From: M23231@mwvm.mitre.org
Subject: Re: What happens when USA goes bust?
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, McLean VA 22102
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 20:34:06 GMT

In article <1992Sep29.155131.29643@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>
cthorne@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Charles E Thorne) writes:
 
>
>In article <BvB78F.Lo0@apollo.hp.com> nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson) writes:
>>In article <1992Sep27.051145.1277@oracle.us.oracle.com> kwee@oracle.uucp (Karl Wee) writes:
>>>When the confidence of investors in the goodwill of the US government breaks,
>>>it will be precipitous.  Current statistical and economic models will no
>>>longer be useful since they are based on certain assumptions which will no
>>>longer hold, like the power of government and certain social and economic
>>>fabrics which will be broken when people get into panic mode.
>
>>   There are many ways things can go wrong.  This is one of them but
>>   a 1930's style depression is another, a totalitarian regime is yet
>>   another.
>
>>   One scenario I have seen few people mention is high, but not hyper,
>>   inflation.  Plenty of nations have survived a decade or so of inflation
>>   in the 7-11% range.   They pay off their national debts in cheaper
>>   currency,
>
>One of the problems with this is that we've being doing this for more than
>25 years (since Johnson thought we could pay for guns and butter and not
>raise taxes).  Our debt has now become astronomical, even though we've gone
>through several long Republican administrations which should have known
>better.
>
>Although debt in itself is not bad, the bad part of the last 25 years is that
>government has tried lots of programs (tried, meaning they didn't know if they
>would work) most of which didn't improve the situation.  Unfortunately, we're
>still paying for these attempts at solving problems.
>
*********
It seems to me that the "trying" that has gone on has been dominated by "adviso
rs" who have had a private agenda of stripping assets from the middle class and
 funneling them to themselves. At least that has been the inevitable result of
all the tampering that has gone on. I was once (3 years ago) an upper middle cl
ass draft horse, but I can no longer pay taxes at the rate I did due to irrever
sible downward mobility.
 
The trouble with solutions which call for pain on the part of the middle class
is that I don't think we have that much of a middle class any more, and those
who haven't fallen probably will if more burden is shifted to them.
*********
>As an example in Health Care, we have at least 30 or 40 million uninsured or
>underinsured people.  There is a resistance to suggest that the government
>spend our money to solve this problem--not because we shouldn't solve the
>problem, but that the cost would be astronomical.  At the present time, the
>Federal government spends about 4 or 5 times what most corporations spend on
>health care.  Increasing this would probably cost Several hundred billion
>dollars--and would probably still not cover more than half of the uncovered
>people.  It's time for change--and change will be painful.
>
************
There you go again! Painful for whom? I damn sure hope it's those who have been
 stripping assets these past 12 years. We ought to *target* anyone or any corpo
ration that has contributed obscene amounts to soft money funds, tax the hell o
f them retroactively as well as in the future, and strip assets from all those
bandits of S&L infamy, LBO infamy, banking infamy, insurance infamy, health car
e infamy, etc, etc. I'll bet we'd get enough in the first year to make a large
dent in the debt. But--if the proffered solution is to let the crooks keep thei
r loot and ask all to pay a fair share as if rape had not occurred, I think
there could be *real* trouble.