unemployment insurance

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE


Our intrepid doomer over at SHTF, Ranger Man, listed his top ten post-apocalypse books. http://www.shtfblog.com/top-ten-fiction-books-about-teotwawki/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SHTFblog-AreYouReady+%28SHTF+blog.com+-+are+YOU+ready%3F%29

Yes, yes, of course this is subjective. You can’t exactly point a trembling finger and spray saliva as you scream at the top of your lungs that this particular individual has cranial/rectal inversion syndrome and also fecal retention disease. That being said, I wonder if Ranger Man has been smoking crack. Because no one called me up and invited me to a weekend party where we would debate doomer topics, compare our spouses cup size and chase illicit drugs with bottles of imported lager. Why didn’t he invite me? That’s just some rude crap right there. The reason I hate it when everyone gushes over The Stand as a post-apocalyptic novel is that it is a quasi-religious, good verses evil conflict with an incidental background of collapse. This kind of Apocalypse is not civilization falling but End Times. At least to me, that ain’t proper post-apocalypse but just Evangelical Porn. Swan Song has the same problem. It is a simple horror novel with the background of collapse. Devil Dude directs the final battle or some crap. I couldn’t read past the opening. Same with The Stand. They start out great, mass death and destruction. In one everyone but .00001% of the population dies and in the other after a time in fallout shelters or military bases or some such, it’s all about Beelzebub. If you watched the hideous movie with Van Dam, Cyborg, this is what I’m talking about. It is all about chop suey fighting. The setting might be post-apocalypse, but any movie that shows swords as the only weapon and then wants us to believe there was the tech and supplies to build a robot is so far out of touch with reality that they are a discredit to the genre. Just my subjective take on the matter.

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I feared unemployment far before the current economic meltdown. My ex-wife is as evil as they come. If I had failed to pay my child support after being laid off she would have waited exactly one paycheck period before she started calling the State for enforcement of payment, the governor to make sure the civil servants in charge were not guilty of dereliction of duty, the TV station to report that she was a starving victimized mother ( never mentioning her income three times mine in some part due to my support getting her through flight school to be a pilot wherein she promptly left me for another student pilot, plus that of a current husband who brought a house to the deal thus mainly cushioning Herself from the cost of rent ), and for all I know a bounty hunter to rough me up a bit. Of course, for the last sixteen years I’ve had little recourse but to pray for continued employment since there was only so much surplus I could devote to my own personal unemployment insurance. Well, not exactly the full sixteen years. Five years ago I did buy real estate so that at least I didn’t have to worry about rent. If I ever did get laid off I wouldn’t have to worry about deciding between rent or support. That was quite a relief off my mind. But that didn’t eliminate the worry, just mute it.

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Previous to moving to Elko I had land but no land near employment. Or for that matter no land closer than several hundred miles away from a current residence. By moving here I now had rent free land and employment at the same time, a further relief. I don’t know if you’ve been following every sordid detail of my life, but I actually own two lots up here in Elko. One, I bought four years ago. But since that was too far from employment I bought one closer to town, making payments for a year and a half before paying it off with a bulk payment a year ago. I now had paid for land ten miles from town rather than 15. And yet, that still wasn’t good enough. Riding a bike that far takes more calories than I consume. I’m wore out just getting back and forth six miles each way. So I’m making payments on a third lot. I have the fallback of the paid lot, but I’m doing all my construction projects on the third, unpaid lot. This is an expense I’ve decided to take as a better alternative ( as a bonus I’m only a mile from the river ), but it isn’t a necessary expense as far as needing to suddenly cut my expenses.

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Rent/mortgage concerns now put to rest, I still had to worry about child support. My first fallback position for unemployment is actually receiving the state sponsored insurance. In theory, their fund won’t be utterly bankrupt before I make my last support payment in a year and a half. But, being the sort that likes to worry, I wanted a private insurance packet. I just crossed the threshold of asset liquidation potential equaling my future obligations. Previously, no matter what I did I would have been screwed had I been laid off. But now, if I sell the truck ( even low balling what I could expect ) and cash in my silver coins ( thanks to its recent doubling in price ) and if necessary a few rifles and other non-essential items, I have enough to pay off the parasite. I won’t have to go to jail, and I’ll still have all essential assets ( I’m talking about selling only stores that won’t compromise my survivability come the collapse ). Now, if the Great And Friggin Wonderful State Of Florida, may all their civil servants roast in the debts of Hell for all eternity, hadn’t screwed me over by not cutting my payments in half as my daughter turned into an adult, this moment would have come sooner. But it is good enough to still enjoy. And every month cuts into my total amount to go by a nice amount. Unlike the first year long ago when I was looking at $5,000 down, only $95,000 to go. And back then to afford it I had to work as a manager. At least now minimum wage is a lot higher.

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Do you have a warm and fuzzy feeling about your preps if you are unemployed? The economic collapse comes before the catabolic collapse.

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