by William Murray, WND:

When millions are paid not to produce, Soviet-era misery is the result

As of April 25, 2020, more than 30 million Americans were receiving unemployment payments. Around 10 million more who had been self-employed were suddenly unable to earn an income yet found they could not file claims because of antiquated state systems. The federal CARE Act was passed by Congress to support all those now unable to work because of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the self-employed. Tens of billions of dollars were transferred to state governments for unemployment programs.

By mid-May, around 40 million newly unemployed Americans will be receiving payments to be unemployed – or to be more specific – paid not to produce any products.

At the beginning of the pandemic, 67.9 million Americans were already being paid by the Social Security Administration programs to be unproductive. There are approximately 230 million adults over the age of 18 in the United States. By mid-May, a staggering total of 108 million of those adult Americans will be receiving money to remain unproductive. That is an incredible 47% of the population being paid to do nothing.

At the same time, with some overlap, 40 million Americans receive food aid from federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP). In addition, the federal government pays for childcare for about 1.5 million children. This does not include state and city welfare programs. As an example, the state of New York was providing welfare payments to 600,000 people before the pandemic began.

Officially, the United States budget is nearly $800 billion for other welfare programs, not including Social Security. The $800 billion does include Medicaid but not Medicare.

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As of May, estimates are that $3 trillion will be passed out in “transfer” payments during 2020 to individuals not to produce any products, although the recipients will buy products including medical care. While termed “transfer payments,” that is not a true definition because a large portion of the money does not come from taxation, but rather from the federal government just printing the money.

Initially, the federal government was projected to spend about $1 trillion more than was received in taxation for fiscal 2020. With additional pandemic spending so far, and reduction in taxes paid, the government is projected to borrow $4.5 trillion – the emphasis being on “so far.” (Wall Street Journal May 5)

This massive amount of money from the central government does not include the roughly $4 trillion the Federal Reserve has pumped into the system so far this year to prop up the casino known as “the markets.” Now the Fed is buying ETF corporate bond funds.

Here is the big question: Where will the products come from that tens of millions of Americans are being paid not to produce?

In my book, “Utopian Road to Hell,” I wrote of my experiences in the Soviet Union just before the Great Collapse. I witnessed firsthand the result of people being paid to produce little or nothing. The Soviets invented the reusable shopping bag, but not to be “green.” Everyone had a folded-up bag just in case something became available. Women carried them in purses, men in lunch pails or briefcases. Lines would appear out of nowhere, sometimes at a street corner waiting for a truck to pull up to sell food, or even durable goods, on the black market. Tens of thousands in Moscow went to flea markets such as Levsha, which now sells mostly nostalgia items, but back then it was to find necessities.

The Soviet people were not poor, as depicted in Western media at the time. They actually had plenty of money because there simply was nothing available to buy with their earnings! “For the good of the people” prices were fixed far below production costs, and jobs were guaranteed for life. Workers were paid regardless of the profitability or quality of their products. The Russian and Ukrainian areas of the Soviet Union had more fertile farmland than the United States, but still had to buy grain because of the lack of productivity.

In the Soviet Union, the retirement age was set at 60 for men and 55 for women, to show the world that communism did more “for the good of the people” than Western nations. (Note: President Putin tried to rectify the early retirement of productive people and saw his popularity immediately drop.)

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