Replies

No, none of us wants to give up, the problem is we have to define what “success” is here. If we win, we all are going to go through some really hellish economic times. And if we lose, we all go through even worse times.

The only way to solve what is wrong with our economy, health care, all of it is to allow the unpayable debt in the system to unwind (deleverage) itself through market forces and to stop allowing government to easily intervene and take external manipulation out of the equation entirely for at least several years.

The result of this victory, will be an immediate and severe depression that will make the 1930s seem nostalgic. Who is going to vote for tihs? /sarcasm on “I WANT TO VOTE FOR ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BECAUSE ITS THE RIGHT THING TO DO! SIGN ME UP FOR THAT!” /sarcasm off

How do you make voters go for that even if it is the right thing to do and the only way out? We tried to take the medicine right before Bush did the first bailout before he left office. We flooded Washington with calls begging them to NOT start down that path. We are Americans, and we will take it on the chin and get out the other side stronger. We should have done it then. But we did not. Now the pain will be an order of magnitude worse. Most of us will end up with nothing but the shirt on our backs if we take the hit now.

But that’s not the worst part. The very worst part is that not only can we not convince voters to take it now rather than later, we also can’t convince them that if we wait until the economic system falls under its own weight we will almost certainly lose our form of government, the Constitution and everything we associate with our way of life. We won’t be the USA any more. Something else will fill the power vacuum from a collapse that severe and there will not be any fixing it. It will be pure luck if we can retain any freedom and liberty at that point.

So, how does all this sound? Because this is where we really are right this moment, today. We can choose to lose almost all of our material wealth now, or we lose absolutely everything including our freedom later.

Choose.

You won’t. You will do what is in any human beings nature. You will ignore it for as long as you can until it cannot be ignored any longer. I don’t blame people for this. It’s too big and scary to easily think about.

Paul Ryan has some solid budget ideas, but they don’t fix the problem. His balancing of the budget would work, if we were not already too far under.

A “turnaround” can’t happen until the pain is over. It hasn’t even begun yet. And he can not tell people this, because that would make him and Romney unelectable.

You sound like an American in 1980 when everyone thought America was on its last legs. But yet, by 1984 when Reagan was re-elected in one of the biggest landslide victories in American history, the US economy was roaring on a scale no one thought was possible.

One of the things that Americans always have is our ability to "move on to the next big thing." Indeed, Americans have the technical know-how to become the first country within 20 years to move beyond wide use of petroleum as fuel. We are now re-discovering the research done in the 1960's at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to create a highly-advanced nuclear reactor that has almost none of the downsides of conventional uranium-fueled reactors--indeed, the radioactive waste from this reactor has a half-life of under 300 years, if the nuclear medicine industry doesn't grab the "waste" first! And we are on the verge of a major breakthrough in electric batteries using dry-electrode lithium-ion and ultracapacitor technologies that could make long-range electric cars finally viable.

In short, what made the USA great was the fact we've had a long history of people willing to take risks to do something revolutionary. It is that very spirit that will ensure America's survival well into the future.