I’ve blogged about this before, but this time, IMHO, the single most qualified person in the world has now weighed in on this issue.
He has amassed the largest fortune in the history of mankind through investing and acquiring companies. (others have built greater fortunes only through starting them from scratch)
Yes, I speak of Warren Buffet who weighs in on the calamitous situation of the United States in this Fortune article at pbs.org:
And my reason for finally putting my money where my mouth has been so long is that our trade deficit has greatly worsened, to the point that our country’s “net worth,” so to speak, is now being transferred abroad at an alarming rate.
A perpetuation of this transfer will lead to major trouble. To understand why, take a wildly fanciful trip with me to two isolated, side-by-side islands of equal size, Squanderville and Thriftville. Land is the only capital asset on these islands, and their communities are primitive, needing only food and producing only food. Working eight hours a day, in fact, each inhabitant can produce enough food to sustain himself or herself. And for a long time that’s how things go along. On each island everybody works the prescribed eight hours a day, which means that each society is self-sufficient.
Eventually, though, the industrious citizens of Thriftville decide to do some serious saving and investing, and they start to work 16 hours a day. In this mode they continue to live off the food they produce in eight hours of work but begin exporting an equal amount to their one and only trading outlet, Squanderville.
If you are a US citizen, I urge you to read the rest of the article here.
United States: The M.C. Hammer of World Governments
So basically, the US has been like M.C. Hammer since the 1970s. We enjoyed a long stint of success prior to that, but let it go to our heads.
What do we start doing with all that cash since the ’70s?
Spend it on blow & strippers & an entourage full of hangers-on, metaphorically speaking, of course…
Political Will to Address this Problem? Negatory
The only candidates who I’ve ever actually heard speak about these issues at length were Ron Paul and Ross Perot. The general public & media treats them as laughable outsiders, of course.
The republicans?
They have their heads so far up their asses they couldn’t see this problem coming from a mile away. Romney talks about “rebuilding our military”, as if its somehow decrepit after taking up over 50% of our US budget for the last 40+ years. (source #2) Yes, that’s our hard-earned taxpayer dollars at work.
Do the troops in Iraq need better armor? Of course. But we blew that money building F-16 Fighter Jets that now sit useless in some airplane hangar.
McCain talks about cutting spending & reducing pork barrel projects, but in the same breath, says he’s willing to keep US troops in Iraq for 100 years …. even upping the ante to 1,000 years. That’s half the freaking time since the coming of Huckabee’s homeboy Jesus H. Christ.
Ron Paul on comparing Vietnam to present day Iraq: “What we achieved in peace, was unachievable in 20 years of the US and French being in Vietnam.”
John McCain fires back: “We never lost a battle in Vietnam.”
I can’t believe half of the public falls for this moronic crap. I guess McCain has never heard the most rudimentary of Tony Robbins ra-ra development phrases (albeit true): the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
The point? Republicans want to cut taxes for the richest 1-2% (and everyone else, but the richest save $100Ms on taxes while the poorest might get back $50-100) — meanwhile continue the occupation of Iraq at a cost of $8.25 billion per month (that’s $4,100+ per household in total so far), while 4,000+ American soldiers have died as a result. (yes, that’s more than the # of people that died on 9/11 by a fair margin)
The Democrats
While not nearly as bad on the war front, democracts like Hillary & Barack are afraid of looking soft on defense to the general public, so they puff up their chests and contradict previous statements indicating they really were for some kind of withdrawal or timetable on Iraq.
Fiscally, Democrats have a better record of balancing the budget and lessening the trade deficit than republicans over the last 30 years.
Still, with talk of nationalizing healthcare, it’s not like they are suggesting we move in a Thriftville-style direction, at least in that area.
As a side note, I recently hung out with several Canadians up in Calgary, who said Michael Moore held up Canada as a shining example (in Sicko and Bowling for Columbine), but the reality on the ground is far different. For example — a snowboarding accident with broken bones sticking out through your skin but you sit in the ER for 4 hours because the lines are too long, or heart attack patients who die because there aren’t enough doctors b/c the government can’t pay them enough.
Does this remind you of any other profession here in the states, the largest employer of which is the government? *cough* teachers *cough*.
Get Out while you Can
So yeah, in a nutshell, we’re screwed. I suggest you move abroad and save paying taxes on the first $80k of your income, the rest of which can be funneled legally into foreign-based corporations. (you must report stock ownership in these entities, though - don’t do anything illegal, of course)
I’m happy to pay 30% of my income to a government that isn’t as corrupt, morally bankrupt and inept as our current one. But I refuse to pay my hard-earned income on the governmental equivalent of coke & strippers. Shit, this same lesson can be gleaned from an episode of Celebrity Rehab: don’t be a co-dependent spouse of an addict.
ps. i hope for all of our sakes Warren Buffet and I turn out to be wrong on this one…
