Defense is the only government function I don’t resent paying for. With that said, the amount of waste is obscene. I worked for both SSA and CMS as a contractor for the last 15 or so years of my career. The amount of fraud and waste is billions on top of billions. Disability turned into unemployment insurance. There are administrative law judges who have never denied a single disability claim in their careers. Not one.. And they go on unmolested without any intervention. Everyone knows but no one changes it. How about the IRS just running a report to see how many dozen people claim Earned Income credits from a single address with imaginary children. Nope. Too busy getting the checks out the door
One can only hope that reality dawns on the electorate, that is probably not on.
My forlorn hope is that we come home from the world and pursue a neutralist foreign policy.
Closing those worthless foreign bases and scrapping useless aircraft carriers would be a start at saving money. I might get a few more month's of SS checks?
Yes, something has to be done about Social Security and Medicare, but "defense" spending is the one that really sticks in my craw. The U.S. military is beyond overextended: Ukraine, Israel, endless Mideast wars (for Israel), troops in Japan and South Korea, bases in 180 different countries encircling the globe. This is lunacy!
Social Security is a true Ponzi scheme, however well intentioned it may have been. As someone who has paid into it for almost 40 years, I'd like to see some returns when I retire but I know the truth that not only are current payments mere transfers, surpluses have been systematically raided by Congress for decades. If anything, the picture is more dire.
Pathetic leaders who.have no real stewardship. With the latest revelations on GOVERNMENT TYRANNY We as a people.need to march and throw the bums out. Secondly jail everyone of.them and make examples out of traitors
Please do not lump my social security money in with general spending. I paid in each month for 40 years and they are simply RETURNING MY MONEY to me. There are adjustments they could make going forward, such as removing the cap on payments in. They already adjusted the retirement age. Return of my money is an actual entitlement, unlike the other so-called 'entitlements' which are really generous gifts from a wealthy nation to those in need.
Current retirees are getting paid more than they ever put in. Future retirees, like me, will get less than they paid in. It’s generational theft. “Your” money has already been spent. The very people who talk about their SS are often the same people against student loan forgiveness. SS transfer payments and student loan forgiveness are the same thing. Let’s nix both.
If the WEF has its way and the great reset occurs, none of this will matter. The deficit will never reverse or be paid off and mandatory spending will continue to increase.
Lately, I've changed from dreading some kind of societal collapse to actively rooting for it. Our elections are a joke, and even if the right people somehow do get elected they have little power to fix the real problems. I don't see how we get out of this without blowing up the whole system.
I do hereby declare you to be a "collapsitarian." I agree that little will change until change is forced on us by a catastrophe. Sadly, though, in times of crisis, scared citizens tend to encourage even more authoritarianism, so even that scenario isn't one that gives me hope.
Now that rates are rising the interest payments will be the largest line item soon enough. By 2025 or 2026, the United States may hit a milestone; Federal interest payments could exceed the country’s entire defense budget.
Forget paying back the money, that will never happen, and as a matter of fact in our modern era it never has. They roll the debt to new debt.
Furthermore, Congress has no intention of ever paying off the national debt. They simply kick the debt can to the next Congress and generation. We'll, that can is now a debt bomb.
There is, and you said it. Stable money. That will require a monetary system fixed in valuation. It won't happen until after the collapse of the current monetary system of freely floating fiat currencies. Maybe the BRICS+ countries can make some compromises towards stability; the Federal Reserve clearly can't.
Excellent point about interest expense, Phil. From the same book of charts that inspired my article, here's one that drills in on interest rate scenarios:
Defense is the only government function I don’t resent paying for. With that said, the amount of waste is obscene. I worked for both SSA and CMS as a contractor for the last 15 or so years of my career. The amount of fraud and waste is billions on top of billions. Disability turned into unemployment insurance. There are administrative law judges who have never denied a single disability claim in their careers. Not one.. And they go on unmolested without any intervention. Everyone knows but no one changes it. How about the IRS just running a report to see how many dozen people claim Earned Income credits from a single address with imaginary children. Nope. Too busy getting the checks out the door
One can only hope that reality dawns on the electorate, that is probably not on.
My forlorn hope is that we come home from the world and pursue a neutralist foreign policy.
Closing those worthless foreign bases and scrapping useless aircraft carriers would be a start at saving money. I might get a few more month's of SS checks?
Yes, something has to be done about Social Security and Medicare, but "defense" spending is the one that really sticks in my craw. The U.S. military is beyond overextended: Ukraine, Israel, endless Mideast wars (for Israel), troops in Japan and South Korea, bases in 180 different countries encircling the globe. This is lunacy!
Social Security is a true Ponzi scheme, however well intentioned it may have been. As someone who has paid into it for almost 40 years, I'd like to see some returns when I retire but I know the truth that not only are current payments mere transfers, surpluses have been systematically raided by Congress for decades. If anything, the picture is more dire.
Pathetic leaders who.have no real stewardship. With the latest revelations on GOVERNMENT TYRANNY We as a people.need to march and throw the bums out. Secondly jail everyone of.them and make examples out of traitors
Please do not lump my social security money in with general spending. I paid in each month for 40 years and they are simply RETURNING MY MONEY to me. There are adjustments they could make going forward, such as removing the cap on payments in. They already adjusted the retirement age. Return of my money is an actual entitlement, unlike the other so-called 'entitlements' which are really generous gifts from a wealthy nation to those in need.
YOUR money was spent. The money you are receiving is from current workers.
AND by voting in each federal election , you gave them permission.
The younger generation owes you nothing.
Current retirees are getting paid more than they ever put in. Future retirees, like me, will get less than they paid in. It’s generational theft. “Your” money has already been spent. The very people who talk about their SS are often the same people against student loan forgiveness. SS transfer payments and student loan forgiveness are the same thing. Let’s nix both.
If the WEF has its way and the great reset occurs, none of this will matter. The deficit will never reverse or be paid off and mandatory spending will continue to increase.
Lately, I've changed from dreading some kind of societal collapse to actively rooting for it. Our elections are a joke, and even if the right people somehow do get elected they have little power to fix the real problems. I don't see how we get out of this without blowing up the whole system.
I do hereby declare you to be a "collapsitarian." I agree that little will change until change is forced on us by a catastrophe. Sadly, though, in times of crisis, scared citizens tend to encourage even more authoritarianism, so even that scenario isn't one that gives me hope.
There's always emigration. Many American retirees are choosing that option, not out of ideology but just that the US has become too expensive.
The US is under controlled demolition.
The question is, what can be done about the final phase of the globalist takeover:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/circumventing-the-cbdc
And you did not touch on interest payments.
Now that rates are rising the interest payments will be the largest line item soon enough. By 2025 or 2026, the United States may hit a milestone; Federal interest payments could exceed the country’s entire defense budget.
Forget paying back the money, that will never happen, and as a matter of fact in our modern era it never has. They roll the debt to new debt.
Furthermore, Congress has no intention of ever paying off the national debt. They simply kick the debt can to the next Congress and generation. We'll, that can is now a debt bomb.
When will it explode?
Rome was broke and nothing could fix it when someone did come up with something.
Constantine made Christianity the state religion, stripped the gold from the temples and replaced base metal coins with gold. It worked.
When I was five in the mid-fifties, a good-size pack of m&ms cost a 5 cents. Today, I can't even afford to become pre-diabetic.
Is there is nothing that can stop the decline?
There is, and you said it. Stable money. That will require a monetary system fixed in valuation. It won't happen until after the collapse of the current monetary system of freely floating fiat currencies. Maybe the BRICS+ countries can make some compromises towards stability; the Federal Reserve clearly can't.
Excellent point about interest expense, Phil. From the same book of charts that inspired my article, here's one that drills in on interest rate scenarios:
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/BudgetChartBook-2022-1.pdf#page=69