Survival Saturday: Income Tax Is Our Biggest Expense, Tech Addiction Soars, and Monsanto May Be Collapsing

It’s Survival Saturday! Welcome to America, where the government gets more of your money than you do and technology has invaded our brains to the point that they are physically changing.  But there’s also some good news this week – Monsanto is losing money hand over greedy fist and Vermont has stubbornly forced some of the biggest players in the food industry to label GMOs.

^Buy It Here^

Survival Saturday is  a round-up of the week’s news and resources for folks who are interested in being prepared.

This Week in the News

The Mastodon in the Room: Taxes

When an elephant just isn’t big enough, you have to go with a mastodon.

Most of the time when people discuss what takes the highest percentage of their income, they ignore the colossal mastodon in the room. We spend more of our income on taxes to fund things we do not approve of than we do housing, food, and clothing combined.  

Think about it: with anything else you purchase, you have a little bit of a choice. You can opt for a splurge of a home with a big house and property, or you can choose to be frugal with a small little cottage.  You can eat thrifty beans and rice, or you can go for the filet mignon. And either of those choices is fine if you can afford them because we’re supposedly free.

However, taxes are collected at the threat of time behind bars (nearly a hundred different taxes!) and you have no options whatsoever about how that money is spent. Do you want your money supporting the fools in Congress? Do you want it subsidizing GMO corn and soy?  Paying for the FDA to crack down on small businesses while allowing Big Pharma to poison us? Paying for wars or welfare? (Our tax dollars helped the US to become one of the top executioners of human beings in the world in 2015.) Perhaps it will go toward luxurious vacations for the President and his family that cost more than we’ll make in 10 years?

As far back as the 1950s, a few brave thinkers were pointing out that income tax was a complete violation of our individual rights, particularly the right to own private property. Frank Chodorov wrote in 1956 that income tax was the root of all evil and presumed government control over all things. Frank had it right, but no one listened. His book is short at only 90 pages, but so worth the read if you want to understand more about the giant fraud that is forcible income tax.

It doesn’t matter if you like it or not, your money is stolen at gunpoint and you have no say in what is purchased with it. You merely get to try to survive off what they leave you with, which could be why more people than ever are without money for basic necessities like groceries. (Here’s how to live off the supplies in your pantry in a pinch.)  I’m sure you can determine my strong feelings about the legalized Mafia at the IRS.

Monsanto Profits Plummet While Little Vermont Forces Big Food to Label GMO-Containing Products

Are we watching the end of an empire? Monsanto reported a drop of 25% for the last quarter, and a decline of 34% for their cancer-causing product, Round-up.  The company blamed the plummeting profits on “less-than-ideal harvests” and “pressures in overseas markets.” However, one might suspect that the grassroots backlash against their GMO offerings and their blithe violations of the protocols of science may have had something to do with it. I’m sure that the WHO’s bombshell statement last year that Round-up “probably causes cancer” probably didn’t help their bottom line, either. The free market is speaking, as people are overwhelmingly seeking organic options in response to the questionable products. Farmers must change to meet this demand if they want to stay in business. This could very well mean the collapse of one of the most hated corporations in the world.

It looks like individual states have done what Congress will not. You may start seeing GMO labels on products at your local grocery store because the state of Vermont requires that they be labeled for sale in that state. Large companies like Kelloggs, General Mills, and Mars are now planning to “voluntarily” label their products because they can’t separately label only the products destined for that state without a dramatic increase in costs. This makes Vermont the little state that could. The labels will read “produced with genetic engineering.”

Related Note: With our knowledge that Round-up causes cancer, damages the environment, etc., I was pretty surprised to see that the Conservative website, The Blaze, had a sponsored ad on their homepage for the toxic product. A sponsored ad is not like an ad network, with which something mentioned in an article ends up being advertised randomly on a page. It’s an advertisement paid for by the company that puts money directly into the pocket of the media outlet. I believe in some circles, they call that “selling out.” Here’s the screenshot from this morning. Shame on you, Blaze.

Tech Addiction: The New Drug?

These days, more and more people are completely addicted to their smartphones.  Maybe it’s the feeling of connection through social media, the access to instant information, or the constant stimuli provided by the tether that is in the hands of most Americans. One study says that it’s related to poor impulse control.

“Mobile technology habits, such as frequent checking, seem to be driven most strongly by uncontrolled impulses and not by the desire to pursue rewards,” said Henry Wilmer, a psychologist and an author of the study. “

Another study says that the average American spends a whopping 90 minutes per day on their phones – which adds up to four entire years of your life! To make matters worse, a direct link has been proven between the excessive consumption of social media and depression. What’s more, it can actually cause physical changes in the human brain. According to Nicholas Carr in his Pulitzer-prize nominated book, “Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways.”

We were recently forced to completely unplug for 10 days and it was pretty eye-opening, especially since we aren’t glued to our phones the way many of our contemporaries are. No phones, no internet, no Netflix….and we discovered we were a lot more productive with less of these things.

Classrooms to Invade the Brains of Students – It’s Educational!

Technology is doing a lot more than addicting us – it’s also spying on us and telling us it’s for our own good. DARPA wants to put EEG readers in every classroom in America to record the brainwaves of the kids. 

According to the benevolent and loving Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, “there is a great need for inexpensive and easy to use neural recording devices” aka a cheap EEG brain electrical activity recording smart app “to allow widespread use by schools and average citizens” because “having EEGs in every classroom in America would engage students in science and technology in a way not previously possible in the field of neuroscience…” and with it “students could record their own brain activity and download the data to their iPad” right there in the classroom!

Watch this chilling video and see how technology is about to invade the very brains of our children.

Are You Prepared?

Do you have the supplies on hand that your family needs to survive (and even thrive) in the aftermath of a disaster? Disasters come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes it is an issue that only affects your household, like a job loss or major medical expense. Other times, it’s a natural disaster, such as a storm that keeps you trapped at home and unable to get to the store. Civil unrest, pandemics, and terror attacks can all interrupt our way of life, forcing us to rely upon the products that we had the forethought to stock.

You don’t want to buy just anything though – emergency food should not be a health crisis. Shop for high quality emergency food without all of the chemicals in other buckets. Take care of your family tomorrow by taking action today.

Anything to add to Survival Saturday?

Do you have any news links you want to share? Now’s the time! You are absolutely welcome to post your links in the comments below. (Your participation is what makes this feature so unique out here in Bloggerland!)