[pup55]

Where to start?

Here are the problems, in no particular order:

1. Steady decline in real income for the bottom 2/3 of the economy since 1971, the year we left the gold standard and hit PO in the lower 48.

2. An entrenched, permanently subsidized underclass, that survives generation after generation on government aid, and has enough votes to keep it going for generation after generation.

3. A workforce that is trained using 1960's technology for assembly line jobs of the 1950's, and still expect world class wages. Entrenched unions that have no incentive to work with management to make money and solve problems, hostile management that would rather shut the doors and move to china instead of invest in the US.

4. An increasingly big share of the economy still being pumped overseas by our insistence on sticking with oil and the automobile, which derives from basing half of our economy on manufacturing, pouring concrete, and selling one another hamburgers through the drive through.

5. The development of a huge, well financed, underground drug distribution network, untaxed, that may be among the largest industries in the country. It suffices to keep the population in (2) under control, but is causing a narco-state to form along our southern border. It fills up our prisons with some of our most innovative citizens, and also some of our more harmless, it is a drain on our already outnumbered police resources, and is logically stupid since we have a similar, legal business, alcohol production which went through exactly the same phase when it was outlawed in the 1920's until we wised up and legalized it.

6. An overweight, decadent generation of young men, 90% of which are unfit for military service to defend the country, whose sole mission in life is to try to get to the highest level in the most popular video game, or else become a studio guitarist or rapper. An increasingly stupid population of whiners raised by their mothers, and completely ill-equipped to enter the workforce in any capacity because they cannot take criticism, have no mental toughness, and do the minimum it takes to skate by. There are plenty of female equivalents, teen moms and others, similarly ill-equipped.

7. An overweight, helpless generation of middle aged men, emasculated because the so called career path and 10 percent annual raises that they counted on during the 70's and 80's stopped happening, and they could not adapt because they built their careers on their ability to agree with the boss, rather than make intelligent business decisions. Since they do not know how to cope, they are obese, have erectile dysfunction, prostate issues, and depression.

8. A corporate governance system that has resulted in 80 to 90% of some of our largest corporations to be owned or controlled by a handful of idiotic mutual fund managers who know nothing about the business, care zero for the employees or the long term benefit of the companies, or anything else, except for maximizing the results of the next quarter. This has caused the upper levels of management of our major corporations to be populated by their cronies, none of whom have ever turned a wrench, operated a forklift, or have the slightest clue. As a result, they're risk adverse, and would rather buy back their own stock rather than invest in the expansion and modernization of their own business.

9. A political system that relies on essentially legalized bribery, fueled by campaign contributions and TV advertising and sound bytes, whose main goal is the perpetual re-election of the entrenched candidates who keep the game going, while putting the best interest of the country on the back burner.

10. A huge, bloated military establishment, the mammary gland of a lot of the communities in the country, set up to stop Stalin from conquering Western Europe, but unable to defend 2 of our 3 tallest buildings from a 6-10 left handed rug trader. Multi-billion dollar aircraft carriers that are essentially sitting ducks in the current modern era, but which we continue to fund because the ex-frat boys need a place to do photo-ops, and a lot of their constituents need the jobs. This also idiotically makes us willing to start unwinnable wars with 11000 mile supply lines to attempt to secure our 11000 mile oil supply lines.

11. A financial system which, since 2008, has been built on a lie, which is that the nation's supply of "real estate" i.e. empty buildings, has some kind of value in the marketplace. No bank in the country dares to openly state the correct value of its performing real estate loans right now, and the problem is being made worse daily as the idiotic over extended homeowners increasingly figure out that the game is up, and either move out, or stop paying their mortgages.

12. A population of indebted, overworked, undertalented, burned out workers, increasingly working for foreign bosses, who have seen their net worth plummet, are hopelessly behind on their credit cards, have no savings, not to mention no retirement savings, and 60 percent of which, according to a recent survey, would be delighted to change jobs if they could because their bosses are idiots.

13. An asinine health care system that spends more than 50% of its annual cost on the last month of Grandma's life, while at the same time the infant mortality rate in places like our nation's capital is worse than in the third world. The system cannot be changed because of the entrenched interest of the medical/drug/insurance establishment, which spends billions on the legalized bribery of elected officials, and other efforts. Meanwhile, the citizens of Japan and Germany, two nations which, 50 years ago were considered to be populated by savages, consider it a basic human right to receive health care.

What have I missed?

Oh, yeah:

14. An ill-conceived Federal Reserve system, set up to preserve the status quo, which for two decades stopped the healthy pruning of the herd by an occasional recession which became politically unpalatable, and print essentially an unlimited amount of money to perpetuate the system, rather than make it stronger by allowing the economic cycle to continue.

[pup55]

Oh, I almost forgot:

15. A completely FUBAR tax system that is idiotically overcomplicated, designed to modify behavior rather than raise money for the government, and is yet another excuse for more lobbying, more legalized bribery for elected officials, and more entrenchment. Example: The leading official in this system, Timpthy Geithner, narrowly missed being erejected because he himself was unable to correctly file his income tax return one year and had to make an adjustment.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('beamofthewave', 'T')hat Georgia program he talked about is where you work for free for a business in the hopes they will hire you . Can anyone say "slavery?" so of course the Republicans love it.

[MD]

pup that is an outstanding rant!

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pup55', '3'). A workforce that is trained using 1960's technology for assembly line jobs of the 1950's, and still expect world class wages. Entrenched unions that have no incentive to work with management to make money and solve problems, hostile management that would rather shut the doors and move to china instead of invest in the US.

[AdTheNad]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('beamofthewave', 'T')hat Georgia program he talked about is where you work for free for a business in the hopes they will hire you . Can anyone say "slavery?" so of course the Republicans love it. All they want to do is cut medicare without ticking off too many Americans. He could fix the problem totally by just having a debt jubilee and allowing all Americans to utilize the VA and building enough VA hospitals to take care of all of us. Why not claw back that Wall street money, that 12 trillion?

[gollum]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('beamofthewave', 'T')hat Georgia program he talked about is where you work for free for a business in the hopes they will hire you . Can anyone say "slavery?" so of course the Republicans love it. All they want to do is cut medicare without ticking off too many Americans. He could fix the problem totally by just having a debt jubilee and allowing all Americans to utilize the VA and building enough VA hospitals to take care of all of us. Why not claw back that Wall street money, that 12 trillion?

[careinke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MD', 'p')up that is an outstanding rant!

[PrestonSturges]

Now we move onto the next stage, The Great Dismantling, where we return to worst part of the 19th century. Actually it may be worse than that since we will not have teachers or mail service.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', 'N')ow we move onto the next stage, The Great Dismantling, where we return to worst part of the 19th century. Actually it may be worse than that since we will not have teachers or mail service.

[PrestonSturges]

Did someone just fart? Oh it was Plant....

[peeker01]

Preston - we will have mail service, but it will be efficient and appropriate to demand.
Teachers aren't going away either, but there seems to be a trend toward accountability
and performance, two measures which seem not to interest the NEA.

[Cog]

The last thing Preston would want is accountability for the mooch class.

[gollum]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'T')he last thing Preston would want is accountability for the mooch class.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', 'D')id someone just fart?

[pup55]

Well, my fellow Americans, here is my plan. we're going to have to suspend the constitution briefly, amend it a couple of times. are you with me? I'll put it back in place once we set ourselves in the right direction.

1. It is clear that the political system is a mess, so we will institute the following Electoral reform: Term limits for the US House and Senate, and all state legislatures and governorships and any other office sufficiently well paying that people might be tempted to stay in it for life. A constitutional amendment that says that only "people" have the right to free speech i.e. outlawing of corporate financing of elections. Re-classify the legal defininition of 'bribery" to include a campaign contribution of more than $100 per election per person. Make it illegal for any elected official to become a member of a registered lobbyist organization after he or she is out of office i.e. no revolving door. I may also include a restriction on the amount of time before an election that someone can advertise in the mass media, so we do not have basically an 18-month multibillion dollar election campaign every four years.

I'm also thinking about some restrictions on the so-called "right to vote".. It is clear that the founding fathers could not foresee a nation full of people who were quite so stupid. i.e. if we can keep felons from voting, why can we cannot keep people on public assistance from voting themselves benefits out of the treasury?. Possibly an IQ test or some other means?, quite possibly restricting voters to people who pay property tax, i.e. landowners. I can be convinced on all of these, while I am fixing the rest of the system. I will allow the forum dwellers, being my inner brain trust, to argue the merits of each of these arguments.

2. The current financial catastrophe that we are facing: The US is committed to repaying its debts, its currency is the envy of the world (just ask the Europeans at the moment, and the Chinese have such respect for it that they have pegged theirs to it. Still, the numbers do not lie, if the projections and contingent liabilities are correct, we are going to have a problem. Since a lot of this problem is the unfunded social security system, and is 100% controllable, that will have to go. We're sorry, baby boomers and everybody after that, FDR could not do math, he could not foresee that your generation quit having 4 kids per family, thus causing not enough workers or consumers to be able to foot the bill for your retirement.

So, henceforth, we're going to allow you to get back the amount of money you paid into the system, and extend this upward into the system to others that are already collecting social security, and allow the people downward in the system to opt out or keep contributing, knowing like you will that you will only get out as much as you put in, plus a little interest.

Medicaid: We're not going to be able to continue this system in its current form either. Its' crazy to have government-provided medical care for our least productive citizens, too old to work, and at the same time, not have government provided medical care for our most productive citizens, our young people. Plus, there is plenty of other idiocy going on in the system.

The first step: The American Medical Association, and various other groups have for years restricted the supply of doctors, thus artificially reducing their number below market levels, thus driving up the cost of their services. So, we are going to create a new type of health care person, similar to a physician assistant or equivalent, and retrain the brightest of our current unemployed people to do such jobs. How in the hell does it take 12 years of medical school to prescribe "tylenol and rest"...We will loosen up the restrictions to allow these people, who you can call "barefoot doctors" if you want, to do a lot of the low level stuff that is now ending up in the ER.

For those talented people that wish to go on to do more complicated procedures, we will offer the protection of a limit on liability lawsuits. This ought to keep the lawyers off of your backs, so you can do what you do. Note: We will set up a review board in every state to throw the book at you if you are found negligent, so by all means, keep your skills sharp.

Now, the real problem, which is grandma: I have nothing but respect for the older generation who built the country, fought WWII and made it through the depression, and I cannot just pull the rug out from under you, especially when your kids are so bad off, so I will give you a medical spending limit of a given amount after age 75, since the average cancer treatment is $500,000, I am thinking it's going to be $100,000. If your family wants to chip in and keep you around a little longer, they can, but basically it is up to you and them to make the decision how you exit the big stage. By the way, we will allow physician assisted pallative care (i.e. pulling the plug) and counseling to help you make these decisions.

So we're reducing overall system costs substantially, by treatment of the low end stuff, we're reducing the end-of-life stuff, and if you want to live a long time after that, I suggest you keep in shape now, because it'll become a family matter.

If we're really lucky, we might be able to find enough money later on to subsidize the catastrohpic health care insurance for those of our productive citizens who have something serious wrong with them, i,e, a 40 year old with breast cancer, and not worry about breaking the family's back financially, but for the time being, you're going to have to pay for some of this yourself.

So that takes care of the social security and medicaid liabiltity aspects of the debt, now let's work on the: non-entitlement portion.

Now, the 14T that is considered the current national debt I am thinking there are two steps on this (1) quit making it bigger (2) pay down the remainder.

I will address the budget later. But, it's clear that the only way we can pay this mess down is by facing up to it, and getting it out of the people who borrowed it in the first place. That's you and me. We are not going to like it, but it's the only way. We won't strangle the economy because of some of the other fixes we are going to put in place.

3. Financial Reform: Suze Orman should probably be arrested at this point for some of the stuff she is saying right now, re: walking away from your mortgage, but one thing that she says that I agree with is that the truth attracts money, and so what we are going to do is start telling the truth about the health of our banking system, starting with the mark-to market, too big to fail, and everything else. If a bank no longer has the sufficient assets to comply with the regulations on reserve requirements, it is going to be shut down. Now, I know that means some of you are going to have some savings tied up in some of these banks that are supposed to be federally insured by the FDIC, and the FDIC is vulnerable, lord knows, so we're going to do the following: We're declaring a 90-day phase out period for the FDIC. Those of you lucky enough to have deposits of over 100,000 in an FDIC bank have 90 days to get it out of there, or leave it in. It is up to your bank to convince you between now and then that they have the assets to keep operating, and if they close down, the officers and directors of the bank are going to be personally liable for leaving you holding the bag if they lie. So, banks, you'd better be doing some tap dancing between now and then because if you don't tell your depositors the truth, it is quite likely they are going to come at you with pitchforks and torches the following morning.

Secondly, we're going to re-fix the US dollar to be worth a known amount of a known metal, and I believe we are very close to parity on copper: The value of one US cent will be the value of one cent's weight of copper. There is enough copper in the world, I think, so that the current supply of US dollars in the marketplace can be backed up by a metal, my assistants here on the forum can do the calculation right now and tell me if I am off. But, what that will do is keep the damn Federal Reserve and others from printing money without a known underlying value. It will make our job of retiring the debt more difficult, because we cannot count on inflating our way out of it but we will be fine, trust me.

I suspect after that the flight toward the dollar, already the world's premier currency will be so great that we will once again be the economic engine of the world, and life will be good.

4. Energy Reform: Do you not agree that it is a catastrophe that we are sending 5% of our GDP overseas in the form of payments for our energy supply? This is no longer going to fly. We're going to determine the "user fee" that we are now paying in the form of greater military expenses used to protect our oil supply, divide that by the amount of imported energy products we use (oil and finished products and natural gas) and impose a tax of that amount. Once the price stabilizes, in somewhere around the $8.50 per gallon range, and the consumption of energy decreases to whatever level, we will ratchet this up every year until we really are energy self-sufficient.

We'll use the proceeds to explore for new internal sources of oil, train an energy workforce, provide a bank with which people can make energy investments, and develop new technologies, and rebuild our power grid to switch over to coal and natural gas, which we have in abundance for the time being. Let us never again forget the root cause of the 9-11 catastrophe, which is that we financed those terrorists with our oil money.

5. The military: We're spending 4% of GDP on our military, those 700 bases worldwide, and such installations as the Great Lakes Naval Station which is 1000 miles from the coast and is only going to defend us against Canada, mainly to defend our oil supply, and idiotically project our so-called power into various parts of the world, so henceforth, we will only spend 1%, which is about what our former enemies Japan and Germany are spending.

We will keep up technologically with the Chinese, in all of the electronic/satellites/death rays and that kind of thing, plus keep just enough nuclear weapons on hand to destroy the world, but we will focus the remainder on developing the toughest army in the world.

Effective immediately, we're going to have mandatory conscription of all 18 year olds, for two years, men and women. If you are old enough to get loaded, you are old enough to be whipped into shape to defend your country. Pacifists may opt out and join VISTA, or some other similar institution instead, but you're spending it away from your mother, away from video games, and by the time you get out you will have a shared sense of pride and ownership in the country, you'll be in shape, and you'll know how to get up in the morning and go to work, because we will populate it by the most caring and disciplined drill sergeants we can find now on unemployment, who you will obey or you will find you will have a lot of problems when you get out, if you survive.

If you do survive, by the way, you will get free tuition to college, or equivalent training in some useful activity, if, and it's a big if, you pass the entrance requirements.

You'll be taught a communications protocol so that if the Chinese or Germans or Mexicans or anyone else is stupid enough to try to attack us, we'll be able to get together a defense, and if you are in the rest of the world, one of our many allies, and historical other nations that we overran at one time in our history like Germany and Japan where we still maintain huge bases, we will see you in hell, because like the founding fathers who patched up an army in 1775 that was able to defeat the most powerful army in the world, we will do so again, but we are no longer going to be responsible for protecting you from anybody.

I will continue later.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', 'D')id someone just fart? Oh it was Plant....

[Ibon]

Very refreshing Pup. One can debate the details but not the need of a benevolent dictator to push this through.

If each weakness you posted on your previous post was a biopsy the microscope would reveal our democracy has terminal cancer.

I heard on NPR the other day a caller stating the following

"Where is the public outrage at the fallen level of education in this country"

If George Carlin was still alive he would have taken this statement and had a field day.

Of course there is no public outrage over the fallen level of education in the usa because it requires a well educated citizenry to generate public outrage.

A deep cognitive dissonance here.

[AgentR11]

Thing is, the educated recognize the system for what it has become, and in general, have decided they'd rather not be destroyed by it; so either play along, participate, or remain very, very quiet.

[gollum]

Well thought out post Pup.