patrick.net

Following your analogy--who cares. Britain is still a pretty nice place, wouldn't you agree?

Nomograph says

They can’t feel good about themselves unless America is number one. I love my country and all, but I derive my sense of self-worth from my actions and accomplishments rather than where I happen to have been born.

I'm continually amazed at your ability to know what "they feel about themselves." You seem to always know what other people think and feel about themselves. Apparently, you've had lots of experience on a couch having everything psycho analyzed and think that your therapeutic sessions have a broad, generalized application to the real world. LOL

Doomsday posts such as this invite people to speculate on your motives. If you believe that the "sun is setting on America," by all means go somewhere else. I mean, if your life is so horrible and there's nothing left to look forward to. etc., etc.

How long can empire America survive the expansion of its world interests at great expense, the advance of costly social programs, the invasion of illegal aliens, huge government deficits, permanent loss of millions of manufacturing jobs, enormous trade imbalances, ongoing endless war with Islamofascists, over dependence on foreign energy sources

The funny thing is here in America 10% of the population owns 70%+ of the wealth. This is what's really broken and fixing this by redistributing incomes more on the European high-tax model will fix about half the problems.

"Costly social programs" create wealth -- the state of being well. And jobs, the most rewarding kinds of jobs, jobs that help people -- teachers, doctors, nurses, counselors.

The war is being stepped back now. Just got to keep the warmongers out of power. You know who you are. If you think there is such a thing as "Islamofascists", you are part of the problem, btw.

Trade, energy, and manufacturing are linked. About half the trade deficit is oil-related.

If we'd spend a tenth of our military budget on energy R&D we might develop something. That would fund about 200,000 full-time researchers, LOL. I don't think we can find that many qualified people.

Vote Republican if you want your dystopia to advance, Democratic to step away from this abyss.

I was incredibly negative about the US in 1991-92, but that turned out to be mostly wrong.

However, over half this country are miseducated fools, and this is getting worse not better. We *do* have serious issues to face, but I do suspect we don't have the national clarity of will to adequately address them.

Too many idiots.

Ridiculous. America is still very wealthy. The standard of living will drop in the future, since it was pumped up by borrowing for the last 20 years. But it will still be exponentially higher than most of the rest of the world. A very, very, very small percentage of the population of africa, asia, and south america lives in 2500 sq ft houses with an average of 2.5 cars and 3 televisions. America could eventually lose it's preeminent position in various fields, but the advantages are still pretty overwhelming. Americans will have to work harder and compete in a global market, but that's hardly Armageddon.

The only thing the sun is setting on currently is the total domination of the world's economy in the post WWII period followed by the technological boom of the 80's and 90's followed by an unprecedented borrowing orgy. That isn't necessarily all a bad thing. Being a little hungry (compared with the recent past) might be the spark that sets off the next American boom.

All that being said, if the ever increasing debt levels aren't dealt with there could be a for real very painful financial disaster for America. Destroying an economy, even a very, very wealthy economy is not that hard. Many governments have accomplished it in the past. America would still be wealthy enough to climb back out eventually, but it would destroy a lot of peoples lives.

America was built by groups of people who took personal responsibility, to make a better life for themselves. But as times goes on, the rest found out that they can get the same benefits from public treasury by voting for socialist. But getting benefits for nothing like this won't last forever. democracy will collpase.

^ "socialism" -- using the term to mean a mixed economy -- can work, but only with adequate taxation.

I don't want "free" healthcare or education, I want taxation sufficient to pay for all of it.

The general gameplan of the Republicans since 2001 was to drown the government in debt by increasing services and not increasing taxes, as stated by Grover Norquist:

"Norquist said the following about the Bush Administration, 'We is them, and they is us. When I walk through the White House, I recognize as many people as when I would walk through the Heritage Foundation.'"

"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."— The Nation, 10/12/2004

Their plan is working quite well, or was until the wheels fell off the economy in 2006-2007.

America was built by groups of people who took personal responsibility, to make a better life for themselves.

America had the twin happy accidents of having a continental temperate zone mostly free for the taking in the 19th century, and the twin European cataclysms of the first half of the twentieth leave a global power and capital vacuum that the US transnational corporations largely filled.

Nomograph says

If a little knowledge is dangerous, I must be a holy terror.

I agree. Ever heard of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? They say knowledge is power, and power corrupts. Do the math.

tongue in cheek

tatupu70 says

Following your analogy–who cares. Britain is still a pretty nice place, wouldn’t you agree?

Britain is a beautiful place. Just waiting for some nice dictator to set up shop. Not that it matters, the people can't defend themselves anyway.

Troy says

Too many idiots.

time for another round of the final solution there Hermann?

RayAmerica says

Doomsday posts such as this invite people to speculate on your motives. If you believe that the “sun is setting on America,” by all means go somewhere else. I mean, if your life is so horrible and there’s nothing left to look forward to. etc., etc.

Trust me, my life isn't "horrible" as you speculate. Making realistic observations and seeking opinions on a subject from others is what I thought posting is all about. Apparently, you would rather post far more opitimistic items such as your "Brad Pitt ... I'm here for you." LOL

AdHominem says

Britain is a beautiful place. Just waiting for some nice dictator to set up shop. Not that it matters, the people can’t defend themselves anyway.

huh? What are you talking about??

don't worry big brother will take care of you.

RayAmerica says

RayAmerica says

Doomsday posts such as this invite people to speculate on your motives. If you believe that the “sun is setting on America,” by all means go somewhere else. I mean, if your life is so horrible and there’s nothing left to look forward to. etc., etc.

Trust me, my life isn’t “horrible” as you speculate. Making realistic observations and seeking opinions on a subject from others is what I thought posting is all about. Apparently, you would rather post far more opitimistic items such as your “Brad Pitt … I’m here for you.” LOL

For starters, you could be more "realistic" if you attributed quotes to the person who actually posted them.

"LOL"

RayAmerica says

Nomograph says

They can’t feel good about themselves unless America is number one. I love my country and all, but I derive my sense of self-worth from my actions and accomplishments rather than where I happen to have been born.

I’m continually amazed at your ability to know what “they feel about themselves.” You seem to always know what other people think and feel about themselves. Apparently, you’ve had lots of experience on a couch having everything psycho analyzed and think that your therapeutic sessions have a broad, generalized application to the real world. LOL

...This is the first time I have seen 2 arch-conservatives fight with each other on these posts. Finally, something to take the attention off President Obama's CLEANUP agenda.

@Troy

Good post, very informing.

The funny thing is here in America 10% of the population owns 70%+ of the wealth. This is what’s really broken and fixing this by redistributing incomes more on the European high-tax model will fix about half the problems.

So by increasing taxes from 35% to 50% would redistribute wealth?...How so?

“Costly social programs” create wealth — the state of being well. And jobs, the most rewarding kinds of jobs, jobs that help people — teachers, doctors, nurses, counselors.

Social Programs meaning government and non-profit sector jobs? Surely you dont believe that non-profits are a good way to spend money seeing that each of them have a high overhead and rarely use over 50% of their grant monies toward the services they provide. My wife and I worked at a non-profit and what we saw was the directors spending all they received so they could get more the next year and also 50-75% of the grant monies being spent on salaries/expenses. I would rather have most of that money in my pocket and/or centralize the smaller non-profits into a larger unit....maybe even require a centralized company to manage their administrative overead. IE ADP for Payroll, IBM for IT services, etc. The key with non profits would be to increase the % of monies spent on actual services provided. Your thoughts?

The war is being stepped back now. Just got to keep the warmongers out of power. You know who you are. If you think there is such a thing as “Islamofascists”, you are part of the problem, btw.

Yeah, the arch-conservatives of the Republican party.

Trade, energy, and manufacturing are linked. About half the trade deficit is oil-related.

Very interesting..thanks for sharing.

If we’d spend a tenth of our military budget on energy R&D we might develop something. That would fund about 200,000 full-time researchers, LOL. I don’t think we can find that many qualified people.

True. We spend about 1 trillion on Defense yet only need 500billion to fund our national security. The other 500billion is spent on war time efforts, pensions, etc. If we scale back 500 billion on Defense we should also scale back on Medicare, Postal Services, Social Security, etc. These programs should not exist if they are not profitable or capable of maintaining a balanced budget.

Vote Republican if you want your dystopia to advance, Democratic to step away from this abyss.

I was incredibly negative about the US in 1991-92, but that turned out to be mostly wrong.

However, over half this country are miseducated fools, and this is getting worse not better. We *do* have serious issues to face, but I do suspect we don’t have the national clarity of will to adequately address them.

Too many idiots.

Right on....however, it would take my arch-conservatism to clean up this mess.

1. Pull out of Iraq/Afghanistan = 1 trillion saved over 10 years
2. Scale back Postal Services = 50 billion saved
3. Charge all gang members for the crime commit by 1 = less crime in 5 years, therfore less investment in the war on crime. However, increased monies for housing idiots.
4. Legalize all illegal Mexican immigrants = 50 billion increased taxes
5. Investigate, Prosecute and shutdown all businesses using the services of illegal immigrants
6. centralize all non-profit administrative services = billions saved in efficiencies. Why does the government, headstart and all other non-profits need seperate finance, it and hr groups.
7. Cut defense budget by 25% = 250 billion saved annually

I am not definite any of this would work, but these are some extreme measures i would like to see taken. we could have this done in 6 mos.

4X says

So by increasing taxes from 35% to 50% would redistribute wealth?…How so?

Wealth is that which satisfies human needs and wants. If I were King I'd rather see a new bus running down the street than a new Ferrari. Tax policy can make that happen.

The key with non profits would be to increase the % of monies spent on actual services provided. Your thoughts?

Half-assed government spending is a joke. Government should focus at least 60% of its energies on public safety, health care, education, and local mass transit. There's so much waste here it's sickening, and the reason there's so much waste is that We The People are easily-distracted idiots. One thing conservatives have right is that we all need to see & feel the taxes that we pay and we need to hold the people who take and spend our taxes accountable.

What percent of the nightly news or newspaper is devoted to how government spends our money? 5%?

I generally think AEI, Heritage Foundation, etc are a joke but whenever I find an expose of government spending on Heritage.org I read it very closely.

we should also scale back on Medicare, Postal Services, Social Security

wut? Medicare creates wealth -- healthy / less sick people! Medicare shouldn't be free, but we need to enroll everyone and run the tightest ship we can. The Japanese do a not-bad job at this from what I've seen. Same thing up in Canada.

I'm no big fan of the USPS, but it's good for rural service to give some freedom for people to live where they want. It's something of a natural monopoly, and thus it's pretty Progressive to run it in the public sector. Even Constitutional, LOL.

Social Security is largely a government-run insurance and pension program. It is largely forced savings and is mildly redistributive for working class enrollees but not intolerably so. In the big picture, Social Security checks fund large swathes of rural America, without this forced savings nobody from WV to NV would have even sticks to rub together now.

There are 10M disabled on SS DI now. I'm sure there's some malingerers there but my Mom got on it (she's now missing her large intestine and has great difficulties with pain and stuff) and it was pretty hard for her to run that gauntlet.

These programs should not exist if they are not profitable or capable of maintaining a balanced budget.

It's all just a question of taxation (and effectiveness in delivering services per dollar). We can't just pump money into Medicare, we've really got to do something about the cost side. The medical services sector is ripping the rest of the economy off blind, and will continue to do so until we somehow rein them in with cost controls.

There's a $1T/yr unfunded liability for Medicare projected for this century. Right now there are 40M retirees and their beneficiaries, and this will rise to around 100M in 2030 and beyond. We can't afford to spend AN ADDITIONAL $10,000 per retiree per year on top of the $500B/yr we're already spending . This is just ludicrous. $1.5T/yr is TEN MILLION JOBS -- 10% of total private sector employment.

Without cost controls everyone in the medical services sector will be living like Kings. Well, the ones who aren't already of course.

i would like to see taken. we could have this done in 6 mos.

OK, I knew absolutely nothing about the USPS until just now. They handle 200B pieces per year on a 650,000 employee base.

. . . 1000 pieces of mail per day per employee. Not too shabby I guess, though with all the bulk mail and holiday cards it's probably closer to 400 pieces of actual mail per day, which isn't so hot. Just eliminating the USPS isn't going to save any money -- somebody else will be charging for the services they are currently providing.

With all the constuction unemployed I guess we could look at new public housing. Difficult to know what to do here. Tax policy is such that we tax new improvements so slumlords have no incentive to modernize. Perhaps subsidizing the slumlords (what we do with Section 8 ) is best, but the whole thing is horrid, as is the history of government involvement in public housing in general.

We need to decriminalize drugs I guess. California is spending $13B/yr on judges & jails. That's almost $1000 per worker, LOL.

I agree with the rest. We may have paid $700B to occupy Iraq but if they ask us to go I guess we should. As far as Aghanistan goes, we should only put people on the ground there who speak the language. And are totally volunteers. Plus also probably stop blowing up innocent people from the air, too. That seems kinda counterproductive.

elliemae says

Doomsday posts such as this invite people to speculate on your motives. If you believe that the “sun is setting on America,” by all means go somewhere else. I mean, if your life is so horrible and there’s nothing left to look forward to. etc., etc.

I didn't mean to pull a Joe Biden on you. Believe me, I wouldn't want to take credit for you post. LOL

MoneySheep says

America was built by groups of people who took personal responsibility, to make a better life for themselves. But as times goes on, the rest found out that they can get the same benefits from public treasury by voting for socialist. But getting benefits for nothing like this won’t last forever. democracy will collpase.

You are correct. The progressiveNAZIliberals on here know you are correct too. The difference being, only right minded people are worried. Left-minded people do not understand that their free thought and anti-social actions are only allowed by America's protective freedom support system that keeps the islamofashists away. I blame drug abuse and sexual sin.

@Troy,
I agree 100% about Section 8. It is absurd that taxpayers are paying the note for private held land/homes for welfare folks to live in (and lower prop values). I do not mind having free gov housing on gov owned land in gov owned buildings for ANYONE that is a legal, safe, law-abiding, self-responsible adult who wants to access it (remove any and all occupancy restrictions about income or ethnic makeup) But, for a private person or group to see their wealth increased by welfare for rent is not right.

Bap33 says

I blame drug abuse and sexual sin.

I blame Barney Frank

RayAmerica says

elliemae says

Doomsday posts such as this invite people to speculate on your motives. If you believe that the “sun is setting on America,” by all means go somewhere else. I mean, if your life is so horrible and there’s nothing left to look forward to. etc., etc.

I didn’t mean to pull a Joe Biden on you. Believe me, I wouldn’t want to take credit for you post. LOL

I don't mind taking credit for me post either. Me awesome!

Of course, I forgot to add:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOL

Oh look, it's the weekly "IS AMERICA DOOMED?" post!

Seriously, the "American Empire" has been "near its end" since the 1920s. I'm not holding my breath.

Well, The British Empire, Ottoman Empire, Greek Empire, Roman Empire, Visigoth Empire, Hunn Empire were all ending for a long time too. That is, until they ended. But ending usually didn't mean life went to hell, it simply meant the relative importance and power of that culture returned to a much more equal level.

America doesn't even need an external empire to be prosperous.

Our population density (80/sqmi) is significantly lower than the mean global population density in general (120/sqmi) and much of our land is economically viable with topsoil, water, temperate zone insolation, mineral resources, and contiguous to the two major oceans on the planet while connecting seaborne communications between East Asia and N Europe.

We've got fixed and societal capital coming out of our ears and good trading relations with our important immediate neighbors in our NAFTA bloc.

Our main problem is that we've suffered under shitty government leadership these past 30 years. If government is going to take and spend $6T+ a year, they better apply most of this spending towards effective end goals, but 30% of this country or more believe government is part of the problem, an ideology that is basically self-fulfulling.

elliemae says

don’t mind taking credit for me post either. Me awesome!

That's why you and Brad Pitt would make such a lovely couple ..... he awesome too.

RayAmerica says

elliemae says

don’t mind taking credit for me post either. Me awesome!

That’s why you and Brad Pitt would make such a lovely couple ….. he awesome too.

And me also have, like, totally super way cool command of english language. That's a prerequisite for making a cohesive, persuasive argument - if you want to be taken seriously.

I'll let Brad know that you think he awesome. When he calls. Still waiting.

And thanks for being one of my biggest fans. :)