Yep, We’re Doomed
Happy Monday morning, everybody. We just hit another milestone on the road to ruin.
It seems like only August [Editor's note: it was only August, Steve.] that I brought you the happy news that the interest payment on our debt was about to hit ONE TRILLION DOLLARS and that it had already eclipsed defense spending. Here we are, just four months later almost exactly to the day, and the vig is up more than 10% to $1.1 trillion.
I'll type the full number for effect: $1,100,000,000,000.
Defense spending — including aid to Ukraine and Israel — is a smaller fraction of our nation's wealth than it has been since World War II, except for a couple of years right before 9/11 when we mistakenly believed we'd never have to fight a major war again. So don't you isolationists out there blame foreign aid (barely more than one percent of spending) or nasty "forever wars" for our pending fiscal doom. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq didn't help, to be sure, but I have met the enemy and he is us, baby — you and me and our fellow 335 million Americans with our endless appetite for federal spending.
Federal revenues for the year are a little over $4.4 trillion, which doesn't even come close to covering Uncle Sugar's $6.3 trillion "budget." Those are huge numbers, so let me give you a little perspective.
Imagine you earn the average U.S. monthly income of $4,665. Now imagine that a quarter of your income — about $1,166 — goes to your Visa card.
Pretty stupid of you, right?
But it gets worse.
You didn't put any major appliances or make any kind of life-enhancing improvements while running up all that credit card debt. You spent it all on Cheetos and Scratcher tickets, none of which paid off more than a few bucks. Any small windfalls you blew on more Cheetos.
How you did that, you have no idea. But Washington's version of high-calorie/low-nutrition Cheetos consists of stimulus checks, welfare benefits of every imaginable kind, student loans, etc — pretty much everything but the very few things that the Constitution authorizes Washington to do. D.C.'s Scratchers is spending on green energy boondoggles that will never pay off and on wars they have no intention of winning.
But hang on; we aren't done with the stupid.
The Visa bill you're spending 25% of your income on will never get paid off. Ever. It's an interest-only bill with zero paydown on the principle. As you continue to put more Cheetos and Scratchers on the Visa — you have no plan to cut down on the Cheetos or Scratchers — your total debt will never go anywhere but up.
Meanwhile, your retirement plan — if you're GenX or younger — consists of a desk drawer stuffed with IOUs you wrote to yourself.
You've been counting on interest rates coming down to provide you with some relief and someday, eventually, they probably will. But before that happens, you have tens of thousands of dollars in low-interest purchases of Cheetos and Scratchers that are going to get rolled over into higher rates.
That's how your monthly payments rose so quickly to almost $1,200 from just $400 a couple of years ago. By this time next year, you'll look back fondly on your $1,166 Visa bill.
By the way, your boss just called you into his office to say you'll be taking a small pay cut next year on top of the cut you took this year. In other words, federal tax revenues have been shrinking since last year and will do it again in 2024. Remember that the next time some lefty tries to tell you how well the economy is doing.
So you might as well grab a couple more Family Size bags of Cheetos and some more Scratchers on your way home because that's what Washington would do.
It seems like only August [Editor's note: it was only August, Steve.] that I brought you the happy news that the interest payment on our debt was about to hit ONE TRILLION DOLLARS and that it had already eclipsed defense spending. Here we are, just four months later almost exactly to the day, and the vig is up more than 10% to $1.1 trillion.
I'll type the full number for effect: $1,100,000,000,000.
Defense spending — including aid to Ukraine and Israel — is a smaller fraction of our nation's wealth than it has been since World War II, except for a couple of years right before 9/11 when we mistakenly believed we'd never have to fight a major war again. So don't you isolationists out there blame foreign aid (barely more than one percent of spending) or nasty "forever wars" for our pending fiscal doom. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq didn't help, to be sure, but I have met the enemy and he is us, baby — you and me and our fellow 335 million Americans with our endless appetite for federal spending.
Federal revenues for the year are a little over $4.4 trillion, which doesn't even come close to covering Uncle Sugar's $6.3 trillion "budget." Those are huge numbers, so let me give you a little perspective.
Imagine you earn the average U.S. monthly income of $4,665. Now imagine that a quarter of your income — about $1,166 — goes to your Visa card.
Pretty stupid of you, right?
But it gets worse.
You didn't put any major appliances or make any kind of life-enhancing improvements while running up all that credit card debt. You spent it all on Cheetos and Scratcher tickets, none of which paid off more than a few bucks. Any small windfalls you blew on more Cheetos.
How you did that, you have no idea. But Washington's version of high-calorie/low-nutrition Cheetos consists of stimulus checks, welfare benefits of every imaginable kind, student loans, etc — pretty much everything but the very few things that the Constitution authorizes Washington to do. D.C.'s Scratchers is spending on green energy boondoggles that will never pay off and on wars they have no intention of winning.
But hang on; we aren't done with the stupid.
The Visa bill you're spending 25% of your income on will never get paid off. Ever. It's an interest-only bill with zero paydown on the principle. As you continue to put more Cheetos and Scratchers on the Visa — you have no plan to cut down on the Cheetos or Scratchers — your total debt will never go anywhere but up.
Meanwhile, your retirement plan — if you're GenX or younger — consists of a desk drawer stuffed with IOUs you wrote to yourself.
You've been counting on interest rates coming down to provide you with some relief and someday, eventually, they probably will. But before that happens, you have tens of thousands of dollars in low-interest purchases of Cheetos and Scratchers that are going to get rolled over into higher rates.
That's how your monthly payments rose so quickly to almost $1,200 from just $400 a couple of years ago. By this time next year, you'll look back fondly on your $1,166 Visa bill.
By the way, your boss just called you into his office to say you'll be taking a small pay cut next year on top of the cut you took this year. In other words, federal tax revenues have been shrinking since last year and will do it again in 2024. Remember that the next time some lefty tries to tell you how well the economy is doing.
So you might as well grab a couple more Family Size bags of Cheetos and some more Scratchers on your way home because that's what Washington would do.
i see no way it can be avoided
Alternatively, you can try to get a critical mass of people to understand why it is happening and stop it.
no real place to go
when the US falls
and can no longer try and keep the peace
all bets are off
i'll stay where i am, try and keep my family and friends as safe as i can
i've prepared, still preparing in fact
There are always going to be countries that are stable when others collapse. You see, I have this theory that I came up with to explain the rise and fall of societies. The main factor is 'predation'. When a society starts out, it has very low levels of predation. Everyone is civil to each other and nobody commits fraud, productivity is high, etc. Eventually, wealth grows to a point that makes it much more profitable to steal than to produce. Predation begins to rise, productivity starts falling. Eventually, most of the members of society engage in theft/fraud. The thing about predation is that it is lossy, there is less sum total wealth in society after those transactions than before. So, total wealth starts dropping. Then, at some point, some great culling event happens to eliminate predation from the society. It might be a war, an invasion, or something else. The cycle starts again. One exception to this rule is when a steady state is reached when predation balances out productivity, everybody is dirt poor but a large number of them are predatory, both production and production is very difficult and not increasing or decreasing, so, they keep themselves in a perpetual hell.
My understanding is that US is in the part of the cycle where predation is increasing at a great rate. If I look at other countries, I see that some of them are in different parts of the cycle.
One proxy for checking the current state of predation in various countries is the Corruption Perception Index:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupt...
It is probably not a very good proxy as perceptions can be deceiving. Still, it might be useful in some way.
Anyway, my prediction for the US is that predation will increase until some culling event happens that will destroy most wealth in the country and kill a large number of people, albeit mostly predatory ones. It might take a really long time though (decades). Still, staying would be pointless, your family is going to end up in a very bad situation in the end.
Get silver /gold , as alternative to fiat (inflation) currency created by these monsters.
They'll probably try that again. Gotta blow things up to create enough "demand."
Now pass me some Scratchers and Cheetos.
Enjoy the decline.
The spend thrifts won't lose what they never had.
Those of us who saved and saved lost our shirts to inflation.
Trust authority?
Follow the science?
As Samual Clements (Mark Twain) said "trust nothing you read and half of what you see"
While "us" laments the seemingly disastrous situation, "they" continues the parasitic behavior with much success until everything is destroyed and "they" moves on, or until "us" realizes the cause and exterminates it.
for far too long most of us sat back and did nothing while those in power did what they wanted
how many people vote each year?
my dad never voted
someone told me they voted for 0bama because he was different, not looking into just who he was
We the People do bare some of the blame
Your belief that there may still be a chance is admirable. I just don’t see us reversing this in any meaningful way as long as people are so far up Maslow’s pyramid that they aren’t experiencing reality. I’ve made this analogy often that what we are seeing right now is the elites arguing over who is captain of the Titanic and how the boats should be loaded. I see myself as one of the engine room crew that said “Screw this! I’m making a raft out of dunnage and tossing it out the engineering gangway. So long suckers! Have fun keeping the lights on…..until they’re not.”
Unless we convince a critical mass of people that the entire system is fake and rigged to enslave them it never changes….until it does. When that day comes, I do not know. But economic collapse and the misery that follows is a lot more likely than Obama’s Martha’s Vineyard mansion being inundated by rising seawater due to Climate Change. Paddling Chefs agree.
We just don’t have access to the 24/7 levers of power that control the normies. It’s better to throw as much grit into the gears, or hell just quit cleaning the grit out, of the machine than too try to construct a different one that people don’t see a need for…yet. Yes I am suggesting we turn the Hegelian Dialectic around and use it ourselves.
Throwing grit into the gears is going to be a drop in the bucket. You need some serious leverage to make that count. There is a huge amount of momentum in the system, it will keep going for a while.
It is a great shame to allow the destruction of all that has been built thus far just because some bad behavior emerges.
What we need to do is to stop human predation. It will involve unzombifying the masses and removing purposefully predatory individuals from society.
I have been trying to do that myself actually by spreading my propaganda on this website. To be honest, I don't think I've had much success so far...
The definition of Blackpilled.
What we need is to actively unbrainwash the masses and we also need to decrease the number of parasites. This includes not only the state but also the low level criminals.
We need like a secret society to cause cold and hot wars between the predatory organizations that are the states to cause them to kill each other off. We need double agents to do false flag attacks. At the same time, we need to spread the red pills of freedom (the anarcho-capitalist kind) among the masses.
I don't think the task is impossible. We just need to hit the weak spots. Making semi-innocent people suffer is not one of them.
1. disallow enforcement of monopolies by violence (abolition of the "state")
2. disallow involuntary purchases of services (abolition of taxation)