As USA murders its way around the world, the Chinese are busy building railroads with the emerging economies, and I suspect, financed with the trillions USA owes China. This is how it works: You owe me $20. I want a haircut that costs $20. I get a haircut, and you give the Barber the $20 you owe me. Now I got my haircut, the barber has been paid, and you and I are square.
So now China wants a railroad that ties into their system. USA owes China a couple trillion. So India builds a railroad, and China says "USA owes us, and they will pay you." Now China owns a railroad, and USA owes India. Is this what is happening? I think so, in essence. If so, China could care less if USA ever pays its debts. If it does, ok. If it does not, even better, because India will hate USA.
USA is in economic trouble because we clamor for domination by "the best and the brightest," for example Jon Corzine. Corzine was head of Goldman Sachs, went on to be US Senator and Governor of New Jersey. Top of his class, top performer, then top Obama official. Top income.
There is a phenomena in probability called survivorship bias. We tend to look at a Jon Corzine and say "brilliant" because he has made a lot of money. Now he may have made a lot of money because given his personality, and being at the right place at the right time, he made the bets he did, and they happened to be the rights one. We tend to prefer people who have succeeded, when past performance is not indication of future success.
The world has changed, and Corzine has not. The bets that made him rich once upon a time are bad bets today. But he does what his personality inclines him to do, which today means bankruptcy. (Again, the regulators show up only AFTER 700 million of investor cash has gone missing, like Madoff, yet we pay their salaries. It is not possible to have government effectively provide law enforcement. It must be in private hands.)
We all want things that cannot happen. Corzine made his billions while the damage was being done in the dot.com boom, the banking boom, and the real estate boom. The damage is done during the boom times, and the bust is where it is decided who pays. (You, not them.) While the damage was being done, all macmansions and ninja loans and CDAs, everyone was applauding the facilitators like Corzine and giving him billions. We wanted it to be true we can borrow our way to wealth.
We want it to be true we can murder our way to world domination. Problem is, it is not true. While we pat ourselves on the back and watch snuff movies of foreigners slain, the Chinese are building railroads and universities and hospitals around the world.
USA was once different. When the imperialists cruelly dominated China and on some slight pretext demanded huge compensation from the Chinese government, most Europeans took their money home, USA took its allotment of the Chinese payment and build schools and hospitals in China, in essence gave it back. We used to be admired worldwide.
We have protest movements, sponsored by big business, the Tea Party by the war industries and the Occupy Wall Street by the welfare industries. The Tea Party thinks we can murder our way to national greatness, OWS thinks that big biz controls govt, and so govt needs to regulate big biz, a dizzying internal contradiction. Facts, reality and evidence cannot penetrate their world.
So it is down to us, we who can see what is going on, and how to fix it. We do not need help, we just need our country to stop doing damage. Bring the troops home. End corporate welfare. Cut government 10% per year for 20 years running. Exempt companies below $100 million from rules and regulations, but enforce property rights which will protect the environment.
Here is what a 10% reduction or 20 years looks like, and you can see it cuts heavy early on, when the fat is greatest, and gets ever finer, when prudence is needed. After 20 years of success, we could review the situation for further beneficial cuts to government.
After twenty years of 10% cuts, we still have govt at over 12% of what it was!
We small business would recover America and check any Chinese hegemony. And there would be no world war, just peace and prosperity.
0 comments:
Post a Comment