What we have here is the failure of the unfree market. That means the failure of Greece. And the other PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain). And Europe. And it means the U.S., too. It even includes the Great Recession. The modern welfare state is collapsing around us.
If you had believed in the 72-Year Rule, you would have seen this coming. The 72-Year Rule says the lifetime of any social order or governing paradigm is about 72 years. For example, how long was it from the adoption of our original Constitution (1789), which sanctioned slavery, to the Civil War (1861)? Call it 72 years. And from then until the New Deal in 1933? Another 72 years. How about from the Bolshevik Revolution (1917) to the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989)? That would be 72 years again.
Do you know when the first Social Security check was issued? January 31, 1940. If my guess is right, Social Security has maybe two more years left.
Generally, the modern welfare states were born in the 1930s. So the 72-Year Rule says the modern welfare states will collapse and/or turn into something else in the 2002-2012 time frame.
Kinda makes you believe in the 72-Year Rule, doesn't it?
Of course, there are more immediate explanations than this rather mystical pattern recognition. The problem is government debts. Huge debts. Unsustainable debts and structural deficits, not just temporary ones to get through recession or war. And what is behind all these debts? The very programs we started setting up in the 1930s, our "social safety nets." Feeling safe?
Blame it on Bush and Iraq or whatever you want. But Bush was not President of Greece. And Greece was not one of the thirty nations willing to admit to being part of the U.S.-led Coalition in Iraq. In fact, Greece was one of the more socialistic of the modern welfare states. The problem was debt. Debt caused by things like government retirement programs, government health programs, and government unemployment payments.
No one has a free market. I encourage you to look at the U.S. Statistical Abstract, Table 1324. That table tells us how much various governments spent as fractions of their economies. The U.S., the supposedly "free market" cowboy of the bunch, had a government that spent 38.6% of its country's GDP in 2008. The lowest of the bunch was South Korea, at 30.9%, and the highest was France, at 52.5%. Five countries, of 28 listed, spent less than the U.S. did, including Australia and Switzerland. Greece was merely in the middle of the pack at 43.2%.
I hope all the conservative dipsticks are willing to take care of their prescription drug-addled parents since they are advocating so passionately for the abolition of those programs.
ReplyDeleteMe thinks they're not up to the task. Instead, they'll hire illegals to take care of dear old mom and dad for a pittance of a wage, all the while complaining about illegal immigration.
To lay this at the feet of social security and medicare is beyond the pale. The largest entitlement program in the United States is the Military Industrial Complex. Cut that massive black hole of a program, and then we will talk.
Anyone under 60 who thinks they have even a 1% chance of ever seeing a SS retirement check or IRA funds in tact are going to get a crude awakening.
ReplyDelete8:46 exactly. But the sheeple are powerless to stop the Empirical wars. We have no say.
ReplyDelete"We the People" died long ago.
Argentina confiscated its citizen pensions after the 2001 collapse. I bet America willing to do the same to its citizens. This is not new. America confiscated its citizens' gold in 1930s Great Depression. Pension is the only money left to be confiscated. They can't tax Americans anymore.
ReplyDeleteTax revenue lowest since 1950, they have no choice. Invasions and occupations aren't cheap.
ReplyDeleteDwight-I assist my elderly parents daily. They are both on 8 or 9 prescriptions per day (i heavily disapprove of any prescription drugs), spend much of their time going to dr appointments, and spend a majority of time watching tv. They are so brain washed, brain dead, dumbed down that I do not even recognize my dad from when I was a kid, when he was a totally different person. Personally, I never want to get that old and have a life like they live (if you want to call it a life at all).
ReplyDeleteThey have no clue as to what is really going on and refuse to listen to anything other than what their tv tells them.
Once Medicare and ss go bust, then the end will be near for them, as they will not have the funds to purchase their prescription drugs & see all the drs. And probably have no $$ anyway, as their assets are ALL in the stock market, which I predict will be worthless within a matter of months or years. They refuse to even consider anything else but the Dow.
The collapse is coming soon, and so goes the welfare state and the demise of millions.
Don't worry about the Elderly- I'm quite sure there will be assisted-living accomodations for Seniors set aside at every FEMA camp.
ReplyDeleteWhen the day comes where I cannot take care of myself there will be a muted bang and instructions to throw my body in the nearest dumpster. People's fear of death and desire to live past their productive or happy years is beyond my comprehension. Worst yet are those who are driving to replicate themselves in the hopes that part of them lives on. Vanity.
ReplyDeleteCarlin at 1:00min here nails it about people that are insecure and have to replicate themselves, nauseating.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIXlwYoOV9k
Prob is smart people don't replicate...Mindless drones do in large #'s...In the end the Thinker will go down the drain...The eater and mouth breather will continue on...All this seems like madness/chaos but the more you read the more it seems planned.
ReplyDeleteI never wanted to believe in an evil cabal trying to play with populations/countries/war etc...But fuck I think the kooks have it right...Where's my tin foil hat?
If you have a need to preserve your corpse, you are a psychopath. If you have a need to reproduce, you are an ultra psychopath.
ReplyDeleteJokes on all of you primitive savages because just like you have a need to reproduce in less than ideal/perfect conditions, so will someone else force you out of their crotch in less then ideal conditions. What'd you think, that life is some crazy fool's play thing where you just charge ahead like a fucking animal without letting reason prevail.
Psychopath animals, the meaning of life is to grow your fine energy component in power and perfection until it breaks freee of a need to incarnate in a human body and not to manufacture minis until you overun the planet like noxious vermin which was created with finite space and a finite regeneration rate to teach you just a miniscule amount of restraint and conquering your ego even 1%.
Truly, if you feel an internal need to manufacture mini-mes/more-advanced-pets you are a degenerate psychopath. (You're planet is 14x overpopulated and this is the main reason for all your problems. To reduce it, in a humane way through strict birth bands is the only solution. Anything else represents pitiful attempts that barely amounts to a drop of water on an ever increasing hot stone).
But if we don't reproduce and replenish the American workforce, who's going to be around to pay my Social Security check when I retire in 25 years?
ReplyDeleteI don't know about the hot stones metaphor, but the 'mini-me's' and 'more advanced pets' descriptors are pretty fitting. Just think to when mom's were throwing kids on leashes and letting them run around in malls like cute little animals. Now I suppose with the advent of ADD medications this has fallen somewhat out of favor. The population is pliant because that is what we have allowed ourselves to become in going from self rule to rule by corporate thugs and all of our undying, arcane institutions against the individual.
ReplyDeleteHas someone has been reading his Martin Armstrong?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.martinarmstrong.org/files/Collapse-of-Capitalism.pdf
"Communism, when implemented as a government policy, lasted only one 72 year political cycle. In 1917, we find the Russian Revolution and Sun Yat-sen set up the rival government in China at Guangzhou as the Nationalists. 72 years later, we come to 1989 and Tinananmen Square followed about 5 months later by the fall of the Berlin Wall. These changes were economically driven. The stagnation of the human spirit led to the steady decline in productivity. This is the same trend we have seen in the American labor unions..."
Dwight is right. There is nothing wrong with Social Security. If there was, the Republicans would be trying to get their hands on it. Don't forget their latest political platform includes trying to privatize SS. Believe me, if nothing was there they wouldn't be trying to steal it.
ReplyDeleteI will never stop saying this: You can't balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the poor, the disabled, widows and orphans. Go after the fucking defense budget instead. Stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and stop overpaying the 100,000 contractors. Stop paying for tanks that don't work and planes that don't fly. We have more than 750 military bases around the world, including countries like Japan and Germany, even though we won that war over 60 years ago.
How about the teabaggers getting mad about real facts instead of imaginary ones?
The 72 rule is irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteThere are many time cycles that actually consume larger time frames, like circles in circles that are in circles.
This actually means that the period from WW2 to now is also within a period from the Renassaince to now, and even from there WW2 was one of a few periods within the Renassaince time.
And of course the Renassaince would be one of many frames from the period of 4,000 B.C.E to now, that in turn would be one of many from 104,000, and that too is one of many in a 4 million year period. This continues all the way to the very beginning.
What it means is that eventually there won't be just one cycle coming to an end, such as this supposed 72 year period, but an end to all time cycles which would be drastically more than just a political upheaval. We will this time see a new species emerge, space-time will alter its laws to an extent (making the new species more mystical than any master in history by default), and of course the entire human order will collapse leaving the next 72 years to be more bizzare than the entire history of the planet combined!
"All these things I've done here ye shall do, and even greater!"
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the hilarious words about the dead. My thoughts are along the same lines. The Teabaggers and Republicans who are against Medicaid and Medicare: Note that I have called in Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck to design the Suicide Pact. You have complete control over when and how you commit suicide BEFORE you and yours take part in Medicare and Medicaid.
ReplyDeleteBeck and Palin: where is the certificate, the wallet card, and the Do Not Resuscitate card? You want smaller government, you embrace it first by committing suicide.
Yes, if anyone can prove that 72 years has to do with anything, other than some observed periods connected by dots, then I am all aboard. Most human civilizations exist for about 200 years and then collapse. Nothing built into that time frame except ample opportunity to rise to greed and extravagance and then fall onto our own swords.
ReplyDeleteI think the administrator should annihilate all of you and reduce waste. This will give the government less to worry about, your sorry butts!
ReplyDeleteUm, how would this alleviate government problems again?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete72 years is not random, it is close to one human lifetime -- i.e. the amount of time until all surviving members of the last crisis are no longer able to influence the affairs of the current day.
ReplyDeleteSee 'The Fourth Turning' and http://www.generationaldynamics.com/
test
ReplyDeleteIve read about the fourth turning. Still dont completely buy it. Just a theory and one can construct data points to fit their theories quite easily.
ReplyDelete