Thoughts on a Surreal Depression
Here in Fresno County, in the heart of California’s San Joaquin Valley, the official unemployment rate in February to March ranged between 18.1 and 18.8 percent. I suspect it is higher in the poorer southwestern portions, especially near my hometown of Selma, about two miles from my farm.
Since 2000 we have both lost jobs and gained people, and the per capita household income is about 65% of California’s average, the average home price about half the state norm.
In some sense, all the ideas that are born on the Berkeley or Stanford campus, in the CSU and UC education, political science, and sociology departments, and among the bureaus in Sacramento are reified in places like Selma — open borders, therapeutic education curricula, massive government transfers and subsidies, big government, and intrusive regulation. Together that has created the sort of utopia that a Bay Area consultant, politico, or professor dreams of, but would never live near. Again, we in California have become the most and least free of peoples — the law-biding stifled by red tape, the non-law-biding considered exempt from accountability on the basis of simple cost-to-benefit logic. A speeder on the freeway will pay a $300 ticket for going 75mph and justifies the legions of highway patrol officers now on the road; going after an unlicensed peddler or rural dumper is a money-losing proposition for government.
The subtext, however, of most of our manifold challenges here in the other California are twofold: we have had a massive increase in population, largely driven by illegal immigration from Latin America, mostly from Oaxaca province in Mexico, and we have not created a commensurate number of jobs to facilitate the influx.
I often ask business people on the coast why there are not more industries in places like Selma other than agricultural related work that is locale specific. I would sum up their responses as something like the following: Our workforce does not have the educational and linguistic skills to justify, in global terms, the amount of wages and benefits necessary to employ them, hence jobs are mostly in service and government. Software engineering, computers, or Silicon Valley-like industry are out the question. But apparently so are large manufacturing jobs, despite an abundant workforce. As I understand employers, they seem to suggest that steel pipe, electrical wire, or radios would not be better manufactured or fabricated here, and yet still cost two to three times more than a counterpart assembled abroad.
In addition, they believe that the state government would look upon any employer of a large industry not as a partner that would alleviate unemployment and lessen county expenditures, but more or less a sort of target to regulate, advise, lecture, and chastise, both to justify the expanding government regulatory work force and to achieve a fuzzy sort of social justice. There are, of course, large plants and businesses here, but hardly enough to absorb the thousands entering the work force.
The result is about one in five adults is not working in the traditional and formal sense. A morning drive through these valley towns confirms anecdotally what statistics suggest: hundreds, no, thousands, are not employed. Construction is almost nonexistent. Agriculture is recovering, but environmentally driven water cut-offs on the West Side (250,000 acres), increasing mechanization, and past poor prices have combined to reduce by tens of thousands once plentiful farm jobs.
We live in one of the most blessed climates in the world, without major floods, earthquakes, fires, or tornadoes. The soil is unmatched. The Sierra and its rich snowpack loom immediately to the east with all its recreational, hydroelectric, and timber wealth; we are but three hours from either San Francisco or Los Angeles. And yet this is now one of the most impoverished areas in the United States, statistically in many categories of income, education, and employment well behind Appalachia.
But we are experiencing a funny sort of depression, or rather a surreal sort. I grew up with stories from my grandparents of 28 people living in my present house. My grandmother, she used to brag, had a big kettle of ham bones and beans cooking nonstop each day and fed assorted relatives as they came in from the vineyard and orchard. My grandfather made one trip to Fresno (16 miles away) every 10 days for “supplies.” The pictures I have inherited from my mother show an impoverished farm — this house unpainted and in disrepair, ancient cars and implements scattered about, a sort of farm of apparent 1910 vintage, but photographed in the 1930s — one that I could still sense traces of as a little boy here in the late 1950s.
And yet all I heard were stories of happiness, hard work, and collective sacrifice. Relatives would say that the “’30s” were the worst and best years of their lives, as they related sagas of real genius involving fruit canning and curing, ad hoc repairs to equipment, and cobbled together furniture and clothing —all without spending any money. I just looked in my grandfather’s diary; he has a happy entry in 1958 about raisin prices over $200 a ton — quite in contrast to $40 a ton he received in 1936. (A ton of raisins would fill two of those huge watermelon bins you see in the supermarket.)
In contrast, in the present depression, the out of work and poor are as numerous, but both unhappier and yet far better off than prior generations. This is not the rant of some right-wing laudator temporis acti, or the death throes of an aging old white guy, but rather empirically based and shared by most of my friends in the ascendant Mexican-American middle and upper-middle classes, many of whom are becoming quite conservative.
The cars of our poorer brethren in our major discount stores are late model and often expensive. People get into them with full carts of food and clothing. Housing here is cheap and good. How to square this circle between official poverty and misery and the veneer of a well-off general public?
I’ve been discussing these disconnects with farmers, a professor or two from CSU Fresno, and local business people. All come to the same conclusions. There is a vast and completely unreported cash economy in Central California. Tile-setters, carpenters, landscapers, tree-cutters, general handymen, cooks, housekeepers, and personal attendants are all both finding work and being paid in cash. Peddlers (no income or sales taxes) are on nearly every major rural intersection. You can buy everything from a new pressure washer to tropical fruit drinks. For this essay, I stopped at one last week and surveyed their roto-tillers, lawn mowers, and chain saws, new and good brands.
New “restaurants” are sprouting all over the highways — mobile stainless-steel encased canteens with awnings and chairs set up along the road. And yet for all the cash economy, it seems almost everyone in the food stores and doctors’ offices are on food stamps, Medi-Cal, and rent subsidies. A carload of people drove in last week, inquiring about a house nearby; the occupants assured me that they had county housing vouchers.
A third ingredient is easy credit, whether for credit cards or late model cars. The result is statistically we are impoverished with near 20% unemployment; but in reality something stranger and weirder is transpiring. Prosperity and well-being are mostly assessed in relative not absolute terms. There is little appreciation of the wonders of the iPhone, whose computerized, and GPS-driven gadgetry would have been confined to millionaires ten years ago; there is frequent lamentation that the iPhone in question is not the latest model as others enjoy. A Camry is not worshipped as a wondrous machine that can get one 200 miles in 3 hours, in air-conditioned and musical luxury, only that one has a 4, not a 6 cylinder model, without leather seats and 6-disc CD.
The combination of 2 billion Indians and Chinese in the world marketplace, exporting cheap goods, has meant fewer jobs for Americans and far more material playthings now accessible to every stratum of society. Again, easy credit, combined with little shame or penalty in defaulting on what one owes, has allowed a superficial parity with the upper-middle class. Massive government transfers and relaxed eligibility have ensured households thousands of dollars in entitlements and subsidies. We have printed $5 trillion since 2009, and borrowed $1.6 trillion just this year. And the huge influx of easy government cash shows here.
Cash wages have meant augmented entitlement money and are competitive with those who are formally employed and who pay 30% of their money in payroll, health care, and federal, state, and local income tax deductions. The result is an odd sort of poverty, in which superficially the unemployed and poor to the naked eyed are almost identical to the upper middle classes.
Indeed what distinguishes the latter — the ability to pay a child’s tuition at college, frequent travel, higher end clothes and cars, a pool, or boat — seems rather superfluous. Need-based student loans and grants are now ubiquitous, one can learn more about Florence on a cable TV in-depth tour than going there, and a Lexus or Mercedes is not much different in reliability and comfort from a Honda or Nissan. I did an experiment the other day. I priced “wicker” furniture at Kmart and Wal-Mart and then drove up to an upscale North Fresno design outdoor living boutique. In short, the local version from China was about $300 for an ensemble, the high-end version was priced at $1700. To the naked eye, they were again almost identical and explain what I mean by the “veneer” of affluence. Ditto everything from jogging clothes to watches, and one can be outfitted in Selma for 10% of the cost of the brands of those popular in Palo Alto.
Some final tesserae in this confusing mosaic: The rhetoric of poverty and oppression is far more strident than the Depression-era, spread the wealth, Huey Long sort. The sense of injustice voiced by the SEIU or public employee unions suggests wide scale Dickensian malnutrition, not an epidemic of obesity so amply chronicled by the first lady.
History’s revolutions and upheavals — whether the Nika rioting in Constantinople, the periodic uprising of the turba in Rome, the French upheavals, or the Bolshevik Revolution — are rarely fueled by the starving and despised, but by the subsidized and frustrated, who either see their umbilical cord threatened, or their comfort and subsidies static rather than expansive — or their own condition surpassed by that of an envied kulak class. Perceived relative inequality rather than absolute poverty is the engine of revolution.
These are strange and dangerous times. An insolvent federal government, an exporting China and India, and an almost complete indifference to federal immigration, tax, and regulatory laws have all combined to create a well-entitled but increasingly angry population, one “empowered” and made more, not less, bitter by the last two years of governance in Washington.
Good points all. I wold argue that a large part of the population not “empowered” are getting just as bitter and angry: They are the ones paying for the “empowerment” while the Government is taking every opportunity to fleece them with exorbitant fines and fees. This is made worse by the insistence of the fleecers that if the fleeced get angry, they are just clingers.
The result will be a deep divide in our society. I already see it happen with the Tea Party movement.
You’ve got that right.
I am surprised that there has not been a movement to break up the State of California, so as to free the truly productive portion of it (and by that I do NOT mean Silicon Valley) from the parasitic tax/spend/regulate liberal fascists who are destroying both California and the US.
Most of the immigrants are used to a feudal system of corruption and bribery. California has helped them transition to another Robin Hood scheme and from a feudal system to a dystopia.
I just recently took advantage of an offer from my cellphone company to sign up for another 2 year service agreement, in return for which I would get a free new phone. The phone normally costs about $200 retail, but as all of you know, the service providers compete with each other in this manner in order to win or keep subscribers.
When I signed up for the deal, I thought I was getting a new (albeit lower end, but perfectly functional and usable) phone for free. Turns out I had to pay a tax to the boys in Sacramento for ‘purchasing’ this phone.
I consider this tax to be nothing less than an outright theft. It’s an extortion, a confiscation that you would expect of a couple of mobsters walking thru a merchant district in a city neighborhood, shaking down the store owners for protection money.
The fact that this can be done and no one really reacts to it indicates to me that we are FINISHED as a nation. The best we can expect is a French or British style social welfare state, where every year life becomes a little more expensive while the household budget gets a bit tighter and its harder to make ends meet.
The Tea Party is a last, desperate shout against the coming soft tyranny, like a lone voice in a vast wilderness.
We are Thru.
It won’t take years… a farmer in my area, Washington State, was surveying his crops, or lack of them.. he was also commenting on the floods in the bread basket of amerika, how the levees were blown up to flood the poor farmers rich soil, to protect the rich farmers on the other side of the river. He was talking about how there was going to be a severe shortage of food, coming very soon. He was asked if he thought it would trickle down to the consumers, his reply: it won’t be a trickle it will be a gusher. The gangstas have ruined not only this country, but their evil has touched the whole world.. money.. they can’t get enough of it.. add that to the power they seek and it equals disaster.
Your farmer friend was toally incorrect about the flooding of poor farmers to save rich farmers. That’s my home county, the land that was flooded by the blasting of the levee mostly belongs to very wealthy farmers. The reason they blew the levee was to save Cairo Il which is a very poor city. Many would say this was a very poor decision by the Corp as the farm land is worth many times what Cairo Il is.
But, the flooding won’t destroy the farmland. It will prevent or delay crop planting this spring, but the river silt will improve the quality of the soil for years to come.
What I think is happening to America is what happened to the USSR. The people split into two groups, the party members and the proletariat. This is why you are seeing violence by government employees against those who are not members of this privileged class. We are following Europe down the rabbit hole. We have become a nation ruled by the bureaucracy.
My dear cyberfriend, VDH…welcome to “free market communism”.
This is “redistribution through gaming the system”. Flashing through all Western civilization, in every European, Canadian, Australian, and US marketplace. If it had a video version it would be called “Grand Theft NATO”.
50% of the people play by the “old” rules. They pay taxes, pay their mortgages, pay their own food bills, enter the country legally, and basically support the “other half”.
The “other half”…play the “victim” of the paying “majority”…and try to guilt them into paying for MORE stuff….while amassing goods and services at the discount window of the “government”, which slanders the paying majority as “greedy”. (and any other slander that imposes immediate guilt and shame…pick a weapon as you walk through the terrain…racism, sexism, homophobia, jingoism, etc)
In Grand Theft NATO, the “have nots”…are GIVEN more and more and more. They are “protected” by their benefactors…but, in order to recharge their “batteries” to press on…they MUST vote when they see their “energy” being depleted. Vote for a leftist…get more “energy”, be given more stuff…and more powerful “weapons”.
As you reach higher and more sophisticated levels…you get assistance in weapons of mass deception. Global warming is used as a hoax weapon to “redistribute” money, power, influence…from the “haves” who are ripped off on a worldwide basis…to the “have nots” in leftist enclaves.
You also get “mass media” protections…a force field shield that covers you for every misdeed, puts out false information and distortions for your benefit.
Grand Theft NATO is available everywhere you can find leftists in power. Thanks for playing…now hand over some more of OUR money…you have made enough already.
great comment
great essay VDH
Dead on balls accurate.
Two thoughts on your excellent comment:
Bread & Circuses & Margaret Thatcher’s great quote, ”Eventually, you run out of other people’s money.”
Great analogy. It has the simplicity of mind and icons to actually get through to the kids who are the main target of the State. It might just be usable to wake some of these twenty something up before it is too late for all of us.
It reminds me of the GOP chickening out on Congressman Ryan’s plan to convert Medicare to vochures over a ten year time frame. It is being abandoned because since we don’t control the State propaganda aparatus we don’t seem to be able to get the message out that unless we do something like Congressman Ryan is suggesting in ten years all of the Boomers and everyone else will have NO MEDICARE, NONE. So, I loved your direct understandable analogy since it is with that type of creative communication that all our hopes to win any more converts lie.
That’s a pretty good nutshell.
Love this comment. Seems right to me.
Except, as one of the people who always played by the rules, I see I have been made a chump by my government and my neighbors. And I’m tired of it.
It used to be that if you wanted a good life, you worked hard for it. Now, you demand your government provide it out of other peoples’ pockets. The New American Dream – financial security without hard work. That’s not a nation headed for greatness – its headed for disaster. Do my neighbors really have a right to vote me and my children into ruin?
“Do my neighbors really have a right to vote me and my children into ruin?”
Yes, which is why I despise democratic and republican forms of government. Such governments continually grow, continually become more intrusive, and continually move towards nannystatism and socialism. We’re following the same path as Greece, Spain, Italy, France, Sweden, Great Britain, etc.
No they don’t! They are not following the contract layed down as the constitution. If they followed the rules they would not be taking from the people who earn what they have and giving it to the ones who don’t. If you understood how it is supposed to be done you would realize that following the constitution would get us out of this mess. All of the unconstitutional programs like HUD, Department of Education and energy etc. should be abolished.
The entire reason why our government fails to follow the Constitution is because the people elect politicians who will violate the Constitution and who will appoint Supreme Court justices who favor expansion of federal government powers despite the language of the Constitution. The only way to fix this problem is to exterminate all who support a big national government. That’s at least two-thirds of our adult population. You’ll need lots of guillotines.
I couldn’t have said it better, which is why I am one of those increasingly angry people who feels powerless to stop the train wreck looming, or enraged by the system that allows some political drone in Illinois to propose law after law that I have no say in whatsoever, but violates my sense of personal responsibility and pocketbook. That is a republican democracy, fueled by influential interests coupled with unholy alliances fostered with those very representatives that swear upon election to uphold the sanctity of the offices and allegiances with their voters that elected them, but, in a perverse juxtapose, leave the same voters at the mercy of their answering machine while they spend two days in the DMV line while the representatives are chauffered off to countless “dinners” and Weeklong “factfinding trips” to Texas.
What you’re describing is the Third World but with welfare – I’ve been all over it: SE Asia, Mexico, South & Central America, the Middle East and I know. There is no order – people simply do what they want to do out of poverty and the disorder cannot be controled by gov’t because of sheer numbers and the insistence that brings with it.
Order is breaking down in some few places in the U.S and it’s strictly on account of Latinos and immigration; they have no respect for order when in sufficient numbers and anyone who has traveled Latin America knows this. We have reached a tipping point.
Prior to this we have already long had no-go zones that are black neighborhoods all across this land.
As for your cash economy and nice cars in the midst of unemployment, you’re living in the midst of a bustling drug trade; soon, violence will follow as competition will discover your area and they will fight over turf.
Wave bye-bye to America cuz in many parts it has already become history and for what? For campesinos who won’t stop having large families they can’t support? What a waste – all that hard work to make a nice country only to see it descend into a wasteland like places we used to laugh at. Now we’re laughing at ourselves and our new neighbors.
it’s strictly on account of Latinos and immigration
If we hire them, they will come.
Ah, VDH, your latest personalized reportage about how “strange and dangerous” the human situation is in your “poor” area is at once timely and provocative.
Perhaps, in the economic dimension, all we have to do is a simple gedank experiment, or thought experiment, a la Einstein—
Every day, the actions of ALL humans can be summed up, roughly, and we can truthfully say that X amount of valuable work was done creating Y amount of goods and services.
That is, in physical AND other terms, humanity managed to fight chaos and add to the life-sustaining ORDER, which is the extant “machinery” left over.
Hence, my guess is that for the developed countries, especially the land within the American borders, all the wealth producing machines continue to take stuff in one door and shoot useful GOODS out the other. And, even though more and more people elude legal borders, like in Selma, there is more than enough to “spread the wealth”.
Also, I’m provoked in memory back to the late 70’s and early 80’s, when Howard Ruff, et al, and a barter economy, and survival kits were all the rage.
Remember the brouhaha about the underground economy?
Thus, despite the “official” unemployment rate of illegals in your area, and indeed all over America, want to bet that a whole lot of wealth creating work is STILL being done by many people we ASSUME are mere takers?
I’ve long thought that this country NEEDS, desperately, the fresh blood of immigrants, because too many “lucky” people who were born AND educated = brainwashed here, have an entitlement mentality, and THEY are the true drags on this country.
Why, EVEN illegals, for the most part, come here to WORK! And, they are the “bottom end” of the needed supply of labor, who are able to escape the nefarious effects of minimum wage laws—HAPPILY!
Maybe, pace what Jefferson said about the need for a bloody revolution, now and again, to nourish the tree of freedom, in a “strange and dangerous” way, the seemingly unstoppable wave of mostly Mexican illegals is a sort of rolling revolution, and the “blood” it is pricking is a kind of “blood letting”, which over time will prove beneficial.
Of course, surely we will have to go through MORE relatively painful adjustments, but unless and until something like an EMP war breaks out, America and the rest of the First World is—ALREADY developed.
That means, physically, and psychically, the infrastructure is ALREADY present, and—WORKING, however unjustly.
We will ALWAYS have to also WORK on making it more just, though.
You are so marinated in leftist theory (you even throw in a sophomoric X-Y equation… WOW! higher math! proof that you are so much smarter than all the rest of us!) that you are absolutely unable to see reality and the destruction caused by your sanctified Other. I have neither the time nor energy required to attempt logical discourse with someone whose ideology is based on envy and hatred of traditional America, and whose thinking consists of little more than semantic games. I will, however, politely invite you to start living amongst all those noble authentic youths you worship, and thereby directly experience the associated societal degradation and chaos caused by your cultural Marxist insanity, although I doubt you will ever have the cojones to do it.
ericcs: You wrote, “I have neither the time nor energy required to attempt logical discourse with someone whose ideology is based on envy and hatred of traditional America, and whose thinking consists of little more than semantic games.”
Exactly what the left’s goal is. The left doesn’t have a rational theory or a viable solution, so it inundates the argument with sophomoric blather, 24/7/365, until the enemy (i.e., the right-wing) capitulates from sheer boredom.
Or, we retreat into fortified enclaves where, with our backs against the wall, we can readily identify the “other”.
Yes, as continually practiced, it’s the incredible stupidity of the Progressives which has seemed to me to be the source of their main power – certainly in the realm of “debating” and understanding issues, and life – and I think they are really quite aware of this particular feature of their effectiveness and very gratified by its use, in a basically infantile way. We expect them to act with reference to reason, but they simply won’t: “Na nana na naaa…you can’t make meeee!” So where does that leave us?
Well, I’m getting the impression that pretty soon this intractable, infantile stupidity is going to be widely seen as what Progressives in fact are – essentially as a kind of inferior hominid subspecies, or at least as a fairly stupid form of Parasite, whose existence we producers have actually enabled by the creation of a very large ecological niche for them to exist within. Such that they are really quite close to essentially possessing the same functional level as that of the Homeless, and I think they know it.
So, given their competitive disadvantage in this respect, the creativity of our own individual free thought related intelligence, and the fact of the easy access to a massive amount of such thought, such as right here – which I think is the game breaker in favor of the more intelligent, and also in favor of the more genuinely ethical – it ain’t over yet. It’s not really even close, as long as we insist upon continuing to think and act in defining the problem and thus its solution.
That’s funny!
I’m so right wing, I make Ghenghis Khan look like a piker.
If I were in charge, the USA would have a solid fence and allow lots of rich and educated people to LEGALLY come to this country.
But, given the sorry state of affairs, I’ve come to the conclusion that “We don’t need no stinking badges” is the current reality, and most of the go getters who do come here do useful work.
There’s a lot of ruin in a nation, and the regular expositions by VDH of the situation in his neck of the American woods affirm to me that there is a rolling revolution going on, but not too many people are killing each other, compared to REAL ones, such as what took place in Russia circa 1917.
America will probably adjust, and the valuable stock of assets within her borders vastly exceeds that of anyone else—I expect China, for example, to sooner or later pay for all of the pollution they are letting go, as they scramble to become a first world economy.
But, hey—me, a left winger: THAT’S FUNNY!
The point that Who Knows is making is that the vast bulk of the immigrants are hard working people. “They” are a problem only in that there are not enough lower and middle class jobs being created in America. “We” are the problem in that we have let the pandering politicians, along with the bureaucrats, create a cushy environment for “them” and their criminal cohorts to welch off the taxpayers. Instead of schools and prisons, this is where Brown should be focusing to get rid of our 25 billion dollar deficit.
Who Knows ? misses a very important point. The illegals come here to work but they are unqualified for anything but the most heavy manual labor. I review workers comp claims. 75% are Hispanic surnames and about half of those do not speak English. If asked, most claim a second grade education in Mexico and are illiterate in Spanish.
We could benefit by increased immigration of the skilled people who are on ten year waiting lists to come here. Instead, our INS discriminates against the legals in favor of “family reunification” which brings more useless mouths to feed. Our immigration policy is insane unless you believe, like Michael Bloomberg, that we need more golf course maintenance workers.
LOL… I am considerably to the right of YOU; in fact, I am probably the most right-wing person I have ever met, and I have met a pretty fair number of people over the years. Anybody who wants to see what no-holds-barred conservatism looks like can see it on my own blog. And no, racism is not a part of the picture at all. PJM is center-right; that’s why I’ve never been invited to write for it!
Back to the topic at hand. Were it up to me, I would forbid ANY immigration for any reason whatsoever, until such time as the US unemployment rate falls below 2%. An exception can be made for practicing Christians who are currently facing persecution by Muslims. The US has caused this situation by supporting Muslim savagery worldwide for many decades, so we owe them that much.
And even then, I would permanently forbid Muslims to set foot on US soil, even as tourists. Being a Muslim is incompatible with upholding the US Constitution and incompatible with civil society of any type. Embracing Islam should be considered the same as giving up US citizenship. Anybody from a Muslim region or background who takes the risk of publicly apostatizing from Islam, or denying that he/she ever was a Muslim in the first place, can be considered a non-Muslim.
From my observations in Baltimore, Maryland which despite our semi northern climate has a very large and growing population of new Hispanic illegals that are rebuilding the slums let to fall into ruin by the inner city Blacks and the displaced Whites from Baltimore’s days as a manufacturing city fifteen to fifty years ago.
The “New Americans” as our erstwhile Mayor now Governor of MD calls illegals, has come a hard working population that has brought the cash economy into investing and rebuilding the dumps that still line the majority of the City east and west sides. They of course are more cost effective then the real citizens who aren’t big on actual physical labor since they have been entitled to sitting on their a$$e$ for generations by the Communist/Democrats ever since we lost our only honest politican in Mayor William Donald Schafer twenty five years ago. The high minimum wage keeps any real citizen from the Inner City world from being able to be cost effective at any real entry level job. Even the fast food places are totally staffed by young men and women from Mexico and San Salvadore.
Center For Immigration Studies – “Households with children with the highest welfare use rates are those headed by immigrants from the Dominican Republic (82 percent), Mexico and Guatemala (75 percent), and Ecuador (70 percent). Those with the lowest use rates are from the United Kingdom (7 percent), India (19 percent), Canada (23 percent), and Korea (25 percent).”
(To be fair there are certain groups of non-immigrants that have excessive use rates of welfare)
These numbers tell the story. Now some of these immigrants are also working, but even so there is no way they are paying enough in taxes to offset their freeloading. It’s scary to think what this country would look like if all the immigrants from Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries became wards of the state rather than realizing the American dream. It wasn’t easy for them, but they built the character of this country and set the stage for us to become the leader of the free world
Yes, some of these (illegal) immigrants are working, but being paid under the table, and are thus not contributing ANYTHING to the tax base. The double-edged sword in this equation is that while these people contribute nothing TO the system, they are extracting large (unsustainable) measure FROM the system. The fact so many work in agriculture and day labor makes it difficult to locate and penalize employers. The only way to drive them back where they came from is to terminate all public assistance to non-citizens. NOW!
The only thing most of them would contribute is the medicare and social security takeout from an employer-issued paycheck.
Back then – prior to WW-I – an immigrant didn’t dare allow himself or his family to become a “ward of the state”, since “the state” had this nasty habit of shipping your sorry backsides to whence it came.
Are you really that sorry won’t say it Just lmfao aint no such thing EIC in the federal tax code is that JUST is it Please ???? and what infrastructer DO you mean the one that is collapseing righting before our very EyE’S ?????? because the goverment took the money specificly Tasked by the FCKING LAWS THEY WROTE and used it for something ELSE ??????? AND ARE now saying WE need to raise more taxes beacuse everything is falling apart AND when asked where the money went well were speading the wealth around for Social JUSTICE is that justice ????? YOU FN SCUM
Such erudite speech. What you say is right but how you say it is appalling. But maybe that is what is needed to get people’s attention. Like the old story of the mule. To get it to do what you need done first you whack it with a 2X4 to get it’s attention. Somehow I don’t think it’s going to work.
The biggest problem with your line of thought is that you ignore that, as a group, these immigrants have no qualms about receiving govt. assistance; unlike previous waves of immigrants who, even if desperately poor, had too much pride to take “charity”. Any wealth these current immigrants generate is more than likely offset by what they are taking from the system in benefits. In the examples cited by VDH, many are receiving welfare illegally. In effect stealing money from disadvantaged Americans.
No good can come from this situation, given the current economic realities. As inflation and unemployment eats away at the wealth of all Americans, more and more will find themselves on the breadline. Having groups of people who are willing to steal bread from a bread maker who is running out of dough, will just make us all poorer and hungrier in the long run.
There is no nobility among any people who will take what they don’t deserve at the expense of those who truly need it. And no justice either. The poor, aged and disabled who depend on govt. assistance for survival, are the ones who are the most adversely affected when welfare funds become scarce. The unintended consequence of the progressive open-borders policy is that they end up hurting the most, the very people they claim to want to help.
A remarkably insightful and distressing posting. Those who believe our borders should be kept open, and that the influx of, primarily, Mexicans will benefit the nation by their labor, energy and assimilation, are totally misled. Overlooked is the truth that those enterprising enough to flee from corrupt kleptocracies are those who are skilled at evading law and government regulation in their home land, and find here a utopia: they survive outside the labor laws and the tax burden shouldered by citizens, take every advantage of an increasingly socialist government obsessed witha mushy concept of “social justice” and live a life of material plenty beyond anything they ever dreamed of, sending part of it back to relatives to encourage them to follow.
Assimilation and the assumption of the responsibilities of citizenship never enter their mind. They have absolutely no knowledge of the principles of our Founding Fathers or of our political system or protestant (or any other) ethics beyond family bonds. They continue to live as the have always lived – by their wits and ability to evade “the boss”. They a re lousy candidates for citizenship and entitled to no support or encouragement.
The combination of socialism and simple-minded Christian social equality and tolerance in the name of multiculturalism and moral equivalence is destroying a nation built on the high principles of honesty, civic responsibility, freedom and diligence. Because recognition of this hazard is imperative, Dr. Hanson’s efforts should be given the widest circulation possible.
Contempt breeds contempt.
Always has, always will.
California is in a position that reminds me of the story of the snake that ate it’s own tail. Eventually there was nothing left. The state seems bound and determined to drive out business thorugh a system of confiscatory taxation in order to keep alive the illusion that it is still the California of the 1950′s and 1960′s. As taxes, regulations and governmental oversight become more oppressive the producers within the economy will either (a) flee the state or (b) go underground. Since there is no willingness at all to cut the size of government expenditures there will have to be more taxation on an increasingly limited tax base.
Governor Brown has already indicated that he plans to raise business taxes (again) in an effort to close the 25 billion dollar budget gap while making practically no cuts in government spending or entitlements. As this happens the underground economy will grow larger and we may actually arrive at a point where unlicensed peddlars who sell appliances or furniture will start using force to defend their “turf” in the same way that drug gangs use violence to regulate their “business.”
Dr. Hanson describes perfectly the disconnect between the economic ralities of California life and the surface appearance. Almost everyone demands the right to the latest electronic gadgets, designer clothing, and even automobiles and houses with no personal outlay. And all of this takes place against a background of political rhetoric right out of Clifford Odets agitprop play from the early 1930′s. This is truly like ordering room service on the Titanic about thirty minutes after she has hit the iceberg.
A snake swallowing its own tail — That reminds me of the talk in Sacramento about setting up a state bank, The State Bank of California, I guess they will call it, that will require the state employees’ retirement funds to be deposited in it, so that money can then be lent to the state government and “invested” in all the brilliant programs that our wise political masters can think up.
No one will now lend the State of California any money, but who needs them — it can feed itself by just swallowing its own tail.
Which is precisely why I’m leaving the state of my birth at the end of this summer. And leaving a job – as a still productive middle-class member of the state – that pays well enough for the rural community I live in. And at a time in life when I should be thinking about retirement, rather than starting fresh.
The state is terminal, and fast sinking, due to the mismanagement of an economically clueless political and governing class, and a demonstrably stupid majority electorate (seriously? – we elect in a clean sweep a Democrat majority when our financial demise is directly tied to just that problem? What the hell is *wrong* with you people?) …and there’s no way California can recover in the working years I have left to me, even IF it enacts needed reforms starting *today*.
Time to leave.
…and if someone in a position like mine has finally smelled the roses, how long before even a tourniquet won’t be enough to stem the blood?
To Davisbr: I think you meant “…what the *HELL* is wrong with you people.”
Kudos and good luck on your impending move. I left California – the state of my birth – 3.5 years ago and haven’t looked back. I’m now enjoying raising my young family in a southern, Atlantic seaboard state. The living is easy and it’s much easier to avoid the rotten, stinking leftists as I go about the business of my life.
In my new state, the legislature flipped red for the first time in 140 years, and they are cleaning house. We’ve seen what the left have done and won’t stand for any more of it here. Thankfully, it wasn’t too late to reverse course. California? Sorry girl, you’re toast.
I still have family and friends in OC and San Diego and am actually not terribly excited for a two-week August vacation. It’ll be akin to running into a once-loved old girlfriend who’s now a crack whore with AIDS, killing herself and infecting everyone who plays with her. So sad. If it wasn’t for the kids, I’d be skipping it altogether.
I left the cesspool of California 3 years ago, but I didn’t move to a red state, I moved to a lighter blue state, namely Washington.
Democrats run the state but they are not so much whack jobs as in California. OK, some Seattle area Dems are whack jobs but that is true for most any large urban area.
Our Democratic governor is pretty fiscally responsible, especially when the voters said no to new taxes her response was OK, then we need to cut the budget, unlike California where the only question they ask you is “OK, if you don’t want us to make THAT tax increase then what tax increase DO you want us to make?”
We have no state income tax and the voters absolutely trounced an attempt to enact an income tax for those with high incomes.
Not all blue states are dysfunctional. California, Illinois, and a few others yes, but I am reasonably satisfied with the governance in my state despite most of the power being in the hands of Democrats.
We need ex-Californians like you here in Texas. We moved from CA to TX, taking two middle-class working tax-payers off the California rolls. That’s OK, I’m sure 2 M13s moved in to some sanctuary city make sure the population didn’t drop for the 2010 census. No state income tax, right-to-carry, and you can buy a gun and take it home right away.
davisbr,
Thanks for leaving. Now this is what I call “economic justice”… take the productive for granted and they leave.
I wish more of the productive would raise their middle fingers and put CA in the rear-view.
I left for Utah in 2004 and am currently working my ass off building a highly profitable multi-billion dollar tech startup here. I refuse to have my hard work support California’s insanity. Screw ‘em!
sac
An essay for the ages. Thanks. Oh, by the way, my parents memories of the Depression parallel those of your parents and grandparents. They said that people showed unusual goodness during that time. When WWII gave them an opportunity, my parents bounced back with their own small business that roared through the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties.
“In addition, they believe that the state government would look upon any employer of a large industry not as a partner that would alleviate unemployment and lessen county expenditures, but more or less a sort of target to regulate, advise, lecture, and chastise,…”
A neighbor of mine, who recently retired to Florida, describes just that. As an executive of a company HQed in Kansas he grew so exasperated with dealing with California’s government that one day he made the decision to shut down the company division there and move the whole thing back to home base.
Hello, John Galt.
It reminds me of a young woman,living in florida,who had several diseases from the gulf sydromes…boils, leukemia etc… who I helped out to the tune of $1500. I didn’t know her except for her youtube postings.. she was something akin to the freeloaders of todays amerika.. expect everything, no gratitude, plenty of ‘attitude’, nothing except anger because I didn’t help her again. The first time was because I felt sorry for her, then I got to ‘know’ her. You would know her too, if you watched her on her posts. I won’t ‘help’ anyone again.. this world is very sick, to treat me as she did, because I didn’t continue ‘to support her, to take care of her every wish and desire’.. puke. Not sorry I did, but NEVER again. MOST of the human race is WASTE.
It was the best thing for you to do, stop the aid.
Best thing to ever happen to me was getting thrown off the gravy train. One matures right quickly when one is dependent upon one’s own good will and efforts. When you compensate a person who is exhibiting particular behaviours you will garner more of that behaviour. Never reward inappropriate behaviour. You did the right thing Joye.
What can’t go on, won’t. The question is, what will happen when it doesn’t.
What I hate most about living in LA is that starting a family without living off government is impossible. I’m now making what my dad makes in a year’s salary, but where my folks live, a decent house runs 100-150k. My younger brother just got a job too, for 2/3 of what I make, but houses in his area are running for as low as 40K, if you’re willing to pick up a foreclosure house. Here? still 500,000 USD for a 2-3 bedroom house. Just the sales tax is more than what it costs to buy a house elsewhere.
Not to worry: When a person enters the national political arena with a call to “awake the great American work ethic of the individual” you will see the return “can do” and other energies and responsibilities.
Suggestion: Listen carefully at the positions and comments Sarah Palin is now making. Join her thoughts with those of Rep. Alan West.
Frontier spirit at play…get in the wagon, grab a couple of oxen and head West for the future!
It’s coming near you…
AMERICA! The land of the freeload and the home of the naive.
Let’s not denounce the whole country.
Leftist California, however….is land of the freak, home of the bribe.
And of course aided and abetted by Washington, D.C.;
Land of the spree, and home of the knave.
(Walter Wager, “Sledgehammer”.)
cheers
eon
Yes. California is the worst. But consider that in a federal republic, the system is supposed to self-correct when one component fails due to its own excesses, incompetence, and corruption. It may takes years but people leave to go where they perceive better opportunities. While this is happening to some degree in California, it is not available to those who do not have the educational or linguistic skills to compete and who are tied to the large influx of cash that Hanson mentions. So those with the ability and resources do leave; those without stay. The endpoint is failure.
1. 40 million Americans are on foodstamps. That’s Obama’s legacy.
2. Your reference to the Depression was interesting. The US also had a federal law prohibiting the production of alcohol. It was called Prohibition. But there weren’t enough federal law agents to enforce the law, so the states, cities and counties enforced federal law.
If that was the case before, then why can’t Arizona enforce federal law?
The federal pre-emption argument is nuts.
….but by the subsidized and frustrated, who either see their umbilical cord threatened,…
California leftists have killed the goose that laid the golden regs.
a question I put to a good Mormon friend. A very thrifty hard working individual, pays his taxes, tithes, self reliant, always quick to lend a hand, prepared for the future with a prudent food and supply storage program. What does he do when these masses of people so used to living off the labor of others rather than working for themselves show up at his doorstep because the Nanny State can no longer support them?
Anyone else listening to Bowles and Simpson talk about the budget deficit? Time to bolt the door….
So what was your friend’s answer? I’m curious.
Ooh! Ooh! I’ve got it!…he gets killed by a starving desperate mob for everything he’s stockpiled.
*sigh*
One way or the other, the mob will get his stockpile of ammo.
Don’t be so sure of that. I live deep in Mormon country and I know them well. As with all people there are a few exceptions, but for the most part they are good, kind, decent, honest, hardworking folks. They are among the aforementioned 50% who work to pay for the 50% who do not. They are determined, focused and unbelievably well organized. Not “Obama organized”, but rather organized to be a close knit community of self reliant and self sufficient citizens.
And they are armed to the teeth. Come to them in need, with a sincere heart, and they will likely feed you. Come to them thinking you can simply take from them what is theirs and you will find them to be a formidible foe. But take heart. After you have bled out they will likely pray for your soul, and then see that you get a decent burial.
I am a pastor/missionary in Mexico City and, of course, have many family members of church members living in California. Just one story highlights the disaster, incompetence, irresponsibility and future collapse of the one-great-state: An elderly couple, parents of some members here, went there to visit their other grown illegal immigrant kids. While there, the father had kidney failure and was treated for free with dialysis treatments and more. That was 10 years ago. With the excellent free care, they decided to stay. I have no idea how they, or their kids have supported themselves, but his dialysis treatment alone I estimated has cost the taxpayers at least several hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just one case, from our small circle of acquaintances. IF I lived there I would be selling everything and moving or stockpiling food and ammunition and making my energy self-sufficient.
just wondering which religion and which holy book counsels the faithful to stock ammunition and not to help the sick.
Well, if you actually understood the Bible, you wouldn’t go around thinking in terms of only “love”. You would also understand the meaning of word “Just”.
You also don’t seem to have any problem with theft. Taking of the labor of one to give to the other isn’t righteous “help”. Do you really appease your conscience in this way?
There is a verse (at least one) where Jesus is quoted as saying that if a man does not have a sword that he should sell his shirt or something and buy one. I take that as meaning that even though you love your neighbor (and everyone else) you don’t let them destroy you. You use whatever force is necessary to protect and defend yourself and your family. Watch the movie “Sgt York” sometime. Sgt York was a man who was convinced that violence of any kind was wrong even in the face of violence until someone read him the parts I’m telling you about. He entered the military and became a war hero to protect his country and family from the bad guys. The thoughts and principles are the point here. You have a moral obligation to protect yourself.
beautiful
I’m about the author’s age. I’m 5th generation Californian, from my maternal grandmother’s side. They settled in the Central Valley just before the Gold Rush, in what became Modesto. I grew up in another farming community to the south-southeast, in the Coachella Valley. After graduate work at Stanford, and jobs in Silicon Valley, I fled the Golden State two decades ago, continuing my family’s journey westward… to the liberal bastion of Hawaii. Things are economically insane here, but NOTHING like what VDH describes has happened to “my” California. I treasure my memories of growing up there, but harbor no yearning to return.
Good article. Where illegal immigration is concerned the key point is the willingness of the State of California to punish legitimately affluent Americans to the full extent of the law while deeming poor illegals largely except from the same while at the same time doling out generous benefits to the latter. This is a prescription for social and economic disaster. Is this a result of the natural evolution of democracy in California? Or is it largely a product of the intellectual incompetence of liberals there, tending toward mental dysfunction? God help us if the California disease spreads to other parts of the country; it is certainly the case that parts already exhibit some of the same symptoms.
As virtually every poster here knows- this was warned about long ago. What generally dooms Democracies is that the population learns that it can vote itself largess from the public treasury.
But since the treasury is finite taxes must be raised. Eventually tax increases must result in a drop in revenue. But since the public will not stop voting itself largess the problem becomes insoluble democratically.
In the case of California- everyone here knows what the ultimate outcome will be. But the voters just this last election continued to vote for the very people who exacerbate the problem. The only conclusion is that the people like Brown and the Demos in the Legislature actually do represent the thinking of most voting Californians.
Yes, but their zeal for conservative economic policies was expressed, and ironically ultimately crushed, when they recalled Governor Davis and voted for Schwarzenegger. It made no difference, did it? So why bother voting for the Republican, or the politician who claims he will cut government? It is so often a lie. It is rare that one gets a Chris Christie, and even then usually just for a year or so until he gets co-opted by the bureaucracy, the other politicians, and by the zeitgeist of the capital city. At the federal level, did the much-feared (by the left) Nixon or Reagan do anything to actually shrink government? Now, with fiscal conservatism lacking in all credibility with conservative voters, but demonized by liberals and the media, who can be surprised that it has little chance in elections? I don’t know if anyone could win the Oval Office in 2012 while promising to raise retirement ages by 5 years, the bare minimum needed to get our future accounts closer to balance.
You stole our wealthiest provinces in 1845. The international law prescribes the acquisition of land by force (or theft). We are taking our provinces back. The wealth that you created is illegitimate, so we will take it back too, in unreported income (and free dialysis). It is ours so give it back
Your wealth???
LOL which disgusting third world “Hispanic” country has created *any* wealth?? If you want the land back, then the current nations will surely leave it as they found it. Then, under your “cultures” administration it will of course just become yet another poverty stricken province of Mexico.
There are probably a great number of Americans who would be more than happy if California became part of Mexico.
Good riddance, good luck!
I think “Reconquista” is baiting you.
Mexico was a corrupt, screwed-up country when Teddy Roosevelt was President and it’s a corrupt, screwed-up country now that Barack Obama is President.
Mexico is just an unstable country trapped in a constant, unresolved revolution. (Call it “The Mexican Revolution,” call it a “Drug War,” Mexicans have been killing each other since 1910)
Mexicans as individuals are good people, it’s a beautiful country. But aspects of their national culture are deeply mentally ill. They need to work it out – or fight out out – amongst themselves.
When you’re done pining for the days of the Age of Copper, can you tell me how much you charge for a pound of weed?
Thanks.
By the way: quilted, cotton armor – that’s not really armor – it’s pretend armor.
We call it “failure armor”.
I’m saying your “civilization” is made of cotton – and magic spells.
And who “stole” it from the original owners in 1519?
By your reasoning, all Europeans should go back to Europe.
Good luck with that.
What is this talk about 1519? California was under Spanish administration — if one could call it that — up to 1821, when Mexico became a country. That was only 27 years before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo when the US paid Mexico for what was largely undeveloped and unpopulated territory.
You’re wrong, according to his logic all of humanity should go back to a tree in Africa.
Ah, yes. “Alta California,” was Mexico’s wealthiest province. And it was stolen by the U.S. from its rightful owners, the Spanish, who, incidentally, came from Europe, and who had conquered the native tribes in Mexico, “Latin” America and South America, and then forced their language and religion upon them. So it’s okay to love being Spanish European, but bad being English European.
Obviously, the proof that Alta California was Mexico’s “wealthiest province” is that it’s so wealthy now. Must have always been that way. Everyone knows, in 1846, the super highways, silicon valley, the suburbs, the industry, the movie companies, the vast farms, the water systems, the electrical systems, the harbors and everything else that makes a “province” wealthy were all in place. The wonders sprang from the wealthy dirt, all by themselves.
You see, for Reconquistas, prosperity is a function of the dirt, not the societal system operating on the dirt. If you can just get control of the dirt, you automatically become wealthy, because some dirt is wealthy, other dirt is poor.
The reality is quite different. For proof, drive five miles north or south of the border between San Diego and Tijuana.
Five miles south of the US border lies squalor, lack, impassable roads, undrinkable water, debilitating political corruption and beheaded bodies.
Five miles north of the border lies a city so wonderful by comparison that its streets might as well be paved with gold, because, heck, they are paved at all.
To be clear, it’s the same dirt in Tijuana and San Diego, but San Diego operates under a once-superior political and moral system that’s now collapsing under politically correct moral equivalence policy.
Rest assured, should the Reconquistas get their way, the entire states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas would look and operate just like Tijuana, even as vast sections of California already do, as VDH so ably illustrates.
Well said Koblog – far better than my feeble attempt. My hat is off to you.
Yeah, I don’t get this whole Aztlan thing: wouldn’t they just be creating a place they’d want to emigrate from? Where’s the logic in re-creating the Age of Copper?
Latinos have some fantasy that the more Latinos come to America the better life will be for them. If you think fantasizing about not being able to reverse engineer a hairpin is so great then why leave Mexico in the first place?
Why doesn’t someone in the press ask Obama about the first shanty towns in America since god knows when and what he’s going to do about it.
Amen. And to top it all off, didn’t the Californeos (sp?) VOTE not to be part of Mexico? Stolen land – ha!
Here is my counter whenever I hear this kind of junk from the “reconquistas”: Try the following thought experiment – what would Baja California look like if the USA had also gotten that land way back as the 51st state? Anyone who gave it even a thought would immediately picture a coastline of hundreds of miles of cities filled high property-value homes, resorts, freeways, infrastructure, and civilization – not widely spaced hovels made of found materials and towns filled with squatter settlements living in cardboard boxes. Perfect? No. Better? Duh!
Reconquista, my man, if you’re being completely serious I’ll let you in on a little secret: the US Southwest never belonged to Mexico or Mexicans because some Spaniards walked across part of it centuries ago; it belonged to Native Americans then and it belongs to their descendants today and, of course, their fellow Americans.
Yes. We will give California back to Mexico if Mexico gives Mexico back to the Indians.
Living in the US puts all of us a great deal ahead of most of the world. Frank Burns (MASH) once said, “America throws away only the best [trash]” or something like that. Yet, I’m betting on VDH – all of the handouts eventually turn everyone into criminals, and all of yesterday’s outrages become today’s stale standard. Interesting concluding last 2 paragraphs.
No surprise this we are at that tipping point.
One wonders if there has ever been another great nation brought to it’s knees by the actions of a small subset of the citizenry, who base all of their opinions and actions on the fact that they were deucedly well-treated as children, taught to share their toys and are now ridden with guilt that they somehow still haven’t shared all of them. Worse, they can’t help themselves, and believe sharing means also sharing all of your toys as well. There is no choice in the matter.
“shared toys”, interesting point. You may be right, Allston.
At age 5 or 6, the neighbor kids had busted my tricycle 3 or 4 times and each time my Dad had patiently repaired it. In an effort to save the trike, he finally told me, “You’re foolish to share anything of yours with those kids. They’ll only destroy it. When will you learn this?”.
Never thought my strong views on property rights could have been based on something this simple.
I have older siblings who are firmly in that generational subset, and debating these things with them is impossible. Their inner self always shines through, and what I get back for questioning them is a combination of weepy moralism, guilt feelings for not sharing all of our “stuff” with everyone, and I think a certain inner loathing, as if they know they’re wrong, but by their own view of the world thay have to share and they can’t or won’t chage.
Take Multi Culturalism. Not a one of them can actually articulate to me a single benefit to us being swamped with third-worlders, except to mutter something about us and our culture being racist to even question it all.
I am very much afraid that this subset of our populace is clinically insane, and won’t seek help for it. Like most mentally ill people, they are firmly in denial.
Next time you discuss “sharing” with your family, ask them if they would be good with the idea of sharing their house with a burglar… After all, having your possessions stolen is simply involuntary sharing. Isn’t that exactly what the government is doing?
“These are strange and dangerous times. An insolvent federal government, an exporting China and India, and an almost complete indifference to federal immigration, tax, and regulatory laws have all combined to create a well-entitled but increasingly angry population, one “empowered” and made more, not less, bitter by the last two years of governance in Washington.”
The Marxist scum that has burrowed deep within our society are playing us all for fools. They are using the debt our children would have to repay to buy our downfall. Three years ago our entire budget at the Federal level was $2.5 Trillion and now they can bear to consider spending less than $3.8 Trillion even if it means we have to borrow $1.6 Trillion from the Chinese who are waiting to slit our throats economically. This is why they regard the “conservatives” as morons, they laugh at us as they use our own tax money to rape our country and steal our freedoms.
They laugh at us because we run around putting out the fires they light.
I laugh at them because I know who will survive the chaos they bring.
Stock up, buy a fiddle and be ready to let world burn.
Victor, you nail it again! I still cherish your book ‘Mexifornia’ which I saw and bought the first time I ‘met’ you in a bookstore outside Santa Barbara.
Everything you write about in the Central Valley of California is also true here in Nashville, though not quite as extreme, far as I can tell. Driving out on Nolensville Road here is like driving over the border into Mexico. And it goes on for dozens and dozens of miles.
Best wishes.
Can you be more specific. What is it you’re seeing in Nashville?
The USSR imploded because the communists collapsed the economy. The communists with Obama are doing the same for us.
Brezhnev-era Soviet saying:
“We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”
A friend of mine is a policeman in a small Arkansas town. He is paid $10 per hour but keeps the job because of the insurance and the fact that he trains police dogs and incorporates his passion with police work.
He told me that if he stops a car load of illegal immigrants, which he did last week, they let them go because the small town does not want to take on the cost of paying the food costs on the illegals.
He says the focus of their police work is to write tickets so they can bring in revenue for the town.
Simple solution — rather than jailing illegals, just charge them a fine every time you catch them “being illegal”.
Formal and informal government. Formal and informal commerce. The latter used to be called the ‘black market’. Wasn’t a wide spread black market an aspect of the consequences of central planning?
A very interesting insight. I had never put the two together but that is exactly what is happening. Capitalism popping out inspite of the lefties.
But you can’t do everything on the black market, only stuff that takes maybe a few people and little capital. Anything big is big enough to be on the radar, which means in black market economies, you’re still limited to basic subsistence.
Many “needy” people, when asking for utility assistance from charities like Catholic Charities, Salvation Army, etc., would be capable of paying for their gas bills or electric bills if they would give up their cable TV, their cell phones or their high speed internet access. However, when those options are suggested to them, they act as if you are tearing their not-yet-born child from their womb.
Actually, on second thought, many of them would abort said child rather than give up their cell phones or cable TV.
And I’m not talking basic cable – they often have the expensive sports packages, which they believe they are entitled to keep. It makes it rather hard to help them out.
Beth.. it makes a sane man crazy.. some of the taxes that are added to our Charter bills go to pay for the illegals/welfare CELL PHONES!! Look for the ‘international tax on EVERY phone bill.. that’s what that is for..puke..
Our taxpayer-funded “safety net” rapidly turned into a top quality box spring beneath an expensive mattress with a plush down top. Our “poor” people live better than our soldiers. If we want to stop the welfare problem without privatizing charity, then we should only provide a true safety net: barracks-style housing, meals prepared in a cafeteria, access to a library, a shared recreation room with one TV, donated clothing, and an on-site medical clinic. No one would starve, freeze, be in rags, or have untreated illnesses, and we taxpayers would shell out less than one-fifth of what we do today.
I wonder why this is not done.
Left-wing loonies took over the safety net programs and decided that the poor needed “dignity” while living off the taxpayers’ dimes. Thus, no poorhouses, no work farms, no barracks-style housing. Instead, the poor get government debit cards.
My father owned apartments in upstate NY. Back in the 1970s, he received rent monies from the NYS Dept. of Social Services for people on welfare. In the 1980s (and beyond), rent monies were given directly to the welfare recipients. NYS has a 90-day eviction process. One tenant didn’t pay his rent. The tenant said he didn’t care about being evicted: he was using the three months of taxpayer-provided rent money to buy a large screen color TV. That’s dignity for you.
My dad always talked about the “work farm” that was the Great Depression’s welfare. If you were poor, you could move there for free, work for your room and board and work an outside job until you saved enough money to get back on your feet. But there was no cash, no food stamps and it was a great shame. We have taken the shame out of welfare, and there are generations of families who feel they are entitled to a handout. My nephew’s common law wife felt greatly incensed that she didn’t get welfare immediately when she moved from IA to OK. She is third generation welfare! As long as we keep paying for babies she and her ilk will keep churning them out.
I, too, have never understood why welfare recipients are allowed to shop at supermarkets. Being on welfare means you have failed economically. It is a dysfunctional state that should be discouraged, not rewarded. Even cafeteria-style meals are too generous. If they are hungry, give them tofu cakes, water, and vitamin pills – just enough to keep them alive. If they don’t like that, well, maybe they’d like to get a job and become productive citizens instead? In a rational system, every single thing about being on welfare should be as grim, joyless, humiliating, and unpleasant as possible – to encourage people to get OFF welfare.
Yes. Of course. Cell phones and internet access are of no use when it comes to job hunting.
Why bother looking for a job when Uncle Sugar is already giving you money? Your argument doesn’t hold water.
M. Simon,
I’m sorry, did you say “job”? Look for a “job”? Are you kidding me?
Save your false pity for someone who deserves it. Free access to the internet and job search resources are available at almost every library in the US. Matter of fact, the internet is so accessible that lawsuits are in process about accessing pornography at said libraries as a ‘right’. I do not know of one state that does not have job postings at an employment office.
Give me a break.
tom
A very insightful article and equally excellent comments.
I am reminded of the Jews who stayed inside the Reich. . . even though things got worse and worse. . . . they knew what the end result would be, but they wouldn’t leave. . . . Hope VDH doesn’t make that same mistake. . . . And yes, here in SC we have tons of illegals, who fund the underground economy, but at least not all of our rat bastard politicians have sold us out. . . . . yet.
What’s developing is a ‘black market’ economy subsidized by the federal government in order to buy voting blocks, and empower itself with tenure.
It’s D.C.’s method of political ‘redistricting’.
And anyone being elected nowadays is deemed a monarch.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CHEAP IMPORTED LABOR.
Any questions?
Thanks for this article.
Areas such as you describe exist in various places throughout the southwestern US. To anyone who has studied the history of the Soviet Union see an eerie parallel to their culture. As documented in “A History of Modern Russia”, Russians had to turn to black market trade to survive. Now, 20 years after the USSR collapsed under its own inept central planning, news sources continually report the corruption throughout Russia. Once forced into corruption, can any society regain its respect for the rule of law?
Enrique Krauz’s history of Mexico exposed the hundreds-year-long dictatorship that has never ruled 100% of the country, and has been fraught with corruption. Mexico never had a rule of law because it never enforced laws. I had always thought of Mexico as a democracy, because they called the head man ‘president’. After reading Krauz, I looked anew at our government powers. How naive we all have been to overlook the 80-year-long transfer of power from the Congress to the executive branch. If you look objectively, we have a dictatorship as well, and the present regime grabbed the reins for Marxism. The instability of changing rules, changing regulations, changing taxes whenever there is a regime change in Washington should be enough to drive any company offshore.
The big question is what happens next in the US? It appears that the fiscal end is approaching. Will people finally see through the lies and corruption and demand a rollback of big government? Or will millions just cheat on their taxes and create pervasive underground economies to survive?
GGA Economics…
Gold…Guns…Ammo!
Heh.
Sounds like my 4-B economic plan: Beans, Bullets Band-aids, & Bullion.
Also look at the poverty on so many Indian reservations. They have been given huge amounts of money and land yet most live in poverty because these reservations are like mini communist countries. Everything is centrally planned and controlled. You rely on the Indian Council to take care of you. A portion of Stossel’s “Freeloaders” documentary covered this subject.
Excellent post again, Mr. Hanson.
The same thing is happening in urban areas as well. In my middle class suburb of L.A., we are ticketed for things like walking too slowly across an intersection ($109), speeding (after lowering the speed limit) for $270, watering at the wrong time, etc. The tickets, really taxes, are extremely expensive, and it’s annoying to be treated like a criminal. Yet in the barrio, unlicensed food vendors and code violations abound because enforcement brings cries of you know what, racism.
The Franchise Tax Board estimates the cash economy costs CA $6 billion per year. IMO, the government allows it to go on because it’s largely minority-based.
We are destroying ourselves, plain and simple.
The Marxists realize that the comfortable working class produced by capitalism is not likely to produce the sort of revolution that Marx predicted so the goal has become to create an unsustainable system that will fail and throw everything into turmoil. Unfortunately, too many Americans hold the idea that revolutions are positive and good because our American Revolution went well, when most don’t go well and plenty wind up with their own version of France’s Reign of Terror.
Agreed, but while reading this I couldn’t help but remember those depressing Allstate commercials from a few years ago that tried to make people feel good about living the life of a church mouse. I strongly believe that 30s-style civil unrest is coming and I see nothing of value in these bleak tales of depressing Depression-era stories. There’s nothing I can do since the people of this nation still seemed determined to bankrupt and over-regulate the system, but the only thing I can think of is to make sure I am not responsible for creating a baby because what could be more cruel than starting a person’s life in today’s America? I’m not advocating abortion here (though that might be more merciful than starting out life in a post-Obama America) but I’m suggesting that people should not actively try to have babies for at least a decade.
If you read Mark Steyn’s America Alone, you will see that good people not having babies only makes the problem worse.
So go procreate!
Adopt or mentor.
I wonder if anyone shares my experience.
Our income puts us in at least the lower end of the middle class in an east coast state. But we cannot afford iPhones or cable tv. We do have computers and internet.
My husband and daughter shop almost exclusively at the thrift stores for their clothes. The rest of us shop at thrift stores perhaps 30% of the time.
The furniture on the porch (all second hand or dragged from someone else’s curb) is falling apart. We cannot afford to replace it.
I drove my last car for nearly 15 years before I bought my current used car. We kept the old car for our youngest child to drive when he gets his license.
My older children both work 30 hours a week while they put themselves through college, both having started at community colleges. Both are living at home because none of us can afford to pay for dorms or apartments.
We aren’t poor. We can afford music lessons and occasional trips to the symphony. We go out to inexpensive restaurants with friends. We have plenty of food on the shelves, though we certainly shop for the lower cost brands and look for sales. We do buy good coffee and grind it ourselves, because that is still much less expensive than stopping at Starbucks. I was able to buy a nice spindle yesterday for spinning wool. No, we aren’t poor, but new cars, costly gadgets, new and fashionable clothes, designer living rooms…these are all out of the question.
This seems to be how we must live if we want to play by the rules and expect to support ourselves in our old age. I just can’t figure out how other people, especially the “poor”, have so much expendable income. But I do fully expect to be paying taxes for the retirement years of both the poor and the middle class.
One word: leave.
“leave” as in “we don’t want you here, because obviously you are too stupid to play the system”?
or “leave” because it isn’t going to get better”?
or “leave” as in “love it or leave it”?
Can you please elaborate?
Yes, I can (and have, already). To elaborate: I made an earlier comment to a reply, where I explained why *I* was leaving.
My “Leave” than (or then, as both have their grammatical nuances), was well-meant advice (sorry for the confusion).
And good advice – *really* good advice – especially for those past a certain age.
If you’re too old, you’re not going to be able to wait out the state’s current self-destructive phase. Things are NOT going to get better …for you. There’s not enough time. Best to face this, and pick up the pieces of your life as best you can, and leave.
If you were successful – however you want to define your satisfaction with life – to this point in life, you still have what it takes to be successful again.
Not everyone can just pick up and leave. If you own a house, you have to sell it. If there are kids in school, you have to yank them out and then put them in a new situation. Which may be good or bad, it depends, but it is wrenching, believe me. Then there are the jobs of the parents. And family considerations, as in relatives close by that you might want to be near.
That said, I applaud anyone with the marketable and transferable skills and the moxie to leave a state like CA or NY when the taxes get too burdensome.
By the way, I don’t live anywhere near California. I live in an east coast state. Though we don’t have as many immigrants, we do have the same attitudes about poverty.
The U.S. is unbelievably wealthy and the boomers/etc just don’t see it. If our country’s GDP dropped 50% overnight we’d still have a higher GDP level than during the Depression. Any wonder why more folks don’t care? Combine the parasites with the lazy/guilt-ridden and you get a strong majority to continue the current, corrupt madness.
Thought Exercise: When Harry Truman left office he drove Bess and himself home by themselves in their own automobile. Could/would Obama or his predecessors do this? Why not? I posit that the “world” hasn’t changed so much as our “government” has.
I have said this before, but…
it still amazes me that the same Democratic Party produced these Presidents.
“Thoughts on a Surreal Depression” or Surreal Depressing Thoughts
“These are strange and dangerous times. An insolvent federal government, an exporting China and India, and an almost complete indifference to federal immigration, tax, and regulatory laws have all combined to create a well-entitled but increasingly angry population, one “empowered” and made more, not less, bitter by the last two years of governance in Washington.”
What a contrast from Alexis Tocqueville’s commentary on America during our nation building phase: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville Some excerpts:
“Among a democratic people, where there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living…Labor is held in honor; the prejudice is not against but in its favor.” [19]
“Tocqueville explicitly cites inequality as being incentive for poor to become rich, and notes that it is not often two generations within a family maintain success, and that it is inheritance laws that split and eventually break apart someone’s estate that cause a constant cycle of churn between the poor and rich, thereby over generations making the poor rich and rich poor.”
“This equality of social conditions bred political and civilian values which determined the type of legislation passed in the colonies and later in the states. By the late 18th Century, democratic values which championed money-making, hard work, and individualism had eradicated, in the North, most remaining vestiges of old world aristocracy and values. Eliminating them in the South proved more difficult, for slavery had produced a landed aristocracy and web of patronage and dependence similar to the old world, which would last until the antebellum period before the Civil War.”
“Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country.”
Dr. Hanson, you are a diligent and insightful reporter and analyst of the conditions on the ground as well as in the governments at all levels and general society. What I would greatly appreciate from you is suggested solutions to our myriad of “problems.” Then people who agree with you can coalesce around those solutions and perhaps we can begin to move forward from this increasingly dysfunctional era.
With regards to one reader’s comment on likely drug activity in your area, one only has to look south of the “border” to see where that “business” is going. Mexico is substantially dysfunctional in economic and governing terms and that explains much of the incentive for illegals to move north. However, aside from the illegals and drugs, another import is ideology. Mexico (and Latin America in general) had a heavy dose of communism and socialism applied in the beginnings of the past century and that relates to the dysfunctionality present today. After all, Trotsky felt quite comfortable there before his demise. It may also in part explain the sense of entitlement among the illegals.
It would be my hope that we control our borders and find a common sense solution(s) to resolve the illegals issue once and for all. Also, my hope is that illegals eventually become legals through an orderly and legal process including being assimilated into our society with similar hopes and dreams that my immigrant parents enjoyed in the beginnings of the last century. They were assimilated and became citizens after sponsorship, night school classes and tests on English, civics and citizenship, etc. We also need to restore the priority for and numbers needed for the skilled workers and the professionals that will propel our economy forward again.
ahservant: Obviously, President Obama has never read Alexis de Tocqueville, or he would know that burning desire to succeed that inhabited the immigrants of that century. He has attested that ‘spreading the wealth’ as an objective, rather than generating more wealth, is his goal.
He extinguishes the desire of the best and brightest to achieve anything.
How sad. Rather than uplifting hope, we have …. depressing change.
tom
Obama never read anything about de Tocqueville because it had no “racial” component.
Obama believes he can divide and conquer. Isn’t that obvious yet?
He even believes he can divide up the wealth of this nation in any manner he sees fit.
Alexis de Tocqueville also observed that “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” I wonder what he would have made of California in the 21st Century?
For all of you fellow Californios commenting lucidly here, who recognize the instability: I have a question.
When are you [too] leaving?
(“Too”, because I answered the question in an earlier reply.)
i’ll wait out the next election cycle
hopefully, j brown will do something so idiotic that it will wake the apathetic zombies that make up the vast majority of people here
maybe another attack on prop 13 or something like this
examples are out in the open of how a top down collectivist scheme operates here:
1. Bell scandal
2. the 1 billion dollar public school in los angeles
3. compton residents getting overruled in their attempt to exercise “parent takeovers of failing schools”
couple this with the high gas prices (almost everyone drives here and this alone could be enough to start tipping the scales back in our favor)
*simple extrapolation of driving as freedom and liberty provides a concrete example that most californians can relate to
i’ve been making a little headway locally getting some neighbors to see the light so might as well try to fight while we still can
my experience is that most people here, while living in the midst of liberty and freedom, dont really understand what it entails (especially the ivory towered busybodies); they are completely ignorant– it’s not like they have carefully weighed the pros and cons of “capitalism versus socialism” and decided on the latter
i still labor under the delusion that the libs write off california as a gimme state in the electoral tally and further convince myself that they would never win a national election again for hundreds of years if, by some miracle, california ever got its act together
i also feel that it is in the belly of the beast where conservatism can really hone its chops
Why should we leave?
We should make the parasites leave- by bus, plane, or, if necessary, a pine box.
I’m one of the ones that left too, from California to Texas, in 2006. We left just barely after the housing market peaked and had just started its slide back down. The 3-bedroom house we bought for $215K, we sold for $380K. If we’d put it on the market a month or two earlier, we’d probably have gotten over $400k for it.
I love the state where I grew up, but every day I see another reason to be glad I left. From the incredible stupidity of the electorate, to the corrupt Union/Democrat Complex, to the insane educational fads, taxes, gas prices, etc, etc, etc, there was no way I would’ve stayed there.
In the late 70s, our government lifted its barriers to American corporations dealing with communist countries, particularly, Red China. I believe this policy change was made out of fear of a nuclear WWIII: Red China was an insular nation, ruled by belligerent, ruthless leaders intent on world conquest. At least, that was America’s view of them. This was a nation with the largest population in the world, a huge military, and God help us, nuclear weapons. The goal was to involve China in the world economy, and by so doing, make them dependent upon us as a trading partner. It was also fervently hoped that capitalism and ultimately, democracy might take root there.
But things didn’t work out as planned. Because of the totalitarian nature of Red China, they were free to fix labor costs at slave wage levels, which a free society could never compete with, not to mention the safety and environmental laws that raised costs here, but were non-existent in China. Furthermore, we have never been able to attain very much reciprocity from the Chinese government when American corporations tried to sell goods to their people.
Even as everyone with an ounce of intelligence understood that this would result in an outflow of high paying manufacturing jobs, as well as a myriad of other jobs associated with manufacturing, government spokesmen and academic experts kept insisting we were going to benefit from trade with China. As time went on and our real economy declined, our government couldn’t raise taxes or inflate the money supply fast enough to compensate without causing discontent and economic instability. So they began borrowing money from the Chinese and other foreign investors in order to maintain the standard of living we had all come to expect despite this great transfer of wealth out of the US.
Now we have reached the limit on how much debt we can sustain, even as our reality-denying politicians are determinedly laying plans to borrow even more. The result will be that the American people will be forced to accept, over a very short span of time, the decline in standard of living that has been accumulating behind the scenes for the past 30-40 years. When we finally reach the point where our creditors refuse to extend more credit, and in fact, demand repayment, it could very well result in violence – not just in the streets of our nation, but war with China as they try to make us pay up in ways we absolutely refuse to accept. Namely, with hard assets in lieu of worthless dollars.
You nailed it. The sight of railroad cars stuffed with wheat from our interior being sent to China while our people starve will be the catalyst. It is comming.
You’re partly correct. Yes, the Chicoms are taking advantage of the US with their cheap labor. But the whole rest of the world as well is playing us for Uncle Sap by imposing Value Added Tax on our exports, while refunding VAT on the exports that they send to the US. Result: we export services, IOUs and manufacturing jobs. We import manufactured goods. We don’t need a VAT of our own, but we should impose an equivalent tax on their exports to us, and use the proceeds to reduce our own payroll taxes.
This underground economy is nothing new. Its been around for decades and so it still exists. Americans sustain this economy in two ways – we hire these ‘cash only’ contractors and then, since they are ‘off the books’ we support them with social services which they don’t need but for which they qualify. They have driven tax paying contractors out of business or lowered their wages significantly. In the end, we got what we wanted and maybe what we deserved. We wanted all of this cheap manual labor and services and we got them. We wanted cheap clothing, furniture, electronics, etc. We got them and all our jobs went overseas. We wanted a safety net for those who needed it during catastrophes and our golden years. We got all that. It isn’t what we wanted?
When you say “we,” to whom are you referring? I have always opposed ILLEGAL ALIENS because they are here illegally but also because they are exploited by greedy farmers, contractors, chicken processors, etc., who could not care less about the well being of our country.
So, I am not one of the “we.”
VDH’s essays, always a good informative read. California has hit bottom. The leadership has that Marxist Democrat disease, which is incurable.
The only solution I see is to find creative and legal ways to delay tax payments, i.e. we get organized en mass. Perhaps file for extensions, do more bartering and petition for tax payment day to be on election day.
I don’t understand what the problem is – Americans voted Liberals in office and they destroyed the states and America.
The voters got exactly what they wanted – capitalism dying and socialism growing.
Now that 50% of “tax payers” don’t pay any taxes and about 80% of those actually get a kickback check from the government, what’s not to like?
This is a problem with American citizens, not the politicians. The American voter has been bought off with “taxing the rich” and FREE unlimited welfare services of all kinds.
I don’t see Americans jumping up and down with gas at $4/gal – they seem to have gotten used to the checks that show up in the mailbox from the government and voting for Liberals to send them more checks.
America has a huge problems and they are Americans……………..
PerryM,
Quote:”I don’t see Americans jumping up and down with gas at $4/gal –”
I don’t know if I dare say this. The obvious problem to the rise of gasoline prices is a Federal Assistance check to the penurious to enable them to survive. The “old and the poor hardest hit” mantra should apply. After all, they must need their vehicles to get to the welfare office and to “apply for jobs” per M. Simon. /sarc
Everyone else should be glad to pony up the extra dollars-per-gallon in the name of reducing their carbon footprint. Perhaps an excise tax added to the pump price to fund the checks to the poor. Much like the ‘temporary’ excise tax on telephony added to fund part of the Spanish-American war of 1898 that lasted over a century.
After all, if you *have* a job to go to, you are way ahead of the poor who are unemployed[or unemployable, no?], with no hope of change.[yeah, I'm getting bad at that..]
tom
Pretty good tirade, Mr. Hanson, but with a glaring omission.
You left out the overarching effect of globalist neocons like yourself that emerged, what, almost a quarter of a century ago with the grand idea of junking our manufacturing base to pursue the glorious new “service economy” which was to solidify our our place in the world by building a thriving, world competitive economy by the method of taking in each others laundry,
as i must reply every time i see the word/term: What is a Neo-con?
Usually it means one who supports Israel, from what I can tell. Strange that it’s usually used as a pejorative.
And I’d guess by the ‘handle’, neocon means anyone not supporting heavy manufacturing by means of unionized labor.
We can’t stop gettin’ old, but we don’t have to get rusty.
Sir,
You could have written:
Perceived injustice rather than absolute poverty is the engine of revolution.
Sir,
You could have written:
Perceived injustice rather than absolute poverty is the engine of revolution.
Calling this a “Berkeley Professor’s Utopia” is like me calling the country of Somalia a conservative’s dream: no government, no taxes, unlimited gun ownership, no gay marriage (frankly, no gays), and a strong clinting (in Huckabee’s words) to God and guns. Would I then be justifed to ask why conservatives love Somalia but don’t want to live there? It’s a false equivalence.
The gratuitious swipe at some perceived philosophy detracts from the otherwise thoughtful tone of the article.
I wasn’t aware that Somalia had a constitution, rule of law, individual freedom and liberty including religious freedom, etc. Our Constitutional government does not match the progressive construct of a vastly expanded, highly regulated, liberal government put in place over the past several decades.
Au contraire – Somalians DO have government, and taxes. They are at the Tribal level, reinforced by the social, political and economic precepts of Islam (with the Wahhabi strain increasingly dominating the field.) Thus, pointing to Somalia as a libertarian/tea party Dream nation is another typical Strawman of the Church of Liberalism. The fact is that the class warfare, gender/race/ethnic identity politics and enforced conformity to social and economic standards defined by the ruling class that Progressives are pursuing and implementing today lead eventually to a culture that has a lot of characteristics in common with present day Somalia.
Thus, the shoe is actually on the other foot ;-).
Wherever you have a county run by Jewish Banksters, you have the decay Mr Hanson details.
Could you take your “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” garbage somewhere else, kid? It’s a very boring troll at this point…..
WHY OBAMA CAN’T BE RE-ELECTED:
1. Obama has now been vetted. He NEVER WAS vetted in 2008.
2.Gas prices have gone from $1.93 to 4.36 on his watch; when President Bush was in charge gas was $2.30 per gal.; oil production was up 20%.
3. Obamacare.
4. Waivers for Obamacare.
5. His Wisconsin friends—demonstrating and creating chaos when some of them belonged in school teaching –(“we care for the students”)–or other institutions.
6. Pigford settlement—a fraud.
7. Letting the Black Panthers off the hook from the Philadelphia show in 2008.
8. Canceling and “playing politics” with oil permits.
9. The U.S. has now lost its AAA rating.
10. The value of the dollar has declined.
11. Food stamps 1 in 7.
12. Unemployment now at 9% (Bloomberg 5/6/11) (remember Biden promised 200,000-500,000 new jobs per month!! back in 2010)
13. Inflation in many sectors including food; famously expressed by someone at a Federal Reserve show and tell, “I can’t eat an I-Pad.”
14. Cash for Clunkers.
15. The phony “stimulus”—failed $850 billion
16. How many times has Trumka visited the White House?
17. Contempt of court for the oil permits in the Gulf and Obamacare.
18. The seizure of GM and Chrysler, transferring bondholder wealth to unions—otherwise known as seizure of private property
19. The shutdown of Shell’s Arctic oil exploration by EPA (a regulatory KGB)
20. Dodd-Frank.
21. Hostility toward Israel.
22. His push for unconstitutional restrictions on free speech via the FCC.
23. The NLRB’s fight against Boeing.
24. the Czars.
25. Failure to resume full water deliveries to California’s central valley because of the DELTA SMELT. Can we shout that out each time the unemployment numbers come up? What has this alone done to unemployment in California?
26. Attempts to try the terrorists in civilian New York City trials.
27. Takeover of the student loan program.
28. Attack on Arizona for exercising state’s exercise of legislative authority on citizen identification rules.
29. Failure to secure the southern border (Al Queda now has a group located in Mexico)
30. The war on Libya.
31. His latest attack on free speech via the regulation to disclose contributions with government contractors. Even Mitch McConnell has called this “Gangster Politics” (see Strassel WSJ 5/6/11)
32. His general loathing of Americans.
33. Fort Hood
34. The proposed new gas mileage tax!
35. His utter hypocrisy when, e.g. with Osama when he totally voted AGAINST the war, Guantanamo, renditions, etc etc etc
36. Driving up health care costs for everyone—even before Obamacare
37. “Bailing out” his billionare friends in the financial markets, at GE, etc.
38. Breaking campaign promise of transparency
39. Humiliating millions of Americans traveling through airports with sexual harassment tactics
40. Inciting racism through ignorant comments and the “Beer Summit”
41. Eased the restrictions on stem cell research. The feeble-minded half-wits in the state of Cali passed a bond measure that has devoted $3 billion dollars to this research…result? NOTHING! So this is an announcement that we are going to waste more billions on NOTHING just to show those stupid Christians what we think about their concern for so-called ‘human lives’
42. $14.6 Trillion in debt
43. $1.5 Trillion in NEW debt from 2012 budget
44. GDP 1.5% growth
“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” Winston Churchill
only problem with this list is the left will use the same, with copius amounts of spin, to tout his re-election
All very good reasons but in our current culture they don’t “amount to a pinch of horse dung.” Maybe I need to increase my anti-depression medication but I’m afraid the stars are aligned for a re-election of The One even if the U.S. is financially and physically a giant smoking crater come election day. Our “elite culture” is so invested in him that he could publicly declare the Bill of Rights null and void and he would be showered with hosannas for his “firm leadership.” Any Republican that looks as if he or she is making progress with the electorate will be defenestrated by our friends in the establishment media.
That selfsame media is treating the (very welcome) death of UBL as if Obama had stripped down to his rippled abs, jumped out of a helicopter and personally strangled the guy with his bare hands. And yet John McCain’s genuine heroism was something to be made fun of. Very strange.
So?
None of this will matter.
The Messiah has the MSM covering for him still.
His narrative will prevail, and all your perfectly legitimate points – and many others besides – will be drowned out, ignored or suppressed.
The Republic Will Fall in 2012.
An insolvent federal government, an exporting China and India, and an almost complete indifference to federal immigration, tax, and regulatory laws have all combined to create a well-entitled but increasingly angry population, one “empowered” and made more, not less, bitter by the last two years of governance in Washington.
—————
The federal government is not “insolvent.” It is quite able to service its debt, which of course was tripled during the Reagan-Bush years and then doubled during Bush Jr.’s years. Since this is Pajamas Media, and since the author is a right-winger, his article ignores the truth.
i’m sure in the devious mind of a lefty we are not insolvent
i’m sure we are a free society with emphasis on the individual and a strong free market economy
i’m also sure that our benevolent federal government is well within its limits of that archaic piece of the slave trading manifesto, i mean, the u.s. constitution
you bash reagan and the bushes but ignore the simple reality that obama has spent more than all presidents combined (in 2 years of one term)
is obama better because he ruined this country faster than anyone else?
is obama better because he spent MORE than reagan or bush?
you cant have it both ways
and, by the way, what is this truth you speak of?
and does it involve the word/term neo-con? (if it does please define it for me- i’ve been asking for years and still havent gotten an answer)
I read somewhere that a Neo-Con is a former Liberal; someone who has seen the light and joined the Right.
i have heard this one
but i have also heard:
the neo-con is a sort of diss on a “conservative jew”
or
a national defense hawk
you bash reagan and the bushes but ignore the simple reality that obama has spent more than all presidents combined (in 2 years of one term)
—————
I know you’ll breeze right past this, because right-wingers hate facts. Still, I write in the spirit of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the conservative Democratic senator who Republicans occasionally pretend to appreciate. His most famous quote went more or less like this: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not to his own facts.”
The Obama administration’s first two budgets (fiscal 2010 and 2011) spend a total of about $7.2 trillion. The final three years of Bush Jr. budgets (fiscal 2007, 2008, and 2009), spent a total of about $8.7 trillion. You can look it up (Google: “U.S. federal budget” and click to the official sites), but I’m sure you won’t.
Y’know, here’s the little flaw in your reasoning.
If I have say, $10, and I spend, say $11, I owe someone a buck. Right?
So if I have a trillion bucks, and I spend one and a half trillion bucks, I owe someone five hundred billion bucks. Right?
Maybe you’d like to go back to your “‘right-wingers’ can’t do math” (I think you phrase it “can’t handle the facts”) statement, and revise your numbers in light of the above reasoning, and THEN comment on what was worse (the Bush years, or the Obama years).
Here’s a hint: The fed’s DID spend more money than they brought in during the Bush years. As usual. And as a result, the fed’s owed more at the end. Granted; no argument. But. NOW, why don’t YOU run the numbers for the number that REALLY counts …which is *hint-hint* which administration is putting us FURTHEST in debt.
And the always-clueless Keynesian-controlled federal government (of the past two totally Democrat controlled legislative and executive branch years), they weren’t just spending billions more than they had, it was in the trillions.
You see, it’s not that in economic arguments right-ies can’t do the math (we’re pretty good at it …after all, it’s not complicated, it’s just checking up the balance on the ol’ checkbook), it’s that lefties throw up these straw-man talking points memes because THEY can’t “do” simple logic.
Two can play these little effin’ games dude.
But Rome’s now majorly burning, and the fires have went from smokers in the low rent districts (in the typical fashion of federal largesse of the Bush years) to full-blown city blocks in the business districts all aflame during this still young Obama administration years.
Quit being dense.
Obama and two years of total Democrat (Keynesians one and all) were a total effin’ disaster to the overall national debt.
And their “answer” was – and still is – “spend MORE” …and only a clueless plebe thinks that the best way to get out of debt (or even merely lower your debt), is to spend even MORE money you don’t have, and *at an increasing rate*.
Hate facts? Jeezus. Get a clue. Take a course in critical thinking.
Sorry, but I responded to a know-nothing right-winger who claimed that, in Obama’s first two years, the federal government spent more money than it had in all of the previous years combined.
The know-nothing right-winger was completely wrong. I pointed it out, and here you come — another know-nothing right-winger — to defend him. It’s pathetic, but that’s life in these United States.
i refuse to get lost in the world of ever changing semantics
i said spending earlier but this may be inappropriate; how do you spend what doesnt exist?
ok. fine. but what about the debt?
i still dont understand what anonymous and not buying it are getting at
are you suggesting that bush did it and obama is just picking up the pieces?
if this is so, what has obama done to fix anything?; all he does is add exponentially to the debt
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123629969453946717.html
what is obama doing differently than bush?
is he proposing spending cuts; reduction in the federal gov’t? or does there need to be more spending and an increase in the size of the government?
by following the keynesian models, has obama failed since he hasnt spent more than all predecseeors combined?
why the bashing of right wingers?
apparently spreading lies; ok, what has obama done to help our deficit problem?
our spending problem?
our debt problem?
do we even have a problem?
how do you “left-wingers” rate obama’s performance in 2.5 years?
how do you define a successful presidency?
what is government’s role and function?
you never give any answers
your take on human history seems to have civilization taking root with fdr and culminating in the reign of slick willy
please inform us, the brainwashed rubes, the uneducated masses, the unsophisticated clingers, on obamas greatness and how it is helping our country
i still dont understand what anonymous and not buying it are getting at
For starters “Not Buying It” and “Anonymous” are the same. I forgot to put my moniker on the “Anonymous” post.
What I was “getting at” is that you made a wildly false claim, i.e., that federal spending during Obama’s first two years in office exceeded that of all his predecessors put together. Your claim was BLATANTLY FALSE, and I nailed you to the wall with it. Like every right-wingnut in this damaged country of ours, you feel free to simply make it up as you go along. It’s corrosive, hypocritical, dishonest, and stupid. It used to be unAmerican too, but sadly that has changed.
When you can’t even face up to being caught in a bald-faced lie, then there really is no hope for you or your kind. It’s a sad day when people tell lies, and when caught lying, stand by their lies. Usually, parents correct that kind of behavior in their children early in life, but right-wingnuts do this so often that I am coming to wonder whether they were hatched, not born.
It’s pathetic, and it would be laughable if it wasn’t so common among your crowd.
By the way, the increase in federal debt under Obama, while substantial, does not exceed that seen under all the other presidents combined, either. To discuss that issue in any relevant detail is useless here, when it’s clear that you and your friends have no integrity when it comes to facts.
Sad, very sad. But oh so true.
Here’s another fact that the right-wingnuts won’t wish to discuss.
The largest deficit in history, in current dollars, was in Bush Jr.’s final year, fiscal 2009. The deficit was $1.4 trillion, or 10% of GDP. Obama’s first budget, fiscal 2010, cut that to $1.3 trillion, or 8.9% of GDP.
In every year of his presidency (budget years 2002-2009), Bush Jr. ran deficits. By contrast, in Clinton’s second term, there were surpluses each year. In Clinton’s first term, federal deficits declined each year. But those are facts, and America’s right-wingnuts despise facts.
Also: Both Bush presidencies were marked by financial fraud and federal bailouts. First it was the S&Ls, then it was the banks. The subsequent Democratic administrations were given the job of cleaning up those Republican messes.
I’ll try one last time.
Note: The Washington Post is not beloved by conservatives (it’s a liberal rag: so, *your* guys). Here’s their link on the subject:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/budget-2010/
Click through the surplus/deficit heading. Here’s the deal.
2001 through 2008 …note that budget deficits as a percentage of gross national product are well within historical norms of somewhere under 5%. Now take a look at 2009 (you can pin 2009 on Bush if you want: but keep in mind that Congress controls the budget, and we’ve had a Democrat majority controlling the federal budget since 2007 in the House, and 2008-2010 were a substantial Dem’ majority, period …until this year, and the GOP House’s first budget will be the 2012 one).
See what I mean Jean? – 2009-2011 (particularly 2010, which is ALL the Dem’s doing) doubled the deficit as a percentage of GNP from the Bush years. Only the years of the Big One (WWII) were worse (and they were waaaay worse).
For a good non-partisan read on the issue: try Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt
The US Treasury lists overall historical debt here:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm
…the Treasury picture ain’t pretty. The debt doubled under Bush in an 8 year period (keep in mind that little problem with Congress holding the purse strings), so under his administration the problem grew by roughly 5.7 trillion overall. That averages about 710 billion per year.
…under the Obama administration (there’s only the one year total for 2010), the deficit grew approx 1.65 trillion. I make that to be close to a cool trillion dollars for his first effort. Gotta say, the man’s no piker.
These are US Treasury Department figures (rounding errors are mine, but what’s a few hundred million amongst friends LOL).
Let’s look at it this way instead, as a function of the controlling party in the House (the Senate isn’t as important to the process IMHO hahaha). The Republican’s controlled the purse strings pretty much during the Clinton administration years, and about 2/3′s of the Bush 2 administration years.
The debt went from about 4.4 trillion (first Clinton year 1993 …during his admin, the debt only grew approx 1.5 trillion overall btw) to approx 10 trillion …so we’ll call it a 5.6 trillion increase over around 14 years. So about 400 million a year. Blame the Repub’s (I do).
The Dem’s took total control in 2007. In the three years (2008-2010) of the Dem control of the purse strings, so we can just subtract 2008 from 2010 …and we get 3.5 trillion. Jeezus in a bucket. Three years. Over a trillion a year.
Like I explained. The math ain’t hard.
You still wanna argue this crap?
There’s a great thread here btw, where rightie’s and leftie’s tear into each other in the comments section along the same lines as your argument (which, again: it ain’t the question that matters, its how you argue the implications).
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/02/05/past-deficits-vs-obamas-deficits-in-pictures/
I leave you with this: the Keynesians of the GOP are as stupid as the Keynesians of the Democrat party.
And I don’t give a crap who’s hands are on the tiller …who you want to fling fecal material at …we’re ALL flippin’ hosed if this keeps up.
Fire. Them. All.
I have a [substantial] comment that has been pending for several hours in this sub-thread that is “awaiting moderation”.
…just don’t want it to get lost in the shuffle.
Thanks.
So. I post that I have a comment “awaiting moderation” and my comment asking for help shows up, but the original comment is still missing. Sucks to be me.
…I’m going to try posting the yet-unmoderated comment again …and so any consequent double post is due to this problem. FYI.
you didnt nail anyone with anything
i pointed out that the “spending” issue is another semantics issue
i pointed out that it is possible to spend anything when it doesnt exist
i pointed out that the debt obama is accumulating is unmatched
and, finally, i pointed out that you refuse to answer any of my dozens of simple questions to further the dialogue– something the left refuses to do
so i am through with responding to you; you obviously dont want to discuss this
so ill sum our results here:
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/05/04/libya-vs-iraq-obama-is-awesome/
you didnt nail anyone with anything
Only with facts, which this country’s far right-wing hates with a passion.
i pointed out that the debt obama is accumulating is unmatched
What’s another lie when you are unconstrained by fact to begin with? The largest deficit, when measured in current dollars, was generated by George W. Bush’s final budget. The World War II-era deficits were far larger than that, as a share of the total economy. Not that facts ever mattered to you and your kind.
i pointed out that you refuse to answer any of my dozens of simple questions to further the dialogue– something the left refuses to do
There is no discussion with a liar. I am confining myself to correcting your right-wingnut lies.
Well, I expected a vacuous, trite, non-responsive reply (if I got one at all), and I got a vacuous, trite, non-responsive reply. One so seldom meets a leftie with any training in rational discourse, and you certainly haven’t raised the bar any.
But hey! At least we can agree about *something* though: it is pathetic, and that’s life in the United States.
Yup, in right-wingnut America, facts are “trite” and “non responsive.” Very, very sad.
The facts were never the question.
The objective analytical ability to determine what those facts signify were the question.
Fail.
the facts were never the question
Not to you, because as a Republican you have no interest in facts. It’s sad and laughable at the same time.
the facts were never the question
Not to you, because as a Republican you have no interest in facts. It’s sad and laughable at the same time.
Actually you have totally mistinterpreted (again) what I (at least) have been saying. Which in this particular was merely that your facts weren’t in question to me because I recognized their accuracy (well some details), and I understood the point you were trying to make with them. They may have been incomplete facts (or biased: but who the hell cares about that …we expect bias in passionate arguments), but they weren’t in the main specifically untrue. Data is data. BFD.
I was – and have been – disputing your ability to successfully argue the implications of those [incomplete] facts. You were (hopelessly IMHO) trying for a defeat in detail, and ignoring a coup d’oeil response. Bad move.
“Facts” that don’t tell the whole story …that are chosen on the basis of a single factoid-ish intent …however accurate they may be in detail …that don’t make the point that you’re arguing (whether you’re aware of what you’re really arguing or not) …are rather as bad as the lies you basely accuse the right of. They’re a mistake: a weakness in your argument.
Worse (to me), they’re facts in pursuit of a logical fallacy; an error in reasoning. THAT is your biggest problem.
First. You paint with too broad a brush. Trust me on this, but all righties are not in agreement on almost anything. Including policies of the Bush administration …and *surprise* those were criticized by the right at the time they occurred TOO.
Second. You too freely use childish ad hominem name calling. Your momma should have taught you that you catch more flies with honey. No one [else] is going to give your “facts” the time of day when you’re simultaneously calling them evil and stupid. Why piss people off? Convince them: it’s more effective.
Third. You don’t communicate in a rational fashion …your “arguments” simply aren’t significant to the point you think you’re trying to make (which I’m unclear as to being, “righties are all evil lieing ignorant bastards” or “George Bush was an evil lieing ignorant bastard” or “Obama is no worse than Bush” – and damning with faint praise, that, LOL – or “Democrats handle the budget better than Republicans” (you might be surprised to find that there are historical periods – none recent, however – where I would agree with that)…well, you get the idea. I’ve tried to engage you on the implications of your statement …but you’re either obtuse, or lacking in depth, or just too full of uncontrolled defensive rage to get to the issue.
Dude: righties have long since learned to recognize straw-man arguments. Fail.
Fourth. You seem to have fallen into the common error of lefties in thinking that the right is monolithic. Au contraire mon ami. I can point you to a bunch of righties who weren’t happy – were, indeed, QUITE critical – of the Bush administration’s profligacy.
This (i.e., your “facts”) ain’t news to us.
But it sure as hell ain’t ever gonna be the basis for why we give the current inhabitant of the White House a pass …and you shouldn’t either.
Fifth and final. You actively substitute passion and intransigency for flexibility. You’re never going to get anywhere with that approach as an method in argumentum. Especially in a hostile forum. Fail.
And *NOW* I’m done.
your facts weren’t in question to me
Listen up: They are not “my” facts. They are “the” facts. In your twisted world, each person has their own facts. This is how you people operate. It’s a big reason why what passes for discussion in this country has become so stupid and poisonous.
Here we have some typical right-wing nutcase making LUDICROUS assertions, and you breeze right on by them as if he never tried to float that utter B.S. to begin with. Then you have the unmitigated gall to blame ME for calling him, and you, out as the twisted propagandists that you’ve become.
“Facts” that don’t tell the whole story …that are chosen on the basis of a single factoid-ish intent …however accurate they may be in detail
Your fellow right-wingnut made a specific allegation: that the feds have spent more money in Obama’s term than all of the other administrations combined. It was a laughable, stupid lie. You wingnuts should have pointed it out. I arrived late here. You people just rolled with your fellow liar’s lie.
And now you keep doing it, by calling the truth “a single factoid-ish intent.” And then you wonder why ordinary Americans vomit at the sight of you.
You too freely use childish ad hominem name calling. Your momma should have taught you that you catch more flies with honey. No one [else] is going to give your “facts” the time of day when you’re simultaneously calling them evil and stupid. Why piss people off? Convince them: it’s more effective.
The American right-wing can do nothing BUT attack, and when the tables are turned they whine and cry like the little children they are. It’s pathetic. I don’t know if you’ve realized it yet, but Obama is sharpening up. I think you people are in for a bitter harvest.
All the junk you and your kind have been spewing is starting to back up into your basement, and it’s only going to get worse for you. Think it smells bad right now? Just wait. And guess what? It’ll only be what you threw down there to begin with, coming back to greet its owner.
This (i.e., your “facts”) ain’t news to us.
Typical right-wing nuttery. You people just make it up as you go along. You can’t even maintain the facade for the duration of a single Internet posting. At one point, you accept that your fellow right-wingnut was wrong, but you just can’t resist labeling the truth as “your ‘facts.’ ”
You actively substitute passion and intransigency for flexibility.
Ah, so that’s what you call making it up as you go along. Flexibility. What do you do for a living? Peddle no-money-down mortgages, or have you moved on to the foreclosure racket? Typical Republican!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8E_zMLCRNg
Sigh. Total fail.
But effectively – however unaware you are of the self-ironic illustration you’ve made by – making my point.
…scroll to your last comment in the thread for the reply to your “facts”.
the cricket was for “not buying it”
the cricket was for “not buying it”
Ohhh yeah …thought so.
I figure it’s always worth a shot to try to get through to them. Can’t hurt. Might help. And you never know who else is going to read it all later. And notice the contrast in the content.
<>
It’s a religious debate for them …and all because they deny their self-created gestalt, and thus are unable to understand the terms of the debate that they themselves have set.
Ironic.
…but sad.
…just FYI not buyin’ it. I responded to the facts with further facts – and the requisite and needed analysis – in your response #66 later in the thread. Umm, that response was prior to your last [above] still-provocative and infantile tirade I might add.
Sigh. #65, not #66. (You’d posted directly to the overall thread at 08:21A, being given a new number, and then re-posted that within the #53 sequence again at 08:23A on May 10. My – dispositive – counter-facts was to your thread #65.)
…umm, and if you notice the gap in the comments numerical sequence (no #64), that was due to the second of my abortive attempts to get past the “awaiting moderation” problem that occurs when you provide actual links to online citations (providing links will apparently put your comment OR reply in limbo) for fact-checking.
Comments within a given sequence in a sub-thread aren’t given a number. (My first attempt was posted May 9 at 11:18PM …it too is still “awaiting moderation”.)
I’m all about the fairness.
And as a gift to you buying it now:
Google search term “Wikipedia National debt by U.S. presidential terms”.
…and I now know more about the responsibility for the federal debt than I ever wanted to know. Sigh.
It’s …complicated. Very non-sound-bitey.
If you’re a rightie – and I am, of course – you might want to glance through those Wiki-provided spreadsheets and charts.
Some observations.
First: Republican administrations (even with adjustments for inflation, so dollars are compared equally over the decades) are “spendy”.
Second: The greatest increase in the debt to GDP ratio (post WWII) was …GW’s second term (no doubt due to that be-damned bank bailout over mortgages). 9/11, two wars & that completely idiotic drug bene’ took their toll.
Third: Obama isn’t there yet; not enough data. Oh, he’s plenty spendy. So far. But irrespective of the lefties assertion of his economic sanity (including the historical foundation for the assertion) …in the main, he’s on a pretty solid course to be the first Democrat administration (since WWII) to increase the debt-to-GDP ratio. Yeah. The first. Go figure.
Fourth: Democrat administrations (since WWII, to date) have ALL decreased the debt-to-GDP, while Republican administrations have mostly increased same (only Eisenhower and Nixon 1 decreased debt-to-GDP).
(NOTE: I don’t see how the numbers would have been cooked, as they’re just US Treasury Dept. base figures …and since “the math ain’t that hard”.)
Who knew.
I’ll give you this much not buying it: you did provide incentive for me to crawl through the web ’til I found out what the hell data-point you were basing your core assertions on.
And as I earlier explained: you might have found a more sympathetic audience had you toned down your rhetoric (and simply provided that link). Enough with the foam-flecked accusations dude: from now on, just point to the data.
You catch more flies with honey. Really.
A neo-conservative is a liberal who got mugged.
Or a colledge kid who got his first job and read the tax deductions on his first pay check.
those are pretty decent ones
Not Buying It…The federal government is not “insolvent.” It is quite able to service its debt, which of course was tripled during the Reagan-Bush years and then doubled during Bush Jr.’s years.
Do you really think your governments are solvent?
Pause for a moment and consider what would be involved to eliminate the deficit. Once the deficit is eliminated, the government is living within it’s means and no longer going into debt further.
Many Americans will answer that ending the wars and\or foreign aid will solve the problem however this will not come anywhere close. Even eliminating the entire defense budget wouldn’t eliminate the deficit.
With a projected deficit of $1.6T, either taxes would have to increase by 70%, or spending would have to be reduced 40%, or some combination of the two. Obviously a 70% tax hike isn’t possible, there would be nothing left for food, clothing or shelter. Imagine what would be involved to achieve an overall 40% federal spending reduction (defense, social security, medicare, medicaid, education, welfare, unemployment, all other ares)
Also keep in mind that the longer this issue is delayed, the more difficult it will be to make the necessary changes. Social Security and Medicare are about to increase significantly with baby boomers retiring which will exasperate the problem further and interest on the debt will only increase.
At the same time, fewer than 25% of Americans think it is necessary to make any changes to social security or medicare, the largest areas of federal spending. There seems to be complete indifference towards the deficit and a protectionist mindset (cuts or tax increases are OK as long as I’m not the one making the sacrifice).
Look at what a joke it was to watch the two parties bickering over $34B in spending cuts a few months ago yet in reality they need to agree on 50 times that amount! . Just today a member of the bipartisan group dropped out, claiming there was no hope to reach agreement on balancing the budget.
Is it any wonder your government doesn’t bother and tries desperately to hide the real problem from the public? It’s so much easier to resort to money printing \ quantitative easing instead.
About 15+ years ago, Robert Kaplan wrote a brilliant article for The Atlantic Monthly entitled “The Coming Anarchy”. He determined, after extensive travels in West Africa and elsewhere, that the entire world was headed for utter chaos, for many of the reasons described here by VDH. All of the issues that led him to this conclusion are even more magnified and ubiquitous today, affecting every corner of the globe.
Although the world he (Kaplan) described, in detail, has not YET(!) arrived, his words appear prescient and prophetic today. I suggest everyone look it up.
I saw this coming 50 years ago. How? Because the laws of physics, and therefore of everything, are the same everywhere and everywhen for everyone. This is the Uniformity Principle. Immediately it follows, that anything which even one person can do just once, may be done any number of times by any number of persons at any number of places. This is why industry has spread so quickly.
Further, science has allowed us to signal one another at the speed of light since about 1840. The Earth is quite small compared to that. Proof? Anything happening now at a given spot, is known to just about everyone from pole to pole within one minute. This explicitly includes technical advances, which now spread instantly worldwide.
Americans have no special claim upon anything, any more than can anyone else. Eventually, and fairly soon now, everyone will catch up to everyone else. There will be the complete and final elimination of disease, ignorance, hunger, and poverty by 2100 or so. These all follow immediately from the Uniformity Principle. That principle is so strong, that it forces life to be common throughout the Universe. Sure enough, planets themselves are now known to be common, and there is even already some possible evidence of panspermia.
Tatiana, have you ever heard of “regression to the mean?” You might want to look it up.
Isn’t Obama’s America wonderful? And in California, which is several years ahead of the rest of the nation toward becoming a socialist utopia, things must be truly great? The only problem is that Obama, and even CA, haven’t made the final transition to such a utopia by having the government takeover the economy completely, or raising taxes to pay for all the wonderful socialist spending they are doing. Right now CA and Obama are still borrowing the money to provide the poor with the 2nd to the latest model I-Phone, or the 3 year old Camry, and the record number of foodstamps and other welfare benefits. However, the time of decision is close upon us. The borrowing can’t continue much longer. People who don’t work are going to find all of their goodies cut and be very unhappy, or people who do work are going to find their taxes raised to pay for the goodies, and we aren’t talking about just the rich, or a few dollars here or there. We are talking about huge massive increases in taxes on every American who earns a paycheck to pay for those who don’t, or who earn a paycheck like the public employee unions at the expense of working people in the private sector who will likely never be able to retire, but will have to work until they drop while the government/Obama takes most of what they earn. Have fun while it lasts!
VDH: Our country might survive and IMHO, that survival depends on the 2012 election. A fair and honest vote count should be obvious to fair observers yet that might not be allowed. A “Chicago” vote like the one in 1960 is a strong likelihood or there might be open rebellion by Obama’s SEIU thugs preventing a strong anti-Obama vote. However, the Obama crowd doesn’t have the numbers to overpower those of us who want to continue and keep this Shining City on the Hill. And, if the Obama crowd does try that, they will lose as will this country’s soul in so many ways.
My firm belief is that either we are facing a long period of a new dark ages or a trial of our souls, pained by the things we might see and do. The world needs a strong and vibrant America, not the one ruled by Obama, a fool, a souless mindless agent of doom.
Why is it that so many people see how screwed up our government policies are but we keep electing the same fools to run our government? We complain but that’s not changing anything. Do something about it. Do your homework. Talk to your neighbor. Donate to or volunteer for a conservative politician. Run for office. Things aren’t going to get better unless you do something about it.
“We” keep electing, and re-electing, the same fools to run our government because there are too many people, as yet, who haven’t been burned by what is going on. and many of them who are getting burned are too easily convinced by the socialists that the problem is “the rich”, “the racists”, “the greedy”, “the capitalists”, and not them. After all, most of what we fret about on these blogs hasn’t happened yet, while most people simply won’t care until it blindsides them. Things will change when the hit fits the shan for maybe 60-70% of the populace. And that will most likely include you and me.
Many people are already doing what you have suggested. Consider the TEA Party. It’s doing some good, but not fast enough, simply because the Senate can’t be reversed as fast as the House, and people like Pelosi, Boxer and Reed keep gettig re-elected. And there is no guarantee that TEA Partiers elected to office will remain faithful, or won’t be nullified by the Old Guard.
The TEA Party will continue doing what it can, but I fear that events will, of necessity, be the real clincher for the critical mass of people who will make change happen, and make it happen permanently. And it won’t be pretty.
Revolution is a leisure activity which happens not when the population is down and out but rather when they are on the rebound. In the US, Americans did not revolt in the Great Depression but during the 1960s when we enjoyed new affluence. The Russians didn’t revolt during Stalin’s terror, but later when iron hand had eased up. The French revolutionaries led a new middle class of merchants to the Bastille, which contained only three prisoners, who probably deserved to be jailed.
“I often ask business people on the coast why there are not more industries in places like Selma other than agricultural related work that is locale specific.”
To manufacture here, you either have to pay Chinese wages, or you have to use robotic productivity enhancement. The latter requires a workforce of trained engineers, constantly keeping the robots happy. Countries like China and India recognize that they will have to have a highly educated workforce to transition to a high-wage economy. So they emphasize engineering studies at the university. We, on the other hand, emphasize class warfare, which is fundamentally unproductive.
California is boned. Flee while you still can.
Mr. Hanson nails the end product of a failed government with absolute perfection.
California is “Escape from New York” and Hanson is Snake Pliskin.
The resentment and anger is not confined to the SEIU types. I think the Tea Party is *a* manifestation of the economic portion of the anger welling up from those of us footing the bill. I just don’t see how this ends well. At the federal level we can’t get anyone to even consider trying to balance the budget. Sure they present 10 or 12 year plans, but they have the same validity and chance of working as the old Soviet 5 year plans. That is, exactly NONE.
I was arguing with a friend of mine about the debt and pointed out that, forget running a deficit, if we ran a 1 Billion dollar surplus and paid no interest it would still take 14 thousand years to pay off the debt.
I think the system will wobble along for a few more years, but at some point an ‘event’ of some sort is going to make it all go pear shaped in a hurry.
I think real civil unrest in inevitable as these “well-entitled but increasingly angry population” meets the other increasingly angry population that is unwilling to fund their life style.
Hopefully I be living in my country retreat by then, trying to stay out of the fire.
I’ll try one last time.
Note: The Washington Post is not beloved by conservatives (it’s a liberal rag: so, *your* guys). Here’s their link on the subject:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/budget-2010/
Click through the surplus/deficit heading. Here’s the deal.
2001 through 2008 …note that budget deficits as a percentage of gross national product are well within historical norms of somewhere under 5%. Now take a look at 2009 (you can pin 2009 on Bush if you want: but keep in mind that Congress controls the budget, and we’ve had a Democrat majority controlling the federal budget since 2007 in the House, and 2008-2010 were a substantial Dem’ majority, period …until this year, and the GOP House’s first budget will be the 2012 one).
See what I mean Jean? – 2009-2011 (particularly 2010, which is ALL the Dem’s doing) doubled the deficit as a percentage of GNP from the Bush years. Only the years of the Big One (WWII) were worse (and they were waaaay worse).
For a good non-partisan read on the issue: try Wikipedia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt
The US Treasury lists overall historical debt here:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm
…the Treasury picture ain’t pretty. The debt doubled under Bush in an 8 year period (keep in mind that little problem with Congress holding the purse strings), so under his administration the problem grew by roughly 5.7 trillion overall. That averages about 710 billion per year.
…under the Obama administration (there’s only the one year total for 2010), the deficit grew approx 1.65 trillion. I make that to be close to a cool trillion dollars for his first effort. Gotta say, the man’s no piker.
These are US Treasury Department figures (rounding errors are mine, but what’s a few hundred million amongst friends LOL).
Let’s look at it this way instead, as a function of the controlling party in the House (the Senate isn’t as important to the process IMHO hahaha). The Republican’s controlled the purse strings pretty much during the Clinton administration years, and about 2/3′s of the Bush 2 administration years.
The debt went from about 4.4 trillion (first Clinton year 1993 …during his admin, the debt only grew approx 1.5 trillion overall btw) to approx 10 trillion …so we’ll call it a 5.6 trillion increase over around 14 years. So about 400 million a year. Blame the Repub’s (I do).
The Dem’s took total control in 2007. In the three years (2008-2010) of the Dem control of the purse strings, so we can just subtract 2008 from 2010 …and we get 3.5 trillion. Jeezus in a bucket. Three years. Over a trillion a year.
Like I explained. The math ain’t hard.
You still wanna argue this crap?
There’s a great thread here btw, where rightie’s and leftie’s tear into each other in the comments section along the same lines as your argument (which, again: it ain’t the question that matters, its how you argue the implications).
blog.heritage.org/2010/02/05/past-deficits-vs-obamas-deficits-in-pictures/
I leave you with this: the Keynesians of the GOP are as stupid as the Keynesians of the Democrat party.
And I don’t give a crap who’s hands are on the tiller …who you want to fling fecal material at …we’re ALL flippin’ hosed if this keeps up.
Fire. Them. All.
*you didnt nail anyone with anything*
Only with facts, which this country’s far right-wing hates with a passion.
*i pointed out that the debt obama is accumulating is unmatched*
What’s another lie when you are unconstrained by fact to begin with? The largest deficit, when measured in current dollars, was generated by George W. Bush’s final budget. The World War II-era deficits were far larger than that, as a share of the total economy. Not that facts ever mattered to you and your kind.
*and, finally, i pointed out that you refuse to answer any of my dozens of simple questions to further the dialogue– something the left refuses to do*
There is no discussion with a liar. I am confining myself to correcting your right-wingnut lies.
I’ve had my damn reply (tried twice) stuck in “awaiting moderation” all night, and again this morning. I’m going to try it without the web links (maybe they’re what’s killing it???). I’ve included google search terms that will get you to the cites (yes, I always mean to include puns).
Here goes: third time’s the charm?
——
original reply follows
——
I’ll try one last time.
Note: The Washington Post is not beloved by conservatives (it’s a liberal rag: so, *your* guys). Here’s their link on the subject:
–link removed — google “washington post taking apart the federal budget”
Click through the surplus/deficit heading. Here’s the deal.
2001 through 2008 …note that budget deficits as a percentage of gross national product are well within historical norms of somewhere under 5%. Now take a look at 2009 (you can pin 2009 on Bush if you want: but keep in mind that Congress controls the budget, and we’ve had a Democrat majority controlling the federal budget since 2007 in the House, and 2008-2010 were a substantial Dem’ majority, period …until this year, and the GOP House’s first budget will be the 2012 one).
See what I mean Jean? – 2009-2011 (particularly 2010, which is ALL the Dem’s doing) doubled the deficit as a percentage of GNP from the Bush years. Only the years of the Big One (WWII) were worse (and they were waaaay worse).
For a good non-partisan read on the issue: try Wikipedia.
–link removed — google “United_States_public_debt”
The US Treasury lists overall historical debt here:
–link removed — google “us treasury historical debt”
…the Treasury picture ain’t pretty. The debt doubled under Bush in an 8 year period (keep in mind that little problem with Congress holding the purse strings), so under his administration the problem grew by roughly 5.7 trillion overall. That averages about 710 billion per year.
…under the Obama administration (there’s only the one year total for 2010), the deficit grew approx 1.65 trillion. I make that to be close to a cool trillion dollars for his first effort. Gotta say, the man’s no piker.
These are US Treasury Department figures (rounding errors are mine, but what’s a few hundred million amongst friends LOL).
Let’s look at it this way instead, as a function of the controlling party in the House (the Senate isn’t as important to the process IMHO hahaha). The Republican’s controlled the purse strings pretty much during the Clinton administration years, and about 2/3′s of the Bush 2 administration years.
The debt went from about 4.4 trillion (first Clinton year 1993 …during his admin, the debt only grew approx 1.5 trillion overall btw) to approx 10 trillion …so we’ll call it a 5.6 trillion increase over around 14 years. So about 400 million a year. Blame the Repub’s (I do).
The Dem’s took total control in 2007. In the three years (2008-2010) of the Dem control of the purse strings, so we can just subtract 2008 from 2010 …and we get 3.5 trillion. Jeezus in a bucket. Three years. Over a trillion a year.
Like I explained. The math ain’t hard.
You still wanna argue this crap?
There’s a great thread here btw, where rightie’s and leftie’s tear into each other in the comments section along the same lines as your argument (which, again: it ain’t the question that matters, its how you argue the implications).
–link removed — google “heritage foundation past-deficits-vs-obamas-deficits-in-pictures”
Thread’s getting old …so I leave you with this: the Keynesians of the GOP are as stupid as the Keynesians of the Democrat party.
And I don’t give a crap who’s hands are on the tiller …or who you want to fling fecal material at …we’re ALL flippin’ hosed if this keeps up. That’s a “fact” for you.
Fire. Them. All.
Ha! Worked!
Davidbr,
Thank you for your excellent analysis.
Alas, you are wasting your time.
Progressives aren’t interested in right or wrong. They are interested in Winning. Someone like “Not Buying It” has no interest in your facts; he’s only pleased that he made progress against you by putting you on the defensive, and is pleased with himself that he has struck a blow against a non-progressive while demonstrating his own ‘liberal’ credentials and proving (at least to himself) his inherent moral superiority due to his unrelenting opposition to anything you say or do, prove or disprove.
The progressives learned their lessons well from studying the tactics and strategies of the most successful left wing revolutionaries of the twentieth century. Facts are twisted to suit ends; facts are misquoted, abused or positioned to forward their agenda. Truth is literally of zero importance, except as it can be used as a weapon.
The whole purpose of the Progressives is to DESTROY the established order so that they can replace it with their own totalitarian regime. They are obsessive about it, utterly ruthless, totally committed, and will brook no restriction or limit. They will strive to Win at any cost, even if the cost is the total destruction of a society (think of Pol Pot or Mao Tse Tung.)
History is on their side, too. Marxism triumphed across large swaths of territory across the world, leaving utterly shattered societies in their wake even after the overthrow of communist government. Look at Russia, Ethiopia, the central Asian states just as a few examples – societies where corruption, bribery, extortion and graft is the only way to get thru the day, week or year; where there is no societal cohesion, trust, or rule of Law; where the infection of totalitarianism survives as a chronic condition in society, mortally undermining any and all attempts of individuals to rouse their broken cultures up to a higher plane, the disease biding its time to resume its complete domination of the populace for a time when the people believe that a formal return to totalitarianism will be worth the price for relief from their current misery. You can see the infection fulminating once more in places such as Bolivia and Venezuela, with the return of Belarus to a defacto dictatorship and moves to rejoin Russia, and with the complete inability of the Dar Al Islam to break its mideaval chains and establish functioning representative republics throughout the twentieth century and now into the 21st.
In short, once a society loses its freedom, they never recover it. The damage to their society leaves scars and residual infection. And with so many people around who are very much like Not Buying It, the battle has been lost here. How else can you explain that someone so stunningly and obviously unqualified as BHO can win the presidency? How else can the entire media establishment be so completely in support of such a man, with his background and agenda? And how else can the political opposition so easily abandon the principles that had guided it for decades and jump so readily onto the uncontrolled spending, big government bandwagon?
The republic will be lost in 2012, even with a Republican win.
The question is only whether or not the Union will survive.
4. cfbleachers wrote:
“50% of the people play by the “old” rules. They pay taxes, pay their mortgages, pay their own food bills, enter the country legally, and basically support the “other half”.
In the early 1960′s a Junior High School Teacher of mine told our class the same thing you just put in your post. His words, “The day will come in our Country when half the people will work to support the other half who will not work”. I’d say he was very much ahead of time. I remember those words from a long time ago. Another saying of his was, “If it’s free, you can’t afford it”. tlnzz
I would only like to argue a single point with the estimable VDH- and that is the definition of affluence. You say that the differences between the subsidized poor and those who pay the subsidies are “superfluous”. But that’s because you picked the superfluous differences. The things people buy are “goods and services” but you left out the “services”.
To me, money has always been about freedom, not things. I don’t do what I don’t want to do (for the most part) and I get to do the things I like (within reason). We have a weekly housekeeper, a lawn service, someone to groom the dog, even a cook who comes in once a month and loads up my freezer with meals that I could never make myself. When the kids were little we had a nanny, and took her with us on vacation so the trips were vastly more enjoyable. We bought the VIP passes so we didn’t have to stand in line at the amusement parks. Now the kids are bigger and instead of forgoing visits home or having me worry when they’re driving home from college in bad weather, they fly. Because they can.
These things aren’t available to the not-really-poor poor because they’re keeping up appearances. I live in a house that’s not that different from theirs and drive a car that’s not that different. Our kids go to the same schools. But the quality of my life is vastly different, because time is money- or rather, money is time. And I have more of it.
What’s really interesting sometimes is seeing the reactions of people when you tell them you take your nanny on vacation. Somehow, it’s okay to drive a $75,000 Mercedes, but spending an extra thousand dollars or so to actually relax on a family vacation makes one REALLY spoiled. I don’t understand it.
HAHAHA!
So it’s Sunday a week after the fireworks is over …and I see that ALL my attempted posts have finally been moderated and are appearing on the thread.
Thanks Dr. H’. And thanks to “not buying it” (whom I’m sure won’t understand for what: but I’m always grateful when someone corrects me …however unintended and – in this case – spiteful that correction was).
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