Ticking Time Bomb Explodes, Public Is Shocked

The Independent Institute ^ | Sep 10, 2008 | staff

[AndyJackson]

Tiger ping!

[KoRn]

Great read!

[AndyJackson]

See. It is not so hard to understand and it doesn’t even require conjuring tricks.

[Brilliant]

Fannie and Freddie as small change compared to Social Security or even Medicare.

[Chaguito]

H.L. Mencken was a true genius. “Politics, under democracy resolves itself into impossible alternatives. Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of preposterous impossibilists on the other.” Democracy “needs beyond everything is a party of liberty.”

Now, we'll see if McCain-Palin can forge a party of liberty that can convince the populace of the need for blood, tears, and sweat in achieving the blessings of liberty.

[Leisler]

The author is

Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy for The Independent Institute and Editor of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, and the University of Economics, Prague. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow for the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation.

[misterrob]

Politicians are not to blame for this, too many of the American people are. We have to redress racial inequality from years and years ago, we have to have fairness in asset and wealth, we cannot afford to have a recession that clears out excess, we cannot have a big company fail and we cannot allow people to accept responsibility for themselves. If you stand up and say you disagree then you are called greedy, uncompassionate, racist or anything else they can throw at you.

I am hoping that I can save enough money and have enough resources to deal with what is coming ahead.

[tcostell]

If you read that and still think there is some fat cat somewhere who deserves to be strung up, then it’s a lot less clear than I thought it was.

[jalisco555]

There’s another fiscal time bomb ticking away that often goes unmentioned. It’s the underfunded pension plans for state and local government employees. These will soon begin to eat budgets, yet almost no one is talking about this.

[Yollopoliuhqui]

The board members of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be thrown against a brick wall and shot or find themselves magically beheaded on TV by our friends in the reformed domestic Taliban. Instead they will get a golden parachute, migrate to other boardrooms and live a life of ease and travel while their victims watch their dreams being raped,looted and pillaged by well-tailored vermin.

[TigerLikesRooster]

People invest a lot of intellect and energy to create a scheme which provides immediate gratification but whose cost can be deferred long into the future.

Soon people who perpetuate such a scheme and those buying into it believe their comfortable illusion, immediate benefit, but deferred cost. Actually, cost deferred long into the future is easily morphed into the perception of no cost. Such a selectively truncated perception of reality is actually no different from a utopia, the world which cannot exist in the real world.

Being smart and intelligent does not guarantee that a person would do a good job. With smarts and intelligence, a person could develop a strong temptation to cheat the reality, or cheat death. Perpetual motion is one great example. Socialism is another.

Without thorough mechanism of verification and fact-checking, people have been always doing it since the dawn of history. Especially, in the field dealing with complex phenomena where there are also many unknowns.

[Leisler]

Most of those budgets are from dying, elderly high cost, immigrant high service using states like Massachusetts, Michigan, New York.

The government, union workers retires have, or will, move out to Florida, Texas. So we'll see the northern states go the way of Detroit, Buffalo but state wise.

And what ever pension money is extracted will be spent in Texas, the south. Of course these people will run for local office, and cause the spending to be replicated, much like human virus.

I was out in a rural county in Colorado ten years ago. The locals were getting property taxed out by retired California teachers that were demanding town services like they had back in California.

Good citizens drive out bad, be it gang bangers, or Democrats.

[randomhero97]

I am hoping that I can save enough money and have enough resources to deal with what is coming ahead.

Unfortunately, I don't think current monies is going to be worth very much in dealing with what's coming ahead.

[E. Cartman]

Now, we'll see if McCain-Palin can forge a party of liberty that can convince the populace of the need for blood, tears, and sweat in achieving the blessings of liberty.

You're kidding right????

Please tell me you're not so naive that you really believe things will change with Palin playing second fiddle to political oppurtunist and good old boy John McCain? Rail against Obambi all you wish, but don't for a minute think with McCain we won't get more of the same "compassionate conservative" crap we've had for the last eight years.

[jalisco555]

And what ever pension money is extracted will be spent in Texas, the south.

As a New Yorker I sometimes joke that my educational taxes are educating the future work force of Texas and North Carolina.

[ViLaLuz]

Sadly you are right. McCain will bring amnesty, gays in the military, embrionic stem cell research and worse. With Palin, he was throwing some crumbs to conservatives, while he’s busy campaigning to Log Cabin Republicans, LULAC and other questionable groups behind our back.

[Osage Orange]

Politicians are not to blame for this, too many of the American people are.

Yes they are...When they chose to stick their collective fingers in the wind...instead of LEAD! When they chose to play "how can I get re-elected politics"...instead of doing the RIGHT THING FOR OUR COUNTRY!!

Yes, of course there are MILLIONS of sheeple clamoring for the things you mention...but it takes leaders to direct them to the truth about life.

Term limits would be a good start...IMO.

Rant off....: )

[E. Cartman]

The board members of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be thrown against a brick wall and shot or find themselves magically beheaded on TV by our friends in the reformed domestic Taliban.

It's not well known but it was English fiscal insovlency which forced Charles I to seat a recalcitrant Parliament setting in motion what became The English Civil War of the 1640's and that it was French fiscal insovlency that forced Louis XVI to seat The Estates General, for the first time in over one hundred years, setting in motion what became The French Revolution.

(Strangely, I like your idea. If they want to earn the big bucks, their risks should be to themselves and not just to the American public.)

[Leisler]

That too. Productive young people are fleeing these states that want to financially rape them and their families for the next 40 years.

Better to take their intellect, work ethic and like East Germans fleeing west, vote with their feet and move to more family friendly, lower cost, low tax rapeing states.

Of course this leaves a ever spiraling downward cadres of louts, sloths, poor performers to each and his own, gum up and rip off what ever they can. (I hear the new booming industry is copper mining house pipes. A grand a day for two men and a pickup)