Ask yourself if Americans are better off today than ten years ago.
Since mid 1980’s, Americans have silently accepted the government policies which exchanged US manufacturing jobs for lower priced consumer products. It is an understatement to say, we all thought we got something for very little cost. But how wrong we were to go along with the governement's line of thinking that these exported jobs were undesirable positions that most Americans considered to be too low skilled. Also, we shared their vision of the future employment for America. Job seekers were instructed to focus on networking and software industries. In addition, they were also led to believe that a vibrant service market would employ a large number of people. We have lost a decade of our earnings, our savings and our precious time. If you believed that Americans are richer now than ever before, consider these issues:
1) When we had a strong manufacturing base, US employment ran near to full employment i.e. 96% were employed, Now, we are dreading multiple years of unemployment across the many states between 18% to 22%.
2) According the third party government agencies, under a strong economy that is to say when times were good, US poverty rates decreased to almost 10%. Now, almost 15% of the US population or 44 MILLION Americans live in poverty.
3) We have experience two major market bubbles, namely the 2001 Technology/Internet Bubble & 2008 Mortgage Backed Securities, both were directly caused by failed government monetary policies. For the past ten years, the retired citizens including the Baby Boomers generation are quickly realizing that their financial planners were wrong about the projected returns of 6-8% return for conservative investment strategies. Worst yet, retired folks expected to make fixed income on CD yields but for the past three years these investments are a far cry from what people had expected for their safe money.
4) Federal shot term deficits should be an important matter. The accelerating debt spending is a desperate attempt to cover the liabilities which have resulted from a reckless government that has continued to spend beyond our means. Social security surpluses were borrowed (raided) and never invested to cover future commitments. Other harmful government policies dealing with deregulation of the banking industry have allowed for irrational speculation and unrestrained liquidity to be pumped into the stock and bond markets. Americans are realizing their 401K’s were knocked down twice in ten years and more aptly called 201K’s.
5) One of the largest budget breaking line items is our US Defense. It appears that many Americans are unfazed that our government continues to spend over $800 BILLION per year (and constantly growing) on an unending series of military conflicts. Most Americans are so distracted by media and government officials that no one seems to hold "candidate" Obama accountable for his promise to end US involvement in Middle East wars.
To an outside observer, it must be confusing to see most Americans more passionate about their local sports teams than they are about our failed foreign policies that have resulted in thousands of our brothers and sisters either being killed and maimed in these undeclared wars, and spiraling financial costs that keep pumping up the debt ceiling. Consider this. Our foreign policy currently has American military involved in four different fronts; Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya. We should return to our founding father’s foreign policies of non interventionism.
To summary, we are at the tipping point. Most Americans seem to be sleep walking and do not realize what it means to our financial future if we allow our government to continue printing money to cover banking speculation. Our debt ceiling is growing exponentially. Prior to 5 years ago, we were conditioned to accept annual debt ceiling increases of 30Bn to 100Bn. The water is getting warmer for us frogs. What is happening now is pure madness. We just increased the debt ceiling over the past two years by over $3 trillion dollars. If unchecked, it is simply unsustainable and will lead to hyperinflation.
I hope it is not too late. The cancerous financial problems have more to do with past govt. mistakes such as deregulating the banking industry through the repeal of Glass-Steagall and (not-so-fair) trade agreements that expedited the off shoring of US manufacturing capability & jobs over to Asian countries. To have a redistribution of wealth, it will need to start by reversing these failed govt. policies. Only then we will begin to see a transfer of foreign based factories back into US.
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