These comments are pointless. We've borrowed money from the fed since 1913. If you wanna go to cash system and live like little house on the prarie, be my guest.
Let me pt. out a very simple soln.: Stop spending trillions in that giant welfare program called Defense. Why is there: 50K troops in Germany (down from 70K the other yr.) 10K troops in UK 10K troops in Italy 42K troops in Japan What are these freak show for? Who are they defensing against? Hitler has been dead for 70+ yr., the bombers from pearl harbor are all dead, why is the US govt. burning trillions in these places? Why the giant welfare program?
Reagan and Obama era is really bad. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Revenue_and_Expense_to_GDP_Chart_1993_-_2008.png
These were set up agains the Soviet threat. 20-year anniversary of the Soviet Union collapse later this year your argument still holds. Moreover, the US military are keen to build further bases in former socialist countries like the Czech Republic, where the government is keen to secure an American base despite overwhelming opposition from ordinary people in the country. The base in Germany was a key transit point for airlifting troops to the Middle East... but with the current presence in Iraq it's probubly redundant. The UK base is in heavy for refuelling aircraft on the way between the US and Europe; CIA is one notorious user. If the numbers of military personell at these bases are reduced, any future increase will require approval from respective governments (which in the absence of credible threat will be impossible to secure). So, I guess this is the cost of maintaining truely global military presence.
Actually, if you look at a longer time series, you can see that Reagan was the first president since world war 2 under whom spending was larger than tax revenues in every year of administration. However, that size of the gap between spending and revenue under Obama is nothing short of exceptional.
a no. of economists who successfully predicted that 2008 crisis, have written books that the US$ will collapse. This global military presence will make that happen. When US do something that no other countries do, either the US govt. is really brilliant, or really stupid. Make a wild guess
one has to consider the congress that went the president. imagine what Reagan would have accomplished if he didn't have Tip O'neil and a large democratic majority to fuck things up. the deal was tax cuts and spending cuts but the dems spent like drunken sailors. the economic boom under Reagan increased revenues but that meant the dems spent even more. contrast, Obama Pelosi and Reid were all in it together. Obama got what he wanted. don't even mention Obama in teh same breath with Reagan
Well, the Republican House is about to pass a budgetary framework that, by the end of 2012, will trim roughly $22B in spending off of roughly $300B in spending increases. That's less than 10% of the increase in spending, and obviously therefore nowhere close to being an actual reduction in spending. The TP is dead and buried.
Obama is considerably more honest, for starters. He's an open spender, Reagan was a closet spender. And boy did that man spend...
CIA is another welfare prog. Tell me this: Why is it that no other countries need or requires this world wide spying prog. except USA? How does other adv. countries, such as so many powerful countries in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, etc. go by all these decades? Now they all have some deg. of spying, but nothing remotely close to CIA. More importantly, what does US taxpayers gain from these trillion $$ of spending? Remember, w/ so many people homeless, we have seen a family of 12 living in the back of a van. Meanwhile, trillions is still pour into defense, CIA, NSA, and homeland security. How much of those trillion is really necessary? How does so many hundreds of other advance countries (as in all countries except USA) get by all these decades since WW II?