First, Cdr Salamander, the well-known naval strategist and commentator, talks about our financial situation. He calls it "The Greatest Existential Threat to the Republic".
Make no mistake, a calamity is baked into the cake that cannot be undone.
A generation that inherited a solvent nation, a victory in the Cold War, and a dominant position on the globe unseen in all of human history—threw away the concept of stewardship and will leave their offspring a mess no one will know how to clean up.
. . .
Of course, I am talking about the greatest existential threat to our nation and global prosperity: the debt bomb.
I am pretty much sure I will live to see it play out, but I unquestionably know that my now 20-something kids will see it.
What we are doing is unsustainable. When the music stops, no one will have a chair. Our descendants will throw our bones on dung heaps.
While there is fair weather, I am doing my best to make sure my immediate family will survive better than average when it comes. Will it be enough? I have no idea. No nation has ever seen this confluence of events before, and it is unavoidable.
. . .
The demographics problem cannot be fixed, and the only solutions to the levels of debt we have—default or hyper-inflation—are catastrophic except for one narrow path with manageable pain, but that requires action before crisis. With each passing year, the path gets more and more narrow. Eventually, it will be too narrow to pass through, then we are left with default or hyper-inflation. Either of those will end this republic.
How did we get there? It is easy to just blame the selfish Boomers, but they are not the only players here. We fell into the deficit trap because our federal government, shaped by two world wars and a Cold War, became unbalanced. Unchecked incentives and disincentives allowed people to pursue short-term personal gains at the cost of future national risk.
(Click the image for a larger view)
Eventually, no one will want to buy our debt, then we have to offer higher and higher interest rates to attract buyers.
Where will that money come from?
. . .
We are about to harvest the fruits of selfishness and a lack of stewardship. I have not seen one responsible person offer a long-term solution that doesn’t involve pain no one wants to experience...but experience it someone will.
Eventually, there will be a crisis that will cascade. I don’t know what the solution will be globally, but if I just focus on this nation and how we could fix it, the simpler options using our present, warped system seem now out of reach.
Just look at the “Big Beautiful Bill” that passed the house. Love it or hate it, it does nothing to fix the deficit or debt problem. However, this was the best ou[r] system could produce. Nothing else could pass, and that is the problem. Our federal government cannot fix itself.
There's more at the link. Click over there to read the whole article. It's well worth your time.
Cdr Salamander proposes a Convention of States to deal with constitutional issues that hamper solving our problems. I'm not sure that would work - state politicians are just as bad as federal ones, if not more so - but it's a thought. Unfortunately, I don't think anything can be done in practical terms before our economic problems overwhelm us.
To make the situation even more appallingly clear, Senator Ron Johnson talked to Tucker Carlson about the collapse of our currency. Here's an excerpt.
“We’re almost $37 trillion in debt,” Johnson warned. “We’re spending $7 trillion, and CBO (Congressional Budget Office) projects over the next 10 years, we will add another $22 trillion to the debt.”
And that’s if nothing goes wrong. “If interest rates start creeping up… just one percentage point, add another $4 trillion,” he said.
Carlson asked what it all means in the real world. Johnson’s answer was simple: less money in your pocket. He said inflation is DIRECTLY TIED to excessive government spending.
“A dollar you held in 1998 is only worth 51 cents today,” he said—a figure that visibly stunned Carlson.
Johnson didn’t stop there. “A dollar we held just in 2019 is only worth 80 cents” today.
In other words, “a silent tax.”
So, in just six years, your buying power has plunged by as much as 20%.
Unless you’re one of the few whose income kept up with inflation, you’re feeling the effects of it pretty hard.
So what happens if the debt bomb finally explodes?
Johnson didn’t sugarcoat it: “It won’t be pleasant… It’ll be painful,” he warned.
And the people who will suffer the most, he said, are those living paycheck to paycheck—Americans who rely on government benefits and have no financial cushion to fall back on.
. . .
Johnson pointed out that while smaller countries have defaulted and been bailed out or had their debt restructured, “Nobody can [bail us out]. We are… the world’s reserve currency.”
And if we lose that status? We lose the magical ability to print dollars that the world still values.
. . .
Johnson says the “Big Beautiful Bill” doesn’t go nearly far enough—it barely scratches the surface. It promises $1.6 trillion in savings over 10 years.
But we’re on track to add $22 TRILLION in debt during that same time frame.
Again, more at the link.
My only disagreement with Sen. Johnson is that he's using official inflation and economic figures to work out how much our currency has declined. As we've pointed out frequently in these pages, those official figures are so "massaged" to achieve political correctness that they bear little or no relation to the truth. My personal guesstimate, as we've discussed many times in the past, is that real consumer buying power, as experienced in your wallet and mine with every dollar we spend, has declined by at least 30% over the past five years or so, and probably more than that; certainly averaging more than 10% every year at a minimum.
I'm a lot less sanguine than Sen. Johnson. By my SWAG (Scientific Wild-Ass Guess), based on my own financial records, a dollar in my pocket in 1998 will buy about 30c worth of goods today. A dollar in my pocket in 2019 will buy perhaps 60c worth of goods today. Obviously, that depends on how we use our buying power: what I buy with my dollars may differ from what you buy with yours, so our experiences won't tally across the board. How do you think your personal buying power has fared, dear readers? Let us know in Comments.
The only way to deal with this problem is to stop the over-spending, RIGHT NOW. Cut the entitlement programs, get rid of all non-essential government spending, implement every recommendation from D.O.G.E. as quickly as possible, and reduce the size and scope of the federal government to manageable levels. You say that can't be done - that it would cause too much financial pain to the nation and to its citizens? You may be right . . . but unless it's done, the ship of state is going to run aground on the fiscal rocks of our own making, causing even greater financial pain - so there is no alternative. Sooner or later, we're going to have to do it.
I'm sure I'm putting off some readers by harping on this subject, but people seem to be blithely ignoring the reality that's coming up fast. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Weimar-style hyperinflation is no longer a remote possibility for us, and for Europe too. That's a very scary thought.
Peter
47 comments:
You're not wrong, however... It's never going to happen.
No politician EVER, was elected by telling their constituents they are bringing financial pain with them to office.
I don't blame the politicians, really, They're responding to the electorate. That's why our world is so fucked up. It's the people. As a species, we have become incredibly lazy and useless. It appears as if Mike Judge was very prescient when he wrote Idiocracy... that's the only explanation I can come up with? Just a few short generations ago we were a very different breed of people. Today's population however, should have given everyone enough demonstrations how catastrophic a Constitutional or States Convention would be.
The monkey's have figured out they can vote themselves free bananas. Do you REALLY think they're going to make smart, hard choices in a Constitutional Crisis?
You can use the McDonalds Big Mac cost as a index to inflation. If my faulty memory serves, back when you could buy a Big Mac for $0.65. Then it went to $1.00. Now it's $5.50.
You can calculate the rate of inflation 2 ways from that. Going from $1.00 to $5.50 and seeing the quantity of ingredient go down (shrinkflation). Ever notice how thin the beef patty is today?
The same analysis can be applied to other things as well. For example, a can of tuna went from 8oz, to 6oz, to 5oz, . A box of ice cream is no longer a 1/2 gal. A bag of sugar is no longer 5lbs. etc. Grocery items shrank while the cost per item went up
I agree with Peter that the rate of inflation is 30% or more, year to year.
The politicians who have allowed this to happen hated us and the country, or were blackmailed, or were incredibly stupid. They certainly have been out of contact with average Americans.
We need to attack the financialization of our economy at all levels. Expel illegals ASAP, they are a large drain on our economy. We need to establish jobs and manufacturing back in the US, eliminate the fraud in our many gov't programs, fed & state, and cut spending to the point we start paying down the debt. Even holding the debt even I think would not be enough.
We also need to attack these issues around healthcare, which is 19% of our spending. Drug prices Trump has gone after, but there is so much more. MAHA can not come fast enough. Diet is THE driver of so much of our healthcare issues. The change we need would take several years as then entire industry would have to make significant changes.
Finally, we have to deal with the outcome of the COVID Vaxx. See the Ethical Sceptic. Cancer rates are going up, we are still seeing excess deaths from the vaxx across many categories. Autoimmune issues across the board. Solid evidence it has driven fertility rates down. Good evidence for vaccine shedding. We don't understand the scope of what has been done, but the financial impact is such we may do all of the above and still not solve our financial problems. You need a healthy workforce if you want to address debt.
We know what has to be done. Trump by his actions knows. The swamp hates us and is fighting back. Peter has chronicled how to be prepared. While Trump gives me some hope, we are deep in the kimchi. China has not taken the gloves off and we're still provoking Russia. Keep building and maintaining your safety stocks.
Too much to snip so look and read the right sidebar of supporting scriptures.
https://biblehub.com/proverbs/27-12.htm
And
https://biblehub.com/1_timothy/5-8.htm
Get busy folks, Noah built the ark before it started raining in his desert land.
Notice the bible scriptures never mention the solo hero (so beloved by Hollywierd) but that families and extended families prepare to survive together. Tribe up.
Spoken against, and voted against, all the overspending bills and politicians. And yet the bills get passed and the politicians get elected. Christianity has undergone hostile PR from the self-appointed elite, probably going on for a couple of centuries now(depending on where you set your starting date) and does not hold sway when it comes to things like self-discipline and self-control that were earlier hallmarks of the early Americans. "Wholly inadequate" - and we see it playing out today.
All of that was to save the "republic". I have to wonder with so many judges holding Presidential power today, do we really still have a republic?
A Convention of States? We'd lose.. the last elections there was wide number of candidates talking about restricting free speech, covid already pushed religion aside and the J6 setup did a number on the free to assemble part of the 1st and the Free Press is owned by the the same people reaping the rewards of all that money being borrowed.
No way the 2nd Amendment would make it out, not even the highly restricted version they are "allowing" us today.
The 4th Amendment is already (in fact) gone with the NSA reading all our correspondence & listening to phone calls.
The 10th Amendment (State's rights) has been dead & buried for over a century and a half.
Is there really a Republic to save?
There is nothing you can do but ride it out to the end.
No one is gonna fix it, not even Trump. He really didn't try. Big Beautiful Bill is evidence of that.
You can't stop it, jut live your life the best you can.
When the US goes down, so will the rest of the world, so unless you are a farmer in a remote place with no contact, no grid connection and self sufficient, it's gonna hit you at some point.
Harping on it is just shouting into the wind.
dollars a dime
I suspect there is no point shouting about Trump's shortcomings on this issue. No US politician is prepared to attempt to tackle the problem (and likewise in Britain, Germany, France, ....). So I'll judge Trump on his activities on other matters.
I remind you of the Luxembourg Prime Minister who said words to the effect of "We all know the right thing to do but we none of us know how to do the right thing and still win the next election."
In other words - in the end, in a democracy, it's the electorate who are to blame.
One of the oddities of living in Japan is that prices here have barely changed in 30+ years in yen terms. Prior to the covidiocy that was 100% the case. Since then there has been a degree of inflation but still compared to other countries inflation has been minimal.
I can still get a lunch for JPY1000. It's not as easy as it used to be, and often I go for a slightly more expensive JPY1200 one, say, but prices are still within 20-25% of what they were 30+ years ago.
I'm not entirely sure how that has happened but I assume that being a country that makes things and has a surplus of exports helps.
Salamander isn't wrong, but term limits and balanced budgets are not enough.
We must also return to Constitutional restraint and explicit powers. Anything the Federal Government does that is not explicitly authorized by the Constitution must be eliminated or pushed to the States that can decide what to do.
This would include Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and Income Security. There is no Constitutional argument for any of these existing at the Federal level.
What makes you think they can't see what is happening?
What makes you think they are less than okay with what is happening?
You know about looters. Some are dressed in rags, and some in three piece suits. Some ride the bus, and some ride in limos. Neither kind of looter cares about the damage they do, the chaos they cause, the lives they ruin. In fact, the more the better because it makes the looting easier.
Looters don't sweat much over tomorrow, and not at all for their children. Other people's children? Peasant children? Field hands, fodder for the mills, and victims to exploit.
Quoth the Salamander, "How did we get there? It is easy to just blame the selfish Boomers, but they are not the only players here. "
I always find it entertaining that the same people who would claim to have conservative/libertarian ideas and would say something like, "I never owned slaves so why should I owe reparations" will say something like that. Some of us conservative "evil, awful boomers" have been trying to stop the insane borrowing and spending for decades, if not since were first old enough to vote.
It's the politicians, the uniparty, that's the issue. And if DOGE has shown us anything it's that politicians have been laundering money to themselves for generations.
I make close to double what I was in my first career job after college 15 yrs ago. I managed to come out with no debt but no money in my pockets either. When my wife and I compare our current financial situation to what it was in my first job we don't feel much improvement in terms of what my salary buys us. Now, we're frugal people and don't buy anything on debt other than our home. I'm not saying we haven't improved our situation but in terms of whether we can afford twice the lifestyle, no. The majority of my income (as my wife stays home with our children so we are a one income family) outside of needs like mortgage, insurance, health care, savings, retirement, etc... All of which have gone up by close to double (though our home is only 15% larger than our first, and don't get me started on insurance), goes to food and a few other necessities like clothing and school supplies, both minimal as my wife is amazing at deal shopping. But there's only so much deal shopping you can do at the grocery store when you don't buy processed foods. All the coupons are for center aisle goods, not produce, dairy, and meat. All this to say, I'd definitely concur with your 60 cents to a dollar since 2019. Some things are more than double others are slightly less.
A couple of thoughts and comments.
1) As this takes place and it will, we will almost certainly see the rise of communism again, or something similar. (History tends to rhyme.)
2) There is no spending or borrowing our way out of this. Sooner or later we have to bite the bullet, and it might as well be now, while at some some things are still working.
3) Weimar problems require Weimar solutions. Like him or hate him, the Austrian Painter took Germany out of the death spiral that was caused by the Great Depression, the Allies, and Weimar government's incompetence. The Bible states there is a time for everything, and typically the time for strongman leadership is when things are at their worst. They tend to be able to streamline things and cut through the red tape. And if need be are perfectly willing to remove the deadwood from the halls of power.
4) The Inflation is beyond anything they mention. You might note they keep the years as close to today as possible. 2019, 1998, etc. No. Go back to 1913 or so. Check what was affordable on a minimum wage salary a single salary mind you back at the very start. You will find a minimum wage salary then could support a stay at home wife, kids, a car, a house, and 2 vacations a year. Think about how badly inflation has actually been when minimum wage today pays you enough to starve to death on if your not careful.
5) There is a Congressman from Arizona, one David Schweikert, he has public briefings on this stuff every few weeks to a couple of months or so. He has charts explaining what, where, and how much is being spent on different things, and how much of it comes from taxes or borrowing. It is well worth watching on YouTube. Surprisingly most of the spending is not actually on the military. The biggest two funds in spending are coming from Social Security and Medicare? Medicaid? I can never remember which. In the next ten years Social Security and Medi-something are both looked to expand greatly in costs. Something else he talks about, for every 1 dollar brought in with taxes we are borrowing $0.39 That is to say we are no longer able to afford our own spending. Also non of the spending is actually paying down principal of debt, it is all on interest. Now I'm not saying this was done deliberately, but you have to be pretty stupid not to try to remove whats bleeding you dry.
- W
MediCare. Although if you count state and Federal spending together, MedicAid is close, but for Fed alone, Social Security and Medicare are the budget killers. And those are considered obligations that MUST be paid, even if nothing else, including the military or federal employee salaries, is paid.
TXRed
Social Security and Medicare are both big buck spend items, but they are both big income items (payroll taxes).
If you do the SS & Medicare math (money out vs payroll taxes in) the actual cost shrinks greatly.
But that looks bad because all those payroll taxes coming in are needed to make to overall picture look 'better'. Looking better is what the politicians want... it needs to look good!
First, there is essentially a captive market for Treasuries: it is the biggest and most liquid "safe asset" class that the government requires banks and other financials to hold. Last I checked, over 90% of treasuries were held by US institutions (and people - my investment portfolio has some). But the costs will keep rising as mentioned here.
Second and more importantly, the executive branch is about 15% of spending and the military is about 10%. The rest is all mandatory spending: Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, etc. As long as politicians refuse to discuss changes to those programs, anything they do with the budget is just trimming around the edges and CAN'T have a significant impact.
To me, cutting federal employees and their direct costs is a rounding error compared to these, so the focus there in recent months is more showmanship than substance.
Jonathan
Part of the problem is apathy in voters.
Part of the problem are voters uneducated on the issues.
Part of the problem are voters who don't read or understand our constitution.
Part of the problem are cowardly officials.
Part of the problem are greedy officials and greedy voters.
The major portion of the problem is that officials at all levels are being blackmailed and not a single law enforcement agency will address the issue because they too are compromised.
Let's just be realistic and acknowledge this problem isn't going to get solved. It's intractable. The implosion is coming. That means what people should do is to prepare for it.
Own things that contribute directly to survival. Things that are easy to hide or transport, hard to confiscate. Each person's situation is different, but those are the principles needed to improve your odds.
Oorah! I suspect if the historians ever dig into it, and if there are the records to help, we'll find boomer voting had very little to do with actual outcomes. I think the game has been rigged for a while. It's not the votes that count, but counting the votes.
If you want to look at the lower value of money over time, I remember, from 1971, when a regular hamburger (not a Big Mac) cost $0.25. (Regular fries were $0.15!) And, when I started after-school employment in 1973, minimum wage was less than a dollar an hour (that one isn't a clear a memory - I think it was $0.85/hour, but can't be certain). When I moved out from the family home for the first time, 1974, my budget (after rent) was $30/week. No, I wasn't living large, but I wasn't wanting for food or clothing, either. I could even afford a movie a week - $2 for a ticket.
The media has often reported about high inflation in other nations, but it's crickets when it comes to saying anything about how the money we hold is worth so much less, every day.
I find it endlessly amusing when Boomers (and their defenders) see a sentence or statement that literally asks nothing of the Boomers (other than perhaps to shut the hell up about firm handshakes and eye-contact) and indeed merely says "the Boomers' undeniable wickedness and depravity isn't the only reason we are in this bottomless pit" ...and reply as if the act of acknowledging that the overwhelming majority of Boomers were, and are, wicked and depraved, and caused damage that a plague of locusts would envy... is the same as asking all Boomers to fix something.
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There's no reparations asked for here. Literally not even a little. Maybe in decades past, but the four generations after the Boomers have long since learned to expect absolutely nothing from them, and ask them for absolutely nothing. Indeed, even asking them to stop talking is irrational and doomed to failure, so (the survivors of) GenX, the bulk of GenY/Millennials, and every single GenZ and GenA have even given up on that.
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There's no hypocrisy here. Reparations and Boomers both suck. There you go. The solipsism is incredible.
Disease, violence, slavery, starvation or rebellion. These are the options being forced on us.
This is, I don't know how many years old...
There Is No Voting Our Way Out Of This, and No one is coming to save us. Plan accordingly.
My .02 - this debt will never be paid off and the current fiat debt system will be bankrupted and replaced.
I have no idea what the solution will be but we will never be free as long as our money is controlled by a foreign elite.
I am hopeful smarter people than me have a plan for this reset.
Stockpiling the precious metal lead - if it gets sporty.
Disease, violence, slavery, starvation AND rebellion.
In 1913 r any day, the "minimum wage" (there was no such thing in 1913 BTW) or entry level wage would not support "a stay at home wife, kids, a car, a house, and 2 vacations a year" except in extreme poverty, no house (you'd rent) no car, no vacation. And the standard of living would be much, much lower.
Don't delude yourself that a basic plain entry level factory workers wage was in any way more than just above the poverty level. At least get your facts straight.
Also, Japan has not undergone any kind of population growth for the past few decades. In fact, I believe its population is shrinking. That might also have something to do with it.
There's another component to this puzzle that no one talks about.
Tax evasion.
The IRS estimates that people not paying what they are legally required to pay results in the government taking in hundreds of billions of dollars less per year than it should--last year, I think they estimated it was about $500 billion, a substantial chunk of the federal deficit that year.
Meanwhile, we have so-called deficit hawks cheering as Trump cuts the IRS. I know no one likes the tax man, but the only people who benefit from a badly-staffed IRS are the dishonest weasels who want to freeload off those of us who are honest.
Re: "We must also return to Constitutional restraint and explicit powers. Anything the Federal Government does that is not explicitly authorized by the Constitution must be eliminated or pushed to the States that can decide what to do."
That's a start, but what is to prevent the same problems from happening again some years hence down the road? Nothing.
The reason being that there is no enforcement of said fiscal or other discipline available to the public, to the electorate, when the criminality, corruption and massive indebtedness again rear their ugly heads.... and they will.
The present system of division of power between the executive, legislative and judicial branches relies upon those three branches of government to police themselves. And as events have shown, that hasn't happened and isn't going to happen any time soon.
Expecting government run amok to regulate itself is like expecting the mob to put itself out of business. It's just not gonna happen.
My point is that without some sort of fail-safe system whereby the people themselves can stop govt. malfeasance and misbehavior in its tracks, all of this will simply happen again - as it has down through history.
What that safeguard ought to be is open to debate, but whatever it is to be, there's no denying that it is needed very badly.
Can't put the fault on the Boomers as a group - they were too young. Gotta go back to at least when JFK was killed - if not further (Woodrow Wilson/FDR perhaps?) but for the now times, I'd suggest the combination of "The Great Society" and the Vietnam War; the dropping of silver coinage, and especially the full conversion to fiat money in 1971. We've been riding over-spending and kick-the-can ever since - it's just taken this long to reach unavoidable crisis levels ... like the loss of the penny. There has to be a "unit value" of money - that time will be soon. Will the now $1 bill become the new 1¢? Do an FDR and exchange $100 of now money for 95¢ of the new? Didn't FDR devalue the dollar to gold by 33% or so? There's no way out, there's only through the ugly, whatever shape it may form.
It's not like the evidence that all governments everywhere are actively harmful is a secret. There's that bible story about ancient Egypt, where the government taxed away surplus grain during years of plenty, and then dribbled it back with strings attached during years of famine. One benefit of the Ron Paul presidential campaigns is that after years of libertarians haranguing you, nobody can claim to be ignorant.
They will keep kicking the can down the road until they suddenly realize there is NO road in front of them. Then it will be too late.
"It is easy to just blame the selfish Boomers..."
Well, only if you're illiterate, innumerate, and wholly retarded with respect to any historical knowledge, given that it wasn't trhe Boomers who established the Federal Reserve, it wasn't Boomers who took us off the gold standard and instituted fiatbux, and it wasn't more than a single-digit percentage of Boomers who elected Nixon, who uncoupled the dollar from gold completely, since only about 5% of boomers could even vote for the man who did that either.
The fuse for the debt bomb was lit in 1913, not 1971, the first year Boomers could even vote in federal elections.
Salamander is pandering, and doing it with all the grace of a retarded paraplegic hippo on crack trying to balance on a high-wire.
He's better than that, and not that obviously stupid, so that line was just red meat for the retards in the commentariat who flunked out of second grade for eight years in a row.
The proof of this is this line:
"We fell into the deficit trap because our federal government, shaped by two world wars and a Cold War, became unbalanced."
Pop Quiz: Which of those two world wars and the Cold War were started by Boomers?
I'll wait over here while the crown who has to take their shoes off to count to 11 works it out.
"default will end this republic".
Relies on facts not in evidence.
The U.S throws a decimal one or two places to the left, and the entire world takes a haircut.
Okay, and...?
Hand-waving doesn't cut it.
Debt gets restructured. People who kept lending money to the U.S. eat a big one.
People counting on fiatbux forever get a bite of the same party-sub of fecal material.
It ends Disneyland, air conditioning, 5 mpg driving, and cheap ice cream.
It doesn't end all life as we know it.
Life goes on.
Is the annual deficit spending, and the resulting ballooning debt, a monstrous problem? Absolutely. Possibly leading to Depression Greater than the Great Depression, hunger, bread lines, and starvation. Probably a war or three after that.
Is it the Sweet Meteor Of Death extinction event, for the nation, or the planet? Likely, not so much. Life always goes on.
But it's going to teach a lesson about fiatbux and deficit spending that'll leave scars for about two generations, until the grandkids and great-grandkids who never experienced the consequences of either forget those lessons, and do this again.
{cf. Weimar, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela}
History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.
IDGAF, because I'll be long dead by then, and so will anyone reading this fresh.
Enjoy the decline. But don't mistake a financial collapse for standing at Old Faithful when the Yellowstone Caldera blows its top.
One of these things is not like the other. Do what you can to de-couple from the inevitable failure of pigs to fly.
Starting with not investing your future in flying pigs.
But the sun isn't going to burn out because the U.S. finally owns its unsustainable debt, and the consequences to that. It isn't going to make the rain stop, rivers to dry up, nor prevent seeds from germinating.
If ony the four generations since the Boomers had learned to read, cracked a frickin' book, and used their heads for something beyond a hat rack, they could speak intelligently on the origins of this problem.
Ascribing any fault to a generation that couldn't even vote in any federal elections prior 1971, and most of whom couldn't vote for anything until 1979, is a little like blaming them for World War One.
This is a level of reasoning (and I use that term loosely) that usually requires reference to the wisdom of AOC.
Well-played to the last three generations of historically illiterate Baby Ducks, for whom the entire world is new every morning, and everything before their cell phones is conflated with dinosaurs, the Middle Ages, and trench warfare in the Somme.
^ That, right there.
Meet the one guy in 50 years that wasn't stoned during history class, and can do math without a calculator.
GEN X/Y/Z, take notes from this man. If you can still write in cursive.
When a new congressperson shows up in Washington today, she or he has a lot of debts, either campaign expenses or mutually understood obligations to donors and the politically influential in their home district without whom they wouldn't have gotten elected. So they have to make friends in Congress quick to gain allies to push favorable legislation through for the fat cats at home. It's expensive to suck up to other congressmen so they call home for more money, entailing further favors.
When the new congressman finds out that not many people at home will cheer when he stops someone else's tax money flowing to them, but he's a hero when he gets federal funding for a local project or program, he'll quietly adjust his networking to hero. Heroes get reelected and appointed to powerful committee seats.
With such a system, what possibility of reducing spending could exist? And spending more than we make is the only insurmountable problem here. Stop spending money we don't and won't have, and every other problem pretty much fixes itself. We have a lot of advantages and freedoms in the US that nobody on earth matches in all respects. We've made much good use of those advantages and freedoms, and shared our success liberally with the whole world at one time or another. As such we're the target of envy and hatred by many. If with all we've been blessed with we can't get it done, well that's on us.
Rick m
Come the revolution is more than just an uncompleted thought. it's going to be really really ugly because nobody is more entitled then the freeloaders who are going to be switched off as nonvital loads and that includes just about everyone.
That was a lot of words to say "despite the fact that we kept voting for the bad policies of those who came before us we bear no blame whatsoever."
Yes, blaming the generation that held, and holds, more economic power than any generation before or since, that has had a deathgrip on the legislative, executive, and judicial branches for decades, that literally still outnumbers two of the generations after them combined (well, they killed most of the first one, Genx) and inherited the richest, most powerful country in the history of the planet and gleefully squandered it's riches and power, and allowed its invasion and subjugation...
Yeah. They had no power to do anything or stop anything whatsoever. A bunch of helpless babes. After all, the Greatest and Silent gens had power before them, and nothing they did could be changed by the biggest most powerful group of locusts the world has ever seen...
You mention voting in 1971. Why is that? Hmm...maybe because those powerless Boomers, the eldest of whom were 26 by then, and had been voting for 5 years, managed to get the voting age lowered that year?
But you forgot to mention that massive chunk of them that were voting for five years before the age was lowered. They were 21 in 1966. And when it was lowered, suddenly millions more of them could, and did, vote. Well before 1979.
Even Victor Davis Hanson has acknowledged the destruction the Boomers caused, allowed, and failed to undo. You're no Victor Davis Hanson. Some Boomers were/are good. Just like some millennials were/are good. Both generations are garbage, but only one had unspeakable amounts of power, and used it to craft, and allow, horrors beyond man's capacity to comprehend. God bless.
Boomers were voting in federal elections in 1965. Stop repeating a falsehood. And Boomers had decades to reverse the gold standard issue and basically every problem you're putting at the feet of the Greatest and Silent gens. Decades of untrammeled power. History didn't stop when those things were done. They could've been changed. And when GenX wanted to change them even after so much damage had been done, Boomers were the ones who stopped them. Which was especially easy because most of us died before birth.
GenX sucks. But at least we're not so egocentric as to refuse to acknowledge it. We suck. We're trying to do better. Some of us are succeeding. And we never had the kind of power the Boomers still have to this day.
It's taken this long to be irreversible...
So you mean there was time to reverse between the first voting Boomers in 1965, and today? Huh. I wonder who had the most power in every area of American life between 1965 and today... what generation the politicians and judges and business leaders were from.... Huh... Time stopped in 1965, and nothing could be done after that.
What can families do?
- Make sure all kids have some good general skills
- growing crops, preserving/using/making them ready for market
- repairing equipment/machines
- building - chicken coop, garden/raised bed, shed
- home based energy production - alcohol, charcoal, wood (growing, cutting, drying, stacking), water power, solar (uses, and what is not worth it)
- teaching to kids/adults - reading, writing (with and without computers), math through algebra/geometry (upper levels not needed for all, but ALL need a strong grasp of basic math)
Aw, isn't that cute, thinking that the puppets put in office via fraudulent voting systems actually have any real power to decide things....
Sarcasm aside, I think that the real powers and decision-makers truly don't care if we are officially broke, or even desire it, because they think that gives them power power/leverage. They want us to own nothing and be happy about it; they have said so in so many words. Believe them. A wealthy, well-educated, independent, God-fearing, family-oriented people cannot be easily controlled. A broke, demoralized, impoverished, faction-filled and fractured, deracinated people are easily controlled.
I remember buying 4 FOUR McDonalds cheeseburgers for one dollar, 25 cents each.
Anon, (other anon) I think you meant 1966. 65 they were 20, not 21. But otherwise exactly correct. I and my Boomer peers were voting by 1966, and a hell of a lot more Boomers were voting by 1971. And in the approximately 59 years between then and now, only a fool or liar would deny that we Boomers have not only failed to undo the bad decisions of our parents, but have indeed made things much, much worse. Millennials are by-and-large useless. That's a given, though there are obviously exceptions, we're speaking on generalities.
But Boomers were their parents, and we had so much opportunity it's sickening opportunity to succeed and opportunity to reverse course.
And to this very day, so many of my peers who are still alive are glorified locusts. Parasites.
My family goes back to Jamestown. Every generation from then to just before the Great Depression passed their lifetime of earnings (what they saved and invested that wasn't spent) on to the next generation.
After the Great Depression, when we'd recovered, that practice resumed. But were it not for the fact that the "family fortune" was placed in a trust by my grandfather, and I was made joint executor of my parents estate with my sister, my nieces and nephews, and grandnieces and grandnephews, would have absolutely no inheritance. My three brothers have no intention of leaving anything to their children or grandchildren. Wicked is the only word. But this family will outlive the wickedness of my generation, and I pray God has mercy on my brothers and their wives as they travel away their children's inheritances.
I apologize. I am old, and I tend to ramble. But yes. 1966, not 65, and certainly not 71.
-The Tortoise
Folks, there are too many of you getting your underwear in a twist over Boomer vs. non-Boomer responsibility for our present situation. It's too late to argue about who did what, with which, to whom. Like it or not, we're in this mess, and we have to worry about how we're going to get out of it far more than we need concern ourselves with who put us in it.
I'm closing comments on this post. In future, please don't argue ad hominem, but stick to the subject, and use logical, reasoned arguments rather than insults or trying to score points off each other.
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