If you hated the bank bailout...
...wait until we're sending 'em $1 trillion/year in interest payments:
That's the upshot of this graph from today's Wall Street Journal article "Voters back tough steps to reduce budget deficit." If you think of the national debt as the balance on your credit card, the net interest is the minimum payment due which will be an estimated whopping $1 trillion/year in 2020 once all the Baby Boomers are on the dole.
What do we get for that trillion dollars? Not a shiny new aircraft carrier, not an army of Border Patrol officers, not even a clean new bed at the VA Hospital. We get to maintain our credit rating, backed by the "full faith" of the U.S. government. Whoopee.
5 comments:
These are the very same individuals back in the late '60's-and early '70's that demanded the government shut down all capitalistic support, screamed "Yippee" in the streets, chanted "Hell no we won't go" and called me a baby killer. They voted in the likes of LBJ, Leahy, Carter and the rest of those thieves. Had a huge celebration when Nixon resigned.
It seems they actually got what they wanted. Now they don't like it!
Well I'm not a boomer (older) with just enough money in the bank for the gummint to look at and is refreshed with your tax dollars, tax free to me. Rest assured I don't leave much there to tempt them. The rest is prudently placed where they cannot see or get at it. Galt was one smart cookie, Anonymous.
This is a serious, non-confrontational question: What do we think McCain would have done differently? Smaller stimulus, less commitment to Afghanistan, more tax cuts, snazzier rhetoric? Surely he wouldn't have ensnared himself in health care reform, but so far that has cost only time and energy, not money. I'm disappointed in the Dems, but I'm a long way from thinking that the GOP is any clearer-eyed about keeping the deficit under control.
Eric, a serious question gets a serious response, every time.
I agree with you. McCain had no clue as to what he wanted to do except Donkey Lite. People that stand in the middle of the road get hit by traffic going both ways. That's condign.
I have no faith in the Republicants; all wish to keep their tukis in DC and their face in the public trough. There are some exceptions, if you have all your fingers on your hands, you can count them.
What do I really think? I think we're going to have guns in the streets and that scares the hell out of me. I'm a combat Vet two tours in Nam (1/5SF) along with Hotspur over at NER. He thinks the same thing. It scares him. Civil wars aren't civil.
We, as a nation, have become too polarized. The middle is a batch of mushwits who are not educated. Yeah, they went to school, but they cannot tell you why they vote for or against someone except that something wasn't "fair" in life. Rinse and repeat.
They were going to vote for McCain? They didn't because he couldn't string two reasons together to even listen to him. Palin pulled his fat out of the fire; she delivered a message that people wanted to hear. Whether you agree or not, she delivers from the gut. I like her; I don't know that I would vote for her.
The Elephants are going to drag out the same tired bunch of Dumbos that showed up in NH last time. Gingrich, Huckleberry, Romney and maybe for giggles they'll get PeeWee Herman. Can you see any of that crowd bringing down the roof with a different message?
Both parties are the same; one is in, the other is out and they like it that way. The shadow government doesn't want change, they control the money. Look up the Rothschild quote about they rather be the bankers.
My doppleganger: well, two things I can think of off the top of my head.
First, no stimulus which channeled almost a trillion dollars mostly to overextended states that used it to pay down debt (looking at you CA) rather than stimulating growth. If McCain had to blow a trillion, he probably would have chosen tax cuts which may or may not have had the same effect.
Second, I don't think you can underestimate how the health care bill - with its impenetrable language and array of corporate requirements - has hurt businesses large and small. Big companies like AT&T had to write down a billion dollars and small companies are frozen scared of hiring due to regulations and pending tax increases.
My feeling is that while Reagan caused a lot of pain in the early 80's with monetary policy, he squeezed a lot of bad elements out of the economy including knocking inflation down from 13% to 3%, then jobs came roaring back. Obama tried to buy a recovery and we now have another trillion in debt, a $1.5 trillion annual deficit, and 9.5% unemployment.
McCain might not have done better? Maybe, but it's hard to see how he could have done worse.
"...[]...If McCain had to blow a trillion..."
I'm not so sure he would have devoted all that to tax cuts. Don't forget he is/was big on amnesty, so something has to figure in to costs there.
That stimulus will show up now as grease for candidates going into tough races. Most of it hasn't been spent, never was intended to be used for anything else.
If ObamaCare isn't A) repealed or B) declared unconstitutional in part it will finish off the economy as surely as the October Revolution ridded Russia of the Czars.
I think Reagan's error was not slamming the Congress with spending cuts; they thought he had the power. Instead he tried to starve the programs. That's like gently setting a dislocated shoulder or jammed thumb. Pain, oh yes serious pain, but nothing like what is coming at us now.
Obama, I think of as Nehemiah Scudder from "If this goes on..." Heinlein http://issuepedia.org /Nehemiah_Scudder whereas most people think of Bush. If you are not familiar, this was written in the 40's, reading it now is chilling.
McCain is an alternate universe. He is at best a RINO which leaves one with nothing.
Social Conservatives and Liberals are cut of the same cloth; the first is in your bedroom, the others are in the rest of your house.
Libertarians/fiscal conservatives and the hell with the drug bit. That is a red herring tossed up to keep people from looking at the policies.
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