People keep emailing and complaining that I must be an Obama supporter since I periodically post critical information about Romney and Gingrich.
In response, I say that it’s my role to simply tell the truth and dispassionately analyze public policy.
But being disappointed in the leading Republicans doesn’t mean I’m deluded about Obama and his agenda. This cartoon nicely captures my view of the President’s track record.
And if you want something more substantive, this data from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve shows how Obamanomics is grossly inferior to Reaganomics.
Appreciate your commitment and integrity to truth and objective fact over the philosophy of pushing a personality.
We take an oath to a set of principles (Constitution) not a “leader.”
It is why I signed up to follow you by email instead of just through the RSS reader.
(Not don’t get gt a big head and disappoint me).
Great!
When the plan for Americans to maintain their six times average world prosperity level is : To reduce incentives and put obstacles to production, while attempting to mask the reality of a resulting decreasing competitiveness with futile ephemeral macro-economic gimmicks, … then one senses that the end must not be too far off. How the end will come is difficult to predict in the fractal behavior of a complex system – but it will come – the immovable force of fundamentals will take over sooner or later. The more reality is being sandbagged the more turbulent the decline will be.
So what are a few scenarios to the general decline ?
Obama will be reelected for another four years. Then some watered down mandatory-compassion republican will take over, will at best roll back a fifth of what Obama did, and America will continue its decline towards worldwide averagedom. Americans will decide that conservatism doesn’t work either and will then turn over to another HopNChanger for another chance.
I have seen the movie. Americans think that they are on some new uncharted course, but that movie has been played in virtually every other European country, even before the EU in its current form was able to implement uniform policies of decline. The speeches and scripts to sell the American population a more effortless prosperity have already been prepared and tested across the Atlantic long time ago – and voters have invariably bought them. All one has to do is translate the non-English versions and find an eloquent politician to present them as new. It is a well-oiled path to decline.
As an anecdote to the above general framework, I’d like to remind readers that when Greeks elected their first socialist prime minister thirty years ago, his central election campaign motto was “Ελπίδα και Αλλαγή“ literally ” “Hope and Change”. He is no longer around to claim plagiarism and few Greeks want to remember that turn towards HopNChange. Now in desperation, they have stopped hoping for shortcuts to prosperity and are embracing… shortcuts to salvation.
Americans were the lucky prosperous outliers that had not figured out how voting works, or had implemented obstacles to Pontious Pilot style governance. But that is now over. Americans seem to have discovered the barn where the seeds of productivity have been stored the past two centuries…
But that is the less turbulent decline scenario. As macro-economic policy in the entire western world flaunts with smokescreens and sandbags the reality of a rising competitive tide from three billion emerging people (who are starting to imitate what was once western capitalism) , the macro-economic gimmicks of easy money out of thin air will careen against the reality of decreasing relative competitiveness. Reality will take over, interest on the entire western world debt (i.e. production/consumption deficit) bubble will take over and a new crisis will bring western world dominance to a much more abrupt end.
So enjoy the temporary Benefits-Paid-By-Others party on the Titanic. So long as you secure a life boat, it can actually be somewhat fun.
Average world prosperity will continue to rise to unprecedented levels. Even without the delusional less than one billion westerners who did not realize what once set them apart form the rest of the world – or did realize, but found the benefits-paid-by-others polling booth machine irresistible in the very short term.
Zorba, I don’t have the time or the thought for an adequate reply now; but your words went in deep and were appreciated for what they were.
It’s not a happy path were all on. In fact it feels like the path of good intentions.