Had I been asked to deliver the State of the Union address, it would not have delayed your dinner plans:
“The State of our Union is broke, heading for bankrupt, and total collapse shortly thereafter. Thank you and goodnight! You’ve been a terrific crowd!”
I gather that Americans prefer something a little more upbeat, so one would not begrudge a speechwriter fluffing it up by holding out at least the possibility of some change of fortune, however remote. Instead, President Obama assured us at great length that nothing is going to change, not now, not never. Indeed the Union’s state — its unprecedented world-record brokeness — was not even mentioned. If, as I was, you happened to be stuck at Gate 27 at one of the many U.S. airports laboring under the misapprehension that pumping CNN at you all evening long somehow adds to the gaiety of flight delays, you would have watched an address that gave no indication its speaker was even aware that the parlous state of our finances is an existential threat not only to the nation but to global stability. The message was, oh, sure, unemployment’s still a little higher than it should be, and student loans are kind of expensive, and the housing market’s pretty flat, but it’s nothing that a little government “investment” in green jobs and rural broadband and retraining programs can’t fix. In other words, more of the unaffordable same.
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The president certainly had facts and figures at his disposal. He boasted that his regulatory reforms “will save business and citizens more than $10 billion over the next five years.” Wow. Ten billion smackeroos! That’s some savings — and in a mere half a decade! Why, it’s equivalent to what the government of the United States borrows every 53 hours. So by midnight on Thursday Obama had already re-borrowed all those hard-fought savings from 2017. “In the last 22 months,” said the president, “businesses have created more than three million jobs.” Impressive. But 125,000 new foreign workers arrive every month (officially). So we would have to have created 2,750,000 jobs in that period just to stand still.
Fortunately, most of the items in Obama’s interminable speech will never happen, any more than the federally funded bicycling helmets or whatever fancies found their way onto Bill Clinton’s extravagant shopping lists in the Nineties. At the time, the excuse for Clinton’s mountain of legislative molehills was that all the great battles had been won, and, in the absence of a menacing Russian bear, what else did a president have to focus on except criminalizing toilet tanks over 1.6 gallons. President Obama does not enjoy the same dispensation, and any historians stumbling upon a surviving DVD while sifting through the ruins of our civilization will marvel at how his accumulation of delusional trivialities was apparently taken seriously by the assembled political class.
An honest leader would feel he owed it to the citizenry to impress upon them one central truth — that we can’t have any new programs because we’ve spent all the money. It’s gone. The cupboard is bare. What’s Obama’s plan to restock it? “Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary,” the president told us. “Asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.”
But why stop there? Americans need affordable health care and affordable master’s degrees in Climate Change and Social Justice Studies, so why not take everything that Warren Buffett’s got? After all, if you confiscated the total wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans it would come to $1.5 trillion.
Which is just a wee bit less than the federal shortfall in just one year of Obama-sized budgets. 2011 deficit: $1.56 trillion. But maybe for 2012 a whole new Forbes 400 of Saudi princes and Russian oligarchs will emigrate to the Hamptons and Malibu and keep the whole class-warfare thing going for a couple more years.
The so-called “Buffett Rule” is indicative not so much of “common sense” as of the ever widening gap between the Brobdingnagian problem and the Lilliputian solutions proposed by our leaders. Obama can sacrifice the virgin daughters of every American millionaire on the altar of government spending and the debt gods will barely notice so much as to give a perfunctory belch of acknowledgement. The president’s first term has added $5 trillion to the debt — a degree of catastrophe unique to us. In an Obama budget, the entire cost of the Greek government would barely rate a line-item. Debt-to-GDP and other comparative measures are less relevant than the hard-dollar numbers: It’s not just that American government has outspent America’s ability to fund it, but that it’s outspending the planet’s.
Yet, you characterize the one man running that would address all of your worries as a loon and unelectable. Ron Paul would take the bold steps required to get you back on track. But, because he might actually upset the ruling elites game and take away their toys, (lobbying, wars, the federal reserve etc.) you trash him and ignore him, hoping against hope he'll just go away. Your hippocracy is as thick as your accent Mark. Want to do something constructive for the country. Tell you bosses at NRO and Fox to quit the shell game and start informing the people of Paul's platform. Honestly, how do you guys sleep at night?
Well put. The frequent comparisons of our situation with that of Greece miss the key point. Germany can, if it chooses, bail out Greece, but no one can bail us out.
As Mark keeps pointing out, there's more to it than debt to GDP ratio. When the dollar figure gets as high as it has, it becomes the key number.
Thank you Mr. Steyn. You've explained very nicely why the difference between R and D doesn't add up to a cup of warm spit. Enjoyed your latest book very much (though its topic was depressing).
We need look no further than to check the registry of the new World Trade Center occupants to learn 'who will bail us out' - I understand the government of CHINA is one of the major tenants so far.
God help us keep the faith that the American spirit WILL prevail!!!!
Lemnos, we have already been colonized--by our federal government. Think about the definition: "control by one power over a dependent area or people" (Webster) or "the policy and practice of a power in extending control over weaker peoples or areas" (Collins). Throw in the government-encouraged invasion from Spanish-speaking countries, and you also begin to get "a relationship between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a minority of foreign invaders" (Osterhammel).
Yes, I know, it's a hyperbole--but how far of one is it? That our government class is a privileged class, immune from the laws of economics under which the rest of us have to toil to pay their salaries, is patent. I live near DC, and I see that constantly. Government workers or contractors in their early thirties buying $800K homes, to which they return by 5:00 PM on the nose every day, jetting off to exotic places for weeks at a time several times a year, not ever worrying about losing their jobs, looking forward to early retirement, and (in the case of some IT contractors I know), spending the day surfing the 'net, reading e-books or working on personal projects--and snickering about "your tax-dollars at work" to boot.
A lot of these people are good people, and I don't begrudge their lifestyle. What I do begrudge, however, is that they are playing with money that doesn't exist. We are broke, and, as a people, we have completely lost control of a ruling class that (on paper) is supposed to be working for us. We are constantly asked to tighten our belts--while the people doing the asking are gleefully loosening theirs.
This is why when I hear Obama lecturing the country about "fairness" I could never feel anything but contempt for him. Something is not "fair" just because you call it "fair." All this man knows is how to take wealth and waste it, while asking for more--which is the precise opposite "fair." He has more than proven he has no idea how to create a dime's worth of it. This man's greatest accomplishment is also his most abysmal failure, and the SOTU was a chilling testament to his grandiose "hope and change" having been shattered into a myriad pieces of small, petty, trivial, unambitious, resentful nothings.
If he gets reelected in November, it will only be because fools outnumber non-fools--something as natural and inevitable in a declining society as the laws of physics. So, let's make the most of our condition as a colonized people, and, if we can muster enough selfish cynicism, let's thank God that our generation won't have it as bad as future ones.
From what I've seen of your comments, I presume you believe, like me, in "government with the consent of the governed". How can that exist with multi-thousand page bills, which will generate many more multi-thousands of pages of additional regulations to administer and enforce by a vast apparatus of the very people you live among? I don't think that's much different from the Quartering Act, or the Stamp Act. I don't consent to be governed by bills that can only be read and understood by people whose jobs are merely to read and understand those laws. Maybe I'm waxing hyperbolic now.
Regardless, that's only the tip of the iceberg, along with what you enumerated and much more that both of us have omitted.
I agree with most of what you said, but do begrudge your neighbors their lifestyles, especially given the comments you attribute to them.
"How can that exist with multi-thousand page bills, which will generate many more multi-thousands of pages of additional regulations to administer and enforce by a vast apparatus of the very people you live among?"
BINGO! Give JoeWI a cookie!
As someone who has been "on the sidelines" of the workforce now for over 8 months, I have over the past 4 months been trying to "create" work, i.e., start a small business or businesses. My most recent attempt has come to a somewhat screeching halt due to the "unintended (?) consequences" of government regulations (those buried in the 1000's of additional regulations resulting from 1000+ page bills).
The crazy bit is the business activity I was trying to start is perfectly acceptable as long as it's a "hobby" (i.e., freely provided), but illegal as a "business" (i.e., making profit from it). NO...ITS NOT THAT BUSINESS...the 2nd oldest profession probably faces less regulation interference than I've found for my business concept. After much research I found that several others had started similar businesses around the country in the 2006 to 2008 range, and were then told to cease and desist, or face fines of $10K/day. Efforts started then (2008) and continue to "clarify" the regulations such that these "valid" small business folks can legally operated. The latest projection is it "might" get resolved in another year to 3 years. Good grief. Newt was right about one thing at least...this nation mobilized and won WWII in 3 to 5 years....but it takes 5 to 10 years just to get on relatively small regulatory change (yikes...that statement is probably an oxymoron) through the swamp of regulations.
I refuse to be dependent of the government...but it would help a great deal if they would GET OUT OF MY WAY!
I'm curious to know what your business idea was, though I'd understand if you didn't want to display that information (who knows who's looking).
Anyway, I once felt your pain. I started a business in the early 90s, successfully made it through the start up maze, and was self employed for 7 years. The blizzard of paperwork and regs did indeed cost a lot and create many headaches.
All very true. And great comment about the multi-thousand page bills. I think the "Govern With the Consent of the Governed" ship has sailed long, long ago.
Remember this, regime change in countries such as Egypt happened with a population where AK 47s are ubiquitous. One of my kids who's in the military said that the majority of households in Iraq included some kind of fire arm, and it's not unusual for the men in a town to have a bunch of AK 47s to fire after wedding ceremonies or whenever they get the urge to express themselves.
What will the citizenry in this country march on town hall with, pitch forks? When societies collapse it's the guys with the biggest guns who end up running the show, not the soft folks who spend their days working in cubicles.
You are aware that the sales of firearms in the USA has spiked in the last year, aren't you? We may not have AK-47's, but there are a lot of high power deer rifles out there that have more range than your average pitchfork.
But, the governed have repeatedly given their enthusiastic consent including the so-called conservative groups. Just try and reduce entitlement spending and you will hear the "fiscal conservatives" howl in protest shouting "Do not cut my Social Security or Medicare!" This crisis will never be solved politically. Instead, it will take a complete collapse of the current structure and then we as citizens can only hope we survive with our liberty and property when a new form of governance emerges. I am not terribly optimistic this nation can even continue to exist without fracturing into several independent regions that push for complete sovereignty from DC.
There were Russian economists several years ago that predicted America would split into four or five separate countries, possible along ethnic, cultural lines. This is happening across the world at this very time in this manner.
I can see that happening. I would feel somewhat sorry for those good people that get saddled with the economic cesspools of California, Chicago, Detroit, New York, DC, etc. however.
Although I'm not a Beck-type end of the world shouter, perhaps guns, ammo, and a 25 year storage food supply isn't a bad idea. Most of America is already doing it.
I guess I'm more cynical than you. I don't begrudge those clever or connected enough to game the system any more than I begrudge the birds that gather around the bird feeder. Clearly, to me, it is the system that allows the freeloaders to suck the public teat that is at fault.
Obama has been a freeloader his entire life; an affirmative action president.
Your summary is amazing!!! Very well said. We need to do our best to educate the "fools" on their futures if we don't get him out of office!!! Four more years and we will all be looking to denounce our citizenship and move elsewhere. At least we could move to a country that has already mastered the art of a dictatorship and save us the pain of slowly, helplessly moving into one!!!
I believe enslavement is more like it, not colonization. Slavery has been defined as, 'government without the consent of the governed.' (Jonathan Swift)
Representatively, yes, but not specifically and not microscopically.
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