American Austerity, What could it look like?

Originally posted by XPLodER
reply to post by beezzer

 

The "social clock" needs to be rolled back NOW before auserity kicks in.

And if children are paying the price, it'll be due to the parents who skipped out on responsibility.

and the death of children are now justified in your eyes because the very poor damaged the economy,
oh wait wasn't it the banks that destroyed the economy?

you find the death of children acceptable?
because you hate the idea of wealfare?

i am sickened by you

childeren have no say in politics why should they bear the brunt of failed polices?

you are a sociopath, plain and simple

xploder

Wah.

Children are the responsibility of the parents. Nice. You want to blame ME for their failure?

Typical.

Originally posted by 00nunya00
reply to post by frazzle

 

No one is going to argue that Wall St didn't screw us, but seriously, they didn't create our budget, congress did. Our *elected* congress. And we can't solve our situation by *just* bringing down the financial PTB, because we'd still be left with that little problem of NOT HAVING ENOUGH MONEY TO COVER OUR BUDGET. That's worth fighting over, because we can unite all we want and we still won't be able to pay our bills. Seriously, how do you think we got into the mess of being beholden to the banks? We BORROWED our way into slavery. Because we couldn't balance the frigging budget. You think "they" exist without "our" letting them?

You can try to feel superior, but you still have no solutions besides "unite." Yeah, unite? Give us a plan for that, buddy.

edit on 17-5-2012 by 00nunya00 because: (no reason given)

The first thing you have to do to have a serious discussion is to READ what the other person is saying. From my post: Its like people can't see that "we" don't have a say in who gets screwed first, congress does, and they've already shown their intent to screw the people while saving the Pentagon and Wall Street.

Yeah, "they" do exist without our letting them. They can always count on Diebold and stupid people who's brains have been fried by the one eyed peephole into hell to keep them safe from ever having to pay for what they've done.

reply to post by beezzer


See, and we've gotten so far from why I brought the kids up-----not because I want to be the "somebody think of the children" person, but rather because it's an example of how ugly this crash will get. We will either have to walk past homeless kids wherever we go, or we will have to pay for them all to be taken away to orphanages. And if they're taken away, you set their parents' rage ablaze.

So my point is, either way, people will be in the streets. Either sleeping in them, or rioting in them. Blame to the side, the reality will be millions and millions more homeless people.

reply to post by 00nunya00
We either work to ease the inevitable suffering now, or kick the can down the road.

Either that or scrap the Constitution and change our country into a socialist state.

I am more concerned with what we look like after austerity. I think if things get pinched any tighter things will explode in a very negative way. Corporations will take the brunt of it and likely won't be able to exist in anything near their current form. What will emerge will go way past socialist in nature. If they were smart they would start giving up some of their profit to avoid the inevitable loss of all of it. Although we as a people may be better off having things come to a head sooner than later.

reply to post by beezzer


I don't think we've got a whole lot of road left to kick that can down. I don't think there's really any time left to ease anything. It's not going to be future generations, it's going to be us.

reply to post by frazzle


And the second step in that discussion is reading comprehension.

You're arguing that congress is not "us" and that we have no power over them. I beg to differ. I'm not talking about voting, I'm talking about allowing one or two votes per year to be our only exercise in control over them. We have so many more options than that. Not popular, but options. Options we've all but thrown out by this point, when we need them the most. We can poop on OWS or the TP or whoever else, but at least they're reminding us that we DO have other options besides slogging to the polls year after year voting for the same damn person.

You'll see massive cutbacks on spending for programs for the middle classes and the poor, while the rich enjoy further tax cuts.

This is what has happened in the United Kingdom, in their so called "Austerity Budget". Massive cuts affecting heath care, child care, senior care, transportation, welfare benefits, arts and science programs, education, policing, and many other services, while the highest rate of income tax drops from 50% to 45%.

It will be a similar scene in the United States, once the realization that you can't indefinitely continue to spend nearly $2 trillion a year (or 15 - 20% over budget) more than you have hits home. Cuts in the USA would have to equal around $20 TRILLION over the next 10 years to even get close to just BREAKING EVEN. Right now the GOP and Dems can't agree on TWO trillion in cuts over 20 years, and they need at least ten times that.

If you run a household 15-20% over budget for at least 15-20 years, you lose the house, car, likely marriage, and find yourself with absolutely nothing to show for the mountain of debt that you have accumulated, if you can even go this long. Likely you would have to stop after 2-5 years.

The LAST THING that the GOP will approve is the expiration of the unfunded Bush tax cuts for the richest Americans, or cuts in the massively over inflated military, but they will gladly decimate all other social spending.

GOP will gladly kybash any reform for health care (as they are in the back pocket of pharmaceutical companies).

The one area that I agree with the GOP on cutting is farm subsidies, which for decades have been subsidizing the growing of crops that can't be used for food, for example, corn for Ethanol and High Fructose Corn Syrup, which isn't edible. Why the US Government pays farmers a bonus to grow crops we can't eat is beyond me.

Eventually, the USA will realize that the only way to pay their creditors is to print more unbacked currency, and before long, creditors will likely only accept payment from the USA in Gold. US dollar is going to become worthless if the USA continues down their current spending path.

Originally posted by 00nunya00
reply to post by frazzle

 

And the second step in that discussion is reading comprehension.

You're arguing that congress is not "us" and that we have no power over them. I beg to differ. I'm not talking about voting, I'm talking about allowing one or two votes per year to be our only exercise in control over them. We have so many more options than that. Not popular, but options. Options we've all but thrown out by this point, when we need them the most. We can poop on OWS or the TP or whoever else, but at least they're reminding us that we DO have other options besides slogging to the polls year after year voting for the same damn person.[.

The bottom line is that you are correct, but most Americans are apathetic. Congress has had a single digit approval rating for the last few years, but over 80% of Congresspeople get reelected every single time.

Most Americans have been brainwashed into going out to vote the same way every time, without even looking at the candidates or the issues very closely. Only about 5% of voters from either side actually care enough to go look into what their candidates policy positions actually are.

Originally posted by 00nunya00
reply to post by frazzle

 

And the second step in that discussion is reading comprehension.

You're arguing that congress is not "us" and that we have no power over them. I beg to differ. I'm not talking about voting, I'm talking about allowing one or two votes per year to be our only exercise in control over them. We have so many more options than that. Not popular, but options. Options we've all but thrown out by this point, when we need them the most. We can poop on OWS or the TP or whoever else, but at least they're reminding us that we DO have other options besides slogging to the polls year after year voting for the same damn person.

edit on 17-5-2012 by 00nunya00 because: (no reason given)

Remember back when the majority of "us" were burning up the phone lines demanding congress NOT pass TARP? I heard the calls were 10-1 against it. So who did they listen to, us? And much of that fund ended up going to foreign banks. So tell me how many of those "representatives" who voted to load us down with more debt, against our will, were voted out in 2010?

We apparently do agree that voting doesn't do what the founders thought it should and I don't 'poop' on anyone who stands up to the founder's corrupt successors. But 'they' whom we allegedly elect are NOT us and when they make peaceful revolution impossible, they make violent revolution inevitable. I hate to think about it but austerity will seem gentle in comparison to what we can expect at that point, which is why it hasn't happened yet.

reply to post by frazzle


Exactly, they've made peaceful revolution impossible, but we LET them! We didn't just wake up one day in a police state, we let every single step of this journey happen without fighting back until we made sure it didn't. We can't throw our hands up and say it's all "their" fault, because there's 300 million of us! To how many of them? We HAVE the power, we have the raw brute force power, but we give it away by bickering and believing that the next vote will change something. It never does. Action does, but we don't take it. We can't blame that on anyone but ourselves. No one will change the BS until WE do.

Originally posted by AnIntellectualRedneck
It's going to look like a situation where we will suddenly understand why these folks about 400 million rounds of ammunition.

I know a lot of these hardcore libertarians think it will be a paradise, but they're insane. It's going to be a situation where you have less help but gain no freedom of bygone eras.

These laws making growing your own crops difficult, living off the grid, and other such things aren't going to magically go away because we get rid of welfare. The basic point is that we're going to have about a quarter of the population not being able to feed or house themselves because they don't have government help, and they don't have the freedom to help themselves.

social programs will always be around even though i'm not a fan. but i do think it's obvious we HAVE to ween ourselves off at the very least SOME of them. it's not sustainable, which should be blatantly obvious. if we are going to have some of these social programs we have to set them up with a realistic goal on how they will be funded without taxing the living piss out of people. somehow the left will have to realize that some parts of government will have to go and the right will have to give in that some social programs will have to stay. i'm not a fan of them at all but this is a democracy, not everyone thinks alike and we MUST come to terms with this.

by the way, maybe we could fund some these social programs that some people "just have to have" if we changed our foreign policy?

reply to post by The Sword


How many people who tried to get rid of the Fed are now dead?

Originally posted by 00nunya00
reply to post by frazzle

 

Exactly, they've made peaceful revolution impossible, but we LET them! We didn't just wake up one day in a police state, we let every single step of this journey happen without fighting back until we made sure it didn't. We can't throw our hands up and say it's all "their" fault, because there's 300 million of us! To how many of them? We HAVE the power, we have the raw brute force power, but we give it away by bickering and believing that the next vote will change something. It never does. Action does, but we don't take it. We can't blame that on anyone but ourselves. No one will change the BS until WE do.

edit on 17-5-2012 by 00nunya00 because: (no reason given)

No, we didn't let them, what's happening now began in 1913, before any of us were born, and people didn't KNOW what was happening because the news media didn't inform them.

In the 1930s Louis McFadden, who was the chairman of the house banking committee, put out the warnings. To dead silence. No one heard his warnings because the media gagged his speeches on the house floor. home.hiwaay.net...

In the 1950s John Swinton spoke before the New York Press Club and blasted the whole bunch of them saying: "There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.'
www.constitution.org...

Its easy to say we all know now. We have the internet. Before that, anyone saying the things we're saying now was looked upon as if he had three heads. That's personal experience talking.

Where have I advised against reacting to the hundred years worth of abuses? Heck, I'm still in favor of those guys who have been trying to protect the homeland since 1492 from the people the rest of us only realized lately are the ones we really need protection from.

America has gotten fat and lazy. That has in turn brought on some serious health problems. Such as;

Welfare.

No one of able body should get a check for staying at home and not working. Need the State to take care of you? Fine the yellow bus will be at your house at 6:00am to go to work somewhere doing something. You have to reshape peoples habits to make worthless unproductive fat lazy breeders into productive citizens.

IRS: All the loopholes (many that I am guilty of taking advantage of) that allow businesses to avoid paying their fair share of taxes should be closed. A flat tax system based solely on goods purchased (excluding food) should replaced the bloated tax code. This system would not allow ANY write-offs. You pay tax for what you buy, period! Drug dealers, big pharma, business, everyone pays the same rate for goods purchased. It hits everyone equally as poor people don't buy as many goods as do wealthy ones.

Foreign Aid - Suspend all foreign aid immediately. We can't afford to pay others bills when we are clearly not paying our own.

Military cuts - Must be massive and immediate. We do not need any new tanks, airplanes or ships until the old ones are gone. End the war on terror overseas. Protecting Americans inside America should be priority number one. One could argue the security of our Nation depends on foreign oil so we have to have a presence elsewhere. I would argue that we could solve our energy needs domestically.

Offshore jobs - Simply ban hiring cheap labor outside the USA. We have all the cheap labor we need as it will take a while to ween people off of welfare. We can build call centers in the projects, here comes the yellow bus!

Oh if I were King..............

Sadly this entire house of cards is going to have to hit the floor before people wake up and demand what is right. Collapse will not come suddenly, it will come in the night and steal away your quality of life. Kinda like a fat person does not realize how bad it's getting until it is to late.

reply to post by frazzle


Okay, so we all got duped, we should just give up because we didn't get ourselves into this mess at all, demanding the ever-increasing government expansions that have gotten us into the borrowing quagmire. It was all because the Fed took over, and we all know they're too powerful to take down so we're screwed, right?

That's the kind of attitude that continues to keep us here. Blaming everyone else and not actually doing anything about it because of these "illuminati" excuses. How's that working for us?

reply to post by 00nunya00


Why do you keep insisting that I want to "throw up my hands" and "give up"? Nowhere will you find those words besides in your own posts. I am merely saying that if you want to fix something its a good idea to know how it broke in the first place.

For the past 20 years I have been advising people to "unite" just for long enough to pack up all those fake chits we call money and ship them back to the federal reserve and start over with a currency of OUR OWN creation. Blank stares.

It will look like this.

1.bp.blogspot.com...

www.wackyarchives.com...

A impoverished slave class conveniently located next to their masters compounds...

The USA will become like Mexico is now, with crime and drugs to suppliment income, Gangs or Hoods where police don't go, Anarchy will become common place after a decade or so, the fabric of society will unravel. Where a vacuum exists, lawlessness will prevail to a more significant degree.

Lets get one thing straight, Social Security was bought and paid for with my cash money, mine and my employer, money I made and taken out by the government it is NOT charity or an entitlement....... you got that!! It was STOLEN from me by the government starting in the Clinton administration......... that National debt surplus that the Dems say he left office achieving, it was funds from SS diverted to the treasury to spend on everything.....stolen from me and every other one due to recieve SS.

reply to post by frazzle


Okay, well I'm with you on that as one of our solutions. Yes, ending the Fed would be a good start, but we still can't afford to go right back to a huge defense budget, never-ending social programs, and ever-expanding government. Ending the Fed won't solve half our problems. Not that we shouldn't do it, but it's not the end-all be-all of solutions.