[quote]Sloth wrote:
Just an idea of how bad spending has gotten.
Our own GAO predicts that in 2040 we could be left with with doing the following in order to balance the budget:
-Raising Federal Taxes twice their present level
-Cutting spending by 60%[/quote]
Do you have a link to this? I want to read.
[quote]skaz05 wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Just an idea of how bad spending has gotten.
Our own GAO predicts that in 2040 we could be left with with doing the following in order to balance the budget:
-Raising Federal Taxes twice their present level
-Cutting spending by 60%
Do you have a link to this? I want to read.[/quote]
For all the negatives of the U.S. that everybody focuses on, I think our country is still doing a fantastic job overall.
I find that the comparisons to past empires by amateur historians to be both amusing and tiresome. Yes, there are some parallels between Ancient Rome and the contemporary U.S… But for every similarity, you could find a dozen differences significant enough to make direct comparisons erroneous. To hold up the Fall of Rome as evidence of impending doom for the U.S. is foolish.
I think the media focuses on the negativity to sell papers, and the effect is that the Crises per diem is vastly overstated, and the positive flip-side is ignored.
For every family that had their house foreclosed recently, there are two or three who just moved into their dream home. For every factory worker in Ohio who lost his job, there are two or three who just started working in the new Nucor plant in North Carolina. For every job lost to outsourcing, there are two or three generated by new business ventures.
Little known fact: Manufacturing production in the United States is and pretty much always has been growing! Yet if you listened to the doom-and-gloom news, you’d think the U.S. hasn’t built a damn thing in twenty years.
In my area, all I see is growth and construction. Every time I visit my hometown, there’s a new store or housing addition being built.
People talk about how hard it is to find work, and yet I see hundreds, thousands of job openings in my city in the news paper, on job sites, and in the Career Placement office of the local University.
The ubiquitous “high schooler who can’t find Canada on a map!” is an urban myth, from my experience. I deal a lot with high schoolers and college students, and I don’t notice them being appreciably less educated than the older models. I think most of you are overestimating just how much you knew at 18.
Another pet issue of mine: Where is this “vanishing middle class” everybody keeps moaning about? Where is it? When I look around, I notice that only about 95% of people I see are in this vanishing middle class. (The vast majority of the remainder, by the way, I’d classify as wealthy.) You’d think it’s be a hell of lot less than that, judging from the CRISIS! rhetoric I keep hearing in the media.
Fact is, the U.S. economy has not even stalled. The GDP is still growing! All this economic doom and gloom is based on the fact that the GDP’s rate of growth has slowed!
Hell, the rate of growth hasn’t even hit zero yet, and people are talking about the end of days!
Even when it does start shrinking, that’s not a sign of the end-times, it’s an opportunity to jump in the market and make your own money!
The bottom line is this: the U.S. has some warts that I think need to be addressed, but the people that think we’re dying need to get their noses out of a newspaper or internet blog and look around the real world to see that we’re doing pretty fucking well.
The “America” I hear and read about in the media does not closely resemble the America I see when I walk out the door, thus I think the predictions of imminent American doom are wildly premature.
I think America’s future is pretty bright.
Just because currently it’s got a shit president, the US isn’t on the decline. It’s a great country with a strong democratic tradition, and there’s every chance it is going to rebound from some of its more problematic policies. Yes, it’s a superpower and with that there will always be a certain amount of hybris and every of its moves will impact others. I’m looking forward to the end of the Bush administration - and many Americans will be surprised how much that will help with the country’s image. So, slightly misappropriating the words of german rapper Thomas D: I see a positive future, because I’m an optimist. 
You cannot continually spend more than you earn.
It is this, the refusal to accept reality, that has doomed us. Not stupidity, but the deliberate refusal to see.
The philosophers who taught that reality is plastic, that reality is what YOU want to make it, that there are no firm principles, that majority opinion is more important than perception, that there is no right or wrong, that one culture is as good as another, that the phrase ‘Who am I to know?’ is the starting point of knowledge — theirs is the guilt beyond all forgiveness.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Comparing empires to the USA is a challenge, because the leaders here, ostensibly, function at the will of the people, not at the will of the Praetorian Guard.
[/quote]
True, and how long has America been a world power to be reckoned with? 60 years? Rome was an Empire for centuries before it collapsed.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
skaz05 wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Just an idea of how bad spending has gotten.
Our own GAO predicts that in 2040 we could be left with with doing the following in order to balance the budget:
-Raising Federal Taxes twice their present level
-Cutting spending by 60%
Do you have a link to this? I want to read.
http://www.gao.gov/cghome/d08524cg.pdf [/quote]
Holy Cow! Thanks!
Upon reading this, I propose that we simply kill off all old people!
There! No more social security, medicaid, and medicare to pay out!
Problem solved! You can thank me later! 
The preceding post was a JOKE. Please don’t take it seriously.
[quote]skaz05 wrote:
Sloth wrote:
skaz05 wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Just an idea of how bad spending has gotten.
Our own GAO predicts that in 2040 we could be left with with doing the following in order to balance the budget:
-Raising Federal Taxes twice their present level
-Cutting spending by 60%
Do you have a link to this? I want to read.
http://www.gao.gov/cghome/d08524cg.pdf
Holy Cow! Thanks!
Upon reading this, I propose that we simply kill off all old people!
There! No more social security, medicaid, and medicare to pay out!
Problem solved! You can thank me later!
The preceding post was a JOKE. Please don’t take it seriously.[/quote]
That is the heart of the problem right there. People are living longer and we have promised them a long happy retirement where they don’t have to do shit anymore and will get top of the line medical care that will add 2 months to their lives and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It doesn’t make sense.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
That is the heart of the problem right there. People are living longer and we have promised them a long happy retirement where they don’t have to do shit anymore and will get top of the line medical care that will add 2 months to their lives and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It doesn’t make sense.[/quote]
Its entropy.
We could aim for a society where intact families, and offspring, are once again the norm. There’s a radical idea that if families produce offspring, and families are expected to take care of their elderly…Nah, let’s all buy expensive wardrobes, another brand new car, and let government take care of our parents. We got some partying to do, and some goods to acquire!
[quote]skaz05 wrote:
Sloth wrote:
skaz05 wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Just an idea of how bad spending has gotten.
Our own GAO predicts that in 2040 we could be left with with doing the following in order to balance the budget:
-Raising Federal Taxes twice their present level
-Cutting spending by 60%
Do you have a link to this? I want to read.
http://www.gao.gov/cghome/d08524cg.pdf
Holy Cow! Thanks!
Upon reading this, I propose that we simply kill off all old people!
There! No more social security, medicaid, and medicare to pay out!
Problem solved! You can thank me later!
The preceding post was a JOKE. Please don’t take it seriously.[/quote]
shit, i killed my grandparents before i got to the last line
America’s future is bright. As soon as we can start producing a useable hydrogen fuel cell car BOOM! It’ll be like the micro chip all over again.
Not to mention it will also solve some middle east problems, as they won’t have us by the nuts anymore.
True the debt is alarming, but hell, if we stop the war (lowers spending) we can work back to a more managable level.
Then again, if we start universal health care we’re going to bankrupt the system in our life time.
[quote]Agressive Napkin wrote:
Then again, if we start universal health care we’re going to bankrupt the system in our life time.[/quote]
Maybe you have hit on something. Maybe Bush knew that gov’t healthcare could only be stopped by the undeniable fact that we are in too much debt.
Maybe he ran up the debt to stop the fed from taking over what will soon be 20% of the economy.
[quote]skaz05 wrote:
Upon reading this, I propose that we simply kill off all old people! [/quote]
And turn them into protein-packed green goodies.
Slurp!
Soylent green is people!!!