Plan B Forum

All politics aside, is it fair to say that the United States Congress has just failed in its fundamental duty to manage the financial affairs of the country?

They have done nothing to avoid the coming tsunami of debt - and that's not an exaggeration - and in fact have REFUSED even to address the root causes.

Most poignantly, there is NO COMPETENT ECONOMIST who sees anything other than total financial ruin when making rational projections of U.S. outlays versus income over the coming decade. The rapidly expanding obligations of SS, Medicare, and other public-sector pensions, the inevitable increasing of interest rates, the utilization of unrealistic growth projections in assessing "savings" from marginal "cuts"...the level of irresponsibility is absolutely incredible.

More than enough blame to go around.

The only question is how bad will it be when the government finally craters. Glenn Beck might just be right when he tells his listeners to buy dehydrated food.

Our elected leaders have been failing in this regard for most of our lifetimes. The current and coming deficits have been known for quite some time, especially the Social Security, Medicare and public pension actuarial black holes. It is a bit unfair to single out the current crowd in Congress for special criticism since they actually did just reduce the expected deficit by over a trillion dollars, which amounts to a modest downpayment on what needs to be done. The reason the predecessors haven't implemented the changes necessary is because it is political heavy-lifting. As the obviousness of the deficits and debt becomes more apparent to more people, the political will to take action will surface; hopefully, we are just seeing the front end of that political wave.

Everyone knows that we cannot go on indefinitely doing what we have been doing. Of course.

The hard question -- or complex bundle of interwoven questions -- is what we should do instead.

It is all well and good for people to say that the government should not be spending money that we don't have. In the abstract, that proposition is effectively unassailable.

But where the rubber meets the road is in the specifics. Which programs should we cut? And how much should we cut them by? Whose taxes should we raise? And how much should we raise them by?

The Tea Party radicals have advanced themselves stupendously by avoiding those questions. They have appealed successfully to the worst kind of populism -- just scream "cut spending!" "no new taxes!" "government must live within its means!" "just like ordinary families!" (conveniently forgetting that ordinary families are up to their eyeballs in debt).

But when the hard questions come up, they seem to have very little to say. Are they willing to look Grandma in the eye and tell her that from now on, her Social Security check -- her only income -- will not be enough to keep a roof over her head and food in her belly? It doesn't look that way.

And they are far from alone. Their left-wing half-analogues are not much better. (Although most of them are at least not insane, which elevates them above some of our elected representatives.) Tax the rich? Great -- an unexceptionable proposition in itself. But then what?

The fundamental problem, it seems to me, is either an inability or an unwillingness to take the long view. "If I can help keep the system lurching along until I am no longer running for reelection? Perfect. If it all goes down the shitter after I retire? Not my problem."

If we address the fundamental problems now, we may be able to avert a crisis that will make current events seem like a church picnic. If not, look out.

And it won't be a matter of our -- those of us in the US, I mean -- having to stock up on dehydrated food. Screwed up mess as we are, we are still the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

We don't have enough food? Australia has plenty of food? Welcome, Australia, to the big happy family of US territories.

Too many people in India? A burden on the global food-distribution system? Strange, it is, how a virulent and fatal disease which attacks only people with certain genetic markers swept through the subcontinent. Tragic, really; but hey, more food for us!

Africa? You mean that mysterious place where natural resources are practically exploding out of the ground begging to be to harvested? That place where there used to be hundreds of millions of people, many of whom were starving anyway? Not a problem anymore. Just a big, empty, take-whatever-you-want warehouse.

When things start getting bad for people in the US, the rest of the world should start trembling.

A very neat analysis up to the apocalyptic at the end Andrew.

I just want to know why we're holding back on the "kill brown people disease"

We're all brown; 'white' is myth.


I'm warning you: don't make me start a thread about that...

Gob wrote:A very neat analysis up to the apocalyptic at the end Andrew.

Australia, six new US states and one territory, and if one has Australia who needs Africa? The only problem is they will have to learn to speech English.

liberty wrote:The only problem is they will have to learn to speech English.

They aren't the only ones.