Posted on 06/26/2012 3:56:44 AM PDT by Kaslin
America is on track to go bankrupt. Just like Greece. The signs are all around us. We've lost our AAA credit rating. Trillion dollar deficits are the new normal. The Fed is buying 61% of our own debt. Barack Obama's 10 year budget will leave Americans with “more debt than has been accumulated by all previous Presidents in American history combined.” Nobody on the Left or Right seems to believe we'll ever pay off all of the money we owe. Life as we know it is very close to ending and yet Americans seem to be infected with a tragic stoicism. Like turkeys being led to the slaughter, most Americans seem content to put their necks down on the butcher's block and wait for the ax to fall. There are reasons for this puzzling inactivity in the face of an avertable catastrophe.
1) They're being misled by people with bad motives: What do you think would happen to Paul Krugman if he were to tell everyone that he is still a liberal, but the Tea Party and Paul Ryan are right about the deficit and Barack Obama and the Democratic Party are wrong? His column at the New York Times would be gone within six months. Do you think Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid would continue leading their caucuses after 2012 if they insist on serious deficit reduction? Not a chance. What about a Democrat running in a liberal district who talks like Jim DeMint on deficits in a primary up against another Democrat who wants more spending? Who do you think would win? The big spender, right? Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in this country whose personal welfare depends on encouraging as much government spending as possible and even if the country goes bust in the process, they're hoping to have enough money in the bank to be able to move somewhere else by then anyway.
2) They think it's far off in the future: Most people think bankruptcy is a problem we'll be leaving to our kids after most of the people reading this column are dead and gone. That's not so at all. If you were a betting man, 5-15 years would be the likely timeframe on a default with it practically guaranteed to happen within 25 years without major changes -- although that may be far too optimistic. America is already stretched to the breaking point and who knows what sort of unexpected event could push us over the edge in the next few years? Maybe the crack-up of the EU, a European bank collapse, an organized effort to keep other nations from buying our debt, another, even more devastating 9/11 style attack, a dramatic surge in oil prices caused by an Israeli/Iranian war, etc., etc. Just as the mortgage crisis caught us flat footed and caused much more damage than we expected, a new crisis that occurs while America's economy is still puttering along as it has been during the Obama years could lead to a much deeper economic spiral than we anticipate.
3) Crisis fatigue is rampant: This is the most important election ever! Tune in at 6:00 P.M. to find out which ordinary product you use will kill you! George Bush is Hitler! Republicans want you to die! Racism today is as bad as the sixties! If you oppose gay marriage, you want to drag homosexuals to death behind your truck! If you disagree with Obama, you're a racist! Your freedom is at stake! Global warming is going to kill us all! Modern Americans are deluged with phony crises and ginned-up outrages all day long. That's why it's not a surprise when a real crisis as serious as anything we've ever faced in our nation's history comes along, many people have trouble distinguishing it from the fake dangers they hear about on a daily basis.
4) It's too confusing to comprehend: Most Americans don't even remotely understand the scope of the problem. They think we can raise taxes on the rich, cut a few bucks off foreign aid, and everything will take care of itself. When you start talking about unfunded liabilities, GDP, and trillions in debt to people who don't know much about economics and don't follow politics very closely -- which probably describes more than half of the American electorate -- you might as well be explaining the ins-and-outs of heart surgery. In other words, they may get it in the most general sense, but they don't really understand it, and they probably aren't going to opt for it unless they become convinced they're going to die otherwise.
5) It's painful to stop and easy to continue: It doesn't matter how reasonable the spending reductions you're suggesting are, if you want to cut ANYTHING in D.C., it will set off squawks of protest from the vultures who are having meat snatched out of their greedy mouths. However, if you really want to make people angry, start hacking money out of the three biggest expenditures in the budget: defense spending, Social Security, and Medicare/Medicaid/CHIP. We MIGHT be able to get by without cutting defense significantly since it's a relatively stable expenditure, but unless significant changes are made to both Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid/CHIP, both of which are rapidly increasing in cost, this country is going bankrupt. That's reality. Of course, it's also reality that making changes to both of those programs is unpopular, easy to demagogue, and scares most politicians more than a special prosecutor talking to their favorite hooker.
6) We still seem to be a rich country: America is a like a guy who lives in a five million dollar mansion with a dozen servants, drives a Ferrari, and hands out hundred dollar tips to waitresses and bellhops. The only problem is the mansion and the Ferrari aren't paid for, he's borrowing the money for the servants and the tips, and he has no hope of ever paying off the debt he's accruing while he lives a lifestyle he can't afford. Superficially, he looks to be very rich, but when the bill comes due, life is going to change for him in a hurry.
America is that guy and the bill is going to come due.
7) They don't see how it will affect them: Most Americans don't have the slightest clue how a default would change their lives for the worse. They don't understand that it would lead to another Depression, their life savings could become worthless almost overnight, their taxes would skyrocket, their standard of living would drastically decrease, Medicare and Social Security checks could stop, and we could have widespread disorder. In Greece, some government workers haven't been paid in months, government road projects are being abandoned, healthy businesses can't get credit, and medicine is in short supply. Unless something changes, Americans won't have to imagine what that will be like because we'll be living it soon enough.
” 7) They don’t see how it will affect them
This. It’s always this. “
They will understand well enough when we have a provable 20-25% unemployment.
” We create our own currency so the term bankruptcy is not appropriate either. The USA will never declare bankruptcy. No one knows exactly when these deficits will directly hurt us because the world deflation is keeping us from seeing seriously obvious inflation. “
I do my own shopping, and I can tell you over the last 3 years, groceries I buy regularly have gone up 20% to 60%.
You watched Bill Clinton do it for eight long years -- that's all he did. All he ever did was midnight basketball and welfare reform, the latter only because Congress crammed it down his throat, so he stepped up and took credit.
Of course, Obama undid it his first day in office -- "Gittin' the FO'KES some HE'P!!!" And keeping them on the 'Rat Plantation.
You don't get it.
These people already have all the money they'll ever need, and more. It isn't about money.
It's the treading other people down, abusing people and taking things away from them, that is so sexy.
Don't believe me? Check out Genghis Khan's answer to the question, "What is best in life?" (Hint: he was quoted in Conan the Barbarian.)
I will advance my idea again of how the USA can fix the staggering debt problem:
DECLARE NATIONAL CHAPTER 11 BANKRUPTCY AND APPOINT AN ALL-POWERFUL JUDGE TO DISCHARGE IT!
1. Pass a law (simple majority in Congress) to declare national bankruptcy.
2. The Bankruptcy Judge and his Trustees make all the decisions and kill all the sacred cows. Small Biz Administration, farm price supports, County Agents, Dept. of Education, National Public Radio, National Endowment for the Arts, unneeded military bases, numerous commissions, subsidies, grants, etc. would come under the knife or be eliminated. A million leftist GS14s would have to go flip burgers for a living using their liberal arts degrees.
3. Cut entitlements. Advance the age for collecting Social Security and Medicare. Re-examine every person on SSI Disability and make them prove they are disabled. Make it a priority to send sick illegal aliens back to their country of origin for medical care (off Medicaid). Cut Congressional pensions to ZERO since they got us into this mess. Cut Presidential pensions to zero. Cut civil service pensions to what the lowest GS4 gets.
4. Eliminate contracts. No government unions will be recognized.
5. Lay off 80-90% of all federal workers. Contract out every function that can be privatized.
6. Sell assets. GM/Chrysler stock, mortgages held by Fannie & Freddie, BLM land, some national forests, federal buildiings, mineral rights including offshore. All proceeds must be used to PAY DOWN THE NATIONAL DEBT.
Note that the USA will NOT renege on our debt. We have plenty of assets to pay down most of the national debt. Thus our credit rating will once again be the best in the world.
A side benefit is that the transfer to private ownership of vast tracts in the West will lead to a development/mining/drilling boom.
How’s that for a start?
Oh, you mean by "recognizing our place in life", and learning to bow and scrape and step and fetchit. For 10 cents an hour. Like that.
Wonder if they'll bring back Pierce-Arrows and riding boots with spurs?
How about that Mexican market where the illegals, err, future Obama voters, shop in your town?? The prices can't be that bad there. I bet you love Mexican food living so close to the border.
BTW : The FBI and Homeland security are staking out that Mexican market to make sure your racist police don't harrass any of these 'new immigrants'.
Private ownership? Well, which private ownership? The NWO plutocrats, or the Chinese?
You won't object when the Chinese start bringing in (without telling you) about 200,000,000 more Chinese to help them "develop" their real estate, will you? I mean, you can't -- private property! Sovereign owner! Who you gonna call then? Ghostbusters?
For me it’s the UFO problem. Discussing random stuff with a co-worker one day we got onto UFOs and he said “of course one thing to keep in mind is that if a UFO lands on the White House lawn today I still gotta go to work tomorrow morning”, meaning there’s a whole lot of real life that still needs to get addressed no matter what. Same applies here, my votes don’t seem to effect the possibility of meltdown and whether the meltdown happens or not I still got a job to hold down to pay bills. Real life today and tomorrow type stuff has to take precedence over 5, 10, 15 years down the road stuff. I try to vote against socialists when I can, they win anyway, that’s pretty much the end of it.
” How about that Mexican market where the illegals, err, future Obama voters, shop in your town?? The prices can’t be that bad there. I bet you love Mexican food living so close to the border.”
1) There aren’t any illegal Mexicans near where I live.
2) I don’t care for Mexican food....to me it is mostly slop.
3) I lived in California for 30 years, and I have never been to Mexico : )
When I get ethnic, I like Indian food, and Thai food.
I am OK with foreign investment. I am all in favor of immigrant entrepreneurs and wealthy investors.
Everybody would object to massive immigration that amounted to an invasion.
I don’t see that as anything but a fantasy for our enemies.
In my experience, I have not seen foreign entrepreneurs trying to bring along anybody but family and skilled workers.
BTW, what is YOUR solution to the massive debt bubble? I offered mine.
IF we were to eliminate entitlements et al, there would be a resulting budget surplus of epic proportions.
We in the U.S. aren't producing anything as China manufactures what we use. The government just creates money out of thin air to give to welfare cretins who buy made in China crap. The example the article gives about the guy who lives in the mansion is exactly right. I have thought the same thing. That's us , we don't produce anything but debt.
In 1970 America was the richest country the world had ever seen, with the highest living standards , fastest rising living standards, most job opportunities , most opportunities to make money ever and far above any country in these things. Now we are just like the guy in the mansion who borrows to pay for it all and produce nothing. imagine if we had built on what we had in 1970, where we'd be now with the advances in technology etc. No instead they have grown the government, grown regulations , and allowed china to steal all our industries and technologies. We have no jobs , no opportunities, only debt. imagine if we'd built on what we had in 1970, the rising opportunities to make money, the job opportunities, the wealth etc. Instead government has done everything possible to destroy America with the EPA, and trade agreements with china etc.
Plural? Could you name them?
I know of only one: Anh "Joseph" Quang Cao, RINO-LA02.
I have worked with many businesses in bankruptcy. As long as there is cash flow, THERE IS NOT A PROBLEM.
There is only a problem when the cash flow stops, and then it is the lenders fault. Things were fine until they stopped lending me money.
I would add that very few business manage for profit, they manage cash flow. You and I do also if we admit it. Profit and cash flow are not the same.
I will also state that there is not one govt that manages for profit, only cash flow...................
THE NUMBER #1 REASON:
The MASSIVE number of Federal “employed”. AND they are looking for permanant Fall Guy servants, like they are trying to pull with Phony-Care.
My spouse has Parkinon’s Disease and receives US Treas. disability checks annually equal to the Fed Income Taxes I pay annually aside from another $15K in the income taxes I pay annually. (Those go to our valiant military and veterans, and gladly.)
Imagine the federal savings — if we cut out the middle man, the gangsta Govt in Washington. And let local voluntary charity and individuals, not federal “planning” — corrupt, cronyism entitlement systems — rip us off with Solyndra, Bridges to Nowhere, Obama phones, obscene GM union bailouts, etc etc etc.
Everyone pays for their own needs peacefully, does not steal-via-government for what they ‘need.’
Most excellent, darth.
I would add one item:
Use the Reconstruction precededent to declare left wing states like California in insurrection, dissolve the state government and send in a military governor with investigators and troops to clean out the fascists and commies.
It’s either that or CW II.
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