Once I had a sense of humor. Used to be able to tell good humorous stories and all. Cracks and oneliners a specialty. Then they went and had an election. And the color left the world. My sense of humor disappeared. Depression sets in. Work seems meaningless.
Fiscal policy is a mess now. Huge debts in Washington. Do you remember when Democrats were the spenders and thriftless? Now we have Republicans that spend and spend. This new Bushian breed like to give tax breaks to their rich base. Then they spend on getting the army all shot up. Remarkably they are also including a new costly and crappy drug benefit for seniors as well. More money. Poor fiscal policy.
Social Security proposals are straight out of the loony bin. Currently, your social security payments go in to pay for the benefits of current retirees. You aren't paying in now so that your own future self can receive the same money plus interest later. The proposal is to take that money you pay in to SS and let you keep it. Ok. Then who pays for the current benefits. Well, the government will pick up the tab. Ok. That means more debt or more taxes somewhere else. But Bush won't countenance more taxes. So that means more debt. In the meantime, if you put your money into government bills, the government doesn't save anything. The plan is that you put it into the stock market. That's good for wall street I suppose; they'll get new income which they can spend on all those expensive drugs not coming out of the pharmaceutical industry these days. But then you're supposed to make a fortune on your wall street investments. You wanna bet on that? Sure, a few people will do well, but the average person isn't going to make even the market average; at a minimum they'll put it into a market duplicating account (ie S&P500) and have to pay a percent to the wall street companies. Many will gamble and lose. Sell low and buy high. Then the government is claiming they can cut benefits for regular SS because we all have these great individual retirement accounts. Sure. So you gamble on the stock market, the government cuts your benefits. You have a wash, the government makes money. Right. I always wanted the government investing in the stock market. With borrowed money no less.
Our dollar is dropping now. As the dollar drops, our money goes less far. Its a form of giving all Americans a pay decrease. We can't travel to Europe so easily. We can't buy goods from overseas. By dropping the dollar we are making oil cheaper for the rest of the world, except ourselves and the Chinese, since their currency is tied specifically to the dollar. Reports say they will be anti-devaluing (What is the opposite of devaluing?) their currency relative to the dollar in the new year. When that happens, no more cheap MacDonald's toys.
The large debts in Washington will cause increased interest rates, as those of us with homes (see the previous page!) will be fighting with Washington for loans. But as we devalue our currency, the people financing our debt by buying our dollars may find they don't appreciate holding our dollars. If they start selling them, then our currency could collapse, making us very poor. Additional social security debt will exacerbate this situation. The world sees us spending money on blowing up Iraq, taking out loans which somehow seem to end up in the hands of wall street, rich fogies and the pharmaceutical industry rather than being invested in furthering American productivity. Who in their right mind will think that the US is a good investment?
Of course, the tourist trade will kick in rather nicely, so maybe we can all become international hoteliers and maitre'ds. With American's knowledge of foreign languages, culture and geography I'm sure we will be an endlessly fascinating destination for international travelers.
-- DCJ