Posted on 08/01/2013 3:49:15 AM PDT by IbJensen
Detroit declared bankruptcy a few days ago.
I've written, for years, about how Detroit should serve as a stark warning to Americans who believe in liberal social policies, like highly progressive taxes and expensive social safety nets.
These socialist programs don't cure income inequality. They merely destroy wealth by reducing incentives for building businesses and encouraging dependency. That's why societies with lots of government spending typically have few civil institutions and a small middle class.
Here's the message our politicians on both sides of the aisle seem to miss: 50 years ago, Detroit was one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the world. Nearly 2 million people lived there, and it enjoyed the highest per-capita income in the United States.
Then, in 1960, everything changed.
Liberal Democrats came to power (and have held power since). Their ideas about using the government to build a "Great Society" – using the government to provide a cradle-to-grave social safety net – have slowly transformed Detroit from the wealthiest city in America to a hellhole.
Detroit's population has declined by almost 70% since 1960. Roughly half of the people who remain are functionally illiterate. More than 60% live below the poverty line. And roughly half of all adults don't work. Only about one-third of the city's ambulances are in working order. Almost half of the streetlights don't work. It takes the police an average of 58 minutes to respond to emergency calls. The violent crime rate (no surprise) is five times higher than the national average.
It is shocking to realize that only 50 years ago, Detroit was the shining example for the world of capitalism and civil society. It doesn't take long to destroy wealth.
Now consider this... Detroit went bankrupt with total debts of around $20 billion. That's roughly $28,000 per remaining citizen. That's nothing. The debts that the U.S. government has amassed over the same period (the last 50 years) are vastly larger.
Today, all Americans owe more than $16.7 trillion on the federal level – that's nearly $54,000 per citizen and nearly $150,000 per taxpayer. How many Americans do you think realize that our federal government is twice as bankrupt as Detroit?
Detroit is a living case study of why government efforts to redistribute wealth don't work. But instead of recognizing any of the lessons of the catastrophe, OBAMA! promises more of the same policies.
Meanwhile, his government is in far worse shape than the city. The only real difference is the president and the federal government are still able to print their way out of trouble, using the Federal Reserve's ongoing manipulation of the U.S. Treasury market.
But no nation in history became wealthier by printing money and buying its own government's debts. In every case, inflation soon destroyed the economies and wiped out private savings. Rates on the U.S. 10-year Treasury bond have recently moved from 1.6% to 2.6% – in the face of continued Federal Reserve buying of $85 billion a month.
The dream that the government could provide prosperity to the residents of Detroit has come to its inevitable end. The dream that the federal government can provide prosperity to the entire country is even more delusional. It will come to a far worse end.
Printing trillions in new dollar bills to facilitate the madness won't prevent the inevitable bankruptcy of our country. It will merely gut the middle class of its savings and its wages first.
Believe me... this will come to pass. It will not take another 50 years. Maybe 10.
This tall, lop-eared and gross Texan showed his true socialist colors when he instituted the Great Society which was, in fact, a gigantic welfare scheme. Before it's implementation the negro family in America was, by and large, a two parent unit with a proud wage-earning father taking his rightful place at the head of the dinner table.
The Lyndon society replaced that man with a welfare check and turned American negro morals on its ear. The females in the family became promiscuous baby factories whose each child meant more of uncle Whisker's bucks. In fact over $3 trillion was wasted on ruining the negro and creating a permanent underclass. The negro 'family' will never return.
Drugs, murder, pimping all describe the condition of today's negro. This segment of American population has become dangerous to themselves and to the white population, but the entire fault can be laid at the tombstone of the evil Lyndon Bird.
What to do?
Eliminate welfare for all but the infirm and suffer through the aftermath. Eliminate, not raise, the minimum wage. Eliminate the corporate income tax and decimate the individual tax. Eliminate most central socialist government agencies and take a meat axe to the bare essential ones. Beef up the military, reverse the women in the military, reinstitute military service for all young men over the age of 18 and restore the discipline that belongs in the services.
Can anyone think of a better way to bite the bullet and gradually get the job done?
“Here’s the message our politicians on both sides of the aisle seem to miss: 50 years ago”
No mister Porter Stansbury, they didn’t miss anything.
This was their intended consequences all along. They
knew what they were doing and this is what they wanted.
oh heck no, government slavery
Oh, I forgot another important event that must take place. The Democrat Party, along with all other subversive and anti-American groups must be outlawed. The American military will be used to only defend America and to train young skulls full of mush.
If the military would return to training young men how many loafers would be lounging around street corners selling crack?
Johnson and his fellow rats simply created a government funded breeding program for demrat voters. It worked. This class of parasites are Bo’s primary base of supporters.
Bankrupt is bankrupt. You can’t be twice as bankrupt as someone else. That’s like being twice as pregnant.
...”Eliminate welfare for all but the infirm and suffer through the aftermath. Eliminate, not raise, the minimum wage. Eliminate the corporate income tax and decimate the individual tax. Eliminate most central socialist government agencies and take a meat axe to the bare essential ones. Beef up the military, reverse the women in the military, reinstitute military service for all young men over the age of 18 and restore the discipline that belongs in the services.
Can anyone think of a better way to bite the bullet and gradually get the job done?”...
I cannot think of a better way, but our elites have the power and will destroy this country before they will give it up to any kind of common sense, logic or reason. I believe some kind of devastating natural disaster or disease is the only thing which can turn this nation back from the insanity and corruption we are living through. The 60s generation took over and destroyed everything which had been built for generations. Remember how they marched in the streets against the “materialism” of their parents? I was their age then and it disgusted me. I have read that only around 10,000 college students and young people took part in those hippie marches but they changed our world into a place of darkness and hopelessness for so many. If I did not believe that God is just, I would be totally depressed.
But you can have twice the debt.
Already here, it’s called the Income Tax. And how much of a slave you are depends on how much you make (or your accountants can write off). Of course there are the slave hands who MAKE more $$ than they ever paid in (EITC).
As I’ve read somewhere here before, slavery never left, but the plantation is now gov’t instead of the South.
Why Conservatives Don’t Get It: you’re not fighting Liberals who are ignorant fools and are only pawns. You’re fighting against SOCIALISTS and MARXIST who know EXACTLY what they’re doing!!! And they’re doing it with the very thing that capitalist love most: US Dollar! Read Karl Marx, “and we will hang them (capitalists) with the very rope that they will sell us”!!
SOLUTION: Tea Party, Libertarians, and yes...”some” Liberals (the ones that can turned (not to conservatism but to the REAL reason behind economic inequality)- need to organize and start MARCHES (on a regular basis- like Occupy Wall St did) in front of Congress AND the Federal Reserve on the anniversary of both the creation of the FED and the Income Tax. The goal? To DEMAND Congress create an ALTERNATIVE CURRENCEY (backed by Gold and Silver) that US Citizens can use INSTEAD of the US Dollar!!! This Congress nor anyone else in Government will do this but it’s for the WORLD to finally wake up and begin to lose faith in the Dollar. They will say, “If their own people don’t trust their own currency- why should we?” This will crator markets including our own Bond market! Then and ONLY then will some politicians start to try to get in front of this cause! This NEEDS to become the Civil Rights of our era!!! This is the ONLY way that will force the Federal Goverment to start cutting back...get it? You shut off the life blood of the Socialists’ tool they’ve been using to Hang the US!
Yeah but the feds own the printing press. They can (and are) going to print their way out of this. At least for awhile. The crash is going to be spectacular, something never seen before in history....
Impeachment File on Benghazi Coward “B. Hussein Obama,” formerly known as Barry Soetoro, currently a Legal Citizen of the Sovereign Nation of Indonesia.
Obama has flat out stated that he has no intention of balancing the federal budget.
Then this creepy, joker-grinning, communist, Muslim, African needs to be rolled down Capitol Hill!
Why won’t the majority of Americans understand that this phony mystery jerk, the entire central socialist government and practically the entire Congress along with the Supreme Court are the enemies of the American people?
We don’t even protect our borders yet we die fighting Afghanistan terrorists and build bridges, hospitals and schools in Iraq and Afghanistan. We shovel billions into nations that hate us. We’ve allowed our entire election process to become irreparably corrupted. We’ve allowed our entire system to become so corroded that it will take eons to repair it if it hasn’t gone past the point of redemption.
When is enough enough?
We can’t look to the newly elected Republicrats to do anything about anything!
Black folks have actually seen a decline in their percentage of the population. They’ve gone from being influential to essentially irrelevant in politics.
Even with 95 percent loyalty to one party, they only pull out a 10 percent shift to the democrats. Hispanics at 70 pull the exact same democrat shift.
You can take the boy out of Detroit but you can’t take Detroit out of the boy.
Change is coming. You’d best get on board or get squashed.
I agree with all but the draft.
I wonder why we hear all the time about ‘peak oil’, but never, ‘peak debt’. ;)
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