08-07-2020, 10:33 PM
(08-07-2020, 09:57 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(08-07-2020, 08:31 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:It was primarily used/ borrowed against to bring an abrupt end to the Soviet Union. You educated me on your philosophy of life during the Obama years. It didn't jive with mine at the time or today but it kind of did jive with mine about 30 some years ago when I was first started out on my own during the late 80's.(07-31-2020, 07:36 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(07-31-2020, 02:39 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The social security fund gets more than it needs. Extra funds are stolen from SS to pay for other things. What other things? Things we liberals live on? Mostly for the military and the national debt to pay for your wars. We've got to win so much that we get tired of winning, right? National debt consists mostly of military spending and interest on the debt, plus the Obama stimulus that Trump is benefiting from and which was made necessary by your guy Bush. Now we have to add a lot to the debt to help YOU PEOPLE (small and big business profits and "working Americans"), and for unemployment benefits, to pay for the Trump Virus.The Social Security Trust Fund has already been spent and is currently being tapped to cover the shortfall between the wage earners and recipients. We are paying for China's virus not Trump's virus. See, you're still thinking like a Democrat too. Dude, the bulk of Obama's stimulus went to shoring up Obama's base and about a quarter went to fixing some roads. The Obama stimulus was probably the biggest political scam in US history. I take that back, it's probably tied with Obamacare and Trump-Russian collusion. I watched that dip shit playing his partisan politics during the funeral the other day.
Yes, the SS trust fund was stolen to pay for all of those stupid wars of choice and tax cuts for the fat cats. The solution is to stop wasting money like that. Let's undo every tax cut since Reagan was elected and cut the military budget by 90%. The US spends 10 times on the military than the next big spender. There's the waste fraud and abuse the Republicans always bitch about. If Republicans care about the deficit, they can fix that stuff. Uh, it's not "China's virus." The US due to privatize everything, was a sitting duck. The corona virus arrived by the planeload because the US DIDN'T DO FUCKING SHIT TO KEEP IT OUT. Only idiocy or incompetence make stuff like this happen. Guess what? It's gonna get worse, because the US has no clue and when folks are scared to go out now and when it gets worse, the fewer folks go out for good reason. Nobody wants to get sick. And yes, I really do want the stock market to crash, because it means nothing. I'd like a 90% crash , thank you, so I can buy stocks at the proper price. Here's another observation. The US social contract is to get a job [if you can], and spend you money. That's it, nothing more. If you can't get a job, then it's the streets for you. I can, of course just fuck off my part of the bargain and not spend, or just get clothes from a 2nd hand store. I don't have to participate in a system that's no good. I'll keep voting to butter my bread since that's the American way as exemplified by the fatcats. If Warren Buffet can have a lower tax rate than I do, then I can go back to the 1970's way and ignore the , buy, buy , go into debt racket. Speaking of rackets, that's most of the US economy. We have a healthcare racket, a college education racket, rental rackets in assorted cities, Big Food racket, Big Oil racket, and on and on, and on. I don't care if rackets crash and burn either.
Young people are hip; older people often lose the spirit of life and get worried about money and in their insecurity they hang on to traditions and symbols. Myself though, I keep the spirit alive.
That was the strategy, as I wrote in my book published in 1997. First one to go broke loses. So Reagan built up the military to scare the Soviets, and they had to build it up to scare us in turn. And they shot down an airliner full of Americans. They were going broke faster than us. The Russians got lucky and got a couple of reformers at the helm to try to change their system. We didn't.
The bad news is two-fold. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The commies were gone, but now they have a new tsar just as bad as the old ones. Even Eastern Europe is no longer free. Meanwhile, our new boss Reagan promised to balance the budget. Instead he unleashed the national debt as never before, and Bush and Trump have put us into total bankruptcy. We didn't fare much better than the Soviets. They got a new tsar and the same old poverty. We got a society where young people can't get ahead, where our infrastructure and education are rotten, and where we rank 36th instead of #1 in measures like life expectancy and the health of our children.
I suppose it will be OK for us to spend trillions of dollars to pay for the Trump Virus. As long as interest rates remain low, because of our slow economy, at least taxes won't go up to pay the interest on our debt. As long as the rich capture all the growth of our economy, thanks to Reaganomics (still in effect after 40 years), salaries and wages will remain flat and the economy will not overheat, and young and poor people will remain miserable.
I suppose if the Democrats get in and rebuild the middle class by deposing Reaganomics, including raising taxes on the wealthy, raising minimum wages and redistributing what the rich have extorted, the people will get more money in their pockets and the economy could heat up with inflation again. Then will be the time for the government to take its share from more of us to cool off the economy, and pay for some of the federal debt and interest as interest rates go up. But only then will we in the USA recover from that project "to bring an abrupt end to the Soviet Union" and recover our spirit. Both countries have paid a high price, and as of now I see no way out for the former Soviets.
