Hope

Do you remember that in my last column, I mentioned a book by Joe Scarborough, titled “The Last Best Hope?”  I have finished it and in turn loaned it to a friend.  Parts of this column will be quotes from pages 213, and 214.  The quotes will show how, in my opinion anyway, there is no hope for saving America, regardless of Joe’s optimism.  The quotes will show you just how important it is to protect yourself by getting out of dollars, and into gold and silver, which will work as money, regardless of the currency in use, wherever you may be. The buck is doomed, as are probably most currencies, because although we are printing faster than others, all are printing, because all economies and governments are run by politicians, and politicians never change.  If the terrorists ever strike again, I wish…well never mind. 

“Over the next 20 years, almost all baby boomers will move into their retirement years.  That, in turn, will lead to a mass exodus from the work force. The number of retirees drawing Social Security will jump from 47 million to 77 million.  By 2020, entitlements for the elderly will consume 25% of all income tax dollars.  By 2030, they will eat up a staggering 50% of all income tax dollars.  To put that in perspective, over the next 30 years, Washington politicians will have to slash every government program on the books by 50% just to keep paying out benefits for two entitlement programs.  (Social Security and Medicare).  By mid-century, 75% of all federal income taxes will go to paying retirement funds.  In our children’s lifetime, the U.S. government will have to use every dime it takes in to keep Social Security and Medicare solvent.  (This is in their current states.  Obama’s programs will make this happen pretty quickly!)

“This means there will be no money for national defense, federal courts, interstate highways, or any other legislative priority.  Every dime Washington gets will go to feeding the exploding costs of two runaway entitlement programs.  If tax revenues remain constant over that same period, the federal debt will explode, rising to more than 290% of our GDP in 2050.  That is a debt that will crush America.

“To maintain these entitlement programs at current benefit levels, the United States would have to adopt a tax system that is roughly the equivalent of North Korea’s.  Such a punitive tax system would lead, of course, to a collapse in living standards and the meltdown of America’s economic activity.  Because of these confiscatory tax rates, those systems we were trying to save would eventually dry up regardless of our taxing efforts.”  ( End of book quote) At current levels, the US government has unfunded commitments of $75 trillion.  With Obama’s plans, they will easily top $100,000,000,000, an amount impossible to comprehend. Yesterday, Obama announced that he will seek to cut prescription costs by 50% for some.  Can you imagine the paperwork and confusion in prescription departments?  Will small ones throw up their hands and quit the business?

Do we honestly believe that D.C. politicians of either party, would vote to balance a budget, reduce the size of government, or economize?   Now there’s going to be a third stimulus package? The supposed Clinton balanced budget is a myth.  The debts are increasing every single minute of every hour of every day.  Under Obama, trillions of dollars in new debt has accomplished nothing.  GM and Chrysler were bailed, and it didn’t help them.  Not a single bailout has helped anything.  Only increased the dollar debt by literally trillions every year, and further defeated the market’s self regulation process.

As our economic system progressively collapses, we are now shadowing a North Korean vessel as it is on its way somewhere, which destination is unknown, but probably Burma. If we stop it and board it, will that cause untold troubles in Korea or the Orient, where we shouldn’t be in the first place?  The last time we stopped and boarded this exact same ship, it was full of scrap metal.  The Iran elections were fixed, but there is nothing that can be done to fix them, because the Ayatollah believes he is God’s representative and handy man.  Since he is God’s man, God has decided that the election was OK, and it’s none of our business anyway.  As an aside, it was America’s meddling in the 1970’s which has made Iran a strong Muslim state.

I’ve often wondered what makes elected Representatives and Senators undergo such a radical change when they get to D.C.  They seem to forget all the platforms and promises they ran on, and become drones, taking orders from their party heads, which usually are dead wrong in their opinions.  Think of what America would be like if there was no Washington D.C.  Naturally, 98% of politicians are lawyers, and 100% of them never read through the laws they vote upon, so in reality, they haven’t the remotest idea of anything.  Without Washington, we’d have fifty individual state governments running their states, taxing their states, and legislating for their states as they saw fit, and as would please their constituents.  No D.C. instructions, mandates, and laws.  No federal anything, except maybe the post office.  Would the individual states authorize foreign wars and entanglements?  No way, because they would listen to their home folk who put them there.  Would the individual state governments have any of the 1300 federal agencies, and the cost and nuisance of them?  No.  Would there be a federal tax on anything?  No, because the federal government would occupy 1% of its current space, and have 1% of its current employees.  Think of the utter freedom we would have, if D.C. ceased to exist.  Boggles the mind.

National Parks?  Each state would control parks within their boundaries, and Yellowstone’s problems would be ironed out by the three states it occupies.  Federal gas, telephone, real estate, income, capital gain, and inheritance taxes?  No.  Federal anything?  No.  The State Department, under a neutral America, probably would revert to the number of employees it had under Thomas Jefferson, and that was seven.  Just imagine fifty states governing themselves and competing with each other.  How to get rid of D.C. should be the object, not which party goes to Washington or controls the Congress.  Both parties are corrupt and ignorant of even the most basic economic principles.  D.C. will never be removed, and politicians there, as in all nations, will perpetually care only for re-election rather than the good of their country. A thousand years from now, they’ll uncover those government buildings, and wonder what gods they worshipped. Stupid, corrupt, greedy politicians have been responsible for the downfall of all nations in history.  Politicians got their nations into wars, overspent, and have done the same imbecilic things down through the ages. Will history ever change?  Of course not.  We can only watch each day pass, and we become more and more mired in debt, failing dollars, and messing in everyone’s business.  As our once grand, prosperous, debt free, happy nation, degrades into terminal insolvency, we should remember, as if it were writ in stone:  Tangible things such as gold and silver will be true money in all nations, in all times, and regardless of which currency may be in use.  It is the one safe place to store surplus assets, and as always happened in times past, 99.9% of the citizenry will save in paper money and trust their government…tragically.