Atomic Fungus loses his cool over the economy and how government has mismanaged it.
This morning, as I was getting ready for work, it occurred to me that I'm never going to be able to retire. I led a feckless life in my youth, and made a lot of mistakes, but that's not why. I mean, even if I had done everything right, just look at the economy right now. Our government is hiding the truth from us because if the American public found out what the real numbers were, all the politicians would be hanging from lampposts by sunset!
Our government has literally spent all the money in the world. They're printing new dollars at the rate of ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS PER SECOND and there is no sign of stopping, or even slowing down. There's a story today about our banking system having a trillion dollars' worth of bad assets, things that count up to $1 trillion on the balance sheets, but are simply not worth that much, and won't fetch anything like that if sold. Someone said that so many banks have overvauled assets that FDIC can only insure deposits at 1:100--meaning that for every dollar you've got in the bank, they'll give you a penny.
When the collapse comes, every last damned asset that isn't in your hands is going to be worthless. Your 401k--whether it's $10k or $100k--won't buy a loaf of bread. The stock portfolios won't be worth anything; I mean, even with the Dow at 200 trillion, if a loaf of bread costs five hundred billion dollars, your stocks are worthless.
I am still of the opinion that the government will nationalize 401k and other retirement instruments before the end. Basically, they'll do to your savings what they did to the "Social Security fund": they'll spend it, and give you an IOU.
Bear in mind that FDR made private ownership of gold illegal, and people had to turn their gold in. They got dollars for it. ...dollars which started inflating almost immediately.
The financial cataclysm I see coming means that no one my age is going to get to retire. Anyone who actually has managed it will not be able to stay retired.
And the absolute worst part of this? The part that really keeps me up nights is that I'M OPTIMISTIC ABOUT HOW IT WILL GO. I'm betting that there are going to be some hard times when we'll be eating rice and beans for most of the week, with maybe a can of SPAM on Sunday--no treats, no cookies, no dessert, just the absolute bare minimum to keep body and soul together, and you eat what's put in front of you even if you hate it--but otherwise things will even out relatively quickly and get better. A year, maybe, of hard times. For everyone, not just us. Only the hyper-rich will not see their standard of living change dramatically.
And then I wonder why I have problems with anxiety??
There's more at the link.
He's more optimistic than I am about a short-duration crisis (I think it'll last much longer), but I can't disagree with his thesis overall. We've been saying the same thing in these pages for a long time, most recently:
The scariest graphic I've seen in a long time
I'd dearly love to see an honest politician stand up and state publicly that the USA is bankrupt, that it's our own fault, and that the only way out of this mess is to slash government spending by up to 50% - which will require cutting entitlement programs to the bone, and abolishing many of them. Yes, people will suffer hardship as a result; but they're going to suffer hardship anyway when our fiscal house of cards comes tumbling down. Do it soon or do it later, it's still going to hurt all of us.
Unfortunately, the genus "honest politician" has so few members that one hardly ever encounters them, so nobody's going to own up to the truth.
Peter
As long as Social Security is on the chopping block for lack of funds, while things like WELFARE and upward-spiraling cost of ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION aren't, we're on a rocket sled to hell!
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, here's where the money goes:
Delete22% to Social Security, 14% to health, 13% apiece to Medicare, the debt, and defense, 10% to "income security," 5% to veterans' benefits, 5% to "education, training, employment, and social services," 2% to transportation, and the remainder goes to everything else.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/
Last year, the feds spent $6.75 trillion. 1.83 trillion of that was deficit spending, or 27% of the budget.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/
So, tell me, please, how cutting welfare and getting rid of the illegals (who make up less than 5% of the country's population) will solve our deficit woes.
If they cut SSN I will lead the revolt.
ReplyDeleteI wonder why no one ever mentions cutting Foreign Aid to cure the deficit????
ReplyDeleteBecause it wouldn't work. If we cut off all foreign aid immediately, the savings would come out to around $60 billion a year (2022 was an outlier at $80 billion, mostly due to the obsolete weapons we sent to Ukraine).
Deletehttps://www.foreignassistance.gov/aid-trends
The budget deficit last year was a little over $1.83 trillion of that was deficit spending, or 27% of the budget.
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/
So, if we had cut out all foreign aid last year and changed nothing else, we would have had a budget deficit of $1.77 trillion dollars. My, such a savings.
It gets even more fun when you find out the rest of the world is doing as bad or worse. The EU already raiding their folks retirement accounts back during their last banking crisis. That's actually a lot of what's keeping the US afloat, we are still considered a safer place to put money even though now that's "safer" not "safe".
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, even an honest politician is likely smart enough to know that at this point you can't just slash entitlement programs without slowly weening the parasites off of it. Otherwise, you will unleash chaos in the streets as the parasites ramp up their stealing to make up for the entitlements they have lost.
ReplyDeleteThat beats just using paper targets all the time. Plus the benefit of practicing lead times...
DeleteIf this mess of a society holds together for another four years, even if Trump survives to be inaugurated, spending is out of control, and has been for a generation,
ReplyDeleteThe foxes are in charge of the hen house, and are stealing what is left.
The illegal invaders will be the threat of a "force in being" as a present threat to Americans who object to having their 401Ks stolen, their houses taxed away, or their Social Security benefits inflated away.
If we object, our opposition, theough their controlled media, will incite them to attackers us, probably in the cities where they are concentrated, in an attempt to get us to surrender more of our assets, rights, and freedoms.
When we try to reduce our national payments of Danegeld, Foreign Aid, those who now seek our destruction will respond by increasing the pace of the invasion.
Sorry, but I get this way looking at stolen elections approaching. Get out and vote. It may not do any good, but it can't do any harm. Watch the polls if you can. Prepare as you can, and do not comply. Never surrender.
John in Indy
There has been a politician that does that though. Every few weeks, a fellow by the name of David Schweikert who is the Arizona House of Rep. goes up and gives a lecture explaining exactly how bad things are and what needs to be done to fix it. Seriously look him up on youtube, its worth a few minutes of your time.
ReplyDeleteThe issue is no one on either side is willing to listen, like at all.
- W
To the anon who stated illegals are less that 5% of the countries pop. The feds own statistics for border crossings (caught and released into the US) from 2000 to 2020 show there are roughly 38 million. The number uncaught likely doubles it. Then they are allowed to ship their families in because its unfair to keep them separate. Lastly the feds flat out refused to say how many were caught and allowed into the country from 2020 to 2024. 5% is ridiculous. Even by the Feds own numbers their are enough of them to outnumber the pop of any state except for Cali and I think NY.
ReplyDeleteIt is quite likely we are sitting at close to 50+ Million Illegals at this point in time. I would like to remind you that each one of them is costing tax payers money, and by their very presence, in addition to keeping wages low. As in when there is more workers than jobs available wages either stagnate or are lowered as workers retire or move jobs. That BS about American not being willing to do the dirty jobs is such nonsense. Of course Americans don't want to do them, they don't pay enough, and if the illegals weren't there, the companies offering said jobs would have no choice but to raise the wages until someone was willing to take said job.
5% my foot. Getting rid of them won't magically fix our problems, but it would go a long way to clearing out the bottlenecks in a lot of places. It certainly would lower crime, the price of vehicle insurance, and raise wages. Just as a start.
- W
That is, to put it mildly, a load of horse hockey.
DeleteTo begin with, between 2014 and 2023 there were approximately 13 million encounters (each encounter being a person), and from my understanding, the period between 2000 and 2013 did not have 25 million people coming across, considering that the last few years have been unprecedented in terms of numbers. Furthermore, over that same time period DHS repatriated (that is, returned to their country), 7.3 million people.
https://ohss.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-10/24-1011_ohss_immigration-enforcement-and-legal-processes-tables-june-2024_2.xlsx
Based on those numbers, I might have underestimated how many illegals there are in the US (As 5% of 330 million is about 16.5 million, it's possible that the number might be as high as 10%) but your numbers are wildly out of line with reality.
I'll admit I was off on my official numbers. The actual total encounters by the border patrol for 2020 to 2024 was 23,956,940 These were the ones encountered. This does not include those who slipped by, or the family members allowed in due to anchor babies or other such nonsense.
Deletehttps://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2019-Mar/bp-total-monthly-apps-sector-area-fy2018.pdf
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics
As for your data from the DHS, frankly I couldn't even be bothered to read it. Its a bunch of baloney. If they called and told me that the sky was blue, I would go outside to see if they were telling the truth. You can say the DHS sent back 7.3 million illegals. I don't buy it for a second. Oh I fully believe they sent out notices stating they were to be deported, but actually doing it. No, not a chance.
So once more.
Illegals Officially known. 23,956,940
Illegals slipped through. (My estimate is 1/4th) 5,989,235
Families brought in. (My estimate 1/20th) 1,197,847
Rough Estimate 31,144,022
Now granted that is much less than my original estimate of 50+ million, but 31 million is still more than most states. Hell its more than several states combined.
They directly compete for jobs, they directly compete for housing, for medical services, they have no insurance, so the car insurance has skyrocketed to cover accidents they are part of. This is a major issue. Now like I said previously it is not the only issue, nor it the worst issue. However it is one of the major problems the country has. Worse is the fact the border is still wide open. The following is the numbers from each year. Pay attention to 2020 to 2024, its eye opening.
2000 1,676,438
2001 1,266,214
2002 955,310
2003 931,557
2004 1,160,395
2005 1,189,075
2006 1,089,092
2007 876,704
2008 723,825
2009 556,041
2010 463,382
2011 340,252
2012 364,768
2013 420,789
2014 486,651
2015 337,117
2016 415,816
2017 310,531
2018 404,142
2019 859,501
2020 405,036
2021 1,734,686
2022 2,378,944
2023 2,475,669
2024 2,135,005
Total 23,956,940
- W
Sadly, as indicated, nobody. is willing to listen, much less do anything about it until it is too late!
ReplyDeleteI suspect a "cure" is not far off. Sometimes known as a black swan event. We won't like it.
DeleteAnd the pace of debt increase in the US has sped up to where it's on course to add a trillion dollars every 7 weeks or so - https://redstate.com/wardclark/2024/10/22/catastrophe-us-national-debt-jumps-473-billion-in-last-three-weeks-n2180909
ReplyDeleteI contacted the bank that handles my workplace's 401k a few years ago and told them to stop taking money out of my paychecks and have been thinking about making early withdrawals. I was enrolled automatically, which I'm not crazy about.
ReplyDeleteI'm 45 years old and there's no way in Hell this economy is going to last another two decades.
There is a pattern here. Unchecked spending and unchecked printing of money, govt spending 40% of GDP (State, Local and federal). Go work in a big box store, 20% or so of customers don't speak english or speak it poorly. Social Security has been on a path to crash for 30+ years, never fixed. Oh, we can't touch anyones entitlements. Yes, Yes we can. Or set things up so that everyone loses (that's the patter OBTW)
ReplyDeleteDeporting illegals and cutting off foreign aid might not be enough, but it would show our mentality has changed and we are on the road to fixing things. Other things would have to be done. I would say wean the country off of social security, but there is way too much interference with retirements and IRAs. The financialization of Wall Street and the Health Care industry must be fixed. We must make real changes in health information. So much of our medical issues are life-style influenced. The US is self-sufficient in energy, we need to restore industry and restore jobs. Greatly reduce the imports. The list is extensive. But let's at least start somewhere.
I do remember thinking I will never be able to retire and Social Security would be bankrupt. That was during the Carter years and I have been retired for 4 years now.
ReplyDeleteSS is a tax and the hacks can raise it up to the point Gen X and Z start to scream about paying for us Boomers.
Confiscating the money in 401s and private pension funds? No chance. That would start the shooting.
What has been happening to our economy is NOT mismanagement. It's all deliberate. Part of a long term plan to destroy the economy and transfer most of America's wealth to the hands of a tiny minority of looters posing as politicians and industrialists.
ReplyDeleteThe first numbers on illegals that I recall was ~30 million, back in the 70-80's, and that was stated by the government! Last numbers were totals of about 60-70 million. All such numbers are, of course, estimated from various means, there are no such things as hard numbers for this category available anywhere. One of the MAJOR problems is that none of them are from an identical or near identical culture. There is no such thing as that so-called "melting pot" when it comes to this subject.
ReplyDeleteBTW, want to guess what the numbers are for abortions here during that time frame? We threw away those who would have been raised in our culture, and replaced them with outsiders/invaders.