
promocast
promohype
proofpoint
properatttude
properspective
properhandled
protorigin
protoriginal
protoriginator
psycharacter
psychbility
psychoproblemated
psychsessment
qualitrait
qualtrol
quickalyze
quickmediately
quicktelligent
quickthru
quietsurance
quirkquacky
radmodify
rapidspansion
rarecasional
rarecurrence
rashfoolish
ravsavaged
razmatazzed
readerial
readyceptive
readyquipped
readyvailable
readywilling
realikely
realityization
recipreply
recognizant
recramusement
regrule
regstriction
regulaw
reiterstate
relata-easy
relataspeaking
rememberminded
remnifact
repeatcurrence
reprocrat
rerepeated
resemblike
responsiduty
retrolook
retroponder
retroview
reversafortune
rhapsamelodic
richcessful
rickety-chancy
rippleffect
rudehavior
ruthole
sacklooted
sadcumstance
safecurity
salestribution
sancthole
sapathetic
scandalhash
scandaltrash
scenescape
schemario
scientinstitute
scurhurry
seemendlessly
seethepot
segdifferate
segresection
selfalyze
selfcluding
selfdulgence
selfensive
selflicted
selfnalysis
selfparison
selfpinion
selfsessment
selfspanatory
selfspression
semblesense
seniorzen
sentimotional
settlecision
sexattude
sexgressive
sexuendo
shabtackiness
shamfiasco
shamigans
sharptelligence
sharptelligent
shatterbroken
shedlighting
shitsquat
shockasode
shockpalling
shtuff
sicktwistious
simplefective
situoblem
sketchario
skillbillity
skillevel
skimskipping
skipbrowsing
skitch
slantfacting
sleazational
sleepgroggy
slogo
slowcumbersome
smartattude
smartelligent
smatterplause
smoothsoothe
socialhavior
soontime
specialbility
spendspree
spindizzy
spintale
splitlickety
sputsputtering
sslow
stackdecking
stalejaded
stamproval
starkgritty
startstablish
statalysis
statquo
statuschieved
statuschievement
stepstone
stratactics
strateforward
strengthability
stressure
struggleflict
stumbumble
stunfrozen
stunmazement
stupidiculous
suchnsuch
suddenthuddingly
sufferquences
sumstance
swiftmediately
swirlstorm
synchpatico
systemsalysis
talkumentary
talkversation
tastilicious
teachique
techveloped
temperjagged
thoughtsideration,
thrillcausative
thrilljoyed
thrillsation
thrillventure
thurojoyed
thuroversed
tightstrictive
tightstringency
timensional
timescape
toosoonly
totalclusive
toughattude
trashawful
traumasode
travellowance
trendalysis
trendcurve
trendvelopment
tricknique
triedntrue
triptriggered
troublenest
trueclusioned
truthnalysis
turnvelopment
tweaktune (v)
tweaktuned
uglumstantial
ultermotive
unpredictanature
upcrease
upncoming
uppchelon
uptdate
uptocluding
urbarea
urbvironment
usilize
usualikely
vaguemagine
vainfoolish
variathematic
vastjority
venturegain (n)
venturestake
verymore
verymuchly
vidiot
viewjoyment
viohavior
vitacritical
voluntribute
vulgarudity
vulgattude
warmaments
waryminded
wealthocrat
weighsideration
weirdball
wellceived
wellfectively
wellficient
wellstructive
whatcome
whet appétit
whethornot
wideclusive
widespersed
widevelopment
wildventuresome
wisetelligent
workvironment
worryhensive
worscario
worsecasio
writerial
writstructions
writtique
wrongstablish
wrongsteered
yawnworthy
zazz
zeronada
195
AM SANDRA FROM CANADA, THANKS TO DR ONIHA WHO HELP ME BRING MY HUSBAND BACK, MY HUSBAND LEFT ME WITH THREE KIDS, FOR ANOTHER YOUNG GIRL, FOR OVER TWO YEARS, I TRIED ALL I COULD TO SETTLED OUR DIFFRENCES, BUT IT YIELDED NO RESULT, I WAS THE ONE TAKING CARE OF THE CHILDREN ALONE, UNTIL ONE DAY, I CAME IN CONTACT WITH SOME ARTICLES ONLINE, CONTAINING HOW DR ONIHA HAS HELP SO MANY LOVERS AND FAMILY REUNION AND REUNIT AGAIN, AND I DECIDED TO CONTACT HIM, AND HE CAST HIS SPELL ON MY HUSBAND, WITHIN FIVE DAYS, MY HUSBAND RAN BACK HOME, AND WAS BEGGING ME AND THE KIDS FOR FORGIVENESS, IN CASE YOU ARE PASSING THROUGH SIMILAR PROBLEMS, AND YOU WANTS TO CONTACT DR ONIHA, YOU CAN REACH HIM VIA HIS CONTACT NUMBER, ON CALL OR WHATSAP +2347089275769 OR EMAIL DRONIHASPELL@YAHOO.COM
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