Again I don't agree with many of your representations and statements. Especially the one about "This seems hopeless to me, because even educated people like you aren't serious about our problems". Wrong! I do take them seriously... I just don't see things the way that you do. Example... you see old women tending cash registers and standing on their feet all day, etc. and yet there are republican lawmakers that are advocating major changes and even cuts to social security. Don't you think that will force more seniors to stay in the workforce for more years? There are possible ways that should be considered to increase revenues needed for this fund. Since everyone that lives long enough eventually benefits from social security, why not raise the limits on income as far as contributions requirements are concerned. Why not double the limits? That would raise a lot more money for the fund and not place the burden on those people that can least afford it. We either do something of that nature or start making cuts in benefits. Who is that going to effect the most? Those little old women you speak about that are having to tend the cash registers.
You seem to want to blame everything on the Dems but the republicans are far from coming up with solutions to our problems either. Example... I agree that our budget needs to be balanced and that may require some cuts be made... however, threatening to not increase the debt limit should not even be in play. Even our constitution requires all obligations to be paid. The consequences of defaulting would be financially devastating. That's money already spent and payment shouldn't be used as a bargain chip and yet it is. I have yet to see a plan from McCarthy and the republicans outlining exactly what cuts should be made. An alternative plan would certainly be beneficial. It would be like having my wife go out and buying an expensive dress from Saks and then threatening her that we won't pay the bill unless she agrees to spend less on clothing next year. Who is that ultimately going to hurt? The absurdity of that scenario should be obvious to even you.
I don't believe in your paranoid assessment as to where we are and who is to blame. Like you I also want to stop the growth of government and the authority it continually wants to exert... however, I would advocate that statement should include such issues as abortion and education, etc.
Again... we just don't see things the same way. That doesn't mean that I am not serious about solving our problems. Not everyone needs to see the world as you do.
People living on Social Security get a COLA increase, but savings and pensions do not get an increase. Those have been going down, especially for old people who tend to be slanted towards bond funds. And yet Democrats want more inflation. That was born out in every "question" I heard by Democrats of Jay Powell last week. Republicans want the opposite. If you are going to shut down the economy this is what you get -- a need to eventually shut down or reduce government, not increase government, otherwise the private sector pays, and shrinks, due to inflation.
The retirement age is way too young. The people I am seeing are well into their 70s, perhaps even older. It's possible that they did not save as they should have, but once again, the government discouraged saving. They encouraged spending and unaffordable loans by providing no return on savings and allowing risky loans, even to people who should not qualify, which led to the 2008 debacle. (We just created the environment for a repeat by suppressing interest rates.). Then we got a supply side "fix" for a problem that was created through bad policy. Old people got forced into risky stocks instead of CDs and bonds. Now look at what is happening.
Democrats have lead us into yet another war and want us to continue pulling weight for NATO. Trump, to his credit, even did better than Republicans on this matter. People like Putin did not dare get out of line. Trump was making all of the right foreign policy moves -- forcing Europe to pay for its own defense -- even addressing a border that Congress was ignoring. Democrats reversed all of those policies. Now we have a massive migrant and drug problem that grew out of a change in policy. We were not perfect but were moving forward. Now we are moving backwards -- REALLY backwards, with war in Europe, AGAIN !!!
The current, massive spending increase post Covid was pushed largely by Democrats. Republicans are the lesser of two evils. Trump was a bombastic blowhard but he did the right things from an executive standpoint. Congress did the wrong things. Congress spends because the resulting inflation can be hidden from voters and blamed on corporate greed. It becomes a money supply problem relative to production. Congress drives up the money supply without increasing the means of production. We get inflation or a need for tax increases. It does nothing but delay payment. Now we can't even make the monthly payments on our federal credit card. Debt is spiraling.
What you and other liberals miss is that you can't have everything that you want. You can't do inefficient things, like a Green New Deal, pay people not to work, and then expect that someone isn't going to get hurt.
The problem I have with Democrats is that they are not practical. They see the pie staying the same size while they cut from the private sector and grow the public sector. It doesn't work that way. The pie gets smaller. The private sector must grow to marginally increase the public sector (i.e., for the pie to get larger). That does not happen with tax increases, energy price increases, and more regulatory red tape.. You can expect the reverse to happen. You recreate the 1970s and then drive the need for what happened in the 1980s. One way to reverse this, and even GROW public spending, is to have a real productivity increase by invention and innovation. That happens by encouraging METS instead of nonsense degrees. It happens by making energy CHEAPER. It doesn't happen by making energy more expensive. See the 1970s.
The country is in deep trouble right now because we were out of balance for way too long. On top of that, we have a whole generation of unhealthy, poorly educated young people, who also have a poor work ethic. Everything Democrats stand for has exacerbated this problem. Inviting unskilled migrants doesn't help. That is what it is ... another Dem plot to buy votes once those people are promised citizenship.
For starters the Department of Education should be dissolved. Giving control of education back to parents through vouchers would end the public school system debacle. It would end unions where there should be no unions. It would give autonomy back to communities. Second, dramatic decreases must occur in our military presence around the world. Our military should be about protecting Americans, starting at our own border. Weapons are high tech now. We don't need an expensive WW2 model. We don't need much more than an effective Border Patrol and Coast Guard.
It's now going to get ugly. For decades we offshored manufacturing so that we could build big, spread out houses and fight unnecessary wars. Now the maintenance of that design is becoming unsustainable. The trend started with suburbanization right after WW2. We built out instead of up. That would have been OK had we a balanced budget amendment, which would have reduced the tendency for sprawl. Instead we became really dependent on a continued competitive advantage against a wrecked post-WW2 world. That was of course temporary. By the 70s wealth was increasing but real wages began to flatten. It's been that way ever since. It will get worse as de-globalization forces us to manufacture again. It will be a repeat of the 1930s, except with inflation, given that there is no longer a gold standard. With so much of the world unable to protect itself from the larger powers (see China), I see a very real risk of WW3. It just might start very close to where it all began with WW1.
You say that you are a Reagan Republican. Reagan had the right idea in cutting taxes to get us out of the deep recession created by the inflation of the 1970s. He had the wrong idea, actually Congress had the wrong idea, in thinking that we could start a process of deficit spending. At the time I said this to one of my colleagues when he expressed the need for economic growth. I said: "We borrowed economic growth." All we really did was shift priorities to something unsustainable -- the Military Industrial Complex. We also did not do enough to curb social security, not a big enough increase in the retirement age. Instead we grew the program and handed out more "disability" to people that might not be able to do what they wanted to do, but were still able to work in some capacity. I am well aware of such cases. We can't afford that.
During the 1980s people working on our energy problem were suddenly laid off and went into the making of weapons. That was when recession created an oil price collapse. The USSR began to fold but we never made a serious effort to cut our war machine mentality. A lot of the problem has roots with what happened right after WW2 and how we dealt with the persecution of the Jews. We sanctioned a Jewish state right in the middle of the Arab world. That was a bad idea that led to US hate and more wars during the 21st Century, beginning with 911.
Most Americans do not understand all of the mistakes that were made since the beginning of WW1, even with the creation of our income tax system. This gigantic snowball of a mess got started with an assassination, and in giving too much control to bankers. You should read the book "All the Presidents Bankers, written by a liberal." (I'll call those bankers the oligarchs of the time.).
Sound familiar? See any parallels with the modern day?
History repeats for those who ignore history. Most in our country don't understand anything about history, nor civics. The current people in power, especially those controlling Education, are fostering ignorance. They are more interested in a destructive form of self-preservation, just like our behemoth of a government.
