I can see no scenario where we can avoid debt default in some form or fashion without brutally slashing entitlements - especially Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Civil Service pensions. Directly stated, Congress has spent and borrowed us into oblivion. The inevitable reduction of defense spending simply cannot go far enough.
And unfortunately, I cannot envisage any significant reduction in entitlements without a revolution ... and I cannot see that happening before the public becomes convinced it is the lesser of all other evils ... and, unfortunately, I cannot imagine that happening before this country is ravaged by hyperinflation.
I hope and pray with all my heart that I am wrong ...
There was a revolution, it began in 2006 and was complete on November 4, 2008. 2009 and 2010 laws were passed that will tighten their control of every aspect of our lives once they become fully effective.
Come 2013 the peasants will be rudely jolted awake as to what they did back on November 4, 2008.
REAGAN was the FOUNDER of REAGANOMICS... REAGAN WAS BRILLIANT... His writings prove this... this poser here... **** him. He may be right on a few points but he is a leftist and incompatibale with America. War... maybe... I’m ready either way.
LLS
This article should have been attributed to Paul Craig Roberts at the headline — not the bottom of the article. You would have saved a bunch of us time wasted reading this. Dr. Roberts has turned into a kook over the years.
He and Stockman have given up on “supply-side economics” not because it didn’t work but because it didn’t stop the rise of spending. So the rational person would say: OK, let’s focus on getting spending under control. But no, these nuts want to throw out the whole logic of Reaganomics.
Moreover, it should be obvious that the War Of Independence cannot be repeated - we are not the political subjects of a foreign monarch and we have representation. The two key drivers of the Independence movement do not exist in 2010. This government is our fault: we created it, we voted for it. A "revolution" today would not mean a well-organized limited war of position against foreign armies stationed on our soil taking part in set piece battles like the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse. It would not even mean a sectional Civil War. It would mean bloody fighting almost block by block with a ferocity that would not spare women and children.
You first, Paul Craig Roberts.
I’m surprised to see the nutcase Roberts featured at zerohedge.
He understands the magnitude but is delusional about the solutions.
“The only way that the US will again have an economy is by bringing back the offshored jobs. .... These jobs can be brought home where they belong by taxing corporations according to where value is added to their product.”
What is it with increased taxes being the salvation of all national woes?
Those jobs left for a reason. They left because the pressures of undue regulation and minimum wage laws. They will not be regained by increasing pressures elsewhere, they will find yet another undesirable solution which lacks such undue pressures - or they will be driven of business. Elsewhere he notes “...tax the rich. The rich have enough money. They will simply stop earning.” Likewise businesses: tax them enough and their “fat cat CEOs” will just cash out and let the business die, or will just move or split the company entirely out of federal jurisdiction.
He observes that this administration has tripled the deficit in two years.
He observes that the populace is up against an economic wall.
He then offers the solution of...increased taxes? WTF?
econ gloom bump for later......
btrl
Our problem is that there has been a revolution going on for a century.
What is actually needed is a counter-revolution.
And not one led by the author of this piece.