The Looming Issue

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by justplugit

Simple way to put it, when your interest payment on your credit card is more than the principal it's over. No more credit cards for you.

True. But if you can print your own money, you don't need a credit card. You just need fools who'll keep loaning you their value earned dollars so they can be perpetually repaid by a greater amount of inflated, unearned, fiat funny money. Of course, if the loaner and the loanee are, by conspiracy, in cahoots, in effect one and the same, inflated numbers are of no consequence. The giant monopoly game is simply played over and over. When the main player goes bankrupt, the board is closed, re-opened and the money is again distributed among the participating players, in nominally greater amounts though not really worth more in buying power since the previous debt represented by all the properties, houses, hotels, etc. have merely gone up in price accordingly to represent that greater debt. Of course, the hidden small folks who are never visible in the game between the big players--the financial midgets who live in those houses, or travel on those railroads, or pay the utility bills and mortgages or go directly to jail if they don't--those folks don't constantly get to go past go and get their $200 like the big players do. But they have to actually manage to pay for the higher prices on less flexible incomes that the big players, who print and redistribute money, have. Inflation actually hurts their pockets, their little fixed stash which is not automatically renewed in greater amounts with every new round of the game.

So those little folks are the real fools who loan their earned money to the government and its big boy cronies, by voting to keep them in power and collectively paying the higher tax burden, by foolishly surrendering the power the birthright some distant Founders gave them, giving that power to government which repays the loan with worth less dependent strings attached. When you pledge your lives, your fortunes, and your sacred honor, not to secure liberty, but to secure promises of comfort based on a corrupt Ponzi scheme, your lives have less meaning and are less in your own hands, your fortunes dwindle in buying power and over-regulated personal ownership, and your honor no longer exists.

But generation to generation, change is not so noticeable. Humans, having a greater propensity and ability to adapt, find ways to be happy, to enjoy life in the circumstance to which they are born. Unfathomable things like trillions of dollars have no relation, no substance, seemingly, to their immediate, very flesh and blood real lives. They elect those other guys to take care of those complex things that no-one but "experts" can understand--government, business regulation, taxes, infrastructure, foreign relations, borders, and they seem to always do a good job. There's always some folks who complain about something, but none of it seems to make much sense, since things always wind up going along OK. Always doomsayers but no doom. Life is good.

What, me worry?

[rphud]

Sometimes a pilot friend of mine's saying comes to mind...."It's always darkest right before you hit the trees."

Maybe Hillary can fix it just like Bubba did.

[Fishpart]

Originally Posted by rphud

Sometimes a pilot friend of mine's saying comes to mind...."It's always darkest right before you hit the trees."

Maybe Hillary can fix it just like Bubba did.

The way Bubba fixed the budget was actually quite ingenious and I doubt his Worst Lady can do the same.

Through a shrewd sleight of hand, when the Roth IRA was created, it included the option to "roll over" your traditional IRA and pay the taxes. Right a the peak of the tech bubble, Billion$ in previously untaxed money was rolled over and taxed at 30% of its market value (which happened to be close to the peak), the governments coffers were flooded with unplanned revenue, the budget appeared to be balanced and the sheeple were happy.

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by Fishpart

The way Bubba fixed the budget was actually quite ingenious and I doubt his Worst Lady can do the same.

Through a shrewd sleight of hand, when the Roth IRA was created, it included the option to "roll over" your traditional IRA and pay the taxes. Right a the peak of the tech bubble, Billion$ in previously untaxed money was rolled over and taxed at 30% of its market value (which happened to be close to the peak), the governments coffers were flooded with unplanned revenue, the budget appeared to be balanced and the sheeple were happy.

Yeah that option, which did not have an effect on the debt interest payment, was a one time thing which is no longer available. And the tech bubble burst anyway, so the illusory budget surplus was immediately cut in half and continued to dwindle into the Bush administration's budget problems which were exacerbated by 9/11. And the response to 9/11 required re-establishing a stronger military which had been diminished under Clinton, so needed more "spending" and stretching of the budget, etc., etc.

So, yeah, Clinton didn't "fix" anything, certainly not the rising national debt. The Clinton's were no less in bed with the big boys and big money than other politicians.

[justplugit]

Originally Posted by detbuch

So those little folks are the real fools who loan their earned money to the government and its big boy cronies, by voting to keep them in power and collectively paying the higher tax burden, by foolishly surrendering the power the birthright some distant Founders gave them, giving that power to government which repays the loan with worth less dependent strings attached. When you pledge your lives, your fortunes, and your sacred honor, not to secure liberty, but to secure promises of comfort based on a corrupt Ponzi scheme, your lives have less meaning and are less in your own hands, your fortunes dwindle in buying power and over-regulated personal ownership, and your honor no longer exists.

But generation to generation, change is not so noticeable. Humans, having a greater propensity and ability to adapt, find ways to be happy, to enjoy life in the circumstance to which they are born. Unfathomable things like trillions of dollars have no relation, no substance, seemingly, to their immediate, very flesh and blood real lives. They elect those other guys to take care of those complex things that no-one but "experts" can understand--government, business regulation, taxes, infrastructure, foreign relations, borders, and they seem to always do a good job. There's always some folks who complain about something, but none of it seems to make much sense, since things always wind up going along OK. Always doomsayers but no doom. Life is good.

What, me worry?

Great sum up of the sheep who believe that "it will never happen." As long as they get what the government "gives" them they don't care.
What me worry? As long as our leader Alfred E Newman plays golf during every crisis, including the one in Denmark, everything must be fine.