"The US and western welfare states can’t just say they’re recognizing the “independence” of their wounded veterans and elderly and cut them off"
Just watch them.
Also: this is why the MAID program exists. It's also why fentanyl is being allowed to flood the streets. Every dead useless eater is several hundred thousand in unfunded liabilities off the balance sheets.
Things are starting to make more sense now after reading this article and the comments.
This helps explain why the gov’t is flooding the country with illegals. I had been struggling with that one for the past 3 years.
If our country is broke, why invite millions more to further drain what few dollars we have left? Funds that should go to SS, pensions, veterans, Medicare etc.
The evidence from the UK is midazolam, the end of life drug, was liberally used during covid in care homes.
The governments are well awar of what the sums tell them. They also know immigration can't fix it. 65 percent of immigrants to Britain are on the dole.
A perfect storm is brewing. One clear step we can all take is be Uber healthy. Medical care may not exist in ten years for most.
I hope fiscal collapse will convince red states to secede, since fedgov is broke, and convince the blue states to let the red states secede, since the blue states subsidize almost 2% of a red-state person's income, on average, through the federal government.
This is primarily because blue-staters have higher incomes and so pay more income tax. But red states have such a low cost of living that red states have a higher overall standard of living and don't need the blue states.
However, when governments face this fiscal problem, they always inflate currency enough so that they can afford to pay what's left of their obligations. Of course, this will cause a collapse in confidence in the dollar, which will make imports much more expensive, and so reduce American standards of living. But exports will become more competitive.
I just noticed Kulak commented that inflating the currency would mean retirees would not get paid enough to live, so the problem remains. True. Either we ramp up the real value of transfers to retirees, or they have to live with less than they were promised.
Much of the “higher income” of the “blue” states comprises “management” fees being charged by bankers to “own” and “package” the productive assets (mines, factories, oil, etc) of the “red” states. If (when?) the “red” states secede, they are keeping those assets and cutting off the “management fees” which feed the “blue” financial sector!
The banksters have proved they can extend and pretend longer than we think is mathematically possible, but eventually it has to collapse into a death spiral. Thanks for imagining what that may look like.
I have a cunning plan -- but you aren't going to like it.
No one is going to like it.
It involves spending cuts AND tax raises.
It also involves bridging that world-to-welfare gap. We have lots of people collecting disability (the other part of Social Security) who are scared to try to get off -- because they are partially disabled. A more gentle clawback system would get some of these people into the workforce, at least part time.
And replacing payroll taxes with tariffs and excises would make living wages a real thing again.
There is much more. Lots of pain. But less painful than going into French Revolution mode.
If a reasonable plan were politically feasible they would have just passed an opt out of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid fo the young back in 2012 combined with an optional buyout (like insurance companies do) where you could get a large 1 time cash payment (worth less than the expected payout) in return for renouncing all claim on x or y program... I was easily fixable even as late as 2015-2019 (before COVID) but of course that's all politically anathama because it reduces the scope of federal influence, would reduce the lifetime tax burden of those who opted out (allowing a flight from the payroll tax (which you'd be opting out of by renouncing social security))...
And Would criple the government, bureaucracy, boomers, and tax system's ongoing power over America...
America is an insurance company with an Army...
And the federal regime has shown time and again they'd rather push onward to civil war than let that insurance company that grants them power lose influence..
Last chance was 2008 imo. Allow debt destruction and the economy to reset, allow deflation, halve the workforce (but result in full employment as two working parent households go bye-bye). It would've been difficult, but there was lots less fake wealth to destroy. Now everything is fake, and thus everything will be destroyed.
The chemistry analogy tells us that the total amount of pain is irrelevant. What matters is the amount of pain to get things going down one path or the other. The activation energy to accomplish your solution is huge (lots of pain), meaning not likely to happen. The activation energy to go the French Revolution path is nil, almost negative (i.e. spontaneous).
He dropped out of the race and then choice the completely unprepared Admiral Stockdale as his running mate. He basically threw the election. Whether it was because he truly didn't want to win -- he was more interested in launching a third party -- or he was intimidated is unknown to me.
Knowing the psychopaths in power, I very much suspect that a plan is afoot to implement a biological tool (it isn't a weapon if you use it against your own people, right?) to cull the old and disabled. Covid, and, more accurately, the supposed 'treatment' (see comment vis-à-vis tools vs weapons) looks to have been a trial run.
The elite hugely increased their fortunes (further insulating them from the fate of the masses, they hope), the gov massively extended its powers (so the elite got more power), and the people got poorer and less of a danger to the elite.
The thing is that the elite is not—at least any more—a homogeneous entity. Some certainly may want that, but many others do not. If you listen to Pete’s podcast with Kulak where they break down this article, he explains it there.
I can already see a day in which the inner cities will be washed with blood, in which insurgents just kill all the druggies you see in those videos. It’s gonna get brutal!
I've read a few of these pieces by you and you always ignore the fact that most of the debt the US has incurred in the past 20 years has been bailouts for banks and military spending. That, and asset inflation built into all those tens of trillions flowing to the financial system and the creation of vast oligopolies across every industry (and the control over prices combined with all the middle-man extractive looting oligopoly enables) has created a high cost economy that can't compete internationally. You can blame medicare and social security (funds that were actually well-funded but have been repeatedly raided by the govt to pay for bullshit) which are paid directly by taxpayers and will be funded well enough if they just remove the cap on those taxes that gives the wealthy a free ride on them (and the ~13% up to $120k that we pay for social security and medicare is the smaller portion of the taxes we pay). So of the roughly 38% taxes I pay on my income (not including sales tax and all the other little taxes), 25% goes to bankster bailouts, war and the worse than useless administrative state. Picking on the one part of my taxes that actually help the average citizen is perverse and morally questionable.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to about the person you’re saying the government can do it but cheaper than private corporations? I really don’t know I’ve lost track it pisses me off so bad don’t know why Biden hasn’t fired every single member that you can do with Trump this is why neither one of these parties are legitimate. They don’t take actions to fix stuff they take action they appear to fix stuff
Gonna be a rough ride for everyone no matter what. But I'm not sure those federal pensions are in quite the danger you think they are. Especially for those hired in the 90s or later. The Federal Employee Retirement System is financially stable. The politicians and federal law enforcement do know how to look after their own (to an extent). Source: https://www.fedsmith.com/2012/11/14/how-much-do-you-know-about-funding-of-the-federal-retirement-system/
Can you see any large logical holes in the hypothesis that the Western elites are aiming to bring about the end of (the appearance of) democracy and a return to neo-feudalism?
"But of course, cutting benefits is political Anathema to boomers, so nothing was done…"
I am a retired boomer. I do not know any boomer who was not willing to see reform. I have set up my retirement with the expectation of losing my social security benefits. I would not be able to travel the world, buy a big RV, but I can live modestly with lessor expectations. Its the politicians who fear the marginal vote loss who fear reform!
Harper began to reform entitlements, moved CPP (social security) to age 67, immensely disliked even though CPP was on a path to insolvency.
Now what does Canada do electing Trudeau and moving CPP back to what they thought was an unsustainable system, why they quadruple the number of immigrants.
While quadrupling immigration may have inflated an unsustainable housing bubble, harmed younger workers and generally made life unaffordable, the key is no politician need take any responsibility.
I would be unsurprised if we continued on our current unsustainable path of reckless borrowing and spending until their is a recession, market crach and or sovereign debt crisis. After all this way no one has to take any responsibility
Simply fix it. This is not some serial mysterious thing. Illuminate the cap on the tax, install a means test with that same number you don’t receive it anymore. Stop the corporate Saturdays what are the best majority of our entire fucking government expenditures and we’re hanging out money by the millions to corporations that pay no taxes and had billions in corporate quarterly profits. That’s who he’s getting the federal treasury rate from blue collar stiff and mostly people who I can get a real paycheck not stocks or Independent businessman who sent it in quarterly if the fucking working people of America they’re subsidizing the Fortune 500 it’s proper tax policy. It’s insane rising the right thing no this has anything to do with debt debt is fucking irrelevant. It’s not like your household debt we can’t print her own money at home pay I mean we should just write it off it’s not relevant to any kind of I mean fuck it’s just like immigration an abortion in that affect anybody except for the positive and you know anybody want to stop at football man stop it stop it
Isn't it more likely that, instead of a spectacular collapse, we'll see something more like a long series of gradual "adjustments" that will keep the real value of the liabilities in check through inflation and periodic recessions? Partially cushioned by valuable technological advances? So, yes, living standards gradually decline for many, but everything keeps limping along more or less as it is now for the foreseeable future? In fact, hasn't this already kind of been happening for a while?
I think our de facto open borders policy is the first of such “adjustments”. I’ve seen members of Congress from a Louisiana Republican to AOC using the same “we need immigration to save social security” talking point in the past few months, so the uniparty is clearly on the same page there.
The $200 trillion question is: can they manage cuts to entitlements, raising taxes, the social costs of immigration, falling living standards etc. without the decline becoming politically unmanageable?
I've always thought the endgame for the U.S. debt is going to involve a lot of refinancing at gunpoint. The Romans did it many times. "Don't quote laws to men with swords", or aircraft carriers for that matter.
Men with swords are self sustaining... Aircraft carriers require constant complex supply lines and financing for 100s of thousands of back end workers who aren't navy but are contracted by them.
Second Most likely way the Us carrier fleet ends is Hypersonic rocket barrage in a miscalculated war killing 1 or 2 then mothballing of the rest....
Most likely way the US carrier fleet dies is the Federal taxing and contracting system that maintains them breaks, and then they all rot to death in port, or 1 to 2 rogue admirals swipe one and carve out a kingdom before it dies under them.
The aircraft carrier is a show, not a capability, against any nation-state that matters, and they're unnecessary against your own population. Not sure they have a use except for CNN b-roll.
The entire US foreign policy rests on the idea that large expensive equipment can be made invincible. If that is no longer true then it needs to switch over to quantity, which it can't (see Ukraine).
I don't think you understand the massive logistical overhead of a large number of men with swords; relative to the complexity of the civilization that fields them it's comparable to aircraft carriers.
The U.S. govt is going to cut basically everything else from the budget before they let those aircraft carriers go, they're the lynchpin of U.S. foreign policy. The competency crisis is going to take those ships before a lack of funding does. Or, as you said, a rogue admiral carving out his own thalassocracy, really looking forward to that one.
Yes they’ll try, but it’s not just a matter having the budget that usually sustains them and their massive fleet of jets , you need every industry that maintains them to stay intact, and every industry that sustains those industries, and every industry that sustains those, and in a federal collapse and attendant economic chaos... that doesn’t seem likely.
I’m certain Carthage thought they’d do anything to keep the elephants going... however during the final siege, they almost certainly ate them.
Small companies of men with swords, or M4s, are self sustaining. They live off the land, and off men without swords, and scoff at the aircraft carriers and their out of fuel F16s. The state of nature is an ugly place.
"The US and western welfare states can’t just say they’re recognizing the “independence” of their wounded veterans and elderly and cut them off"
Just watch them.
Also: this is why the MAID program exists. It's also why fentanyl is being allowed to flood the streets. Every dead useless eater is several hundred thousand in unfunded liabilities off the balance sheets.
Things are starting to make more sense now after reading this article and the comments.
This helps explain why the gov’t is flooding the country with illegals. I had been struggling with that one for the past 3 years.
If our country is broke, why invite millions more to further drain what few dollars we have left? Funds that should go to SS, pensions, veterans, Medicare etc.
I'd like to read where your mind goes when imagining how this might all be resolved.
Why import millions just to kill the natives with cheap drugs?
That’s certainly one way to conceptualize people who suffer from drug addiction or advanced disease
It's exactly how the regime does conceptualize them.
The evidence from the UK is midazolam, the end of life drug, was liberally used during covid in care homes.
The governments are well awar of what the sums tell them. They also know immigration can't fix it. 65 percent of immigrants to Britain are on the dole.
A perfect storm is brewing. One clear step we can all take is be Uber healthy. Medical care may not exist in ten years for most.
I think Europe will expell the immigrants before paying their pensions.
Europe will be theirs when they get to pension age if we continue as we are.
I can’t speak for Canada. In the US, medical aid in dying is available in only a few states. It’s not a federal priority
Opiates remain a terrible challenge
I hope fiscal collapse will convince red states to secede, since fedgov is broke, and convince the blue states to let the red states secede, since the blue states subsidize almost 2% of a red-state person's income, on average, through the federal government.
This is primarily because blue-staters have higher incomes and so pay more income tax. But red states have such a low cost of living that red states have a higher overall standard of living and don't need the blue states.
However, when governments face this fiscal problem, they always inflate currency enough so that they can afford to pay what's left of their obligations. Of course, this will cause a collapse in confidence in the dollar, which will make imports much more expensive, and so reduce American standards of living. But exports will become more competitive.
I just noticed Kulak commented that inflating the currency would mean retirees would not get paid enough to live, so the problem remains. True. Either we ramp up the real value of transfers to retirees, or they have to live with less than they were promised.
Much of the “higher income” of the “blue” states comprises “management” fees being charged by bankers to “own” and “package” the productive assets (mines, factories, oil, etc) of the “red” states. If (when?) the “red” states secede, they are keeping those assets and cutting off the “management fees” which feed the “blue” financial sector!
I don’t think you read it properly. This problem cannot be reversed by voting.
> Either we ramp up the real value of transfers to retirees, or they have to live with less than they were promised.
And that's just the current set.
I have notionally been "promised" all sorts of things, but I flat understand that's never happening.
As soon as I understood Ponzi schemes, I stopped counting on ever drawing a social security check.
I predict Canada will be euthanizing 100k people/year by 2030.
Am I being too conservative?
They will certainly try...
I'd add another zero or two, at the least, to the people they offer it to.
The banksters have proved they can extend and pretend longer than we think is mathematically possible, but eventually it has to collapse into a death spiral. Thanks for imagining what that may look like.
I have a cunning plan -- but you aren't going to like it.
No one is going to like it.
It involves spending cuts AND tax raises.
It also involves bridging that world-to-welfare gap. We have lots of people collecting disability (the other part of Social Security) who are scared to try to get off -- because they are partially disabled. A more gentle clawback system would get some of these people into the workforce, at least part time.
And replacing payroll taxes with tariffs and excises would make living wages a real thing again.
There is much more. Lots of pain. But less painful than going into French Revolution mode.
LOL.
If a reasonable plan were politically feasible they would have just passed an opt out of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid fo the young back in 2012 combined with an optional buyout (like insurance companies do) where you could get a large 1 time cash payment (worth less than the expected payout) in return for renouncing all claim on x or y program... I was easily fixable even as late as 2015-2019 (before COVID) but of course that's all politically anathama because it reduces the scope of federal influence, would reduce the lifetime tax burden of those who opted out (allowing a flight from the payroll tax (which you'd be opting out of by renouncing social security))...
And Would criple the government, bureaucracy, boomers, and tax system's ongoing power over America...
America is an insurance company with an Army...
And the federal regime has shown time and again they'd rather push onward to civil war than let that insurance company that grants them power lose influence..
Last chance was 2008 imo. Allow debt destruction and the economy to reset, allow deflation, halve the workforce (but result in full employment as two working parent households go bye-bye). It would've been difficult, but there was lots less fake wealth to destroy. Now everything is fake, and thus everything will be destroyed.
The chemistry analogy tells us that the total amount of pain is irrelevant. What matters is the amount of pain to get things going down one path or the other. The activation energy to accomplish your solution is huge (lots of pain), meaning not likely to happen. The activation energy to go the French Revolution path is nil, almost negative (i.e. spontaneous).
H. Ross Perot nearly succeeded in taking us on the near term pain route -- as a third party candidate at that.
Nearly? He wasn't that close.
He dropped out of the race and then choice the completely unprepared Admiral Stockdale as his running mate. He basically threw the election. Whether it was because he truly didn't want to win -- he was more interested in launching a third party -- or he was intimidated is unknown to me.
Knowing the psychopaths in power, I very much suspect that a plan is afoot to implement a biological tool (it isn't a weapon if you use it against your own people, right?) to cull the old and disabled. Covid, and, more accurately, the supposed 'treatment' (see comment vis-à-vis tools vs weapons) looks to have been a trial run.
The elite hugely increased their fortunes (further insulating them from the fate of the masses, they hope), the gov massively extended its powers (so the elite got more power), and the people got poorer and less of a danger to the elite.
The thing is that the elite is not—at least any more—a homogeneous entity. Some certainly may want that, but many others do not. If you listen to Pete’s podcast with Kulak where they break down this article, he explains it there.
Where can I find the podcast?
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1O7iqfu8lSMbT0cHkUQl8q?si=NIoCC2u4SdiZJX2kqnAbHA
Got it. Thanks.
I can already see a day in which the inner cities will be washed with blood, in which insurgents just kill all the druggies you see in those videos. It’s gonna get brutal!
If something cannot go on forever, eventually it will stop.
It seems that the only infinite resource in the world is delusion.
I've read a few of these pieces by you and you always ignore the fact that most of the debt the US has incurred in the past 20 years has been bailouts for banks and military spending. That, and asset inflation built into all those tens of trillions flowing to the financial system and the creation of vast oligopolies across every industry (and the control over prices combined with all the middle-man extractive looting oligopoly enables) has created a high cost economy that can't compete internationally. You can blame medicare and social security (funds that were actually well-funded but have been repeatedly raided by the govt to pay for bullshit) which are paid directly by taxpayers and will be funded well enough if they just remove the cap on those taxes that gives the wealthy a free ride on them (and the ~13% up to $120k that we pay for social security and medicare is the smaller portion of the taxes we pay). So of the roughly 38% taxes I pay on my income (not including sales tax and all the other little taxes), 25% goes to bankster bailouts, war and the worse than useless administrative state. Picking on the one part of my taxes that actually help the average citizen is perverse and morally questionable.
First, the highest federal tax bracket on income is 37%.
The majority of your tax dollars go to billions of dollars per quarter profit corporations. That’s what Medicare and Medicaid are. Corporate subsidy.
There are solutions to these policies mistakes. Remove the cap on Social Security. Apply that $128,000 per anime figure as an income means test.
Demand #ByDefinition #UniversalHealthcare.
Twice the care at almost half the price. But hey, or Americans our freedom to do and say really stupid shit is paramount …..
Universal health care is twice the care at half the cost? Sort of like the Post Office? My stars!
I’m not sure what you’re referring to about the person you’re saying the government can do it but cheaper than private corporations? I really don’t know I’ve lost track it pisses me off so bad don’t know why Biden hasn’t fired every single member that you can do with Trump this is why neither one of these parties are legitimate. They don’t take actions to fix stuff they take action they appear to fix stuff
Removing the cap on Social Security only works if you means test benefits.
Gonna be a rough ride for everyone no matter what. But I'm not sure those federal pensions are in quite the danger you think they are. Especially for those hired in the 90s or later. The Federal Employee Retirement System is financially stable. The politicians and federal law enforcement do know how to look after their own (to an extent). Source: https://www.fedsmith.com/2012/11/14/how-much-do-you-know-about-funding-of-the-federal-retirement-system/
Can you see any large logical holes in the hypothesis that the Western elites are aiming to bring about the end of (the appearance of) democracy and a return to neo-feudalism?
There will be blood.
"But of course, cutting benefits is political Anathema to boomers, so nothing was done…"
I am a retired boomer. I do not know any boomer who was not willing to see reform. I have set up my retirement with the expectation of losing my social security benefits. I would not be able to travel the world, buy a big RV, but I can live modestly with lessor expectations. Its the politicians who fear the marginal vote loss who fear reform!
Example from Canada
Harper began to reform entitlements, moved CPP (social security) to age 67, immensely disliked even though CPP was on a path to insolvency.
Now what does Canada do electing Trudeau and moving CPP back to what they thought was an unsustainable system, why they quadruple the number of immigrants.
While quadrupling immigration may have inflated an unsustainable housing bubble, harmed younger workers and generally made life unaffordable, the key is no politician need take any responsibility.
I would be unsurprised if we continued on our current unsustainable path of reckless borrowing and spending until their is a recession, market crach and or sovereign debt crisis. After all this way no one has to take any responsibility
Simply fix it. This is not some serial mysterious thing. Illuminate the cap on the tax, install a means test with that same number you don’t receive it anymore. Stop the corporate Saturdays what are the best majority of our entire fucking government expenditures and we’re hanging out money by the millions to corporations that pay no taxes and had billions in corporate quarterly profits. That’s who he’s getting the federal treasury rate from blue collar stiff and mostly people who I can get a real paycheck not stocks or Independent businessman who sent it in quarterly if the fucking working people of America they’re subsidizing the Fortune 500 it’s proper tax policy. It’s insane rising the right thing no this has anything to do with debt debt is fucking irrelevant. It’s not like your household debt we can’t print her own money at home pay I mean we should just write it off it’s not relevant to any kind of I mean fuck it’s just like immigration an abortion in that affect anybody except for the positive and you know anybody want to stop at football man stop it stop it
Isn't it more likely that, instead of a spectacular collapse, we'll see something more like a long series of gradual "adjustments" that will keep the real value of the liabilities in check through inflation and periodic recessions? Partially cushioned by valuable technological advances? So, yes, living standards gradually decline for many, but everything keeps limping along more or less as it is now for the foreseeable future? In fact, hasn't this already kind of been happening for a while?
I think our de facto open borders policy is the first of such “adjustments”. I’ve seen members of Congress from a Louisiana Republican to AOC using the same “we need immigration to save social security” talking point in the past few months, so the uniparty is clearly on the same page there.
The $200 trillion question is: can they manage cuts to entitlements, raising taxes, the social costs of immigration, falling living standards etc. without the decline becoming politically unmanageable?
I've always thought the endgame for the U.S. debt is going to involve a lot of refinancing at gunpoint. The Romans did it many times. "Don't quote laws to men with swords", or aircraft carriers for that matter.
Men with swords are self sustaining... Aircraft carriers require constant complex supply lines and financing for 100s of thousands of back end workers who aren't navy but are contracted by them.
Second Most likely way the Us carrier fleet ends is Hypersonic rocket barrage in a miscalculated war killing 1 or 2 then mothballing of the rest....
Most likely way the US carrier fleet dies is the Federal taxing and contracting system that maintains them breaks, and then they all rot to death in port, or 1 to 2 rogue admirals swipe one and carve out a kingdom before it dies under them.
The aircraft carrier is a show, not a capability, against any nation-state that matters, and they're unnecessary against your own population. Not sure they have a use except for CNN b-roll.
The entire US foreign policy rests on the idea that large expensive equipment can be made invincible. If that is no longer true then it needs to switch over to quantity, which it can't (see Ukraine).
I don't think you understand the massive logistical overhead of a large number of men with swords; relative to the complexity of the civilization that fields them it's comparable to aircraft carriers.
The U.S. govt is going to cut basically everything else from the budget before they let those aircraft carriers go, they're the lynchpin of U.S. foreign policy. The competency crisis is going to take those ships before a lack of funding does. Or, as you said, a rogue admiral carving out his own thalassocracy, really looking forward to that one.
But yeah
Yes they’ll try, but it’s not just a matter having the budget that usually sustains them and their massive fleet of jets , you need every industry that maintains them to stay intact, and every industry that sustains those industries, and every industry that sustains those, and in a federal collapse and attendant economic chaos... that doesn’t seem likely.
I’m certain Carthage thought they’d do anything to keep the elephants going... however during the final siege, they almost certainly ate them.
Small companies of men with swords, or M4s, are self sustaining. They live off the land, and off men without swords, and scoff at the aircraft carriers and their out of fuel F16s. The state of nature is an ugly place.