Posted on 12/16/2011 10:46:43 AM PST by passionfruit
By 2020, just the interest payments on the federal debt will be larger than the US military budget. That’s not paying down the debt, but merely staying current on the servicing. Like when you get your MasterCard statement and you can’t afford to pay off what you borrowed, but you can just about cover the monthly interest charge. Except in this case, the interest charge for US taxpayers will be greater than the military budgets of China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, Turkey and Israel combined. Just in interest payments on the debt. That’s 20 percent of federal revenues, a fifth of your taxes, entirely wasted.
Pious celebrities often simper that they’d be willing to pay more in taxes for better government services. But a fifth of what you pay won’t be going for government services at all, unless by “government services” you mean the People’s Liberation Army of China, which will be entirely funded by US taxpayers by about 2015. The People’s Liberation Army is the largest employer on the planet, bigger even than the US Department of Community Organizer Grant Applications. And we’re already funding about 80 percent of it.
As I’m sure you know, when the Visigoths laid siege to Rome in 408, the Imperial Senate hastily bought off the barbarian King Alaric with 5,000 pounds of gold and 30,000 pounds of silver. But even in the slough of despond and decadence, they didn’t budget for Roman taxpayers picking up the tab for the entire Visigoth military as a permanent feature of life. That unprecedented historical act had to wait for our time. There is no precedent for this in human history, of one power consciously, consciously, funding its successor power.
(Excerpt) Read more at frontpagemag.com ...
For your Mark Steyn ping list.
According to many FReepers, Steyn is a RINO because he won’t support Newt.
Amazing how failure to support a RINO can lead one to becoming a RINO.
I hate election season. Conservatives sniping at each other, back biting, name calling.
I can’t wait for the primaries to be over!
“We have to pay back $15 trillion just to get back to having nothing.”
Laser, meet Steyn.
Another brilliant, funny piece by Mark Steyn. He is a treasure! Thanks for posting this, passionfruit.
Mark Steyn ping.
Freepmail me, if you want on or off the Mark Steyn ping list.
Thanks for the ping passionfruit.
Any society — a community is a compact between the past, present and the future, in which the citizens, in Tom Wolfe’s words, conceive of themselves, however unconsciously, as part of a great biological stream.
Europe climbed out of the stream. They decided you didn’t need to make material sacrifices; the state takes care of all that. You didn’t need to have children, and you certainly didn’t need to die for king and country. But a society that has nothing to die for has nothing to live for. It’s no longer a stream but a stagnant pool. “How fair thou hast been,” in Goethe’s words, “but only for the moment. And in Europe, the moment is passing.”
The Western world’s economic crisis, I think, is a mere symptom of its existential crisis. What is life for? What gives it meaning? A post-Christian, post-nationalist, postmodern Europe has no answer to that question. And so it has 30-year-old students and 50-year-old retirees and wonders why the small band of workers in between them can’t make the math add up.
See the following:
The Price of Obamacare, or, The Full Faith and Credit Card
Cheers!
Our grandchildren will look back at our generation... Do you feel dread?
I do believe Steyn was referring to Egyptian Copts, not Egyptian cops.
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