In Jim Cook's Archive

UNSUSTAINABLE

Recently we’ve been running TV commercials on Fox and CNBC that start out with the words, “America is in terrible trouble.”  Do we really believe that or are we just trying to sell more silver and gold?  I can assure you that we believe it with all our hearts.  We have a different perspective than all the experts we hear warning about a crisis in entitlement spending over the next ten years.  We disagree with politicians or economists who predict our budget deficits will be unmanageable by 2025.  It’s coming to a head much sooner than that.  We further disagree that anything can be done about it.

We are certain that everybody is underestimating the growth rate of government spending.  In other words our spending has started to grow exponentially.  It’s out of control and it’s beyond our ability to stop it.  However, it will be stopped in a way that’s also out of our control.  The markets will stop it either by destroying the value of the dollar or through hyperinflation both of which end up in national bankruptcy.  What follows a financial collapse are riots, lawlessness, unemployment and poverty.

Upcoming budget deficits will be worse than anybody suggests or predicts.  In healthcare new medical devices and procedures are super costly.  It’s nothing for a patient to run up a million dollar hospital bill.  The government spends almost one trillion a year on healthcare costs that are running away.  At the same time the government is adding people for free healthcare as fast as they can make the data entry.  This is a financial backbreaker.

Social Security is exploding with new retirees.  This government retirement plan has also become a money tree for millions of people who claim a disability.  More people began to get permanent disability payments last month than got jobs.  They also get free healthcare for the rest of their lives and by definition they have more medical requirements.  Social Security disability payments are running away.

I don’t have to tell you about the growth of food stamps, public housing and unemployment benefits.  Over 2,000 Federal programs that provide income supports are also exploding to the tune of a quarter trillion a year.  Veteran’s benefits are now over $100 billion.  Today’s veterans sign up for benefits at a rate almost five times that of the “greatest generation.”  Along with these disability payments comes a lifetime of free healthcare.

The government gives people the entire $2.2 trillion they take in from tax revenues.  Everything else from military spending to farm subsidies, gasohol, education and the government agencies, are paid for with $1.5 trillion we borrow or with money created out of thin air.

The point is that it’s much worse than anybody’s saying it is.  We’ve borrowed the savings of the world to pay for it.  We owe $16 trillion but we are still spending at an exorbitant level that’s getting worse by the minute.  We are eating the seed corn and dissipating the capital left us by prior generations.  Thanks to our government we have become a wasteful, profligate nation rife with dependency and dissolution, busily squandering our heritage.  It’s much worse than anybody believes and the final outcome will be much worse than anybody believes.

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