Thursday, May 24, 2012

What will the future in America look like....

...if we continue to spend trillions more each year than we take in via taxes?

I have yet to see anyone articulate their best speculation as to how things will be when we finally run out of other people's money to fund a luxurious safety net for every American, and quite a few foreigners here illegally.

If you ask a liberal, they will give some lip service to the out of control deficit spending as a problem, but will suggest we get rid of our military, tax fat cat corporations out of existence, and ditto with those greedy millionaires and billionaires to correct the national deficit.  Once all of that money that formerly went to the military complex and greedy rich sumbitches flows into the U.S. treasury, we will have plenty of money to make the U.S. a heaven on earth, where nobody has any want, need or even a single tear in any eye.

If you ask a rock ribbed conservative as to how things will end up, given our current trajectory of deficit spending, you might get a different spin as to what the future holds.  First things first: Social Security (FICA) will become insolvent around 2030, give or take ten years.  Once the treasury finds that it takes in less money than it needs to cover the checks, it will probably not send out notices to senior citizens that their checks will stop.

Nope, that will certainly end up with blood in the streets straight away.  So what will our government likely do? Start printing money, just like they are now.  Call it 'quantitative easing,' or whatever you would like to call this smoke and mirror tactic.  In short order, since we will have so many dollars in circulation chasing the same amount of goods and services, inflation will ramp up.  Once that occurs, oldsters' savings accounts (those that have them, most don't seem to have planned for the future) will buy less and less with these dollars.

Rather than just cut these geezers off cold turkey, this QE34, or whatever it is called by then, will simply delay the blood in the streets by a decade or two.  But rather than simply screw the geezers out of their promised SS checks, the government will have screwed everybody, young and old, by wrecking the dollar and accordingly the economy.

But here is where people stop short (except Glenn Beck, a.k.a. Doctor Doom) in their speculation as to how this profligate irresponsible spending of money we don't have will manifest itself in our daily lives at some point in the future.

Once the checks stop, or continue to show up but are virtually worthless, people will opt out of the economy and a black market will replace it, much like the Weimar Republic in Germany after WWI, or more recently like the early days of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989.  Rubles were no good, as it took a wheel barrow full of them to buy a Snickers bar.  Cash was not worth the paper it was written on, and had value only as something to wipe one's posterior after a trip to the powder room.

Once the government realizes that nobody is paying taxes anymore, they will ramp up enforcement of tax collection efforts, and beef up IRS enforcement agents with hand cuffs, guns and mortars.  They will target any and all sources of revenue for arrest, and society will at that point begin to break down.  People targeted by the government, who had the foresight to see this kind of thing coming and to keep themselves well armed, will not take kindly to an armed government agent coming in to arrest them. 

At this point, I would expect that a revolution of some kind would erupt.  Would this revolution resemble the 1789  French Revolution, where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette lost their heads in a short three years?  Probably not.  France was for centuries prior to the revolution governed by an aristocracy and theocracy, widely considered to be a conservative bunch, where the wealth of the land was controlled by a privileged few well born and pious folk.  The rabble that toppled this centuries old form of conservative government was considered at the time left wing.

We are still living with the progeny of the French Revolution, in the here and now with their Rights of Man baloney.  It may indeed be the source of all of our crazy spending we are doing now: everyone has a right to a house, a right to food, a right to medicine, a right for this and a right for that.  And included in these rights are nothing about paying for them, since a right is a right, regardless of the cost.  Right?

No, our revolution will be somewhat the reverse of the French Revolution.  Our government has been liberal based for many, many years now, and has spent us into oblivion.  Conservative voices (anyone ever heard of 'The Tea Party'?) are speaking out against this madness with increasing volume.  The revolution will be one of conservatives holding the torches and pitchforks, and the liberal leaders will be riding in the back of the wooden tumbrels en route to the guillotines.

I expect, however, that all of this revolution doom and gloom will likely be avoided, once America starts electing conservative adults to represent our long term interests, and oust the drunken-sailor liberals, who have spent us into a pending catastrophe.

9 comments:

Silverfiddle said...

Read up on Argentina, a once great country with bountiful resources. We are following in their footsteps

innominatus said...

We've been lucky that the Tree of Liberty yet survives, having gone so long without a watering of Patriots' and Tyrants' blood. But the Tree is getting really thirsty.

Fredd said...

Silver:

Naw, Argentina has never been a strong fiscally conservative country like the USA has been for most of its existence. Argentina has been at war for nearly half its life, and has put in power this potentate and that despot.

Bad analogy. It was never a great country. Top 10 was the best it ever got, and it was all downhill from there.

Fredd said...

Inno: yup, gotta water that tree, as the leaves are drying up as I write this...

Z said...

Fredd, I consider you highly intelligent and well read....that you think America has a ghost of a chance is very reassuring.

I just can't IMAGINE Conservatives ever winning the presidency again mostly because the poor/needy/derelicts and entitlement creeps are voting their pocketbooks (which we paid for, by the way).
And our leftwingers have upstanding college graduates believing the money will keep coming, too! HOW they believe this is amazing, but they vote.
Heck, they even become president!

Keep doing optimistic posts, I really need it :-)

Fredd said...

Z:

I think Obama will go down in history as an anomaly.

He was voted in by a nation taken in by his oratorial prowess, much like the citizens of River City by 'The Music Man.'

Much like Elmer Gantry wooed the citizens of Zenith.

Much like the Germans fell for Hitler's speeches.

(well read, maybe. I try, though...)

Kid said...

Fredd, your left sidebar has my old blog address on your blog list.

"Don't make me come up there" and take you out to dinner at the Palm Court in Arlington Heights for example....

So, I've heard a rough number that the total stealable wealth of all the rich people under the USA umbrella is about 3-4 trillion.

They could take it all and it wouldn't even last a year. Then what? They couldn't even tax the rich at 1% because they wouldn't have any money left. It's not like they amass 4 trillion each and every year. Takes a while.

Kid said...

Couple thoughts Fredd:

Given the truism that it is really hard for a president and government to make things better, and it is Super easy to screw them up, I can't believe anything other than we are on a path to being at the world's mercy. It won't be in our lifetimes.

Of all the capitalist supporting presidents and government majorities we've had all it took was LBJ and Carter to put us where we are today.
LBJ stole social security and created Welfare,

Carter hit us with:
- the house for everyone program (that was the seed that destroyed the world's sconomies in Oct 2007)
- Dept of Energy, keeping us dependent on our enemies for oil
- Dept of Education - communist indoctrination for our kids.
Those are the major point though we could add a lot more.

Even Ronald Reagan could not vanquish these life sucking dragons.

Voters won't accept taking the right path now because it is the hard path. They'll have to be forced through having no other alternative. Like a coke addict and there ain't no coke anywhere in town.

I've heard that the total wealth of 'the rich' that include the individual the US government could get their tax claws into is 3 trillion. Sounds reasonable given the wealth of the entire world is 500 - 700 trillion, depending on the day and a lot of that is derivatives, so it's not even real fake paper money.

The government could take it all and it would last 7 months at today's burn rate. Then what. And you'll never tax at 70% of course either, people will stop working and move out of town, than work 70% of their time for someone other than themselves. This is the obvious piece of the puzzle the liberals cannot grasp if their life depended on it.

Fredd said...

Kid:

Yeah, austerity is not for the timid...unless there is no other alternative other than revolution. And with that revolution thing, one usually has to pick sides in the beginning, and everyone notices which side you're on during the tiff. And the winners tend to remember that you were on the losing side, and take appropriate actions.

If you are a timid type, you usually make wrong decisions anyway.

700 trillion worth of world wealth. What's that number going to be when we accumulate another 300 trillion? What comes after a trillion, anyway?