As you look at this harrowing image, keep in mind that in 1913, two very important changes occurred in America.
First, was the adoption of the income tax. From 1913 onward, all of a person’s earnings **belong to the government first.** The government then decides how much they permit everyone to keep.
Second, the Federal Reserve was created in 1913. If the government wants wars and welfare, it now had a monopolistic central bank that could create money out-of-thin-air to pay for them.
Governments *always* want wars and welfare. We’re now witnessing the extremes of both.
#1: Vicomte13 To: Deckard (#0)
We rose to diominance through war, and our dominance is the source of our prosperity. Lose our empire, and like the USSR, we lose our prosperity, our longevities, our relative security in old age.
Europe and Japan have these things too, without much war now, because they are client states defended by the American Legions. They get the free rider effect and it is too their benefit. But if WE end the empire, it will be to others, and they will assume dominance, and we will assume the poverty of the fallen empire, the USSR. There will be no "Marhsall Plan" offered to US, and there will be no shield behind which WE can hide.
We chose, as a nation, to become The Hyperpower through wars of expansion. To maintain what we have, we have to hold onto that dominance.
Personally, I think that asceticism and living more simply, with less, is a better way, but hardly 1 in 10 Americans would agree with me on that.
Our national character means that we have to abhor war, all the while engaging in it in order to hold onto what we've got.
A military empire is exhaustingly expensive. To maintain prosperity we have had to print money, and we shall have to continue to do so. Periodically, we have partial debt jubilees for private citizens. When the day comes that the government has a debt jubilee for itself, our standards of living will ratchet down several notches.
Nothing at all can be done about it, because there are too many vested interests who will not allow anything to change to their detriment voluntarily. So the changes will have to be forced by external and uncontrollable factors.
Look at the Roman, or British, or French, or Spanish Empires. How could they possibly have been saved? The answer is: they couldn't be. Neither can ours be, in the long run. Too expensive, and the core is hollowing out.
Vicomte13 posted on 2018-04-13 06:37:04 Reply Private Reply
#2: Vicomte13 To: All (#1)
Vicomte13 posted on 2018-04-13 08:38:45 Reply Private Reply