If 50% of the people were dependent on the government, this would be a third world country with high crime rates. Who would pay to take care of all of the poor, unless the working people want to pay 80% of their income for taxes?
The budgets of the entire Public Sector are about 45-50% of GNP! That does not include the massive unfunded liabilities that have been promised. That level of taxation is considered by some to be the breaking point and we seem to be broken...
What does it matter when you can print money with no accountability? The entire system needs to be burned down to the ground. There are crook with guns and ones with suits. What's a crook? The guy that robs that liquor store or Golden Slacks that becomes a bank holding company and borrows from Helicopter Ben at 0% and can make an instant 3-4% How can you not win.
I can guess what the "American Dream: is not. Buddy of mine in Detroit, made about $35 an hour, plant closed. Re hired @ $15 an hour. He had to take the job for the health benefits. Point being, we are all going to working for chump change and handing it over to health care insurance in retirement.
I predicted years ago that if more people were like me the world would go into a Never Ending Recession. More and more people are realizing that more things don't make you more happier. That means we are buying less. Not because of lack of money, but simply lack of desire. We had a consumer driven economy. And to this day they are still saying, "If people just had more money they would consume and everything would be just like the good old days." There is something called an "investing economy" but it's hard for me to imagine what that might be like.
We "won" the Cold War, and more than a billion Chindians have been released onto the global labor market. Those Chindians want all the stuff that Americans have had for the last 60 years... they want refrigerators, and even an Avanti dorm room fridge is a luxury while Americans have been taught by HGTV that they should have a SubZero fridge with a Viking range and imported granite countertops... Basically, if you make your living by selling labor, then, in most cases (unless you have particularly unique skills), your pay and your standard of living are going down, down, down until to you come to parity with the dorm cube fridge craving Chindians. There is still some time left, but the door is closing... if you make your living from selling labor, try whatever you can to shift your income source to make your living from capital. Unfortunately, most people are not prepared to make the leap from selling labor to becoming an owner... these folks need to get used to small dorm fridges that only cool down to 55-degrees.
" look at the at yoyo..... thats the way to do it ...... money for nothin" and the chixs for free " the boyz were right, and it is finally crystalizing. cheers, s
Due in no small part to "outsourcing" and "globalization". 300-500 million low-cost-labor Chindians were brought into the world work force... displacing many middle-class jobs in America and Europe. That genie can't be put back into the bottle.
Why not legalize drugs ? At least when most of the people are high they will be happy. Prohibition of alchohol didn't work in the 1920s and the same for drugs. People won't be told what to do by the Govt. Those stupid enough to get hooked are probably expendable