Tell that to the senate and the kenyan: Look how they've f'd it up so far and they're still in DC.
Posted on 11/27/2012 11:35:39 AM PST by SatinDoll
In the duh department we have this:
* * * * * * * * * * * The actual liabilities of the federal government—including Social Security, Medicare, and federal employees' future retirement benefits—already exceed $86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP. For the year ending Dec. 31, 2011, the annual accrued expense of Medicare and Social Security was $7 trillion. Nothing like that figure is used in calculating the deficit. In reality, the reported budget deficit is less than one-fifth of the more accurate figure. * * * * * * * * * * *
Did you get that?
The entire economy is $15 trillion.
The accrued expense of Medicare and Social Security alone -- and most of it is Medicare -- is half the economy each and every year. Put that in your head and consider that this would mean that just to keep even we would have to more than triple the existing amount of tax collected, raising total taxation to more than 60% of the economy!
If you have read Leverage [by Karl Deninger] you know that one of the pieces that I pound on hard is the medical cost explosion. I've also written about it extensively here in these pages. This is why -- it is simply impossible for the promises made through Medicare to be kept. That is not conjecture, it is not able to be fixed with taxation, it is not a matter of opinion.
It is mathematical fact.
You're not going to get Medicare, unless (1) you're getting it now and (2) you're reasonably close to death. For everyone else what you have been promised and what you're going to get are very different, and there is exactly nothing you can do about it.
There is also no "gradual" way to deal with it.
Politicians lie? No!
In other news, the sky is blue. And after weather, the grass is green.
You will get Medicare. Karl’s wrong. The only question is what the Medicare will consist of. What I see in Canada is that they are happy to give people pills (generics), up to and including and maybe especially pain-killers.
A story to illustrate this: A friend and I were traveling by motorcycle and needed to take a 24 hour ferry trip. He strained his knee really bad muscling his bike on the ferry deck. He mentioned to others on the boat (in B.C.) that he was in pain. Suddenly everyone pullout out pill boxes full of all sorts of stuff. Not one or two people, and not just old people.
What you won’t get are expensive surgeries, or hi-tech cancer therapy, or things like that. You’ll get low cost symptom treatment, pain management, assisted suicide and perhaps hospice care. It will be more like Canada. Stuff like MRI’s will be reserved for young people, and even then there will be waiting lists and qualifications to use them. (And perhaps not for MRI’s: maybe they are already ubiquitous in the USA, but whatever the next great technology is, assuming it is ever developed in the first place).
In summary the government will re-define the benefit, not end it. Much better from a PR point of view.
Question is..... is the government secretly planning to print up more money and put in circulation to try to handle these enormous liabilities? If they do that, then we will see tremendous rates of inflation. Unfortunately, that could be the path of least resistance.
Government can get the money through taxation, borrowing, putting more money in circulation, or some combination of these.
Or, we could see cutbacks in future benefits under these government programs. But it’s not likely than any politicians, Republican or Democrat will push for any such policies.
Nor will the politicians try to wean people off of food stamps or Section 8 or..cell phones. Something’s got to give. Question is how all this gets solved in the decades ahead.
Question is..... is the government secretly planning to print up more money and put in circulation to try to handle these enormous liabilities? If they do that, then we will see tremendous rates of inflation. Unfortunately, that could be the path of least resistance.
Government can get the money through taxation, borrowing, putting more money in circulation, or some combination of these.
Or, we could see cutbacks in future benefits under these government programs. But it’s not likely than any politicians, Republican or Democrat will push for any such policies.
Nor will the politicians try to wean people off of food stamps or Section 8 or..cell phones. Something’s got to give. Question is how all this gets solved in the decades ahead.
I’m not sure about that. Older voters are the single biggest voting-bloc in the USA. Politicians of all stripes fear them. Politicians that try cheaping-down Medicare to Canada-type levels will be voted out bigtime. As for the GOP, I’ll believe Republicans want to save money in Medicare when they support the federal government negotiating prices with drug companies (regarding Part D). It’ll never happen. Too many Republican (and ‘rat) friends in Big Pharma.
Obamanation Communism File.
Remember, money isn’t value, money represents value. Printing more money doesn’t solve the problem, it just divides the total value of the economy into smaller pieces on the premise that the number of pieces is what was agreed on, not the value per piece.
Unfounded liabilities at 550% of GDP means we need to use five years’ worth of economic activities to pay one year’s obligations. They could confiscate 100% of all income, and not even meet 20% of obligations. Redefine the dollar however you like, drive inflation thru the ceiling, the feds are obligated to confiscate over 5x what everyone earns in a year for any obligations indexed to inflation. Should those obligations not be indexed to inflation, the inflation needed to make the numbers work (i.e.: effective cheating) would wreck the economy.
Hyperinflation is their only way out of this.
And “out” means jumping over the cliff.
The two extremes are chaos (the Zombie Apocalypse) or totalitarian tyranny (we must have order...the trains). The Bernanke seems to believe he can inflate carefully, continue the gravy train AND Ponzi schemes, AND should the economy begin the shrug back to live even under these burdens he can suck the “funny money” back and avoid hyperinflation all the while with no one the wiser. This is like praying for a series of unlikely miracles. In fact, that is exactly what it is. One problem I see is that he has no problem pushing funny money forward but who is he going to get it back from? The US Taxpyer is tapped out.
When are these ‘experts’ like Daniel Henninger going to realize that no amount of rational analysis will solve anything anymore. A majority of the public doesn’t care and isn’t listening. Things are just going to have to get really, really bad. We need to accept this, withdraw from offering solutions, and let things get bad. There is no other way. This is war, there needs to be a serious Machiavellian strategy to destroy the Left and part of it has to be to let them dig their own grave.
Tell that to the senate and the kenyan: Look how they've f'd it up so far and they're still in DC.
$273,885 for every person in the USA. From the ones born when I began this reply to the ones that will die before I finish.
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