[j r]

(10-03-2013 03:28 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

(10-03-2013 02:50 PM)It_is_my_time Wrote:  

(10-03-2013 02:34 PM)Easy E Wrote:  

(10-03-2013 02:25 PM)Aliblahba Wrote:  

My family has land that can be tilled that butts up next to The Land of the Forgotten. When shit hits the fan we'll converge on it and at least stay fed and safe. It's depressing that we even had to have this conversation in the last few years.

No use in putting money in the banks here or abroad, as the guv will be making runs on it as they see fit. Not trying to be the doom and gloom guy, but I believe now we really are past the point of no return. Unless CNN says we're ok, then I'll feel better.

I wish it was crazy. I follow economics and finance a lot. We are already above 100% debt to GDP ratio, and economists for decades have agreed that once you pass this threshold your country can never recover. We are seeing that play out in Europe right now.

And that isn't taking into account the 90 some trillion in unfunded liabilities headed our way, the retirement of the baby boomers, and the interest payments that will eventually balloon.

Economically we are in trouble. To be honest after Bush we were at a point that we needed someone on the ball, and instead we got a guy who made all the same mistakes Bush made economically, except on a larger scale.

Huh? The deficit has been falling under Obama.

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rachel-maddow...9#51912479

I'm sorry, the reason we got in this mess can be directly tied to three decades of Reaganomics policies. Slashing revenue by cutting taxes for extremely wealthy people while sending us into wars paid for with debt.

The deficit is a year-to-year number that tracks how much more the government spends than it takes in in revenue. The deficit isn't the problem. The stock of outstanding debt is the problem and that is still growing. After 2009, with that giant stimulus bill, it would be almost impossible for the deficit not to fall, but that doesn't mean that the deficit is small, just that it was a lot larger. Saying the deficit is getting smaller is just saying that we are drowning at a slightly slower rate.

The problem is this: people want a lot of goodies from the government, but they don't want to pay for them. So, you get two parties, one party that wars to give goodies and raise taxes to pay for them. Another party that pretends not to like goodies (of course they really do) and keeps taxes low. Put those things together and you have a dysfunctional system. h

You can have a country where the government takes more than half your salary and gives you lots of shit. Or you can har a country where you keep almost all of your salary and the government sticks to providing basic public services. Most Americans haven't figured this out yet, because there's always some politician there to tell them that they can have their cake and eat it too and pass the blame in to some scapegoat. Democrats blame the rich. Republicans blame brown people. The truth is that we are all to blame, because we buy into this bullshit instead of acting like adults.