Hanging out at the corner of Preppinig and Persecution

On Monday I did a short and, frankly, way too glib Locals post about this Maxine Waters plan for a Social FICO Score. But the more I sit with it, the more terrifying it starts to feel.

One of my super powers has always been the ability to see over the horizon and identify things downstream that could be a problem for me personally or professionally, and then step out of the way before they arrive. It’s what makes me a good Prepper, I think. I remember telling my wife last February that we ought to resupply all our preps because I had a bad feeling about the way the Government was talking about this COVID thing… and six weeks later, all hell broke loose and we were the only people on the block who didn’t need toilet paper.

This story about race and politics-adjusted credit scores is scratching that same itch, for me.

We already know that most American Corporations have gone all in on the Woke stuff, especially banks, who have rolled over everytime the Government has asked them to stop doing business with people or groups or businesses who aren’t down for the struggle. This would be unconstitutional if the Government tried it, but as with Big Tech censorship, they’re getting around it by claiming that these decisions are made independently by the banks with no input from the Government which… yeah right.

But what this means is that I’m not sure Maxine Waters would even have to pass a bill to make this happen. She, or some senior Senate ally on a critical banking committee, could take in data from Big Tech about which Americans are reluctant to take the COVID vaccine, or who still harbor doubts about the 2020 election or whatever, and pass it along to the good folks at Experian who would, on their own initiative of course, subtract a few dozen points from those dissidents’ credit scores.

Or, since Affirmative Action in college admissions have been upheld at least twice by the Supreme Court, Maxine could simply suggest to TransUnion and Equifax executives that, as with college admissions, all non-White Americans should get an extra 50 points added to their credit score based on nothing but their skin color… remember that the Courts have said that as long as race is only one factor among many in determining an outcome, then it passes Constitutional Muster… apparently.

And then one sunny day, White Conservatives in America could wake up to find that their credit scores have shrunk relative to other borrowers by 15% compared to what they were when they went to bed the previous night, despite having changed nothing at all about their personal financial health.

Would this outcome be catastrophic? probably not…. would it be wrong? Yes…. would it be so corrosive to our National fabric that it would push us even closer to that Hot Civil War folks keep warning us about? Maybe. But the answers to those questions are beyond the scope of my super power. All I can tell you, as I told my wife 18 months ago with the COVID lockdows, is that there is a non-zero chance that this is going to happen in the very near future and you’d better start preparing for it.

So what do we do? How do we harden our lives against this particular threat? Well the obvious answer is that we have to become less dependent on debt, so that our credit scores no longer matter much to our lives and futures. For decades we’ve been sold a bill of goods that our lives must be financed through debt like school loans, car loans, HELOCS and mortgages. But in order to accumulate debt, you need some way for the debtors to know whether or not you’re a safe bet. And Presto-chango, a bunch of Credit Score compnies popped up to deliver just that.

And now, decades later, we’re stuck… because whatever criteria the credit score companies decide to use, we have little choice but to bend over and take it, unless we want to be frozen out of the debt market.

Literally the only solution left to us in a world where Credit Scores are not based on our personal financnes but on things like political views and skin color, would be to reject the personal debt and consumption paradigm altogether and create a lifetstyle that is not dependent on your Credit Score at all. It sounds impossible, and we’ve been trained to believe it IS impossible… but it’s really not. It’s very hard, it’s a huge pain in the ass, but it’s not impossible. We simply have to eliminate all, ALL, of our personal debt and return to a lifestyle more like that of our grandparents, who saved money for all the things they wanted and then paid cash for them.

If you’re looking for a plan to follow, there are a million of them out there. Personally I like Dave Ramsey’s approach. I don’t follow it 100% to the letter, but I find that he’s created a lot of good benchmarks and pathways that I can use to manage my finances and stay on track, and his basic system (The Baby Steps) has done well by me so far.

But however you do it, the bottom line is that you must get out of debt as fast as you can. Start today. Don’t listen to the people who tell you hyperinflation is coming and you should wait for it to come along and erase your debts for you. That’s dumb. Frankly it’s like waiting on Government for a bail out. You’d laugh at anyone who told you to do that, right? So smile, say “thanks but no thanks” to that person and then go on about your business. Your goal should be to finish 2022 owing nothing to anyone.

Get to it. Storm clouds are on the horizon and you can never have enough sandbags to stop all the water coming your way.