Posted on 01/11/2012 8:33:20 AM PST by blam
"Eventually, this thing is coming all the way down. Someday America will be such a horror show that it will be hard to believe that it is the same place that many of us grew up in."
When almost everyone is a parasite like the Democrat base, almost everyone will be Democrat.
I have read that the Weimar government deliberately devalued their own currency to get out of paying war reparations.
Is that accurate?
Europe’s Socialist Paradise has Eurozone Has $39 Trillion In Pension Liabilities - Almost 40x The ECB’s Balance Sheet!
This is our future.
Taxes will have to be raised or someone will have to be laid-off...something has to give.
Ron Paul is the only candidate who never voted to raise taxes nor voted to increase the debt limit - never.
Ron Paul’s budget plan would cut $1 Trillion from the Fed budget in year One.
$1 Trillion !
how did CA not make the top 10 ?
Deliberate inflation amounts to taxation by teleportation.
You have $1.
The feds “print”* $1.
The total quantity of currency has doubled, but the value it represents remains the same - thus halving the value of each of those dollars, and transporting $0.50 of value from you to the feds.
* - “printing money” is an anachronism. We now operate in large part on a “virtual currency”, whereby the Federal Reserve writes an arbitrary amount in the income column of its ledger, then loans that “money” to the government; from there on the “currency” is a chain of IOU debts which are strictly audited. Ergo, if the federal government wants another dollar, it just asks the Federal Reserve to write “+$2” in its income ledger, and after some computer time you lose $1 of savings value - to wit, taxation.
bookmarked
4 Simple Steps to Grow a Hundred Pounds of Potatoes in a Barrel
“Ron Paul’s budget plan would cut $1 Trillion from the Fed budget in year One.”
Don’t get me wrong when I say this, the gov needs to be reigned in, but has anyone considered the impact massive cuts like that will have?
Inflation is the only way out of this fiscal mess for our leaders, short of war. Legal obligations must be satisfied ... but since those obligations are rendered in terms of “dollars”, the Federal Reserve can just conjure up more money and reduce the value those dollars were understood to represent.
Gold is OK for long-term high-density value storage, but impractical for common use during hard times. Certain popular forms of copper/brass/lead are more suitable for mundane needs.
Furthermore, I’d like to know the breakdown of this $1T in cuts, vis-a-vis military versus entitlements. How much of these cuts are in things in Art1Sect8, and how much in other areas that the federal (aka: national) govt is wasting money on?
People (especially Democrat politicians) always claim that big banks aren’t lending, but they are. They are loaning the Federal Government hundreds of $ billions. Obama’s deficits have sucked $ Trillions out of the private economy and will continue to do so until real spending cuts are enacted.
“Don’t get me wrong when I say this, the gov needs to be reigned in, but has anyone considered the impact massive cuts like that will have?”
The pain will be difficult. No politician will support any meaningful reform until the illusion of free government spending is thoroughly clear. When the majority of voters finally understand the unsustainability of our current path, it may be too late. External forces will already be delivering the bitter pain. Democrats have convinced a large number of voters that the rich will be forced to pay for their benefits. Reductions in spending will be aimed at the military. Obama has a clever plan to dilute the immediate impact of military reductions with several large contracts to foreign governments.
We are in much worse shape than Europe. Europe has high taxes across the board especially with income taxes high on even low wage workers and a VAT and gas tax that increases the prices of almost every consumer good. Europe is starting to take the bitter medicine now. Democrats here just keep expanding the welfare state (student loans, Obamacare, food stamps, housing assistance, ...), sharply increasing regulations, and government control of the economy. Government employee unions have no intention to reduce their outrageous demands for retirement compensation. The unions have tremendous legal protections that place their benefits ahead of every other spending priority. Courts will support the unions and may make demands for increased spending in other areas such as eduation (see idiotic court decisions in Colorado and Washington state).
Yes. That’s why some consider an economic crash and mass civil unrest inevitable.
At present, about 20% of spending (not revenue, SPENDING) goes to each of Social Security, Health, Defense, Treasury, and Everything Else. We need to cut $1.5T just to break even. Treasury, being mostly debt service, is nigh unto untouchable: cut payments of debt interest and the whole system will collapse. That leaves cutting the other four categories by 54%, RIGHT NOW, just to stop the bleeding.
Like that’s gonna happen.
We can’t even convince Congress to reduce the rate of increase of spending from 6% down to 2.5% to match the average GDP growth - a mere 3.3% reduction in what Congress _wants_ to spend.
Slashing federal spending in half for everything but debt service would have a massive impact. The half of “taxpayers” who don’t would riot; 50,000,000 rioters would be, um, bad. Ain’t happenin’ since we can’t even get a handful more Republicans to grit their teeth and vote for a 3.3% spending cut.
Problem is, what’s the alternative? Hyperinflation may solve the problem of federal debt (the only non-war alternative once debt interest approaches 100% of revenue), but it would require equivalent increase in welfare (broadly defined) spending because the recipients expect to receive _value_, not just on-paper numbers. Inflate the currency 100% to cut the value of debts by 50%, but then (for example) the $2 needed to buy a loaf of bread will inflate to $4, requiring welfare payouts to double.
The only solution is CUTS. BIG CUTS. Even if we take Ron Paul’s shocking proposed $1T cut and reduce it to $0.1T over 10 years, we’re still increasing the debt by $7.5T over that period. We’d have to cut spending by 3.3% just to have any hope of paying down the debt _ever_ and Congress won’t do that. Heck, Ron Paul’s shocking proposed $1T cut STILL leaves a half-trillion-dollar annual deficit.
Yes, massive cuts would have enormous impact.
So will anything less than massive cuts.
To wit: hang on, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
Problem is, cutting $1T over 10 years means increasing the debt by $7.5T over the same period.
Not a solution.
Ron Paul is the only candidate who never voted to raise taxes nor voted to increase the debt limit - never.”””
That is correct.....but:
IMO, Ron Paul knew he was a lone wolf in such votes. He knew that his vote would be symbolism only. He also knew that he was running AGAIN for President.
While this makes his voting record seem legendary, I believe that he is tilting at windmills.
However, I also wish this country to stop spending money like a drunk who found a dropped bag of $100 bills.
We cannot keep sending moeny to enemies. We are funding the weapons which are used against us in the big picture, IMO.
Trouble with that & Ron Paul is that Ron Paul doesn’t see that we even HAVE enemies!!! He thinks that IF we all ‘play nice in the sandbox’, there will never be any problems on the playground. NOT!!!!
I absolutely like Newt’s & Perry’s idea of every country has to go back to ZERO in foreign aid & they have to tell us why we should be helping them.
North Korea spends most of it’s country wealth on it’s military —nuclear weapons—armaments of all kinds. It’s people are starving everywhere. There is no power sturcture to even try to build up industry for jobs or products in N Korea.
When this country attempts to get consessions in return for FOOD aid, their multi-generational crazies who are in charge call it ‘politicizing’. N Korea doesn’t have any kind of moral right to products of the USA. They ARE an enemy & I don’t think Ron Paul will ever admit that....along with the long list of others, including Iran-Syria-Pakistan-etc.
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