Before they cut services and rein in spending, they will try to raise taxes and cut defense. They will fight tooth and nail to keep the system going. If history is any judge, in the battle between guns and butter, butter always wins. With 54 million on SS, 47 million on Medicare, 60 million on Medicaid, and 44 million on food stamps, there is a huge constituency to keep the gravy train going. Add Obamacare to the mix and the fact that by 2030 one in five Americans will be 65 and older, twice what it is now, and you have the ingredients for a crisis of epic proportions.
We are approaching the last crossroads. It is not with this debt ceiling battle, though. The crossroads we are coming to are November, 2012. If we continue on the same road then, we are doomed.
This latest smoke and mirrors exercise over the debt ceiling demonstrates that there is not the will among our political elites to make real spending cuts. Rather, both parties continue to play word games about "cuts" that are not reductions in spending but in the rate of the growth of spending. We will still continue to run trillion dollar annual deficits for years to come.
If/when interest rates reach historic norms, we will be paying close to a trillion dollars a year in just debt servicing costs within a decade. Imagine, when Obama took office the national debt was $10 trillion, it is now $14.3 trillion, and by the end of 2012 it will be close to $17 trillion. Alas Babylon!
With 54 million on SS, 47 million on Medicare, 60 million on Medicaid, and 44 million on food stamps, there is a huge constituency to keep the gravy train going.
*****
Important numbers!
I dream of a discussion with people marginally interested in economics, where I present the scenario of a community deciding how to spend a pool of community funds. How many security people, gardeners, cleaners, etc can we afford to pay? How much insurance, building fund, contingency, office, etc is mandatory?
Should every member of the community pay the same into the pool of money, should there be categories of contributors?
I would hope to illustrate that for every person not putting into the pool of money, someone else has to put in more.
Hoping to joggle a few brain cells...
But we can’t. We just can’t. Eventually, we will run out of all and any other options or it goes completely belly up.
So my thinking is aligned with yours. We will not do what we have to, and we then will get what’s coming to us.
Hard, hard, hard.
I am personally trying to improve my finances by taking all kinds of odd jobs available to my profession. I am old and have an 11 and 15 year old at home. I am pissed at what life will be like for them, because of this ship of fools we are sailing with.
I have to have hope, God Bless us! What other nation, our Great Babylon, has so many Christians in it? Why would He forsake us? 2012 is the prayer now, and come, come sweet Jesus!