dallen0427
New Member
Agree completely. I'm a bit pessimistic about the lifetime politician voting for term limits. We need to clean house.
Gov shutdown
- Thread starter Whitehawk
- Start date
Musket Man
Veteran member
This shut down is all backwards. Should start not paying at the top starting with the president and everyone in DC. The little guy at the bottom needs his pay to live on, the top doesnt and I bet all of them in DC could live just fine if they never got paid again. If they did the job they were elected to do we wouldnt have this problem in the first place. Them borrowing money to pay interest on money they already borrowed as I understand it is the stupidest thing I ever herd of. Its just digging us in deeper. I truly believe some of the leaders in this country are trying to sell is out and trying to end the USA and all the freedoms it has stood for since 1776. Something has got to change soon. As long as we import more then we export we are going to be broke. IDK who you are or how much money you have if you spend more then you make you will eventually go broke and thats exactly whats happened here. All the regulations here have choked businesses out and sent alot of work over seas where they dont have all the regs to deal with. It all got alot worse with Clinton and been down hill ever since IMO. That was when all these 'environmental groups' got way to much power and alot of logging, ranching and farming got shut down and Clinton delcared all the national monuments while he was walking out the back door. If you figured it out I think about 10% of the country is trying to support the other 90%. Ok I think Im done, this subject gets me a little rattled!
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Colorado Cowboy
Super Moderator
SORRY....I don't think so. Started way before him. I believe it really started back around Ike's time or even earlier. Congress was looking for ways to pay for the new massive interstate highway and other social programs and the Social Security Trust money was just too juicy to be left alone. They started "borrowing" the excess (and there was billions of excess trust fund dollars there back then) and leaving a so called IOU to pay it back. Never happened. Now the entitlement programs are sucking up a majority of the money, leaving very little left for discretionary spending. If that SS Trust money was still there, our gov't would be in fat city!
If you had a savings plan like a 401K or something else and kept spending more than you earned every year, when it came time to tap that fund for your retirement......... Well you get the idea. Not really as simple as this, but you can't spend more than you earn and keep your house in order for very long. THE PIPER HAS TO BE PAID SOME DAY.
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Musket Man
Veteran member
Agreed CC. I worded that poorly. I believe it got alot worse in Clintons time in office and I see that time as a major turning point for alot of things. Ike was before my time lol
It started when people decided that the answer to all problems was the federal government and the states ceded their sovereignty to the federal government.
The Federal Reserve Act put us over the hill and FDR coming to office was when the train hit full speed with the New Deal and all of the various socialist programs that went with it.
The Federal Reserve Act gave the federal government the ability to manipulate the monetary supply.
Then came FDR and the New Deal and its various flavors of socialist policies and the beginning of new interpretations of the Constitution to expand the powers of the government in order to exercise more control over the economy.
During that same time frame the notion that the federal government should manipulate the economy become popular.
Then Nixon, I believe it was, took the dollar off the gold standard and floated the currency. That effectively gave the Federal Reserve free reign to print as much money as it saw fit, limited only by the debt limits approved by Congress.
Now the self-anointed elites are advocating for the elimination of the debt limit - that would give the Federal Reserve a blank check.
The popular idea among the self-anointed elites is that Keynsian economics are the way to go and that the federal government can and should apply those economic policies on a national scale and (try to) run the economy like a giant company.
A significant part of that is deficit spending, Keynsians don't just believe in deficit spending, they encourage it, you should be spending not only the money you have now, but you should have the money that you will make over the next 10, 15 and 20 years already spent.
According to them, if you're not doing that, then you're not putting your money to its most productive use.
To be fair to Keynes, he understood that there were limits to everything and didn't espouse rampant and out of control borrowing.
But, typical of the self-anointed elites in this country, if a little is good, then a lot is better and even more is great.
The results of that are what we see today: The political and business types in this country see the United States as one big company with the President as the CEO and the citizens of this country as its (captive) investors.
That's why the know-it-alls in Washington and the Ivy League schools won't even think about sending you a check instead of spending it on BS projects.
You will spend the money to pay off debts, they want to see GDP increase and paying off debts doesn't do that, only spending it on new stuff makes GDP go up.
So, they would rather spend a billion dollars to build cold storage facilities for the Eskimos in the Arctic than cut you a check.
Sorry to go on a rant, this stuff just drives me up a wall and the amount BS that comes out of D.C. and the games that those bunch of arrogant idiots and their Ivy League and Wall Street buddies play with peoples lives is just disgusting.
Musket Man
Veteran member
One good thing about this thread is it makes me feel alot younger! lol. I remember Regan being in office but Clinton was the first one that I was really old enough to understand alot of these things. I could be missing something but I cant see how increasing the national debt could be good in any way. Im not against borrowing money but there needs to be a way to pay it back and if you keep borrowing more without paying it back its just getting in deeper and deeper the more you borrow. I dont really understand how this all works but it seems to me the federal government is in way over its head right now and they want to keep digging deeper.
brooks
Member
What ever happened to.....We The People ? We need people in this country with the mind set people had in the 1700 and 1800's !!!They would have burned the White House and the Capital down by now.
Colorado Cowboy
Super Moderator
Hey MM...I'm not that damn old. I'l be 72 at the end of the month and just because I remember Ike and Truman don't make me ancient!!! At least I won't have as long to pay into the national debt as you guys....HA HA!
Come out cowboy shooting sometime and I'll show you how quick an old fart can shoot and move...Yee Haw.
Musket Man
Veteran member
Long story short, the key is GDP - Gross Domestic Product. They want GDP to increase, all the time.
If GDP isn't increasing, isn't increasing fast enough or, God forbid, is decreasing, then according to the D.C., Ivy League and Wall Street types, somebody needs to spend more money.
If private investors and businesses can't or won't spend enough money, then they believe that the federal government has an obligation to spend the money and if they have to borrow it, so be it.
The fact that they are creating a huge liability that the citizens of this country are liable for doesn't matter to them.
To them, an increasing GDP is more important than anything else, which is why they are now publicly calling for eliminating the debt ceiling.
I'm in the same boat as you Musket Man, I started to understand things when Clinton was there, but it was during Bush's time that I truly understood how screwed the system really is.
Problem is, somebody like Ron Paul could be elected and inaugurated today and it would do about as much good as changing captains on the Titanic after she hit the iceberg.
Too many people in this country buy into the system as it exists today - the idea of the "two party system", the amount of government involvement in the economy while calling it a "capitalist economy", the complete impotency of the state governments - that no one person or even handful of people will be able to make a change.
The only peaceful way that things will change is if a real third party that has a base in the large number of people who don't affiliate themselves with either party (not the ones who call themselves independent but then vote right in line with republican/democrat party lines on every single issue) coalesces and gets a foothold.
The other option is nothing but bad, but, unfortunately, not unrealistic due to the ignorance and arrogance of people in the federal and state governments.
Eberle
Veteran member
Colorado Cowboy
Super Moderator
I wrote that with my mouth wide open so I could breath better....had to run across the room to get the phone
Musket Man
Veteran member
Seems to me our GDP would be going down steadily as more and more things are made over seas. It would explain why our debt is going up though. This system keeps getting worse the more I know about it. I herd somewhere our national debt used to be mostly in this country so the interest was staying here atleast but now it has shifted to being more in other countries so they are getting the interest and thats really hurting us.
WOW! CC you must have a big house! LOL
WOW! CC you must have a big house! LOL
Yes...They (politicians) are in a race to see who can make the U.S. be owned by China the fastest. Right now Obama and his gang are proving just how easy they can spend our money while too many in the GOP are trying to coax them into taking baby steps when they need to go "cold turkey" A 3rd party is gaining steam I feel, CLEAN HOUSE.
Musket Man
Veteran member
I think they are selling us out to China too. China gonna have a hell of a fight on its hands when they come try to claim it if they ever think they own this country!
The Chinese are smart, they know they don't need to come and claim anything.
All they need to do is establish themselves as the economic top dog of the world. Then they have the collar on us, then all they need to do is choke us for a bit just to get the point across that they can do it and show that they control the leash.
After that, everybody plays by their rules.
Right in line with what Lenin said - "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."
The people in this country who put the economy before everything else are playing right into their hands. I don't think they're doing it deliberately, I just think that they're too greedy to see it and too arrogant to believe that it can happen to them.
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Colorado Cowboy
Super Moderator
The really sad thing is that our country does not have a budget to run the government. Hasn't had one for 5 years. The way they do business is I get what I had last year PLUS a 10% growth factor. Absolute madness!
I was a department head and a Director of 3 departments in my other life. Our annual budget process was what is called a Zero Based Budget or as we called it "bottoms up" budgeting. We started each yearly budget process with zero money and then justified every dollar of annual budget. Every bit of growth from the previous year's budget had to be justified. It started out as a government mandate on budget justification for contractors many years ago.....too bad they don't the same themselves.
I was a department head and a Director of 3 departments in my other life. Our annual budget process was what is called a Zero Based Budget or as we called it "bottoms up" budgeting. We started each yearly budget process with zero money and then justified every dollar of annual budget. Every bit of growth from the previous year's budget had to be justified. It started out as a government mandate on budget justification for contractors many years ago.....too bad they don't the same themselves.
They say it's over now. But I dout it did anything but make someone lots of money. I hope they pay the people that where forced to not work or work with out pay it isn't their fault and they should be paid for the time off.
xtreme
Very Active Member
I agree CC, about the budget. I don't see China in the same way others do. I tried to have things manufactured in the U.S. to no avail. Even trying to use non union labor was not competitive. I have visited China once for 20 days. I kinda like their way of doing business, they spend about 2 trillion less per year on government regulations than the US. You have much more freedom in China than the US. For example, in China, if you have an auto accident, its your fault. That works for me.
I built my own tire molds and they are still in use, some of my products I built are sold around the world, but not in the US. The US is a hard place to do business. There is still opportunity here in the US.
I built my own tire molds and they are still in use, some of my products I built are sold around the world, but not in the US. The US is a hard place to do business. There is still opportunity here in the US.
I don't know if they do the zero-based-budget here - from what I gather from friends who are privy to what goes on at the upper levels is that it's more like throwing a cow into a pack of hyenas, everybody's fighting to get a scrap.
In this case, you need to out-BS the next guy to get your scrap.
The thing that irks me about a lot of this is when I listen to the politicians and talking heads talking about taxes, like people having to justify why the Bush tax cuts shouldn't be allowed to expire, as if it's some gift to us.
It supposed to be the other way around, they should be having to justify each and every bit of extra taxes that they want, every tax should have an expiration date and if they want to keep collecting the tax, they should be the ones having to justify why.
I've watched C-Span and listened to some politician talk about some grand plan of his and how he wants to spend $300,000,000 on it, like he's about to spend $20 at Wal-Mart. No justification of why the taxpayers should be paying for it, no explanation of where the money is going to come from and no explanation of how long the money is going to keep flowing.