{"id":5157,"date":"2023-02-15T17:39:45","date_gmt":"2023-02-15T23:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/?p=5157"},"modified":"2023-03-01T08:04:47","modified_gmt":"2023-03-01T14:04:47","slug":"modern-american-slavery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/?p=5157","title":{"rendered":"MODERN AMERICAN SLAVERY"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What does all slavery, in any time of history, depend on to maintain stability between owner and slave?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Think for a moment about different examples of slavery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What do they have in common?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>+First, the master\/slave relationship is not open for negotiation&#8212;at least not by the slave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>+The master can only make limited concessions, because he must maintain complete control.  If he relaxes control, he will likely lose the slave&#8212;and every slave means money for the master.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>+So, money is the motivation for the slave owner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What is the motivation for the slave, if any?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>+Some slaves are captured and forced into slavery&#8212;no motivation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>+Some are enticed or seduced into slavery&#8212;motivated by promises of a better life, anything but the current desperation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>+But many enter into slavery by choice&#8212;that makes motivation a mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In modern America, there are two MAJOR cases of widespread slavery where money is the motivation for the slave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Everyone is encouraged and expected to participate in <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">insurance<\/span> and <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">retirement<\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Americans sacrifice whatever it takes to pay for insurance and stash money for retirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is a recent phenomenon&#8212;not universally applicable around the world and not throughout history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The prosperity of Americans has recently fueled their perceived need to protect what they have, out of fear that they may lose it&#8212;so they pay a lot for insurance, to &#8216;guarantee&#8217; they can&#8217;t lose money, even if they lose property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The insurance industry is the modern American slave owner, with ever-increasing power and control that makes Americans slaves to insurance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fear&#8212;fear of loss, and fear of illness&#8212;is the motivation for people choosing to slave over insurance payments, that master their lives now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The prosperity of Americans has also recently fueled their perceived need to save a lot of money for someday when they don&#8217;t have to work, or can&#8217;t work&#8212;so they pay a lot for retirement, and spend a lot of attention investing that money to protect it and make more money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Providing for retirement has become such a universal expectation, that you can&#8217;t feel right if you don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fear&#8212;fear of less productive senior years, and fear of health crises&#8212;is the motivation to slave over storing money now for then, robbing time and resources to enjoy now and use to help others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other motivation for sacrificing to build a retirement portfolio is the lifelong goal to just take it easy and enjoy everything one day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We are slaves to whatever becomes our all-consuming priority, especially for a lifetime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Reflections on insurance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Insurance may promise money to pay for loss of stuff, but it does not prevent the loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Insurance also promises to pay for damage or injuries from accidents or illness or safety violations, but insurance does not inherently make products safer or guarantee health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Insurance is like the lottery (called the moron tax)&#8212;people voluntarily pay money, with the hope of getting back more than they paid.  The odds of winning with insurance?  If you lose big, you win big.  Kinda odd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Insurance has grown so big, so fast, that it has become all-consuming for Americans to pay for it, and for the government to regulate it, and that not very successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Reflections on retirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How much of the world, and how much of history, has seen such a large percentage of the population saving money for retirement, as in modern America?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As long as the economy sustains stability until a person retires and spends his retirement, there is not much argument against it, but there is still a case for calling it slavery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>About half a century ago, Daddy observed that young people became more concerned about the benefits package of a job than the pay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both employers and employees must calculate the extra costs, and added compensation, before agreeing on a job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The result&#8212;ever higher prices for products and services, so we all become slave partners. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What does all slavery, in any time of history, depend on to maintain stability between owner and slave? Think for a moment about different examples of slavery. What do they have in common? &#8211; &#8211; &#8211; +First, the master\/slave relationship is not open for negotiation&#8212;at least not by the slave. +The master can only make [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,4,14,9,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-educational","category-financial","category-health","category-political-cultural","category-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5157"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5157"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5350,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5157\/revisions\/5350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}