“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana
History is a patient teacher. If we do not learn its lesson the first time, it will gladly provide additional opportunities in the future to learn the same lesson.
History teaches us brutal truths, if we but pay attention to more than just dates, places, names and holidays. Economic history shows that LBJ’s war on poverty has failed, as we have more people on food stamps and welfare than at any time since he began his war. Economic bubbles are bound to burst and destroy many peoples’ lives and livelihood. Medicare has become a giant program that will soon go bankrupt, along with Medicaid and Social Security. The National Dept of Education has failed to improve student education, as it has focused more on feel good programs and supporting unions than on saving children.
Yet, we do not learn.
If the War on Poverty and Medicare haven’t worked, then let’s try Obamacare on for size, which tries to unite Medicare, Medicaid and several other archaic and unfunded programs together with some new regulations and requirements, and see if we cannot miraculously get it all to save America’s economy AND provide better healthcare at the same time!
We see a history of economic bubbles that government and the Federal Reseve have pushed onto America: tech bubble, housing bubble, banking bubble, etc. Now, a recent article discusses a Wall Street bubble that is just waiting for a good reason to burst. Because the government bailed out big banks, big unions, big corporations, and now the Federal Reserve is pumping $85 BILLION per month into banks, the stock market is surging to new records all the time. All it will take to pop this balloon is for the Fed to stop or slow down its Quantitative Easing (QE) program. Do they dare risk another recession by doing it? Or will they continue printing a Trillion dollars a year of paper money into the system until they wreck the economy (further) for the middle class?
It isn’t a matter of IF, but WHEN such a bubble will pop. Either the Fed will stop printing excess money and Wall Street will sound like a balloon with all its air being sucked out, or they’ll continue deflating our dollars until gas, groceries and other basic items doubling in price (again). Either way, it will create a new recession that we will not be able to buy our way out of, because the American dollar will be worthless at that time.
Already, China and other nations are discussing replacing the dollar with some other currency or set of currencies and valuables as the new world standard. At this rate, within 20 years, America will no longer have a middle class, but will have an elite rich class and most Americans in a poor class. Even those with college educations need to fear, because the wealthy will have reason to export jobs overseas untl our own wage levels drop to commensurate levels elsewhere.
It is time to tell the Federal government to balance the budget, to stop vast unfunded programs, reduce benefits to those receiving benefits, and tell everyone that our period of excess is over, and now we have to tighten our belts and pay the piper. If we don’t, then there will be nothing for us to give our children and grand-children (and great-grandchildren) except debt and a Third world lifestyle.