The wealthier and more leisured American society has become, the more it has developed some terrible habits that will have to end if we are going to return to fiscal sobriety and a unified culture. I am pessimistic on that count, but here are a few examples:
1) The Administrative Fig Leaf of Cosmic Justice
I was always curious when teaching in the California State University system why self-important administrators sent us weekly memos about their diversity goals and accomplishments, but were silent that under their watches the number of students in the freshman class who needed remedial courses hit 50% — or why, after even six years, less than half those students who entered CSU graduated. Have you experienced this phenomenon, a sort of politically correct Neroian fiddling amid burning Rome?
NASA head Charles Bolden not long ago announced that his agency’s chief mission was Muslim outreach. I wish instead that his chief worry was getting rockets into space, since last week yet another one, under NASA auspices, failed to send a satellite into orbit, a mere $424 million mistake. Perhaps with his newfound contacts, Gen. Bolden could enlist some of the brilliant scientists from the Middle East who have tapped into the Islamic scientific tradition as outlined in the president’s Cairo speech.
Why did Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik lecture the country about the social-political-economic-cultural — and cosmic — implications of the unhinged Tucson killer, Jared Loughner? Might not the sheriff have worried less about a supposed conservative “climate of violence,” and more that he did not have any of his 500 sheriffs at Rep. Giffords’ rally, or that his department was well aware of Loughner’s prior serial run-ins with law enforcement? Did Rush Limbaugh prohibit him from putting Loughner under surveillance or patrolling the perimeter of the congresswoman’s event?
Mayor Bloomberg by now can offer a polished lecture on dietary fat, second-hand smoke, and the status of Islam in the United States, but not guarantee his own streets will be passable after a storm. Were his municipal workers too fat, out of breath, or Islamophobic to remove snow?
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pontificated about green energy for years and other cosmic crises, but he left the state with a $25 billion shortfall and upped our long-term debt obligations by tens of billions of dollars. Was the idea that the income from the leasing of land for solar panels and wind machines would pay down the debt?
In short, we live in a medieval age of politically correct penance — as the brilliant Al Gore grasped when he made millions hawking carbon footprint offsets — in which loud abstractions can mask concrete incompetence. I suppose when my plumber starts lecturing me about the secular nature of the Muslim Brotherhood, I should assume he did not find the leak under the house.
2) The Angst of the Liberal Mind
I was politely pointing out to an acquaintance not long ago that many of California’s problems — soaring Medicare and Medicaid costs, near-bottom in national school rankings, flight of the affluent out of state, soaring prison populations, hyper-expensive law enforcement costs, high taxes, and swamped public bureaucracies — had at least something to do with the fact California has more illegal aliens than any other state, meaning that social services spike, tax revenue per capita plummets, and billions of dollars leave the state to Mexico in remittances. I did not locate the assessment in an ethnic context, but simply pointed out that it is hard (and costly for others) for millions en masse to integrate into a sophisticated society without legality (when the first thing that an arriving immigrant does is to break the law of his host, then the violation of subsequent laws is logical rather than aberrant), English, or a high school diploma, and that such disadvantages both ripple into a second generation and require a humane society to make enormous investments to ensure parities — or else.
I added to statistical evidence a few anecdotes from what I saw cycling in rural central California — especially my most recent (and probably last) bicycle ride 10 days ago. A huge concrete irrigation standpipe was knocked off its base by a hit-and-run driver. Two men were tossing out from a pick-up a built-in dishwasher onto the side of the road. A no-dumping sign at a rural pond had three fresh garbage bags at its base. And, oh yes, there was my own modest first-hand bit of research. I rode by a small house, or should say “houses,” since it seemed about 30 people lived in various garages, sheds, and Winnebagos at a single address. Eight unleashed, unfenced Chihuahuas and Pekingese dogs ran out (Don’t laugh, I concede at the outset that they were not pit bulls). All chased me (riders can attest that the tiny dog under the wheel is as dangerous as the bigger dog by the pedal.) Note I don’t wear bike “garb,” but old sweat pants, flannel shirt, and work gloves.
Ah yes, living on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius in 78AD, spending long, languid evenings evaluating the latest vintage, and laying it down in the cellar to mature.
“Ah, this is so fine,” exclaimed the man delightfully as he fell past the 24th story on the way to the 23rd, “I’m flying!”
But the sidewalk was waiting in the end nevertheless…
Ahhhhhhhh…..my friend. Quite a beautiful metaphor. I think I shall borrow it.
Thanks,
Abdul
Exclaimed the falling man as he plunged past the 24th story, “So far, so good!”
But seriously, Hanson, as a longtime fan, I’m glad you’re rethinking these bike rides of the damned. Every time you pause to scold some rulacho for dumping trash at the roadside, I worry that I’ve read my last “Work and Days.”
And going up to that house to complain sounded much more dangerous than tumbling over the filthy little dog…
Explains the Obama “Superman” myth. As he dove down from the heights in his cape, everyone thought he could fly; it’s only when we heard the “splat” that we realized he can’t.
He dove off a very tall building. Some think he’s still flying. But he should reach the pavement soon, just the same.
How does one not weep, curl up and hope for the Peace that comes with timeless sleep?
I’m not being rhetorical.
How do I tell myself that the end is not nigh for me and mine? For I see nothing on the horizon that gives me any hope whatsoever.
Hopefully, coming soon onto the American Presidential political scene, will be a smart candidate who will offer you an advisory, kitchen cabinet, serious position for policy formation and effective communication to we, the voters.
I’ve been thinking of a Sarah Palin, Alan West ticket: Kind of has a double barrel shotgun approach.
Think of “frontier Mom” riding with “Ward Bond” of Wagon Train coming into your view, over the horizon.
RJ:
Why wish for a pseudo when the real deal exists. How about Victor Davis Hanson for President, Sarah Palin for secretary of oil drilling and Alan West for whatever else needs doing? Victor Davis Hanson in 2012.
While I admire and respect VDH for his great mind, verbal and writing skills that hit their target time and again….I don’t think he’s much of an “in your face” warrior as West and Palin are.
It’s one thing to talk / write a good game….but I’ve heard West and Palin…..and these two are bonafide ass kickers. Which we need right now. I want the world to fear us…not offer us a Pulitzer….pfffffft.
Why stop at Palin/Webb- Cain-Bachman or Bachman-Cain wouldn’t be bad either.
I must confess that seeing Allen Webb dress down the representative of “CAIR” in a town hall meeting last week was just a wonderful moment. Having been on the receiving side of one of those diatribes from a West Point Graduate during the Vietnam War ( no I was not a combst vet) I was glad it was not I receiving the brunt of Congressman Webb’s comments. The CAIR rep deserved everthing he got plus more.
“… ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished …”
But, alas, for all the reasons VDH cites here and heretofore, it won’t be.
The Huns are already in the palace.
Run! It’s all over but the final rush of the Barbarians.
It’s the only “diversity ticket” that the Left would never vote for.
While I love Sarah and her message, I believe her best position is as a lightning rod for all the hate and venom from the left.
I absolutely love the prospect of Lt. Col. Allen West on a national ticket.
John Bolton for President!
Victor Davis Hanson for… Secretary of State!
In regards to your first point I have found that as Leftist institutions and leaders fail at their primary tasks they take comfort in promoting some secondary task to make themselves feel and look good. With these secondary tasks progress is either completely unmeasurable or something that can only truly be measured in the distant future. It doesn’t take long before these institutions are in a vicious cycle where the diversion of resources to the secondary tasks further hurts progress towards the primary task, and the goals of the secondary tasks are doubled down on instead of abandoned.
JDWinston, I have noticed the same phenomenon and I’m looking for an explanation. For instance, the average American college senior cannot pass a basic test in American history. At least a third of new college graduates take jobs which do not require a college degree, yet the average graduate owes $25,000 in student loans. So, what do the colleges do about it? They create Offices of Sustainability, as if college campuses were some sort of environmental threat. The California Assembly was debating the legal rights of people who have attempted to change their sex by surgery at the same time the state sank tens of billions of dollars farther in debt. The Presbyterian Church USA has lost one-fifth of its membership in the past twenty years. Their response? They deliberate on whether or not to ordain homosexual people and decide in the affirmative. Truly, a case of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Why do they attend to tangential issues–because they feel unequal to the central ones? Or unable to tell the difference?
Read the “Peter Principle” it explains all of the gov’t incompetence to a tee.
Simple round up, “They have been promoted to their level of incompetence.”
An excellent suggestion; it’s very easy to recognize the underlying principle from up close. If you’ve ever had a boss who micro-manages everyone he supervises yet fails to get much more important work done you’ve seen it first hand. It comes from a lack of confidence. When the manager looks at the real problems they seem too large to tackle, and so they focus on things they reckon are within their abilities, and so make everything worse.
I personally think it comes from a philosophical fallacy. What some call ‘management theory’ is also the default mindset of the leftist, and it is intrinsically false. Leadership is pointing out the direction, encouraging others to follow, and then actually LEADING the way. Management is a conceit that somehow a human being can expand his brain enough to ‘manage’ others into perfection from a position of complete safety and little risk. Just ask your the boss of your boss why they want a new procedure when the problem is just a plain old goof. After the lecture there will be no reason, because no amount of management can remove human nature. People get tired, they get irritated and frustrated and worried and distracted. They really can’t stay awake for 2-3 days and still keep their brains functioning at 100%. Management theory, recently termed ‘Taylorism’ by Michael Barone, is based on the assumption that human beings can be parts of a machine. They cannot. What needs to be done, in corporate America as well as the government, is to ‘release the legions.’
Professor VDH would of course know what I’m talking about. In Roman legions the general would direct the battle until there came a time when communications broke down, the cohorts were fully engaged, and he really became a spectator. Then he would order to the trumpets to sound the release, giving each centurion, primus pilus, or even tessarius the legal authority to make battle decisions without consulting higher authority.
The real key to Roman military success–let the guy closest to the problem make the call. This is how the ‘unstoppable’ Macedonian phalanx discovered it could be stopped. It worked the same way in the larger sense too. Governors and general made decisions on their own, and consulted Rome about it later. Pliny the Younger’s letters to the Emperor are a good example of this. Management revolves around fear, while courage is essential to leadership. What we need are leaders at every level of life, and managers should be relegated to their proper positions; adjutants to the leadership. Toadies have an important place in life, but should never EVER be ‘in charge.’
“If you’ve ever had a boss who micro-manages everyone he supervises yet fails to get much more important work done you’ve seen it first hand. It comes from a lack of confidence. When the manager looks at the real problems they seem too large to tackle, and so they focus on things they reckon are within their abilities, and so make everything worse.”
In the Marines, we called such as they “rock-painters”. In a Marine Infantry company, there is usually a junior NCO who is designated as the Police Sergeant, and who is tasked with taking care of the company grounds. Invariably a newly appointed Police Sergeant will cause all the rocks in the company area to be painted a different color. This is solely to advertise the fact that the company indeed has a new Police Sergeant. This universal Police Sergeant habit was recognized so long ago that “rock-painting” entered Marine Corps lexicon as any job of work that was inherently pointless other than serving as a job of work.
A “rock-painter” will also usually engage in the most basic function of even the most incompetent supervisor…”clock-watching”. A supervisor may be a totally incompetent nincompoop in every single circumstance that he may face, but he can watch the clock and note if you arrive late or leave early.
Of course, his clock-watching engenders everyone under his supervision to clock-watch too…which means he ends up with a crew that shows up promptly and leaves exactly at the appointed time, and does dick-all in between, (if they don’t jump ship on him by stealing the lifeboat in the middle of the night).
The lack of confidence that you note is a symptom of a lack of competence. This is a function of our society preferring “Education” over “Experience”.
If you’ve “been there-done that”, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect, but if you’ve only read about it in books or seen it in a film, you are terrified and hide your insecurity in the displacement behaviors of clock-watching and rock-painting.
“For instance, the average American college senior cannot pass a basic test in American history.”
Well Jack you nailed it in IMHO. Few kids or adults have even a smattering of an understanding of world or American history. That in itself is much of the reason why we keep marching to the left and political correctness. None of these kids know a thing about totalitarianism, communism, fascism, or capitalism for that matter. Indeed the first three are something that can only happen in OTHER COUNTRIES. We here in America will do it fair and right unlike THEM and live happily ever after.
Clueless they are. The world is mad and we may be doomed to once again repeat our human historic past. Let’s hope there are enough of us left to turn the wagon around before we go over the cliff.
Well said. I also have long noted and questioned those same amorphous, non-measurable, and unattainable goals in bureaucracies that seek to avoid tangible evaluation of their purpose. One particularly annoying example, proudly displayed in a billboard-sized logo on the side of a local elementary school, is the school’s motto: “Our Children’s Future is Our Mission”.
Really?
Setting aside for the moment that “the children” are used to justify an incredible array of questionable public spending, policies and programs, I don’t understand how the school can claim, with a straight face or in honest reflection, that its mission is the children’s future. Talk about self-aggrandizing and generalized overreach.
Literacy as an educational mission is good. Academic excellence is better. Fiscally responsible academic excellence is best. But the children’s “future”? All of the children at the school are going to have a future–longer or shorter and for better or worse–with or without the school district. I rather think that, despite the mission-creep of publicly funded education to such an extent that it now includes everything from meals, to health services and psychological counseling, the children’s future is the mission of the children’s parents.
from Wiki-The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to appreciate their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence. Competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. “Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”
The left in a nutshell. They’re too stupid to realise they are stupid.
‘burger
As they say the first generation plants it, the second grows it and the third
expends it all. Here we are, we not only expending our inheritance we also
ripping off our kids future.
Victor, I’m older than you and a lycra-clad cyclist who’s tumbled many a time, most recently with multiple fractures of my pelvis. I agree that small dogs seem more a threat than the Rottweiler vectoring on your upper leg. Country roads without defined shoulders are indeed a problem…but legally (not much solace as you lay in pain staring up at the sky) you have the right-of-way of any other vehicle. Likewise a Valley resident, I cycle past Spanish speaking enclaves replete with roaming chickens, sub-code wiring, apparently no trash pick-up, etc. It is not condescending to say they seem indigestible anomalies that, despite well voiced sympathy from many, stick and accumulate in our cultural/social craw.
I daily teach “multicultural” (mostly that means English Learner Hispanic children) and can testify to the difficulty, expense, and methodological contortions put on my school. Despite ardent, egalitarian-based denials by administration, our curriculum is “dumbed-down” of necessity brought on by the needs of a growing majority of such students.
Narrow, blind intersection country roads are no treat to ride, but I’ll be sorry if you don’t continue. Perhaps the canal banks? A friend crashed after a squirrel got caught in his spokes. Something to chuckle over– after healing.
My rear spokes picked up a snake once, then whipped me across the — um — spandex with it.
Very exciting.
The political liberal Left is obsessed and convinced that all cultures are equal and will surround a minority student with piles of money and 10 personal tutors to prove it.
Outstanding essay – one of your best because it seems so obvious in retrospect and captures something essential, but doesn’t seem to have been said in just this way before.
A sure sign we have slid off the edge is every form of media fixated on
the slow motion train wreck called Charlie Sheen.
We have lost our decency and shame , Thirty years ago this affair would
have been hid like a Playboy under the mattress.
So many examples exist
Great Article
Attacked by an army of chihuahuas, on the anniversary of the end to the siege of the Alamo, good thing they didn’t put you to the sword. You Gabacho’s need to understand this is not your country, viva la occupation.
What happened to the poor injured little dog? It’s owners probably couldn’t afford to take it to a vet.
Did you report them to the police?
Good God, Filing a police report would surely have landed VDH in deep stuff. Remember, the goal and purpose of California law enforcement is elimination of “racism, homophobia and islamophobia”. Anything like crime or “stuff like that” is a waste of money that could be applied to the complete support of illegal aliens and enemy moslems.
Higher ed is more about credentialing than about educating. Maybe it is time to reinvent the school system to take advaantage of internet resources. With podcasts students can have access to the best lectures. The self-taught approach may work with proper incentives. The days when an old prof was an irreplaceable repository of knowledge are long gone in fields such as computer science. We will still need apprenticeship type training, but maybe the majority of classes can be online.
Education is in the process of reinvention. It’s called homeschooling. On-line universities are gaining in stature, without the Liberal BS. Both are beginning to siphoning off the best and the brightest students and dedicated instructors.
Robert, I think you’re on to something that will become evident to a wider audience in the not too distant future. Both of my daughters have opted to home school my grand children. At first I was quietly against the idea thinking they would miss out on the education and experiences I received as a child in Minnesota (50′s and 60′s). However, I’ve noticed that they are already way ahead of their peers and the synergy from the younger ones hearing what the older ones are learning only increases their learning. They get interaction with other kids in church and at sports. I’m a believer now.
I homeschool my youngest child, the only one still at home. Though the reality is that by and large, he teaches himself. I provide the materials, any questions he has he asks or uses a search engine to find the necessary answers. At 15 he is better versed in actual education than his peers as well as being much more mature. His social interaction, which people always ask me about as if I must simply keep him in the basement, is through youth group at church, Tae Kwon Do and guitar lessons, not the mention the routine interaction with whoever is around as we go to the library and various other places of interest. You see he interacts on a routine basis with people who are outside of just a group of kids and thus he imbibes quite a bit more socially then he would otherwise. No one makes fun of what he choices to do, or what he finds interesting or how he opts to dress. He has the ability to simply be who he is and to learn at his own pace.
The tools out there for kids to learn are immense, and the benefits are large. I don’t worry about the dangers that are inherent in any school now, including the small rural schools like we have that once were immune. A year ago I took my son to the school during the lunch period so he could find a friend that he wanted to connect with, but had lost his phone number. In the small Jr/Sr. school in which the largest graduating class has been 174 students from two small rural communities, had every door locked except the one by the office, including the one closest to the parking lot. When I got to the right door to get in, there was a large sign indicating that I had to go to the office. So we did and explained that my son would simply be going to the lunch room, less than 25 feet away, to find his friend. We were informed that he could not do this since he did not attend this school and it was against policy for safety reasons.
Now I just wonder if anyone actually thinks that had I or my child wanted to do harm to anyone in that school if stopping at the office would make a difference, or would one be more liable to simply go in shooting? All I could think of was how we were locking up our children and giving a false sense of security. I mean think about it, we are sending our kids to a place in which drugs, bullying and overt sexuality are the norm with teachers that indoctrinate a left wing ideology and then locking our kids in.
I grew up in the 70s and graduated in 1981. I feel like we have entered bizarro world and I want the head of those responsible.
Jake, I couldn’t agree more. The tragedy is that this is really a statement about just how bad our public schools have become. When a child alone being taught part time by a non professional far exceeds the “professional” in a modern classroom with extensive national and state resources, it is proof we are clearly not using our tax dollars wisely.
We’ve taught our kids at home since they were born. We recently attended an event at a public school where the following mission statement was proudly displayed:
The mission of (redacted) School District, in partnership with family, business and community is committed to providing academic excellence in an education environment that nurtures responsible, contributing citizens in a changing society. Such citizens can shape a nation.
Some occasional validation that we made the right choice is comforting.
Interesting that “in a changing society” is in there. Obviously, change is a constant but the people who drafted that mission statement did not contemplate just referring to “society,” let alone “a society in which our great traditions are upheld.” It strikes me as a reference to “a society adrift.”
We have a decadent, gluttonous, porn-addicted, drug-addicted, alcoholic culture of pissants as our up and coming youth to represent our ‘future’.
It ain’t lookin’ good, Bro.
Step away from the coast! If the outlook does not improve, you need to step further!! Do so quickly!!!
Won’t work. They’d just follow.
Vic, you’re braver than I am, to have approached the door to complain. I unknowingly wandered into a barrio neighborhood once while walking in a unfamiliar area. Two preschool kids on bikes came at me, one hit me and the other glared and hissed at me. I couldn’t believe such rudeness at such a young age…then a woman pushing a baby stroller smacked it into my leg and I came to the conclusion they maybe didn’t like me.
Perhaps they don’t understand that I am helping to feed their kids with my taxes. Next time I’ll be sure to point that out, then I’ll be loved.
Raised by a generation of selfish, entitled grasshoppers who wonder why there are so few ants. These in turn raised by a generation, who, in their desperation, turned to FDR-style socialism, not understanding the death warrants they signed. Are you surprised?
It’ll be my generation, the kids of the Baby Boomers, who will have to pick up the pieces and relearn not only a healthy distrust of government but self-reliance. We’ll save, we’ll work, we’ll learn to live on one income again so mom can stay home and our kids are raised right. We’ll learn to live without entitlements and we’ll be sickened by the thought of endless consuming.
You are sorta right monarch. Don’t denegegrate your grandparents, learn to live like they did. Learn why they turned to FDR in desperation. You are correct about the boomers and their children(you) being the solution. Your grandparents got along fine in a 1200 sq ft home with one car, one TV and one telephone. They weren’t adverse to walking and riding the train or bus. They ate good food mom cooked at home and threw away none of it. I image VDH would suggest they had a better understanding of a “tragic” side of life. They were disciplined enough not to indulge in their every whim however deviant it might be. They didn’t demand instant gratification in the form of credit based finance.
Not at all, my grandparents did it right. Grandpa worked hard enough to ensure that his wife’s only jobs were mom and housewife. Their two children never came home to an empty house. They bought within their means, saved whatever they could, and owned their house free and clear well before retirement. He died in the mid-nineties, and left his wife a millionaire to live out her remaining twelve years in modest comfort.
Contrast that with my parents who mortgaged an almost-paid off house to finance an even bigger retirement home. They’re now approaching their seventies and live in a house far too big for two people, far too expensive to keep up, and far too high a mortgage to carry in retirement. My siblings and I worry that when they’re gone we’ll be forced to sell a beautiful piece of property because of its high carrying costs and the ghoulish tendencies of Sacramento and Washington to bleed the bereaved dry.
So yes, we’re learning the lessons of my grandparents. We plan to flee California for Nevada (or Utah or Idaho) to escape the inflated property prices and crushing taxation. We’re saving for that old-fashioned 20% down and a year’s expenses in the bank. And we will qualify on my income alone so that our kids will always see their mother when they come home. I don’t expect my folks to have anything left to leave us, and that’s fine, but it’s a sad waste of what their parents built for them.
“Contrast that with my parents who mortgaged an almost-paid off house to finance an even bigger retirement home.”
Wow. People usually downsize for retirement. I wonder what drove them to make such a decision.
Nothing will change until fundamental issues with our economy are clearly defined, laid bare, discussed and solved without partisan nonsense;
The US dollar is supported by the Petro Dollar. This arrangement was instituted in 1973 and has placed the entire US economy at the whims of Saudi Arabia. This is utter incompetance and is the greatest threat to National security of the United States, and yet nobody on this site, or anywhere in government, has the courage to discuss this openly or even mention it. This alone will bring about the fall of America, as we no longer can control our own destiny.
We handed control of our economy to the House of Saud in the 1973 and have been paying for that ever since, as 90% of the US dollar depreciation since 1900 occurred from 1973 though 2010, since we destroyed Bretton Woods and replaced it with the Petro Dollar in 1973.
Only 12% of the budget is available for reduction. 88% of the US Budget is off limits to any form of reduction or discussion of reduction. This is ridiculous and in order to effect any type of serious budget restraint, ALL of the budget must be available for reduction. Hiring inspectors and auditors is actually the single best investment the United States government could make to root out fraud and corruption.
GDP means nothing. We can increase GDP by 100 Billion by throwing 100 Billion to research trying to understand how a Frisbee works. Did we achieve a net gain to the economy..? No, we simply added 100B in expenditures while adding Zero in Net gains. Nobody should be using GDP numbers, We can manipulate GDP to reflect any gain or loss we wish.
M0, M1, M2, M3 ; These Four rates of money supply are the barometers of the US economy. These are yardsticks to use to forecast the path we are on, and they all indicate severe contraction coming to US economy.
Germany is buying the NYSE. Spin this any way you want, America has lost the ability to manage its own finances and is getting spanked by international banking groups. We are the laughingstock of world banking system, and foreign investors.
Someone needs to draw up the courage to discuss openly and honestly the truths regarding America’s finances without political considerations. Otherwise, We will be watching the downfall of America within this decade.
“within this decade”? I agree with you 100% but I don’t think we will last a whole decade. God help us!
“88% of the US Budget is off limits to any form of reduction ”
Really? So how was Rand Paul able to propose a $500B cut without breaking a sweat? And without touching SS, Medicare or defense. He really must be good.
Or else the liberal myth that the budget can’t be cut without those three must be wrong.
And speaking of that, in Bush’s last year the budget was about 2.4T and now it is over 3.4T. Who knew that in just 2 years, Defense, SS and Medicare went up more than a trillion. Why, we really must be in trouble.
The only solution has to be to let seniors die. Or raise taxes. But probably both.
More math: the FY budget was $2.7 trillion, and we were fighting two wars, added DHS, and senior drug prescriptions. For the past five years we’ve had very little inflation, and yet the budget has gone up $1 trillion. WTF?
Even allowing for inflation, the 2007 budget wuld still equal less than $2.8 trillion now. Sen. Paul’s reduction would still leave a $3.2 trillion budget. Sounds like a reasonable reduction to me, even generous of him.
Whether intentional or not, the draining of the Saudi oil fields and those of other beligerant little pissant countries, has given us forty to fifty years of not using all our natural oil and gas reserves. I don’t disagree with the rest of your arguements, only want to point out that we not they have benefited from their oil reserves being available for our use at our prices for most of the period since their discovery before World War II.
Now the international socialists want to grab power and under a one world “order” seal our fate by using those very resources that lie dormant and politically untouchable here in the United States to finance their takeover of our Republic. Realize what they are really doing has little to do with what they are saying and then fight them with every breath.
Only 12% of the budget is available for reduction. 88% of the US Budget is off limits to any form of reduction
What baffles me about that notion is that the federal budget for FY 2007 was $2.7 trillion; it’s now a trillion more with Obama’s 2012 proposal. How in the hell, with low inflation all along this timeline, did we end up with an additional $1 trillion in “essential” spending? For a trillion less we were fighting two wars AND had very big government, including the addition of the totally unecesary DHS, and prescription coverage for seniors, and No Child Left Behind. Even allowing for the bailout and the stimulus (both multiyear programs), it doesn’t add up.
We handed control of our economy to the House of Saud in the 1973 and have been paying for that ever since, as 90% of the US dollar depreciation since 1900 occurred from 1973 though 2010, since we destroyed Bretton Woods and replaced it with the Petro Dollar in 1973.
Whatever may be the merits of your argument as a whole, the part about 90% is misleading. So long as there is any depreciation for 100 years, no matter how small, but so long as it is steady, at least 73% of it occurs in the first 73 years. If the rate of depreciation is at least 2.2% per year, at least 90% of it occurs in the first 73 years.
Suppose it’s 1% a year. Then 82% occurs in the first 73 years.
Suppose it’s 0.5% a year. Then 77% occurs in the first 73 years.
You may object that the rate was not steady, but that’s irrelevant to my point that there is no reason to expect only 73% to occur in 73 of 100 years.
Ohmigod. I apologize. I thought you said that 90% occurred from 1900 to 1973.
I’m sorry I made that mistake, but there’s still a problem: It’s not true that 90% of the 1900-2010 depreciation has occurred since 1973. The correct figure is about 16%.
I’ll have to use 2009, since the inflation calculator I’m using only goes that far.
Westegg Inflation Calculator
In 1973, $5.33 would buy what $1 in 1900 would buy.
So the dollar had lost 1-1/5.33=0.81 of its value by 1973.
In 2009, $25.45 would buy what $1 in 1900 would buy.
So the dollar had lost 1-1/25.45=0.96 of its value by 2009.
81/96 = 0.84
So 84% of the depreciation occurred during 1900-1973, 16% during 1973-2009.
We handed control of our economy to the House of Saud in the 1973 and have been paying for that ever since, as 90% of the US dollar depreciation since 1900 occurred from 1973 though 2010, since we destroyed Bretton Woods and replaced it with the Petro Dollar in 1973.
It’s not true that 90% of the 1900-2010 depreciation has occurred since 1973. The correct figure is about 16%. I’ll have to use 2009, since the inflation calculator I’m using only goes that far.
81% was lost during 1900-1973.
96% was lost during 1900-2009.
So 81/96=84% of the 1900-2009 depreciation occurred during 1900-1973.
I put it to a friend this way:
We’ve watched our society go from Conrad Hilton to Paris Hilton.
I don’t know if it can be any other way. It’s human nature to take blessings for granted; in this case it’s the hard work of the previous generations.
Doc! You’re scaring me. What in the wild world of sports are you doing ridding a bicycle at 18 MPH without a helmet?
We need you, your voice, your wry humor, your profound knowledge and experience. You’re too danged valuable too lose. Heck! send me your address and I’ll send you the $20 for a helmet.
Did he say he didn’t have a helmet? I missed that.
Gee thanks, Dwight. Here I was reading through the essay and comments until, Sham Wow, I was nearly blinded by your brilliant insight that crystallized all the ramblings of lesser minds into one blazing point of intellectual light. My deepest appreciation, Herr Snark, for being what Rabelais used to call an Abstractor of the Quintessence.
Ouch!That’s gonna leave a mark.
It was more of a yes or no question.
D-White wears a tweed helmet with tweed sunglasses so that he won’t scrape his knees and elbows when he falls off his state mandated tricycle.
You try so hard
But you don’t understand..
VDH, sorry to hear about your mishap. I hope you are feeling better.
By now, it is abundantly clear that leftists are always going to opt to Prey it Forward.
They will pickpocket the future and blame it on capitalism. The only remaining question is, do we have enough will power to stand up to their shrink-wrapped slurs and slanders and tell the absolute truth, which is going to sting.
We are broke because we were too timid to stand up to them as a nation. We still show signs of falling for all the ways they game the system….and blame and slander the very reserved and slow to retaliate “bitter clingers’.
Their tactics have been monumentally successful…if you call destroying a nation brick by brick a success. They are tearing apart this nation, tearing down the economy and tearing up the Constitution. And, as a rule…those who agree with you …tremble at the thought of the peer pressure…to not be called names and be though “uncool”.
If we don’t have what it takes, they will continue to take what we have.
Excellent take, Senor Hanson!
Mark Steyn is happily back in his own witty form, witness his column this week.
Broke is BROKE!
That is, the climaxing demonstrations in places like Madison, Wisconsin along with unbelievable “polls” indicating people still like public sector unions and don’t want to cut government handouts, etc, are empty and futile gestures.
I think reality always eventually smacks down dreamy “hopes” about no “change” from the free gravy train, so that NEEDS put mere WANTS to bed!
Most Americans are spoiled rotten, dominated by their assumed WANTS, which are being exposed as the baby cries of “children”.
Yesterday, another perfect example of this broke me up, as I sat in a therapy pool at the YMCA—
It is common for many very obese people to raise the water level in this pool, so these two 30-something women with their kids did so, and eventually started taking about: FOOD!
What else?
Before long, public comments about hamburger and hamburger helper led one of the fatsos to exclaim she was STARVING, and up they went to satisfy that “NEED”!
America has become a circus, with fat ladies and gentlemen taking over the public squares!
A realist must be pessimistic!
Professor, surely your liberal friend realizes that there is a fundamental difference between the immigrations of the Poles and Irish early in the 20th century, and that of the Mexicans now. Those who migrated then expected to support their families or die trying, knowing that there was no “social safety net” to support them-and no bilingual, free education, either. One wonders what effect removing the social safety net would have on the great, current immigration…
I actually think that many of the illegals are hard working people. It is our system of political hacks bringing them into continue their control over our government at all levels that are destroying the country not the poor immigrants from Mexico and Central America. No one can blame them for taking full advantage of every freebee in our culture, they all do it. Check out the Chinese immigrants and inspite of the fact they are all working they still make sure that grand ma and grand pa get on medicaid and medicare inspite of the fact that they just arrived here last month. Poor people aren’t stupid and if some one( namely the US taxpayer)is stupid enough to put the venal scallywags we call our political class in charge of dispensing our national wealth, then who are the illegals not to partake in the bounty?
If we didn’t do this then the current crop of illegal aliens would be just like the Irish or the Italians before them, namely fighting for every crust to make a living for themselves and their family. Maybe we should try it and stop pandering to the liberals who are robbing us all blind.
“…ask our administrators to administrate first and philosophize second…”
Beautifully put.
5. Anonymous
I don’t fault your intentions, but dumbing down the system to meet the needs of recent immigrants does not work in anyone’s best interest. Maybe two or three years in first grade would work, and again maybe not. I’m not a educator so I really don’t know what will work, but I do know what educators have done so far is a failure. The system cheats the students that could be excelling, and does a disservice to those who are led to believe everyone can, finish college. I think whatever changes are made in education part of the change should have standards, high standards, and those that don’t meet those standards should not be advances, period! Immigrants, kids from whatever ghetto, or spoiled, nasty rich kids, meet the standards or do not advance. All colleges and universities should be competitive, based on academics and ability, and even athletes should have to meet the same standards as other students.
Fig leaf justice, angst of the liberal mind, and someday over the rainbow. Could there be a common thread? Could there be SOMETHING that ties these seemingly unrelated phenomenon together.
Well, the good doctor knows but as is his want, he is far too kind to say. The answer is: talking a good game is easy.
Wait a minute, did I just describe our very own little lenin in 6 words. Why, I believe it did. And as a corollary, those 6 words describe about 50% of the Cuddly statistmarxists mind. The other half, of course, is that they want what you worked to achieve, and without having to work for it themselves.
The followers have spied the keys to the treasury. The power crazed leaders are willing to hand them over. And the ones in the gated communities are figuring that hell won’t rain on THEIR heads. 2 or the 3 are going to be sorely disappointed.
But.. But,
What about that 3.7 trillion dollar social security trust fund they have in Washington?
We could use that to pay down the national debt.
You mean the one that has been borrowed against and essentially doesn’t exist? Or perhaps you just want the treasury to print more bonds and essentially inflate our way out of debt?
Besides, we could pay it off, but without a change in spending, it’d come right back.
Yeah, the one that was funneled off by Congress even before the first check went out. The one that when the time came to pay the first annuities out of the interest, Congress had to raise taxes to meet. The program that was the original, “we must pass it to learn what is in it”.
If you really want a sober number to realize how far over the edge we are in this Progressive run Thelma and Louise spend till you drop Government, check out the fact that currently 70% of the $1.6 TRILLION dollar debt that has to be sold to close the Government budget gap each year is “bought” by our own Federal Reserve by printing up new dollars to purchase it.
Think about that for a moment. That means that only 30% of our current borrowing needs can actually find some one stupid enough to lend our supposedly triple AAA US Government money at current interest rates. The rest, the 70% of $1.6 TRILLION dollars is not able to be sold in the debt markets and is effectively “bought” with thin air.
This means that real interest rates, or those defined as the real rate of interest that would be required to intice buyers to actually lend us all of the $1.6 TRILLION dollars would be substantially higher than the current 2-3% interest rates we claim to be paying. This is reality.
Where will our economy be when those “real” interest rates have to be paid? Where will our default rates on consumer loans or commercial loans be? What about the number of forclosures or the price of the marginaly house be when real mortagage rates are allowed to be known in the debt markets? Enquiring minds want to know.
Mr. Hanson, sorry about your accident. Don’t want you to stop thinking and writing. By the way. Maybe you can sue over this. I’m thinkin’ Ruben Navarette.
Wonder why we hadn’t heard from you. Hope you will be on the John Batchelor Show this week…!
As always, another great article from Mr. Hanson. I’m an Hispanic(not Latin American, I don’t speak Latin)who came to this wonderful country back in 1964. I was 3 yrs. old at the time. Those Hispanics who came to this country at that time were much different than those who have been arriving here in the last, I would say, 30 to 40 years. The laws and culture of the country was well rescpected. You are entering a country that has given you an invitation to better your life. It was a priviledge, NOT A RIGHT. Those who arrive now, mostly illegals, some legals, have no respect for this country and its laws. They have been brainwashed by those in this country and from where they originated in socialist and leftists propaganda of the evils of “El Norte” and “el gringo pendejo.” I believe it can never be cured.
A .22 pistol will do you more good than that there helmet, Neil. He likely wouldn’t have had to actually plug one of those ankle biters. Firing a round into the air should suffice. However, if they persist….what’s a simple farmer to do? We must obviously soon do something about the Sacred Cows of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Closing the border with Mexico for real, enforcing the laws against hiring wetbacks and declaring English the only legal language for school, business, etc. would go a long way as would drilling here and drilling now. And then, there is the ballot box provided Obama-ayers’ ACORN hasn’t loused that up along with just about everything else he’s touched.
Dr. Hanson,
I just want you to know that you are my link to reality. Just when I think there is not a sane, critical thinker in America, you put pen to paper with crystal clarity. Why is the right having such a difficult time with their message? Could it be that everything they say is met with ‘they are the haters?’ I do not believe any poll that states people support the unions in Wisconsin over the Governor. It is so refreshing to see a Scott Walker stand up to people who long ago put the kids second or third.
Thank you for another wonderful read.
Your friend with whom you were discussing the wages of the illegal immigration influx displays the classic symptom of unwillingness to engage the topic. Such people apparently have no capacity to discuss any substantial problem logically, but offer generic defenses such as “Scapegoating”, and when those fail, simply turn red and get angry, e.g. the Wisconsin Public-sector Union showdown.
How are we to deal with any issues at all if people are so determined to ignore them?
A Modest Proposal
“… Let us not sermonize on human misery from a distance (e.g., a “downright mean country” is not compatible with Costa del Sol). And let us act now, rather than dream of acting later — or simply be quiet.”
Dr. Hanson:
That’s what I’ve been waiting to hear you say. When are you going to announce your candidacy for President of the United States?
Where do I send the check?
1. The talk of energy independence has been going on since Nixon was president, but nothing has happened and it has gotten worse. Much worse.
So Chief of Staff Bill Dailey goes on “Meet the Press” and says we are thinking about releasing oil from the petro reserve. Why? His peeps don’t like the fact that they are paying 85% more than they were on Jan 19, 2009.
Hello, Obama! How about resuming drilling in the Gulf and ANWR? How about OTR trucks using natural gas as a fuel? Nuke power plants? A new oil refinery?
But it will *never* happen with this guy. He’s tied to his “green jobs” which are pie-in-the-sky.
2. I finally figured out the whole green scam. It relies on a fraud: man-caused global warming. But when I heard the CEO of Wal-Mart speak at Davos, I knew that this whole scam is an iron triangle between big corporations, the government and academics.
Wal-Mart and GE love the global warming scam because they can make more money on it. It’s all about the money; make no mistake about that.
In a few years, no one will be able to buy a regular light bulb. The new “green” light bulbs cost twice as much and therefore both WMT and GE make more money. Think of it as government-mandated obsolence. The Wal-Mart CEO was complaining because his customers are so broke right now they can’t afford to buy the green products that cost more, but make them “feel” good.
3. Obama must be defeated.
Since I’m a regular here, I think I’ll end all of my posts that way. Just as Roman senator used to end every speech, “Carthage must be defeated.”
Corn, you make a lot of good points. I wonder if the Wal Mart kind of executive says such inane things in order to keep the Feds off their backs. After all, how much money do you make off of light bulbs?
We are going back to the life VDH describes whether we like it or not. those of us that get in front of this sea of change will suffer less than those who think the lights in the tunnel are the end of the tunnel and not a train! Be well!
GE supports the man-made global warming scare because they own wind and solar power divisions. Those divisions are currently being subsidized by the federal government to the tune of $200 million per year. GE’s CEO Immelt also wants energy costs to increase to make his “green” energy divisions more competitive.
Surviving the Ignorant Uncorrectables
By Robert Winkler Burke
Copyright 10/16/09
Sad to say,
And it gives me no pleasure,
Some leaders,
This moment, this hour…
Ignorant of yesterday’s blood-sacrifice lessons,
Ignorant of ancient time-tested truths,
Ignorant of how great-indwelt of God man can be,
Proclaiming famed intellect is their ruse.
Until mugged, the mugger’s great champion,
Until enslaved, the slave shackler,
Until humbled by man, God and Devil,
The cause of epic human disaster.
The deniers of the greatest revelation,
That God lives in man, His creation,
The propagandist of the greatest lie,
Survival of fittest means others must die.
Unenlightened, ignorant uncorrectables must live,
All lesser others must die?
That the indwelt of good depopulate earth themselves,
And never ask why?
The ignorant uncorrectables,
Have an amazing blandishment trick,
They, being deceived, deceive well,
Diseasing multitudes yet appearing not sick.
Ages come,
And ages go,
Fiat paper worthless,
Gold always gold.
Why rail against darkness,
When gross darkness has completely now come?
Batten down the hatches,
Behold, oh world: Job’s unavoidable storm!
Not to prove you or I are right,
Or that the uncorrectables are wrong,
But that in self-restraint is liberty,
A lesson seven billion must learn strong.
Even if just half of the people of the world,
Believed in Lincoln’s, Jefferson’s and Moses’ precept,
Mutual dedication to self-restraint,
Then in liberty man would have his best days yet.
But first the mad uncorrectables,
Must rule and ruin their aureate roost,
To disabuse the world of lies,
And give peace on earth its best boost.
Sanctimony dies hard,
Lies die harder,
But not all death is vain,
Truth lives farther.
See: Bill Whittle’s “The End of the Beginning”… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLilhZ_73Zc
I’ve been wondering to myself lately if there might be some kind of karmic and/or cosmic connection between the Boomer generation, aging and Social Security / Medicare programs.
It seems to me that we Boomers have fought an aggressive and impressive fight against aging, that 57 can now be considered the new 37, and that many of us do not or should not plan on retiring at age 65. Granted, we’ve been paying into the system for 40-some years, but did anyone ever really think that they would be able to retire solely on income from Social Security?
In a karmic way, maybe we owe back to the technology, medical advances and the system that has enabled us to not only be upright in our 60′s but pretty much thriving. If that means we put off being paid by that same system, or don’t get paid as much or at all, it strikes me as being a fair deal.
I would not want to give up the relatively good health and energy I still enjoy if it were to be in exchange for a little more of a pittance if / when I finally do retire. Although equally I do *NOT* want the government I am paying for to be bankrupted by the needs of a bunch of law-breakers who don’t speak English, and for whom there is no such word as “litter”.
A more widespread administrative fig leaf:
Public schools have required for decades that future teachers take scores of credit hours of education courses. Many public school districts now require teachers to obtain Master’s degrees in education either before they start teaching or within a few years. What has over forty years of increasing “professionalization” of public education generated?
High School Graduation Rates:
1970: 78%
1980: 72%
1990: 74%
2000: 72%
2010: 70% (estimated)
We live in the Computer and Information Age, yet a greater proportion of teens drop out of high school today than forty years ago. College attendance is greater than ever (two-thirds of high school graduates), but despite marked dumbing-down of most curricula, four-year college graduation rates average 53% in the USA. (That rate includes students who took up to six years to get a four-year degree).
Bottom line of today’s education:
High school drop-outs: 30%
High school grads: 23%
Some college: 22%
Four-year College grads: 25%
Back in 1970:
High school drop-outs: 22%
High school grads: 58%
Some college: ~6%
Four-year College grads: ~14%
Forty years of public school professionalism resulted in a 30% increased rate of high school drop-outs, a 79% increased rate of four-year college grads (who mostly learn much less than college grads from previous generations), and a 267% increase in young adults who began college but did not get a four-year degree (and who spent tens of thousands of dollars and/or acquired massive debt). These figures prove the complete failure of professional educators in the public schools.
Dr. T…. You evaded the LBJ New Society concept of education. Remember that LBJ said the education ‘bar’ was just to durn high for a certain minority to adequately gain admissions into colleges and universities? If the bar was to high for entrance into out highest level of education then certainly the bar was to high in the K-12 levels. I think we all know the rest of that story…do we not?
Also, when citing your statistics, you fail to address on important factor. Much of the nations sane States through the 50′s and 60′s maintained a dual track of education at the K-9 through K-12 grades. So the kids doing poor or lacking interest in manistream academic requirements were transferred into an alternative track of vocational training along with ‘basic’ core academic subjects. Included was a diversified home economics, wood working, a very diversified FFA program, mechanical drawing (drafting) and the more formal votec course of automotive mechanics. So if you didn’t finish HS you at least had some life skill training for entry level somewhere in a needed area of employment.
Imagine that! That was when the federal government was only giving about 1.5% to 3% financial aid.
Socialist tranformation, labor unions and the government education (legislation) have destroyed education…not teachers!
Obama’s public education reform rhetoric and demeaning teachers is nothing more than a political a sham! The very social and political ideology he is indoctrinated into is what created the education decline in America. He is using ever populist card possible to gain votes…nothing more. Some have used crime, while other use children for every conceivable advantage, etc.
Sixty years of education sabotage isn’t going to be reversed in even Obamas great grandchildren life time. That the sad fact!
And watch the socialist moron get reelected!
T T Thomas, great post. In our idiotic drive to send every child to college we have totally abandoned two thirds of our children who haven’t got the IQs to go to any real college program. In order to actually have a chance of pursuing a college level education you need about a 110 IQ as a minimum and of course when you are flooding the educational system with children whose ethnic groups have an average of 86 IQ for Hispanics and 84 IQ for African Americans and expecting them to all go to college is insane. The very programs you mention that we used to have for those children who can’t handle the workload of a calculus or heavy science education, should still have a means to become educated and fully performing US citizens.
Thanks nickle! We can thank all those ever-lovin higher level thinkers who refer to themselves as the bearer’s of social justice…otherwise known as socialist.
If you listen closely to the idiots you hear them constantly decrying how we have to increase the ‘quantity’ of high school and college graduates….never mind quality. We’ve been graduating educated morons from colleges and universities for decades now.
Now, the nation is not only broke but horribly in debt and we haven’t the economic resources needed to restore America’s traditional education. The socialists after 60 years have the nation pinned into a corner with only two choices…continue on to their intended total collapse…or civil war. SAD!
Only 10-20% of high school graduates should go to college. Most who go beyond that number end up as mechanics, admin clerks, or telecom installers anyway.
I don’t mean to insult anybody by that. It’s just the plain truth. All of those jobs have skill requirements totally unrelated to English literature or Anthropology, and the world needs many times more mechanics than English Lit professors anyway.
The plain truth behind the plain truth is that the 1 to 3 years most people spend in college is time they could spend learning skills that they could use to support themselves their entire lives. The same holds true for a lot of people who actually graduate from college as well.
When I was in high school (1969-1973) we had three tracks: college-bound, business/general education, and vocational education. In the lower grades, we had ability-based tracking: kids of similar abilities were grouped together so that teaching and learning were done at a pace that matched the kids’ abilities. These programs were eliminated by “professional educators” who had the incredibly idiotic belief that all students should receive the same education and that segregating students by abilities or by future job preferences was racist and elitist. Thus, kids with IQs of 150 are in the same classrooms as kids with IQs of 70. High school kids who plan to be plumbers have to take the same coursework as those who want to be doctors. This lack of concern by modern educators for kids who either are not capable of graduating college or who don’t want a job that requires a college degree is a major reason for the high dropout rate. The only winners now are the colleges raking in fortunes for teaching remedial English and math and misleading the many students who have no hope of graduating.
And then the higher level socialist thinkers came along and …..well, we know the rest of the story.
Is it against the law in California to protect yourself ? Get a gun. I suggest a Taurus Judge .45 caliber in which you can also use 410 shotgun shells.
God created man – Sam Colt made them equal. Stop whining and start protecting yourself. Stop being a victim. Start running for President.
“Is it against the law in California to protect yourself ?”
Yes.
“I suggest a Taurus Judge .45 caliber in which you can also use 410 shotgun shells.”
I can’t imagine how that could be good for the barrel rifling at all
Yes, I’d get the newer model that holds the 3 inch 410 shell. Really handy for snakes, vermin, pesky small dogs and other things. You can also load it with buckshot. Dr Hanson, Sadly I think you need to buy an indoor stationary bike or join a bike club. The world isn’t what it used to be in your neck of the woods. Or better yet move to the midwest where there is still a little bit of sanity left and good bike trails as well.
“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”
Abraham Lincoln
I think the quote is “delenda est Carthago” Cornhead from Cato meaning Carthage must be destroyed. Delenda est Obama-ayers does have a certain ring. Delenda est Democrat Party of Death might be more better.
“Cartago delenda est!” Carthage is to be deleted!
Victor if you were a character in Ayn Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED who would it be?
“(I assume many baby boomers have learned that they are helping their children way into the latter’s late twenties, and assume they will monthly recirculate their Social Security income to their children anyway.)”
That’s quite an assumption ‘Twould be nice were it true, but “many” baby boomers are using or planning to use their social security funds to help them survive their golden years, rather than “recirculat(ing)” them “to their children.”
How ’bout, rather than one-size-fits-all reductions, we means-test so that those who are giving their SS funds to their children can forgo what they have put in, in order that those who need the money can still receive it?
So you want to penalize those of us ants who saved enough while rewarding the grasshoppers who blew their money on oversized houses, new cars every 3 years and trips?
And now that so many are raising no or one kid, shouldn’t they be cut first? After all, no matter what anyone thinks, none of what we have paid in to SS was “saved” for us; the only way future SS gets paid is through our kids’ efforts; if you did not raise any/enough gainfully employed children – why are you entitled to SS? It was different 50 years ago when almost everyone spent significant effort and funds in raising a large family.
Under your suggestion, the people rewarded the most will be those who did not have any kids and spent all their money on themselves.
Sorry, but means testing is going to reward the wrong people.
If you means test the social security system as the Liberal/Progressives would so dearly like to do, then you transfer wealth paid at threat of prison into welfare. Do you really want to do this with an already screwed up political system? The answer is to free us of our chains not to make them more tightly fitting.
Not mentioned much (as far as I can tell,) is the fact that seniors (I am one,) are among the wealthiest Americans. Wealthiest being largest net worth (homes paid off, steady income, low expenses,); clamping onto every SS check and Medicare writeoff as a God given right.
Time for the adults (Republicans) (there must be some) to say ” Democrats are playing a game of chicken with the American People. We are ready to accept the truth that benefits have to be cut; that someone else will not pay; and that the people are in charge of their fate. If America will not take on the burden, America is responsible.
It will take an articulate Conservative to say it. My God, I hope we get one.
TERRY
Don’t hold your breath on this one. Conservatives believe in SELF interest over everything else, right?
No, Dwight, we Conservatives believe in God and morality before everything else. There is a HUGE difference between self-interest and selfish interest.
You deride our talk of self-interest, because you do not know what the term means. Leftists really do not understand language, because they are too busy perverting it. Understanding the exact meaning of terms clears away the fog. One then becomes Conservative, because simple, basic truths become evident.
Why yes Dwight, it is. How perceptive of you to understand that conservatives believe that we are much more capable of determining our own needs instead of believing the government should determine them for us. How perceptive of you to understand conservatives believe we don’t have a right to your money. How perceptive of you to understand that conservatives don’t believe in ordering other peoples lives, while also understanding that common laws and common decency should be adhered to by all.
Unlike those selfish folks on the other side who believe the government knows what I need before I do and are willing to take your money in order to provide for those needs. But as far as using common laws and common decency, lets just say they have too much self interest in being able to do whatever they want with no restrictions at all to be able to follow anything that is so-well common. And just for good measure they expect you to pay for their self interest.
Selfish I know.
Well, to cut to the chase here, my 4-4-4 plan includes the 4% increase in taxing pensions over 50,000 which is another way of addressing the means testing. By the way, this would include state taxes for state pensions like my own, which were supposed to be (state) tax free. Or am I betraying my own self(ish) interests here?
Obviously the problem is that an even-handed plan lacks partisan base support, as it is goring both oxes. But it still strikes me as the only way to really get at the problems. Cut spending AND raise taxes.
Higher taxes for pensions above a certain level (such as your 50K suggestion), or even reduce SS benefits on a progressive scale for those above a certain retirement income.
Means testing of both SS and Medicare should have been done from those program’s inceptions.
And maybe the plan is not achievable, which is the problem with so many of the proscriptions we get here and elsewhere. Arbitrary statements of what SHOULD be done to solve a problem, are irrelevant if they can’t be sold to a voting plurality. But as Obama has to move to the center with the Republican House, it is the kind of thing that they MIGHT come up with.
Though I am a senior-senior and among the lucky ones from hard work and responsible economic restraint…there are millions of senior citizens who live on less than $500 dollars monthly social security income and millions more who live on less than $1,000 dollars monthly drawing disability. How much would you say they sacrifice?
The equitable way is to establish a means testing system rather than an across the board system if you want to have citizens sacrifice their social security eligbility benefits. I have never accepted a penny of social secuirty or health care benefits (not even my military Tricare) and its a shame that the truly wealthy (above the national income means line) cannot willing do the same. Likewise, tax laws need to be reformed so that ALL working citizens and those who receive other forms of income share in the cost of the government. I personally support the national retail tax system since the top 5% pay nearly 70% of individual income taxes collected to support the cost of government in the form of taxes.
I don’t think I said anything against means-testing. My problem with it is the need for all of us to provide net worth data to the Feds. (Another snooper getting access where he shouldn’t.)
Seems to me a sliding scale of reductions based on current benefits, time in the system/life expectancy, etc might work to at least demostrate that we understand the problem, rather than waiting for it to blow up on us.
Many years ago, a writer for National Review said it had taken us 50 years to get SS where it was, and would take another 50 to work ourselves out of it. In the interim, we’ve done nothing along that line. Remember that the Moynihan-Clinton-Bush SS reforms went nowhere.
Here’s a novel idea: all Social Security income is fully taxable from the first dollar. To those without any other support, the Standard Deduction and Personal Exclusion will reduce their taxable income to zero. However, to the person with a lavish pension or massive investment income, the entirety of the Social Security check is subject to the recipient’s marginal tax rate.
Makes sense to me.
Social Security is collected as a tax on income from all those who pay into it! You want it as a tax going in and….then tax it again going out?
On the other hand, you have a bit of a good idea IF it were to work like the ‘choices’ of the two IRA plans.
And for those who so easily cast about the idea of moving the age eligibility to 70 remember this. The MAJORITY of working American’s have real physical jobs. Would you want your 69 year old father beam walking up 20 floors on a new high rise bldg? Lots of jobs wreck the human body well before even 62.
That said, the baby boomers should be the very last to remain on the old government backed system since the congress cannot keep their hands out of the retirement kitty.
Let me see: “Here’s a novel idea: all Social Security income is fully taxable from the first dollar.”
Gee, Myth, first they give it to you, a few months later they take it back? Why give that part of it to you in the first place? Why don’t they just keep it? Doesn’t make any sense to me. But honestly I can see how the libs and fabulists would like it, because it has the appearance of a loan. Right, Dwight?
If I had invested or directed the investment of my social security money, I would have a much larger benefit than I am getting now. There has to be a way to let people make a choice of what they want to do with their future retirement money.
I realize there are many poor people who make little SS. They made bad decisions or they had bad luck and illnesses which kept them from realizing any financial goals. Who would take better care of these people? Someone in Washington or someone in their home towns? Or bouroughs? Or townships? The federal government, in the name of kindness, just kept grabbing power and money.
That’s why we’re in this position.
Sorry bubba, I’m not inclined to “share” the 400 thousand or so bucks that the mrs and myself have been forced to “contribute” to Social Security at the point of a gun, so that an idiot like Dwight doesn’t have to pay for his own health insurance. If we had been able to keep the money it would be over a million bucks today (probably a lot more than that, actually).
Got a hunch I’m not alone in that opinion.
Try to get at that, bubba, and the country ain’t seen nuthin yet. My generation isn’t the passive one.
We would settle for the smart one. Oh well.
And another example of your memory problems. Go back and figure out who DOES pay for my health insurance. Here’s a clue; it’s a fraction.
What a ego.
This fool actually gets upset when people can’t remember the details of his inane brain farts.
Dwight buddy, i hate to be the one to have to break it to ya, but nobody reads past the first sentence of any of your adolescent scribblings. If somebody actually toughs it out that far, he already needs to take a dump to flush the sludge out of his system.
Proreason, old pal, Having noted the precision (or more precisely, lack thereof) of the content of what you write, I think you have just exposed to us your method in much of what you read. Don’t let the facts get in the way; they’re too damned distracting from what you KNOW to be true.
Dwight, I know you will appreciate this. Here is the Obamacare stealth tax plan from James Capretta at National Review:
“But the Obamacare tax hikes associated with Medicare — 0.9 percent on wages and 3.8 percent on non-wage income — were sold as hitting only individuals with incomes exceeding $200,000 and couples with incomes above $250,000 annually. But those income thresholds are fixed. They will be the same in 2030 as they are in 2013, when they kick in. Consequently, [FB: as a result of the inflation of salaries over time] as the years go by, more and more Americans will find themselves paying much higher federal taxes for Medicare — even though they are decidedly not the “rich” people the president said he was targeting.”
Disagree with Dr. Hanson this time, regarding social security.
It seems to me that the notion of cutting off social security to those who have been forced to pay into it for forty years or more is not at all the same as cutting it off for those who have paid into it for, say, five or ten years.
For one thing, younger people have much more time to make alternate plans. Old people without their social security are pretty much out of luck.
Why not phase it out more slowly? Those who have put in so much more should get something out of it, with diminishing returns the younger you are (and the less you have invested in this by-force retirement plan).
Unless there is some particular joy in pulling the rug out from under a distinct age cohort – say 55 and older.
Certainly means testing would be a better way to go about it, if cutting off seniors must be done. Or raising the age of retirement.
It is simply not true that most old people “don’t need it.” They have paid into it all their lives, expecting and counting on a return from it.
This is different from an entitlement. This is something people were forced to pay into, for their retirement.
Watching the destruction of California from over here, it still makes me sad. Dr. Hanson’s analysis is pretty flawless in terms of the politics of the state. I have also lived in Fresno County, and driven the LA-SF route enough to see the desertification. It is objectively true that the state is Latino-ized to a significant degree. Of course Latino culture has its pluses, but overall it implies a very different future for California, and a huge lobby for the entitlements/payments that will continue to drain the state. So basically Hollyweird and Silicon Valley will keep paying to prevent bankruptcy while the software engineers and graphics artists keep voting to bankrupt the state. That’s liberalism…
It would truly benefit anyone reading this site to set aside whatever funds are possible to purchase guns, gold, good quality alcohol and dry Ammunition. These commodities are historically able to sustain a family no matter how bad the economy, or collapse.
Watching events unfold is almost like a movie about the last days of the great nation America; the NYSE sold off, the US Dollar placed in treasury of Saudi Royalty, massive entitlements enacted without method of paying for them, Invading foreign lands without regard, adding trillions to budgets and debts simply by printing money.
In the meantime, leaders and followers debate political issues that have absolutely nothing to do with source of problems facing our Nation. Our leadership are acting like buffalo herds heading for the cliff, nobody questioning the economic foundation, which is the CAUSE of our problems.
Until we address the cause; petro dollar system, 88% of budget offline, rampant banking fraud, fractional and derivatives markets gone mad, no budgetary or administrative auditing or even supervision of the Federal Reserve, we will continue heading into the abyss.
America is being parceled and sold off by International Banking community, and we are assisting them willfully and ignorantly.
Nothing will be done, because too many of our politicians are cowards. They tell the voters what the voters want to hear in order to get re-elected over and over. When robbing Peter to pay Paul, Paul’s vote can always be counted on. Meanwhile, these same gutless politicians continue to kick the can down the road, just long enough and far enough to have a comfy career and accrue enough wealth and benefits to survive what they inflict on the rest of us.
Why do you thing Charlie Rangel was building a hideaway in the Caribbean, or Chris Dodd a tiny fiefdom in Ireland? Because they know what’s coming. They are getting theirs while the getting is good.
We voted for these fools. We have the government we deserve. And we’re screwed.
World knows that Americans having lot of bad habits which hurts other countries
Seems to me that “other countries” hurt themselves bunches and lots by depending upon and demanding American aid and assistance. If you want our tax dollars to help you rebuild your hell hole then you have to put up with our meddling and listen to our morality lectures.
What has been going on in the Middle East the last few months is an example of the world without American interference. I just hope we cut off the money flow to Egypt and let them figure it all out for themselves. As a taxpayer who has been pouring tax dollars into Egypt for decades I feel pleased to say that the choice in Cairo seems to be Freedom fighters or a bunch of wannabe rapists.
Terry is exactly right. I too have paid SS for 45 years, and can accept the notion that I won’t get the amount projected. I’ll get by.
I don’t think means testing is appropriate, but I would cooperate. How many would? I think we WILL see riots in the streets if we get serious about entitlements.
Doesn’t matter though – we’re broke, and out of choices. Borrowing from the future is insane, like paying your bills with your credit cards because you’re broke. Most of us have been broke, and know what cutting expenditures to bare bones means. We have heard banks or relatives say “no” to loans, prospective employers, landlords, etc. say “no”, we know about being out of choices.
Our politicians MUST at some point bite the bullet, if they make any pretension of being statesmen, and honestly say, ‘We MUST do this, we are out of choices, whether you like it or not.’ If doing so costs them elections, if we already are so far down the drain that the entitlement vote rules all, then it’s too late.
It’s not just about a strong and solvent USA, it’s survival.
Ah, yes, I too have worked with the bleeding hearts who long for the socialist utopia (and the illegals help that come about) and then go home to their lofts or gated communities. (The illegals make good, cheap yard men, though.) I am an immigrant (officially) from the former Yugoslavia, and remember when Eastern European inner-city neighborhoods were kept sharp as a pin, both parents working, etc. There is quite a difference between immigrant communities. We can thank the commies for encouraging the lawlessness and hatred of America by the newest arrivals.
Regarding Social Security, this quoted from the article…
” ‘I’m sorry, we are all broke. And I don’t see why my generation (I’m 57) should not work a bit longer and get a bit less Social Security, given that the sacrifice is going to be much harder on our children.’ ”
Social Security has always been the 3rd rail. Why not invite the conservative and independent masses who grasp the danger to our federal budget and country go to Facebook and LIKE for their age…i.e. A Facebook page for 43 year olds who say they would not mind if SS age was pushed to 70. A separate page for 52 year who would sign off on 68…***Political cover is the mission….for ACTION to be taken… and the party that actually can DO something of fiscal maturity might gain the votes.
Maybe because Pima County only has one sheriff. In fact most counties only have one sheriff, who is the head of the sheriff’s office or department.
All subordinate officers working under the sheriff are typically referred to, in the generic, as deputies — like Barney Fife, only (one hopes) with better training.
It might be noted that the ancestors of today’s Mexicans had the right idea of what to do with a chihuahua – they ate them, which seems to be what they developed the breed for.
Having had my share of dog conflicts while bicycle riding I learned long ago that resisting taking any evasive action is the only way to minimize the odds of crashing.
Last, a century ago there was created a cartridge, and revolvers to fire it, called the 5.75MM Velo Dog. “Velo” was short for “velocipede” an old term for bicycle. It seems that in the early 20th Century it was recognized that loose dogs were a deadly threat to bicyclists, and that those on bicycles had the right to defend their lives by shooting them.
Shooting the small dogs who chase you?
Actually, a good idea. Here in the Philippines, the tricycle drivers spray water or acid on the dogs that chase them.
And remember: stray dogs can carry rabies. If they aren’t tagged, call animal control.
Spraying water i can understand.
But acid????!!!! that’s disgusting!!
A good sharp spray of water, laced with something doggies find repellent like tea tree oil or something should be sufficiently seffective.
Or of course, pedalling at top speed!
I think the Prof has it about right. In so many ways, circumstances have changed radically but we’re still living according to yesterday’s habits and assumptions. We’re still a monstrously prosperous nation. We’re just not AS prosperous as we used to be. When the budget gets tight, it’s obvious that spending has to be curtailed and priorities have to be readjusted. It doesn’t help that for some of us, certain budget items are sacrosanct, never to be touched no matter how bad the economy gets. Tough choices to be made. I wonder if we’re capable of making them?
VDH must be my twin brother — except that he got all the brains. I know of no other author with whom I agree so often. I am also amazed by the group that replies here. It’s all (well mostly) good stuff! But is it possible that we are all being overly pessimistic. Is there not some small chance that when falling (flying)from the 64th to the 63rd floor that we will not hit the sidewalk — that America will finally wake up and act like responsible adults again? I worry that if we are absolutely convinced that the “sky is falling” we will leave our umbrellas at home.
Have a great day!
…and sort of went into a blind, deaf, and dumb mode, as I tried my pidgin Spanish.
I’m willing to bet, too, that after you left, they all had a good laugh at the gringo having been ambushed by their mutts.
Nah. Too sensible. Too much work. Let’s party!!
(Just kidding – except about the too sensible part.)
I’m glad you’re okay but really sir, if you were riding so slow that you were chased down by pekes and chihauhuas then you must have inching along.
Of course, Hanson’s bike crash was his own fault for riding too slow to let the dog catch him – too fast to be in control …
Thanks daisy for your compassion.
What kind of an unhinged coot are you anyway!?
I taught in the California public schools for thirty years (1975-2005). The high school where I taught was 70% Latino (80% now) and next to a multi-generational street-gang community. From my classroom doorway, I saw drive by shootings take place after school when the street was full of parents and students.
Many of the Latino (probably illegal) students often said they were Mexican and not American and saw no reason to study or obey the rules. There were exceptions of course…
In our ESL classes, there were teens from Mexico that had never held a pencil and were illiterate in Spanish too, and we were required by “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” to teach these teens–teach them how to hold a pencil and learn to write in Spanish and English.
There is no comparison to Latinos coming from south of the border and the Irish, Japanese, or Chinese, or Germans because those immigrants came to stay and learned the language. Many Latinos come to earn money, send it home then move back some day. Many have no plans to become US citizens or stay in American and see no reason to learn English or take advantage of a free education in the US.
If you look at the statistics, the Latinos drop out of US public schools in the largest numbers compared to all other racial groups. They also have the smallest number of students going onto college.
However, if the US were to build the Great Wall of America twice as high and deep as the Great Wall of China along our border with Mexico, they would still sneak into the US. If illegal immigrants from other countries do it by living in cargo containers aboard ships, then the Latinos will do that too.
We cannot stop them. As long as there are any kind of low paying (but high by south of the border standards) jobs in the US, they will keep coming.
So, why not do away with all of the entitlement programs that pay American citizens not to work and force them to do the low pay, hard labor jobs that the illegals do that sneak across our borders.
What we have are millions of “fat” Americans that lost their jobs, cannot find the same job and keep collecting entitlements (such as food stamps, etc.) and have no motivation to take these low pay, hard labor jobs that Americans once did.
Just read Steinbeck’s “OF Mice and Men” and you see that Americans once picked the crops in US farms–not illegals from down south of the border.
I’m proud to say, for most of my 65 years (I was a little kid once and didn’t do these chores then), I did my own yard work, washed my cars and did the hard labor around the house that most Americans now pay illegals to do while those same Americans sit watching hours of TV a day while swilling sodas, eating fast food and getting fatter.
When I was growing up, I watched my father paint our house and change the oil and brake pads for all the cars he owned.
I’ve read that there are about 11 million illegal Latinos working in the US. More than enough low pay, hard labor jobs to put all unemployed Americans to work so they can at least feed themselves even if it means giving up fast food and eating bowls of rice and beans only while drinking water.
11 million Obama Democrat voters. They “dont need no stinking egukation”.
IT’s not “Latinos” — do not paint with such a broad brush. Latinos/Hispanics are not a homogenous group. Mexicans are one thing, Cubans quite another, Argentinians yet a third,…
Of course one sees the latter only in token numbers in Californicated, and California is basically paying the price for a failed state (Mexico) exporting its economic problems. This together with a professional poverty pimp class who are using/manipulating the immigrants to further their own fiefdoms.
Something will have to give one day. And as usual, the poor Jose Shmoses who came in search of a better life will pay the price, not the political hustlers who deliberately turned them into a dependent class.
“The political liberal Left is obsessed and convinced that all cultures are SUPERIOR TO OUR WESTERN ANGLO-AMERICAN CULTURE and will surround a minority student with piles of money and 10 personal tutors to prove it.”
Fixed it for you.
We had some good habits. Habits that have been under development for 10,000 years, ever since the ice receded, our ancestors developed agriculture, cities began, and complex civilization superseded bands of hunter gatherers. Habits like the golden rule, hard work, the rule of law, love thy neighbor, freedom to speak but not to violate, and many more.
In Europe and the US, those ten thousand years of trial and error with various forms of urban/rural living became Judeo-Christian morality, the ethical code that allows a billion people to live in peace and tranquility.
And in the last three thousand years, English common law developed, starting with the Jews and Greeks; evolving through Rome and the Middle Ages; jolted by the Magna Carta; defining personal property rights, jury trials, intellectual property, personal freedoms, and culminating in the US Constitution. This is the rule of law that now enables nearly half the people on the planet to create wealth that a man in 1775 never could have imagined.
But a few thousand “progressives” are smarter by far than the tens of billions of humans who preceded them. In the last hundred years, a mere blink of the eye, they have set out to discard the wisdom of ten thousand years. It’s all wrong you see. Judeo-Christianity doesn’t exalt the equivalency of people whose morality is to cut your head off if you disagree with them. English Common Law allows 25% of total wealth to be concentrated in the hands of a handful of genius commoners, rather than 99% in the hands of the self-appointed elites. Yes progressives are smarter than all that. Ten thousand years of learning how to live in peace and tranquility with riches that might as well have descended from outer space…all of that has to go so that civilization can be “fair”, even though it means that 99% of the world will live in poverty again forever.
Except, of course, for our benevolent rulers, who necessarily must live in even more glorious splendor, so they can control our base instincts and prevent us from ever again living “unfair” lives; and oh yes, challenging their dominion over us.
So it has always been, and so they want it to be again.
Similar sitch here in Georgia.
I just did a 9am run to the local Walmart (that the legal, taxpaying, law-abiding local American citizens (ie: “bigots”)) refer to as “WalMartinez”, and on a Monday morning it was packed with able-bodied adults who appeared to be of Mexican descent.
I work at a place that is one of the essential, human-right industries, and regularly witness gold-toothed, cell-phone-toting, Louis Vuitton-clutching folks who, through a translator, don’t remember their birthday nor address!
Sadly, what we look at as “bad habits” are exactly what folks in most of the world want to emulate. Those on the Left routinely engage in “magical thinking”. It is a phenomenon of immaturity. But, we are not alone.
Few in this world truly understand that irresponsibility does, and will have inevitable consequences. And even after those consequences arrive, most refuse to recognize them as such!
Dr. Hanson,
Long ago I lived in a semi-rural California agricultural community and was constantly bothered by strays and speeding ranch trucks as I rode my Schwinn Varsity (yes, it was that long ago) through the orchards and hills. Now I live in an elite, ethnically monolithic community that has maintained a semi-rural feel through the imposition of confiscatory land use controls and I have no problems at all with stray dogs nipping at my heals. Better yet, passing BMW drivers slow down and wave approvingly as I ride along in my stretchy pants. Victor, wouldn’t you be happier if you washed your hands of the unwashed and joined us here behind the gates in Shangri-La?
Yours truly,
ThOR
Dr Hanson discusses the painfully obvious. What he says is too true to be good. Why then do only some see the good. Or is that a grown-up thing in a world rife with adolescent oblivion.
I don’t understand this argument that, if cuts are to come to Medicare or Social Security, we must “honor our commitments” to those over 55 or whatever. Why? Aren’t they the members of the generation that created the fiscal disaster that’s approaching? Why is their financial well-being sacred, while it’s OK to expect the twenty or thirty year old, who had no hand in creating this mess, to pay for it all?
Justice for Snookie! If the dog sues it can probably be bought off with a couple chalupas. No chalupa, no peace.
If, as I worry, this leftist tide cannot be turned and we continue down the road to a totalitarian Marxist state, I wish for only one thing…that we do it the American way and do it right this time, using the idea of American exceptionalism to get Marx right, unlike the complete botch job that Lenin and the Bolsheviks did in the Soviet Union. You see the Soviets merely replaced one aristocracy with another – their own. Instead of Czars and Dukes and Barons the Bolshies brought in their commissars, nomenklatura and apparatchiks. And these latter lived as extravagantly as any of their predecessors, and far more bloodily. This was of course contrary to Marx’s teachings which called for a classless society. The rugged, individualistic, American way that I wish for will make sure there are no self anointed elites, no American nomenklatura or apparatchick class but just one seething, roiling mass of proles all rolling around in the mud and the filth at the bottom of the pile – which is what these radical egalitarian leftists intend for all but themselves. I say that if we have to go down this road we acquaint them with the reality of Marx the good old fashioned American way.
yeah. Astronauts doing “Islamic outreach”.
I read an article in our papers in the Philippines a few months back about astronauts giving talks to Muslim students in Mindanao schools.
Nice fuzzy outreach.
Yet isn’t it a waste of money to use PhD’s whose expertise might not be teaching to do such public relations outreachers?
And why Mindanao, and not areas where the growing middle class is well educated and ambitious, and might actually become astronauts?
Great essay, many great comments.
Administration – SacBee reported new CFO hired for UC Davis Medical Systems. $400k/yr + ? benefits. Is it just me or isn’t that a little excessive at a time like this?
25 Jose – Known several legal immigrant hispanic families. People who worked very hard at low tier wage jobs while raising several children who went on to become very honorable successful productive American’s themselves.
On legal immigration, since reading “Fields WIthout Dreams” I’ve met several people who came out of the greater Fresno area from farm families. Japanese, Armenian, Indian & Mexican backgrounds. All very hard working successful folks some family members stayed on the farms, others well educated professionals.
*Legal* immigration is the lifeblood of this country. Often these people have a better sense of what this country represents than us natives. No quarrel at all with stopping illegal immigration.
Well to do people can be just as bad about dogs. Lock them up in the suburban yards with no exercise. Big mean nasty dogs that like to bark continually while the owners are gone.
Well said, as usual, but one minor quibble: The elites aren’t insulated from the immigrants. The census demographics have been released and I’ve learned that Jackson, Wyoming and Teton County, perhaps the single richest county in the US — “where the billionaires are running out the millionaires” — is now 27% Hispanic. Are those folks out on the slopes or dining at some of the better five star restaurants? Of course not. They’re cleaning the mansions, doing the laundry, watching the kids, preparing the gourmet meals, shoveling the walks, and polishing the stretch Hummer. Their little chihuahuas are not running around in the driveway peeing on the Bentley’s tires and if one of the silver spoons turns up missing? Well, that’s why we have deportation proceedings.
They’re the folks who bend a knee and tug a lock when the baron of the manse jets in for a skiing weekend with his 40 closest friends. The elites aren’t insulated from the immigrants, they benefit greatly from having a ready supply of powerless serfs to maintain them in style, in enclaves that are rapidly losing anything resembling a middle class.
# 49. Archaeopteryx re: 5.75MM Velo Dog
I looked that up on wikipedia –
a simple modern equivalent would be a Ruger bear-cat – small light .22 revolver – loaded with .22 shot – ammo – a tiny shotgun – might blind a dog if one of the tiny balls hit in the eye – but otherwise probably wouldn’t do any real damage — i use one here for amusement – and any small animal pests – it’s a single action, requires one to thumb-pull the hammer for each shot, but otherwise probably a good velo-dog device. S&W makes some nice hammerless double action .22′s – several ammo manufactures make .22 shot cartridges
In this Age of Insanity, Prof. Hanson should consider himself fortunate that, so far, he hasn’t been sued by these illegal aliens for injuring a poor defenseless doggie or arrested for animal cruelty.
1. 64. Steve Koraly
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An amusing read, VDH, but I disagree with the premise. I’m sorry you fell off your bike but America desperately needs people as bright as you to offer more thoughtful analysis and better solutions. America is not failing because of political correctness, (which admittedly encourages poor governing), but because of poor parenting, (which has produced bad citizens that elect dangerous socialists).If they stopped philosophizing and became “better administrators” they would more effectively implement their horribly destructive policies. Too many voters were too ignorant to foresee the havoc Obama and Swartzenager would cause and too many are voting selfishly for “handouts.”
The idiot, inmates running our asylum would never have gotten elected if parents had instilled common sense and personal and civic responsibility. Our generation’s failure to pass down moral values has created a MORAL DEFICITE that is more serious than our trillions of National debt. It’s time for “Charlie” and all of us to sober up.
What good will it do to raise the age for retirement to 67, 70 or beyond when our image-conscious corporations refuse to hire anyone beyond the age of 45? Liberals and conservatives will have to agree on anti-age-ist hiring legislation. We’re sunk. We’re finished. Start hoarding the lentils, canned wheat and bottled seltzer water for the best is yet to come.
If the free market prevails, one would think there have to be some tremendous deals in hiring the 45+ crowd – trained, experienced, willing to work (likely).
Sounds like a great opportunity for the insightful business owner.
Great Post.
I wonder… had you been carrying a golf club, and threatened to “edumakate” little Snookie with it, how quickly they would have miraculously learned to speak English.
Victor
You got a cheap lesson if you only wrenched your knee. Hope you knee is getting back to 100%. All the other injuries are nothing. Watch that knee! As far as raising the age to get SS. What jobs are out there for a 55-64 year old in the interim?
Time to listen to Ron and Rand Paul. The Establishment GOP has seemed unable to talk about the budget and the deficit in a mature matter.
We constantly hear that big business and big agri is behind our (bribed) government turning a blind eye to illegal immigration because these groups couldn’t survive without that source of cheap labor. I don’t know what to make of this argument; I never see it refuted. Any comments?
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