The Results of Greed
How does a nation arrive at a point of financial breakdown? Does arrogant entitlement and over-extension beyond one’s means resonate with today’s news headlines? On a national level, we are experiencing the severity of living on international credit – coming to fruition.
For the past 20 years, our Congress encouraged massive out-sourcing, in-sourcing, and off-shoring of American jobs. This has caused us to lose our manufacturing base and facilities. Thus, today, we tolerate a $700 billion (and growing) annual trade deficit. We pay China, India, and other countries to manufacture our goods at lower prices, while our middle class languishes with millions of job losses – and cannot continue buying those goods.
Are you ready for the Breakdown?
James Howard Kunstler, the author of The Long Emergency, said, “Americans failed to recognize the essential fraudulence of the idea that this destruction was ‘creative’ and would lead to a higher good, that the end justified the means, even as they watched their towns die around them. Wal-Mart and its imitators used their wealth and muscle to set up ‘superstores’ on the cheap land outside small towns and put every other merchant out of business, often destroying most of the town’s middle class. They also destroyed the local capacity to produce goods. The public enjoyed this bonanza of ‘super cheap’ manufactured goods without reckoning any of the collateral costs, which were astronomical.”
While Congress dismantled our manufacturing and construction base, and millions of necessary jobs, Congress exacerbated our vulnerability by borrowing (selling), unknown to average citizens, $1.3 trillion in Treasury Bills from (to) China to prop up our moribund economy. On a national level, the average credit card runs a $9,240.00 balance (debt) according to NBC’s Brian Williams. Total consumer debt exceeds $2 trillion. National debt tops $14 trillion. Ahh, the abundance of unsubstantiated bailouts flows from a Monopoly Board checkbook!
The day approaches, likely soon, supported by the Hubbert Curve analysis – when galloping population expansion collides with declining oil extraction.
Few Americans realize that when you shop at such stores as Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, Kohl’s, Home Depot and Target, you slit your neighbor’s and your own financial throat.
Similarly, we falsified home values with escalated appraisals cradled in vacuous, lofty ideals. We allowed millions of poor borrowers without down payments or viable financial histories to purchase homes clearly outside their range. Surprise! The real estate bubble burst! Millions of foreclosures strangled American citizens and poor migrants who lost jobs while they watched interest rates rise beyond their means.
Can you guess the next bubble to burst? What can we see it exploding in our faces? What crisis long denied by our presidents and Congress, zeroes in on our civilization like a stealth missile? Immigration-driven hyper-population growth extends its ubiquitous tentacles into every aspect of American society. Our myopic Congress proposes doubling legal immigration to 2.4 million annually and giving amnesty for 20 million plus illegal migrants! Watch for that political torpedo coming soon to a town near you.
Does anyone see the correlation with our financial plight? Where is the common sense of importing more bodies when our own workers stand on unemployment lines? Why do we entertain inviting millions more immigrants into our country when our middle class stands in welfare lines, visits soup kitchens, floods into food banks, and loses homes?
Now is the time for sensible decision-making – as other countries must decide – regarding how many immigrants we can sustain before exploding into chaos. We accept more immigrants annually than all other countries combined. Our natural resources suffer over-extension today. California’s accelerating water shortages, arable land loss plus overwhelming debt strangle its sustainability. California depicts and portends America’s future. From the look of things recently, we’re already there!