Posted on 04/12/2011 9:10:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
"Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
Does it seem too strong to call the way America deals with its debt "madness?" If not madness, then what? Denial? An addiction? However you phrase it, we're a country that's in deep trouble, but so many of us seem unable to deal with it.
Liberals in this country, for the most part, will admit that we're running up "unsustainable" deficits. Yet, these same liberals adamantly oppose any and all serious efforts to do anything about it. Once you move out from liberals to the general public, once again you'll find plenty of people who admit that this nation has a huge problem. Yet, when you leave generalities, get down to specifics, and start looking for programs to cut, then suddenly everyone gets nervous and says, "never mind." It's like the old saying, "Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die."
Sadly, this is a natural outgrowth of ladling out public funds to special interests. There is so much collective money that few people feel or appreciate it when even billions are saved. Yet, if we yank even a few million away from special interest groups like PBS, Planned Parenthood, or the unions, they squeal like pigs that are about to accidentally be put in the wolves’ pen at the zoo.
In the face of that, people have to realize that this country is on pace to go bankrupt -- and it could happen relatively soon if we don't start taking serious steps to control our spending. Mike Pence thinks we could just be ten to fifteen years away. Tom Coburn is less optimistic and thinks it could happen in as little as five years. If that happens, we're not a tiny country like Greece -- we're the biggest economy in the world. That means there's no cavalry coming to pay our bills for us because we ARE the cavalry.
What happens then? Well, we don't know for sure, but we can make some educated guesses about what COULD happen and how it will impact YOUR life.
1) Your life savings could be reduced to nothing almost overnight. Inflation is a fact of life. As Thomas Sowell has noted, "As of 1998, a $100 bill would not buy as much as a $20 bill would buy in the 1960's." That's under normal circumstances.
However, the thing governments have traditionally done when they simply can't pay their debts is print more money. The problem with this is the further you expand the money supply, the less the money you already have on hand is worth. This can wipe out the savings of a lifetime in a relatively short period. Imagine spending billions of dollars just to buy a loaf of bread. Sound far-fetched? Well, guess what? That has happened in the Weimar Republic, which was crushed under debts from WWI and decided to pay it off by printing more money. It could happen here, too, and all the money you've scrimped and saved could become worthless in a short order.
2) Your taxes will skyrocket. We've been conned into thinking that we can fund a massive government on the backs of the rich. This is simply not so. It's not working today and it's not going to happen in the future. We cannot tax the rich enough to pay off our debt or even enough to keep the government going long-term. Even if we could, the rich have the resources to flee the country for greener pastures if they're being taxed into oblivion. The middle class? Not so much.
What that means is the more desperate the government gets, the more the average American is going to be hammered with new taxes. How much more of your income can you afford to send overseas to pay China for the money they've loaned us to keep PBS, Planned Parenthood, and the National Endowment of the Arts going? What about if the country goes bankrupt and your income tax rate shoots up fifty percent? How are you going to pay your mortgage? How are you going to feed your kids? When the government runs out of cash and it can't borrow any more money, then it will start leveling massive taxes on the American people.
3) Your life could be in danger. If the government goes bankrupt, you'll have an extremely angry, confused, and frustrated populace that has little faith in its leaders -- combined with a horrific economy and a reduced ability of the government to keep order. Under those circumstances, widespread rioting and violent crime seem entirely plausible.
When Argentina had its crisis, violence went up 142% and "young men began looting supermarkets."
Here's some of what happened during the German hyperinflation of the currency in Weimar Republic after it started printing money night and day,
The flight from currency that had begun with the buying of diamonds, gold, country houses, and antiques now extended to minor and almost useless items -- bric-a-brac, soap, hairpins. The law-abiding country crumbled into petty thievery. Copper pipes and brass armatures weren't safe. Gasoline was siphoned from cars. People bought things they didn't need and used them to barter -- a pair of shoes for a shirt, some crockery for coffee. Berlin had a "witches' Sabbath" atmosphere. Prostitutes of both sexes roamed the streets. Cocaine was the fashionable drug.
4) Your payments from the government will dramatically decrease or stop altogether. Contrary to what some people believe, Medicare and Social Security are paid out of the same fund that pays for everything else. In other words, if the government goes bankrupt, there is no money set aside to pay for these programs. So, if you're receiving Social Security, Medicare, welfare, food stamps, or any other similar programs, those checks could stop or be slashed down to nothing. That seems unthinkable to people, but if the government doesn't have any money, then it can't pay it out to people. As they say, "You can't get blood out of a turnip."
5) You will have a dramatically reduced standard of living. If taxes and inflation escalate dramatically, both of which are very likely if we go bankrupt, economic activity will slow to a crawl and we'll go into a depression. We're not talking about a "This is the worst economy since the Depression" situation that we hear every time there's a mild downturn in the economy; we're talking about a REAL depression. Businesses will close left and right, the stock market will tank, unemployment will soar to heights not seen since the thirties, and the government won't be in a position to help very much.
If that happens in a country like America, where people have been so prosperous for so long, it's going to produce utter misery. It's not a lot of fun to be poor under the best of circumstances, but it's much worse to go from having a comfortable life with a bright future to growing vegetables to eat in the backyard and wondering how you're going to keep warm in the winter.
What the US needs right now is a federal version of California Proposition 13. Along with a legislative re-affirmation of the 2nd Amendment as per original intent.
They are coming for your homes. And your lives.
Don't be so sure. In the 1930s, the Supreme Court invalidated the gold clauses in contracts. Today, the courts will likely protect the banks by adjusting the outstanding mortgage balance by the rate of inflation. You will still owe the same amount in "buying power" but your income will not keep up with inflation. So... your mortgage will become MORE expensive to pay off. Banks will be protected to "protect the system." You will not be protected. Be VERY, VERY cautious about relying on this theory to pay off debt. Variable rate debt will destroy you and fixed rate debt will be converted to variable rate debt to protect the banks... Better to be out of debt all together...
If anybody tries to steal your possessions under color of law, shoot out their kneecaps.
Gold will be worthless. Try eating a $2 million painting. In a real depression, large cities will collapse in a matter of weeks. No more welfare; no more food. Food riots follow. If winter, heat and electricity riots. We’re talking about the most valuable commodities being shelter, food, fuel, clean water, electricity, and means of self-defense. I live near an interstate. In the 1930s there were no interstates and private cars dwindled fast. People camped on open land. That land is now owned privately by homeowners. Today, as hundreds of thousands of starving Bostonians come streaming out of the fallen ghettos of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan, gold ain’t gonna do it. While towns like Boston, Newton, Cambridge, and Hatfield ban the ownership of private firearms, the fact is that 85% of MA towns do not. Democrat/Liberal policies that guarantee such a depression must be overturned.
“A lot of people have stories of their grandparents, who went through the Great Depression, and then for the rest of their lives were always thrifty, always saved things that might be re-used later, never borrowed money. The Depression changed them, and the memory stayed with them.”
I don’t think the Depression changed them all that much. Thriftiness, common sense and self-reliance were character traits most people already had back then. The Depression just made them more attuned to them. And a high school diploma actually meant that a person had a solid, well-rounded education.
My concern is that those character traits, if not already extinct, are certainly in short supply in the American populace. Too many Americans today have absolutely no sense of thrift, no common sense, and are woefully ignorant of even the most basic macro-economic principles. So when the crash comes, how many “Katrina victims” will we see? You know, the ones waiting for “the guv’ment” to come save them?
Makes me think of the panda. Dependent upon one food source to live. Take away bamboo and their benign habitat and they die. Too many Americans today also fit that description.
Yep, we are doomed to just trudge along off of the plank.
If we had a fair and objective media this country would not be in this sorry situation. Media bias is so pervasive it allows no discussion of evil deeds perpetrated by dems.
“Also why the idiots on FR who advocate intentional government default have no idea what they’re talking about.”
There is little doubt that we are going to default if one looks at the math.
An “intentional” default - choosing not to pay back certain treasury securities - would be extremely chaotic and destructive, but it would (theoretically) be less destructive than driving off the cliff, which is our plan now.
We can default now, or do it later. Those are the choices when you have the leaders we have now.
p.s. An economic collapse also means the end of a real U.S. military. China could actually stage a benign invasion of the U.S. with the acquiesence of a Lib/Dem/Marxist government “as a gesture of good will towards our unfortunate American friends.” We would be powerless to stop it short of a nuclear war. Sort of like the Nazis “reuniting” adjoining countries with Mother Germany.
http://www.thegermanclub.com.au/events/schutzenfest.php
I won’t argue that Germans were as well armed as Americans in 2011, but shooting clubs have always been popular in Germany. They enjoyed hunting and target shooting with long arms. One of the first thing the Nazis did was round up their weapons.
National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). ... This was reflected in the growth in the German Social ***Democrat*** Party (SDP). The Nazis just gave them different weapons and targets.
If our Democrat party tried this, the fit would hit the shan.
They weren’t armed and informed like we are. Apples and oranges.
The joke on them is that in a collapse the Rancid Media would be one of the first casualties. The government would conmtrol the press with an iron boot, as opposed to its having to first take the press out to dinner now before screwing it.
Congress needs to grow a pair and do what needs to be done.
Balanced budget - PERIOD!! And not through taxes — through across the board cuts.
Cut the budget 60% across the board to start. Then identify the ENUMERATED requirements - IE the military and adjust their budget accordingly.
You then look at the non-enumerated departments - education, transportation, irs, etc etc etc - and you cut them furthur across the board to pay for the raises in the enumerated departments.
Final step is to look at elimination of non-enumerated departments completely. Return those things to the STATES as the Constitution prescribes.
I think the media would be doing what it’s doing right now; cheerleading for its leader and bashing any stated opposition to the regime. What other choice would they have?
Conservative media would be dismantled. The existing MSM media would continue on as today, perhaps worse if that’s possible.
The Feds are looking for ways to seize retirement plans, IRAs, and 401Ks to finance their deficit spending.
I believe they will do this in combination of inflating the currency. This will enable them to keep spending and kick the can down the road a few more years, then total collapse. They want to make everyone poor and miserable - communism.
They then can blame the failure on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights or as Obama has openly stated “Bill of Wrongs”. He has suggested we need to replace both of these outdated documents. His vision of what it should be replaced with comes straight out of the communist manifesto.
America is so screwed.
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