End of America?

[Souleater]

endofamerica39.com

I came across this recently and started reading through some of it, its better to do it on your phone since you can read through it instead of watching the video.

Basically talks about the debt that is currently welling in the federal reserve and how America is heading for a second massive depression.

Opinions?

[Drakonid]

You think that is serious, look at this:
End of the World. Flash Animation

Now seriously, the guy says nothing new, and exaggerates some stuff...

[Souleater]

I've seen that before, and he whole nuclear winter thing is more of an end of the world kind of scenario, not exactly an impending depression scenario.

[Drakonid]

You know it was a joke, right?

[Souleater]

You know it was a joke, right?

I realized it. Its still funny. However, the sad part is, its semi-likely to happen.

[C0FFINCASE]

Our debt is unacceptable, we're at twice the level the world thought we'd need to incur to go under. Everyday a bunch of people in a room take in loans from private and foreign interest on our debt. We're broke and doing nothing about it. If we don't cut spending and raise taxes with in five years America goes bankrupt and the government just shuts down one day and then all hell breaks loose. Its absurd that we let ourselves get in this situation and is even more absurd that the public knows we're in debt and bitches about spending cuts while politicians talk about cutting taxes.
We are about to have another bubble burst, the stock market is a wonderful tool for seeing when the next down turn is coming it always comes right after explosive growth. The current "recovery" is being fueled by the wealthiest people of the world buying up everything while its cheap, once prices reach a peak they'll sell and no one will buy and then they'll start cutting prices and everyone will freak out. That's just how capitalism works. You produce till you overproduce then there is a crash and then you produce more and there is another crash and ever crash gets worse. We know exactly how to prevent another crash and we know how to turn the economy around but it would require a global effort and a whole lot of unpopular policies. So social programs are going to suffer, some people are going to lose help they need, its not great but its what has to happen. Taxes have to go up as well, by a good bit too. The only thing we can't afford to cut is the defense budget because right now we're holding several countries in the middle east together while the region goes to hell and if we go soft China takes over as the world super power.

[Souleater]

Our debt is unacceptable, we're at twice the level the world thought we'd need to incur to go under. Everyday a bunch of people in a room take in loans from private and foreign interest on our debt. We're broke and doing nothing about it. If we don't cut spending and raise taxes with in five years America goes bankrupt and the government just shuts down one day and then all hell breaks loose. Its absurd that we let ourselves get in this situation and is even more absurd that the public knows we're in debt and bitches about spending cuts while politicians talk about cutting taxes.
We are about to have another bubble burst, the stock market is a wonderful tool for seeing when the next down turn is coming it always comes right after explosive growth. The current "recovery" is being fueled by the wealthiest people of the world buying up everything while its cheap, once prices reach a peak they'll sell and no one will buy and then they'll start cutting prices and everyone will freak out. That's just how capitalism works. You produce till you overproduce then there is a crash and then you produce more and there is another crash and ever crash gets worse. We know exactly how to prevent another crash and we know how to turn the economy around but it would require a global effort and a whole lot of unpopular policies. So social programs are going to suffer, some people are going to lose help they need, its not great but its what has to happen. Taxes have to go up as well, by a good bit too. The only thing we can't afford to cut is the defense budget because right now we're holding several countries in the middle east together while the region goes to hell and if we go soft China takes over as the world super power.

Smallest of problems, even if the taxes were raised exponentially, the generated taxed income wouldn't be enough to pay off the debt that America has right now. THe multi-trillion dollar debt won't get taken care of easily. In fact I'm pretty sure that most of the debt that we have will be bought up by other countries, putting us in more and more debt, and eventually, the slight increase that we have seen since 2oo8 will mean nothing.

For all intents and purposes we are almost identical to the way that the Roman Empire was right before it completely collapsed in on itself. China is a major concern as far as many things go, money, power, egg rolls, all that good shit a country needs to rise to the top of the global super power food chain. We are short bursts away from being like England in the 7o's, its inevitable that the economy is going to collapse under the wait of the shifting losses.

After the Great depression, the American financial situation became a log cabin that was built on shifting sand, and its starting to tear it apart.

The 2oo8 bailouts had to be the worst idea possible. The massive debt held by the banks that were bailed out was uncontrollable, not to mention bailing out failing businesses. The economy was pruning the chaff from the wheat, and was phasing those out slowly by way of bankruptcy. Next issue is that the government freaked out and thought that they were losing everything, which they weren't.

Makes me think, what if they had taken those trillions of dollars and put it into something that is needed, like an over-haul of the American education system, maybe we would have less reality shows and more scholars.

[C0FFINCASE]

Smallest of problems, even if the taxes were raised exponentially, the generated taxed income wouldn't be enough to pay off the debt that America has right now. THe multi-trillion dollar debt won't get taken care of easily. In fact I'm pretty sure that most of the debt that we have will be bought up by other countries, putting us in more and more debt, and eventually, the slight increase that we have seen since 2oo8 will mean nothing.

For all intents and purposes we are almost identical to the way that the Roman Empire was right before it completely collapsed in on itself. China is a major concern as far as many things go, money, power, egg rolls, all that good shit a country needs to rise to the top of the global super power food chain. We are short bursts away from being like England in the 7o's, its inevitable that the economy is going to collapse under the wait of the shifting losses.

After the Great depression, the American financial situation became a log cabin that was built on shifting sand, and its starting to tear it apart.

The 2oo8 bailouts had to be the worst idea possible. The massive debt held by the banks that were bailed out was uncontrollable, not to mention bailing out failing businesses. The economy was pruning the chaff from the wheat, and was phasing those out slowly by way of bankruptcy. Next issue is that the government freaked out and thought that they were losing everything, which they weren't.

Makes me think, what if they had taken those trillions of dollars and put it into something that is needed, like an over-haul of the American education system, maybe we would have less reality shows and more scholars.

No taxes alone won't fix any thing but with the right taxation and the right cuts we could get out of this hole assuming we still have the time to do so.
Grossly simplified but still one can try it to get a feel for it: Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com
The bailouts were a a horrid idea. The government assumed debt it can't deal with for no real reason other than to keep wallstreet happy. In addition to that if we hadn't refunded the surplus, cut taxes, and then increased war time spending we would be much better off. I'm not saying we should have gone to war but we should have realized that to fund a war we'd need income and not have cut the money we were pulling in.
I honestly believe major tax reform combined with spending cuts and the cooperation of the global market that everything could be fine. Tax reform for me though is not tax the people above $250000, which is middle class not millionaire as Obama says, but to tax the people that make real money i.e. the captains of industry and I mean really tax them. Up the corporate tax and ramp up the death tax on estates over a few million.
Spending cuts in the trillion is my idea there. Social programs cut down to the bones, ect.
Finally the world will have to kill protectionist measure and let the free market work. The G12 summit said that's what they'd do and then turned around and went protectionist. Its ridiculous. On top of that the IMF and World Bank are sitting there, holding a vast amount of capital that we could pull if we really wanted to, granted people would not be happy about it, we could do it and be pretty solid because of it.

Budget Solved:http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...oices=y80vc40m

[Souleater]

No taxes alone won't fix any thing but with the right taxation and the right cuts we could get out of this hole assuming we still have the time to do so.
Grossly simplified but still one can try it to get a feel for it: Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com
The bailouts were a a horrid idea. The government assumed debt it can't deal with for no real reason other than to keep wallstreet happy. In addition to that if we hadn't refunded the surplus, cut taxes, and then increased war time spending we would be much better off. I'm not saying we should have gone to war but we should have realized that to fund a war we'd need income and not have cut the money we were pulling in.
I honestly believe major tax reform combined with spending cuts and the cooperation of the global market that everything could be fine. Tax reform for me though is not tax the people above $250000, which is middle class not millionaire as Obama says, but to tax the people that make real money i.e. the captains of industry and I mean really tax them. Up the corporate tax and ramp up the death tax on estates over a few million.
Spending cuts in the trillion is my idea there. Social programs cut down to the bones, ect.
Finally the world will have to kill protectionist measure and let the free market work. The G12 summit said that's what they'd do and then turned around and went protectionist. Its ridiculous. On top of that the IMF and World Bank are sitting there, holding a vast amount of capital that we could pull if we really wanted to, granted people would not be happy about it, we could do it and be pretty solid because of it.

Budget Solved:Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

All of that assuming that the hole that we have dug is escapable, that is the issue. Assuming that fixing the tax bracket and began taxing the rich and super-rich more than what is going on currently, the debt could be put into a slow reverse, inevitably pulling us out of debt, but who knows how long that could actually take?

As far as spending cuts, that is already happening if only behind closed doors. I have from DoD knowledge to know that military and all military related spending will be cut by the billions over the next fiscal year. Then there is the rest of the government spending that is going on in other industries, mainly the political agenda of creating more and more jobs. The job situation attributes to the depression as much as anything else. People lose their jobs everyday due to out-sourcing. Maybe the big companies hadn't sent thousands upon thousands of jobs to India, and Pakistan to pay people a minimal amount of money, perhaps about 1/3 of what they payed an American worker, as many mortgages wouldn't have matured so sourly, loans could have been paid off, but the super-rich wanted to make more money by sending the technical support jobs to those countries.

The brackets need major reform. All people need to be taxed in accordance with their income. If you make 4oo million a year, then you should in effect be taxed as much as someone who is taxed that makes 25o thousand a year. And the amount that needs to be taxed in that idea should be in an increase to at least 3o-4o% for those people. Tax breaks do nothing for the people, it is only beneficial for those that already have a lot of money. Taxation, going the right way is the key.

Cutting spending does very little in the greatest of schemes. If you cut spending, then the funding for thousands of organizations that are government sanctioned are put into jeopardy.

Spending in foreign markets needs to subside, and investment into our market needs to take its place.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...oices=y80vc40m
I think my way is more extreme, but might have a faster impact.

[Pondering Horizon]

It does seem we are turning up like the Romans did, greed controls the world, and it's hard to save the world and be popular.

[chowchig]

China is a major concern as far as many things go, money, power, egg rolls, all that good shit a country needs to rise to the top of the global super power food chain.

I personally think China will suffer in the future, since right now it's thriving over its cheap labor and lax environmental policies. Those two things make it an attractive place for companies to make their products in. The U.S. at one time had cheap labor and many factories to build such things, but much of it was lost when we started increasing minimum wage and such.

On Topic -

I personally think this country's failing infrastructure is a pretty impressive problem.

Also, on social program cuts, I think that the population as a whole will not want the government to touch their things like Social Security or Medicare. If someone were to cut those, I'd think it would be the end of their political career.

[Souleater]

I personally think China will suffer in the future, since right now it's thriving over its cheap labor and lax environmental policies. Those two things make it an attractive place for companies to make their products in. The U.S. at one time had cheap labor and many factories to build such things, but much of it was lost when we started increasing minimum wage and such.

On Topic -

I personally think this country's failing infrastructure is a pretty impressive problem.

Also, on social program cuts, I think that the population as a whole will not want the government to touch their things like Social Security or Medicare. If someone were to cut those, I'd think it would be the end of their political career.

Cutting social security won't cause the end of the career of any politician, if it did Bill Clinton would have been done after his first 4 years. Fact is, Clinton's policies are the best idea compared to the policies that Obama and Bush came out with. The only problem is that they were set up for the short term, not the long. If it were the other way around things would have been much better.