Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,talk.politics.misc
From: kwee@oracle.uucp (Karl Wee)
Subject: Death of America 3
Reply-To: kwee@oracle.uucp (Karl Wee)
Organization: Oracle Corporation, Belmont, CA
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 08:28:04 GMT
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by an unauthenticated user
              at Oracle Corporation.  The opinions expressed are those
              of the user and not necessarily those of Oracle.

I've collected some serious responses so far.  Here's my answer:

- How bad is it?  How many jobs will be lost according to calculation?

We're going up the exponential curve of compound interest and turning
the corner into the sharp increase portion because every year the govt
has allowed most of the interest, if not more than the interest, to be
rolled over.  It doesn't matter what the exact numbers are.  THE EXPONENTIAL
NATURE OF IT is there.  The later we fix it, the worse we'll suffer the
fix.  (e.g. in 1992 it would require 300B, or half of all tax receipts,
to pay that interest.  The govt will have a deficit of 400B, so the
interest will more than roll over for this year.)

If we can only reduce the deficit to zero, we'll reach a steady state
and be safe for a while.  Even though the yearly interest on the debt
will still be the biggest drag imaginable on real investments.

You can't calculate how many jobs will be lost in the coming depression.
The modern economy is heavily leveraged on FAITH.  When some kind of faith
is severely damaged, people panic and the economy gets into a vicious
cycle from which there's no telling how long it will take to get out.
The debt problem will create a "transcient" behavior which can really
become a steady state -- depression, hyperinflation, or a combination.

And this doesn't even take into account the social security fraud the
politicians committed.  Even if we get past the current crisis, when
baby-boomers retire, the govt's living on the SS surplus
AND calling the surplus regular revenue will come back to haunt it!

- The federal govt is not America.  Time to get rid of the federal
  government all together.

It's a little like quitting a game AFTER you've played and are about
to lose.  The federal govt has already run up so much debt in all our names.
If you owe money, you pay back.

- Americans still have brains and physical infrastructure (comparatively).
  There're no problems physically producing enough goods and services to
  satisfy everybody as before.  Ultimately this is what counts and so
  there can't be any serious problems.

True, but in the modern economy MOTIVATION to do any work
is necessary and depends heavily on faith.  Depressions and
hyperinflations are never caused by physical incapacity to produce.
They are always vicious cycles caused by the collapse of faith in some
way and panicky action.  No one knows how long the depression and
hyperinflation will last.  The idea is not to get into it at all while
we can still maintain a reasonable minimum standard of living while
making sacrifices for the debt and have most people understand and accept
the sacrifices.  If the depression is severe enough we're talking about
problems with putting food on the table.  The idea is not to take that
risk while we can still control the situation if we try.
Xref: sparky talk.politics.theory:5447 talk.politics.misc:64179