Here in America, we have passed the tipping point: There are more people on the government dole than there are working and paying the bills. There is no longer an escape. The slide towards financial collapse has begun. Once the powers that be see this, they will try to avoid the anarchy that happens when the free money machine stops, and there will be a massive crackdown.
It is mathematically certain.
Divemedic
March 26, 2013
A virus
[There are some outs. None of them particularly pleasant.
- Entitlements are drastically cut. The scale required to balance the budget will result in riots, starvation, inadequate shelter, inadequate health care, and large numbers of premature deaths.
- The deliberate killing of “undesirables”. In some scenarios this is just a more direct version of 1. above. Another scenario is that the “undesirables” are the moderately wealthy (the extremely wealthy can almost always escape) and the looters extend their “on the dole” careers until they have consumed all that is consumable including most of each other.
- Massive influx of productive people and wealth from other parts of the world. This wealth and productivity would be taxed to continue supporting paying out the “entitlements”. The addition of new people to the roles of the beneficiaries would have to be essentially stopped with productive people having to work, essentially, “until their dying day” to pay off the debt without adding to it.
The third option is the least unpleasant and had some hope of occurring. This is because other countries are ahead of the U.S. on the collapse timeline. The wealthy of those other countries will, and are, fleeing. If the U.S. can attract those people then it may become a viable option. The biggest problem is that those on the dole are also fleeing areas of economic collapse. As long as the U.S. has “free” food, shelter, education, health care, ad infinitum it will be just as impossible to keep them out as has in the past.
I think the most likely scenario is that the government will not cut entitlements or stop adding people to the roles of those on the dole. The political reality will be that it is always easier to continue the looting tomorrow than it is to trigger the riots today. The end result of this is that the inevitable collapse is more complete and more people will die.—Joe]
Not disagreeing with the Premise, but somewhere in the Continuing Policy of “Bread and Circuses,” I think some “Savior” from the Left will arise near the time of Collapse and pull a Hitler to gain Political Control to “Save the Country.”
Of course, once the Sheeple Vote said person in, he’ll pull a 180 and “Impose Order, and all those Congress Critters who have been Spending Our Taxes like Drunken Sailors will suddenly find that they will still be keeping their “Special Status.” In a Special Prison, just for the Political Elite.
That of course supposes that WE fail. Because who outside the U.S. will help the Resistance?
#1 and #2 are why I live nowhere near a city of any size. Much easier to keep your head down and out of sight when you’re far from the masses…
A lot of people think that, but as FERFAL points out in http://www.amazon.com/The-Modern-Survival-Manual-Surviving/dp/9870563457 , being far from the city means you are far from help. He went through the Argentinian collapse, and wrote a book about his experiences. One of the thin he said was that because votes are concentrated in the city, and it’s easy to concentrate forces and money in the city, the countryside was largely left to fend for itself. As the well-armed farmers in SA found out, when a well armed gang shows up, it doesn’t make how much you have in terms of guns and ammo, you gotta stick you head up SOME time.
Yes, but votes from the city are likely to be the kind of votes that disproportionately helped get us into this mess in the first place. What kind of help would that summon? I think your point that the cities can project power much better than the embattled lone farmer is correct, but I wonder if the hypothetical rural areas banding together to counterract the effect from the cities wouldn’t be a better solution.
Read the book. It supports some common “prepper” good ideas, and pokes holes in a lot “conventional wisdom”, too. Cities may not “project” power, but they CAN protect power, or at least those in it, so they can continue to spin they comfy-sounding lies and STAY in power. A well-stocked farm makes a tempting target for an organized band of looters, many of whom are former (or even current) police and military, and use well-organized tactics, out of uniform. To paraphrase, no home is so secluded they can’t find it, and a mile from nowhere, no-one can here you scream. Or your wife, or kids.
FerFAL is a bright guy with a lot of things to say that are worth hearing, but on this I would submit that he suffers from sampling bias. Argentina is more or less a monoculture. The load of “multicultural” horseshit we have allowed the Left to sell us in the US means that we have tens of millions of IQ-55 “wonderfully diverse” “cultural enrichers” who took in hatred for Whitey with their mother’s milk, and whom generations of “community activists” have taught to blame Whitey for all their ills, is not going to have relative peace and order in the cities once The Machine stops.
Blacks, whites, and Mexicans all cordially hate one another and only play nice while Uncle Sugar is holding them all at gunpoint–for some values of “nice.” Remember this one?
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/22/us/georgia-baby-killed
Remember how quickly the liberal newsmedia dropped it down the Memory Hole? This is the norm. It happens day in and day out whenever white people make the mistake of going near African savages. C’mon up to Detroit some time and go for a walk in Delray or Harper Woods or the Cass Corridor. You’ll see. Better wear your kevlar and bring extra ammo, though.
Anyone who lived through the ethnic cleansing that took place in so many of America’s major cities in the 70s, in which working-class whites were driven out by organized black violence, with the tacit approval of the judicial system, already knows all about this.
If you are reading this, you are probably white. As such, Rastus wants you out of the universe. They say so. They act on it day in and day out. The Mexicans hate us only slightly less, and only hate the blacks a little more than they hate us. Only the EBT cards are keeping the lid on. Once the EBT cards stop working, shit’s gonna get Biblical in a hurry. Believe it.
As such, when the shit hits the fan, the cities are all going to turn into Mogadishu, with pitched battles between black and Mexican gangs wherever the two territories meet. Whites are going to be hunted in the streets like animals, by which I mean, even more than they already are. The cities are isolated, vulnerable to having their water and food cut off, and full of murderous savages. There’s going to be a vast die-back among these populations.
The tl;dr version is, race war is coming to a country near you, and the cities are going to burn. There are historical reasons for this: multiculturalism didn’t work for Rome, it didn’t work for Yugoslavia, it didn’t work for the Soviet Union, it’s not working in Canada, it’s not working in Eurabia, it’s not working in Japan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhIZh5_TfG4
and it ain’t working here either. Likewise, racking up unpayable public debts and printing larger and larger amounts of worthless fiat money to provide bread and circuses for the unproductive have always historically signified that a society is in the final death-spiral, circling the drain.
Here’s to the brave new world we’re going to live to see–some of us, anyway–and that our children will have to live in. Got ammo?
I don’t disagree with the basic premise of your statement. Perhaps I misunderstood your original point; it seemed to me as if you were suggesting that living in a city would be better than a rural area. If that is your contention, I would remain skeptical since I haven’t read the book.
I do believe that a city can project power. Consider the hypothetical SHTF scenario, where it is fairly reasonable to presume that the well-stocked rural areas would be much better off for survival than the cities, which I’ve often heard referred to as “food deserts.” Now, suppose in order to quell rioting, the powers that be spread some of the aforementioned comfy-sounding lies that they can bring food to the masses. It wouldn’t be too hard to use the police force to go raid farms and granaries in sparsely populated areas. I could even see the collar counties of a major metropolitan area going along with that for “protection.” That might work for awhile, until the uncomfortable fact that one must replant and work a farm in order for it to be sustaining.
This is why I’m doubtful the lone-wolf survivor/preppers will have much of a chance. I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve read the book, but I would still believe the rural areas -banded together – would be better off.
I have blogged about the possible solutions in the past, and I don’t see a way out. Your solution number one of cutting entitlements will never happen. The two largest entitlement programs are Social Security and Medicare. Even talking loosely about touching either of those programs means an almost instantaneous end to a politician’s career, even though those programs combined with the interest on the debt that we have already incurred eats up every penny of tax receipts, and still leaves us with an additional $200 billion deficit.
It isn’t just Social Security, Medicare, and entitlements. We also spend more money on defense than every other country in the world COMBINED. The US accounts for more than 50% of all defense spending worldwide.
2 and 3 above will not prevent the inevitable collapse, they will just delay it. Like all Ponzi schemes, there comes a point where the model is no longer sustainable. We have reached that point. Like the sinking of the Titanic, one compartment at a time will flood until the ship heads for the bottom. It is now a mathematical certainty.
There ARE solutions. The problem is that the solutions that will actually fix the problems are not politically palatable, because the politicians are not willing to spell out the problems, and name names, and send the bankers, pols, and lobbyists to jail. I think that if they DID, they’d get popular support for the reforms, but they’d also have a fairly short life expectancy.
I don’t think so. What will happen to the first politician that proposes shutting down the biggest expenditure: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid? Those three items comprise 2/3 of Federal Spending.
I think someone who can spell out the math, and use current examples from our own failing cities and others failing nations, people will get on board with changes that are big enough to fix it, but not so bit that everyone gets tossed into the cold tomorrow.. Raise the retirement age, starting now. Change medicare entirely to a voucher support system. radically alter SS disability and all other transfer-payment systems so that they are in total a percentage of the budget, distributed on a scale to need/contribution, so that the incentive for people getting them is to find people who shouldn’t be (malingerers who fake it for SS disability, for example) and fraudsters, and turn them in, because.
The biggest problem is the MSM – their combine ignorance and pathological leftist ideology make sure that the facts DON’T get to the masses that think that “people” magazine is a great news source, and other reliably Dem / stateist voters.
Has anyone ever seriously given the Medicare & Social Security recipients an alternative? I’ll nswer that – NO!
Here’s my alternative: the Feds have a LOT of U S land that they think they “own”. Why don’t the Feds offer to trade those recipients of Federal largesse some of the land, together with it’s mineral, water and other resource-extraction rights, as dollar-valued shares of a Real Estate Investment Trust. When you or a corporation of recipients accumulate enough shares, you get permanent title to the land.
Win-win, it will get a percentage of recipients off these forms of Government assistance, the REITs could be taxed, etc to generate revenue to support those who don’t participate in the REITs.
States could use this idea as well.
But you forget – the reason folks are IN government is POWER, not providing solutions or services. There ARE solutions – but the require a diminishment of power in the center, more independence and less control. Ergo, it will never be mentioned, let alone tried.
“There is no longer an escape.”
And so the prudent thing (as many people will see it) will be to try to get as much of the pig slop as possible before the trough runs dry. We could call it “loot” or plunder or “booty” but it’s all confiscated wealth of some form. We’re ringing the dinner bell for freeloaders. “COME AND GET IT!”
You know it’s an attack on the West, and on the U.S. in particular, and we asked for it when we sat back and enjoyed ourselves while we could have done somethig about it decades ago.
The Appeasers are the ones who create the very wars they’re trying to avoid.
Meanwhile the Republicans have gone from frantically trying to figure out how to act on camera to frantically trying to figure out how use all the brute force they can muster to keep the libertarians and tea partiers out. If they’re your Great Hope then you’re in for one hell of a Great Dissapointment.
I dont think the “entitlement class” is as a drain as most people think. Endless wars, endless debt, endless corruption, endless foriegn aid programs are the biggest drains on the national budjet. All that and a giant military budjet thats out of control.
Im ex-Navy. I like big ships, big powerful ships, but some ships are not cost efficent for what they are, take the new ‘Zumwalt Class destroyer” DDG 1000. A four billion dollar destroyer.
Why do we need a four billion dollar destroyer. In fact its one ship and it’s not an aircraft carrier.
Things like this is the real reason we are going broke!
Except that you are mistaken. There are three types of spending: Mandatory, discretionary, and interest on the debt. In 2012, the US Federal government took in $2.6 trillion in taxes, but spent $3.8 trillion.
Mandatory spending includes entitlements like Medicare, Social Security, VA benefits, Food Stamps, etc. which are REQUIRED by law to be paid.
Discretionary spending includes nearly everything we think of related to government– the Military, all of the Alphabet agencies, the courts, Federal prisons, foreign aid, welfare, bailouts, etc.
The two categories that must be spent every year are the interest on the debt, and mandatory spending. That totaled about $2.5 trillion in FY 2012. With the discretionary fund, this resulted in a deficit of $1.3 trillion. Even if the rest of government (the Courts, FBI, Prisons, Congress, Coast Guard, FAA, and the rest of it) had been shut down, we would barely balance the budget.
There’s no blame game left to be played. President George W. Bush left office having presided over one of the largest expansions of federal spending in history. President Barack Obama has pulled off off the amazing feat of making Bush look like a relative tightwad.
It is entitlement spending that’s driving the debt explosion. Unfortunately, the president’s expansion of the government’s role in health care will exacerbate the problem, despite the administration’s claims otherwise.
Republicans, just as much as their Democratic counterparts, are afraid of offending potential voters by threatening to take away their subsidies.
Even if we spent $0 on Defense, we would still run a $700 billion deficit. While I agree that Defense spending is too high, since we spend more money on Defense than every other country in the world combined, cuts there alone will not fix the problem.
Raising taxes on the rich won’t do it, either. This means that the government could confiscate 100% of the income of the top 1% of wage earners (anyone who makes more than $340,000 a year), and there would still be a $300 billion deficit.
In fact, increasing the taxes of all Americans by a third (133% of last year) would still require that all government discretionary spending be cut in half.
Does anyone here think that we can fix this?
Your #1 presumes those on the dole will starve rather than fend for themselves should government handouts decrease or stop.
You underestimate the people, and their survival instincts.
While riots against austerity might occur, after that people will start planting backyard gardens.
See Siege of Sarajevo for examples of urban dwellers’ hardiness.
Nowhere in there did I say that they would starve. There will be anarchy when they free money inevitably stops flowing. They will not just lie down and starve, they will do the only thing that they know how to do: they will riot. Do you really think that they street gangs will abandon the robbing, rioting, and stealing that has always worked and take up farming? Foolish.
Once this occurs, the government will do what governments always do when threatened with collapse because of civil unrest: call out the troops and institute a massive police crackdown.
#3 is already happening. The real estate market is being propped up by foreigners who are buying houses in the cities (Miami, Los Angeles, NYC, Boston, San Francisco, etc.) hand over fist. They are also purchasing commercial property.
They are also buying corporations.
I expect the USA to be a joint Brazilian/Chinese venture in 100 years.
I’d agree, except for the fact that they are imploding right now, too. The US dollar is “strong” because it’s the least-dead horse in the glue factory. I’ve seen several stories about rich and powerful business / party elites starting to off-shore assets and family in a big way out of China, and while on many fronts Brazil looks strong, it’s export-driven economy is dependent on a number of other economies in the world staying healthy – and with current debt levels and trends, that just isn’t happening. Rome didn’t collapse in a day, or even a century. Neither will the US.