MaxFan said:
I do believe the US is going bankrupt, and am generally not in favor of the government giving away money, but if they're going to do it anyway (as apparently they are), it might as well be to me.
We're not "going" bankrupt. We ARE bankrupt, we've just devised a number of cunning schemes to hide this fact from ourselves and the rest of the world so that other countries keep accepting our *promises* to pay them as if they were actual money.
What the government REALLY needs to do is to start making deep budget cuts, plans for even more future budget cuts, and shutting down as many departments as possible. Not only will this free up a tremendous amount of capital for reinvestment in production, it will free up a large *workforce* that has previously not been doing anything productive. (This would also need to accompany massive repeals of restrictive laws, but the two go hand-in-hand.)
The problem with this is that there would undoubtedly be some unpleasant short-term effects, for instance wages would drop to reflect a reduction in labor scarcity. This doesn't necessarily mean there would be a wage drop for *unskilled* labor, so the people who are already doing nasty jobs like picking fruit or mopping floors will probably not suffer much, and they will receive a huge benefit after a short time when other prices begin to drop as a reflection of increased productivity. But people in mid-range "skilled" jobs will probably take a hit because companies will be able to replace them easily for a short while.
This short-term hiccup is vastly preferable to what will inevitably happen if the budget is not cut, however: industries and individuals not fortunate enough to receive government sponsorship will begin to collapse as they find the costs of these programs impossible to bear. Panicking, the gov't will either cut back on funding to the businesses they've chosen to prop up (unlikely) or issue a massive amount of new regulation and controls over those industries (likely). The effect is the same in both cases--the favored industries will collapse.
The end of the road we are currently on is total socialism, whether of the fascist (massive state regulation) or communist (direct state ownership) varieties. The only hope is for people to demand a total return to free-market principles--not reforms, not a partial return, the 200 proof absolutely unadulterated real stuff.
