It seems obvious that as we watch the government flail aimlessly, its endless rapaciousness serving only to create a greater hunger for money, what has happened is that we have lost the fundamentals.
Our Founders, and the great economists of the past and present, have all said their piece in better, more polished words than are at my disposal, but they have been ignored.
So it falls to me, and those like me, to try to make those of you who honestly, but ignorantly, believe in the economic fairy tales being told by this administration, understand why they are false.
First, let me begin by saying that the world is a place of simple solutions.
That's not what you keep hearing, is it?
You keep getting told, "there are no simple solutions!"
But that's a lie. Simple solutions are everywhere. The truth is that most of those simple solutions aren't EASY. it's a trick of language, you see? They tell you that the solutions that work aren't SIMPLE, because simple is sort of LIKE easy, and then claim that the solutions which work are ridiculously overcomplicated, and thus only to be understood by...
Well, not you. You're a peon, a serf, just like me. Not a member of the "elite," and thus clearly unable to understand the overwhelmingly complex solutions which will actually solve our many and varied problems.
Allow me to demonstrate ways that you can prove that this is not the case.
Begin with Occam's Razor, an aphorism usually paraphrased as "the simplest explanation that fits the facts is usually the correct one." (William of Ockham actually said, "avoid needless multiplication of entities," but who's picky.)
Keynesian economic theory, that wonderful practice the Obama Administration proclaims will give everyone in America a pony, claims that unlike private spending - say, you, in Wal*Mart - where $1 is equivalent to $1, GOVERNMENT spending is worth more. Keynes called this a multiplier; the Obama Administration says that $1 in government spending is equivalent to $1.60 spent by you in Wal*Mart.
To demonstrate, simply and easily, why this is retarded, I propose the following experiment.
Fill a bottle of water, about 2/3 of the way up.
Using a black marker, draw a line around the bottle, where the water level is.
Now, pour about a third of what's in the bottle into an empty cup.
Set both of them down.
Wait.
Now pour the cup back into the bottle; try not to spill any, as we want to give the illustrious Mr. Keynes every chance possible to be right about this.
Once all the water from the cup is back in the bottle, check the water level against the line you drew on the bottle.
They're the same, aren't they.
This is the most benign way that the government can "stimulate" anything; it has no effect at all. This is taxation, in which you take money out of the economy, and spend it in that same economy.
To continue, pour enough water into the bottle to fill the bottle all the way up.
Wait.
Now, pour water out of the bottle to the line, and then a thumb's width more water past that, directly into the sink drain.
Check the water level in the bottle versus your original line.
The water's lower, now, isn't it?
This is what happens when you borrow; the government can spend, and the economy balloons, but when it comes time to pay it back - plus interest - you are left with less than you had starting out.
To continue, pour all the water from the bottle into a pan.
Boil the water on the stove until it is entirely steam.
As it boils, flail the bottle around in the air to catch as much of the steam as possible.
Water no doubt fills the air in your kitchen, now, and your spouse will likely complain, but since you expanded the water so massively, there has to be more in the bottle, am I right?
Check your water level in the bottle against your original water line.
It's pretty much empty, isn't it.
This is the worst means the government can use to "pay" for things, called inflation. The method is simple; print more money. Of course, this makes the money worthless, so prices on everything go through the roof, but it allows the government to claim publicly that they poured money into the economy at a prodigious rate.
Now, in reality, this destroys the economy entirely, for a number of reasons. This, by the way, is the method chosen by the Obama Administration to pay for all the "stimulus" legislation, and how they're proposing to pay for cap and trade, and the much-ballyhooed health insurance bill.
The first reason inflation destroys the economy is obvious: if money is worth less, YOU have to pay more at Wal*Mart for your groceries and whatnot, but your employer does NOT have to pay YOU more - thus making everyone go broke, really fast. this cascades; if you can't buy things, the companies that make those things go out of business, causing runaway unemployment. (Since we're seeing that now, I will take this point as amply demonstrated and move on.)
The second reason inflation destroys the economy is more subtle. See, governments use inflation as a means of screwing creditors; it is a time-honored tradition of dictatorships to do so. Our government has borrowed billions of dollars from other countries - say, China - when our money was worth something. now that our currency is worthless, they can easily pay back those loans by DOLLAR AMOUNT, without giving the creditor anything of value. Of course, this damages the economy of the creditor immensely.
Here's where the second reason breaks out into sub-reasons: First, now that we've damaged our creditor nations, they will be far less willing to loan us money in the future. This hurts the economy because credit allows large cash transactions for things that won't accept payments, and lacking credit makes continued operations for governments and companies alike far more difficult. Secondly, we've damaged goodwill with those nations, and hurt our reputation - other, unaffected nations will ALSO be less willing to loan us money, plus the nations we injured will attempt to gain restitution from us in other ways. Good luck selling American cars overseas, now.
The third sub-reason is specific to the United States.
Remember back during the Reagan years, when people kept screaming about how other countries were buying America? And how that was going to be our downfall?
Wrong.
That was a calculated move, called in military parlance a baited ambush.
We convinced other nations to give us huge sums of money, giving them bonds - federal promissory notes - in exchange. This gave us immense liquid capital, and limited theirs - and at the same time, tied their balance sheets, their economies, to our willingness to repay them.
What nation, on this planet, could come and physically force us to pay? None today, but give it about another 15 years and pretty much anyone will be able to manage it. (This is strictly my opinion, but considering my observation of the generation behind mine, I suspect fairly accurate.)
So we had set up the ultimate political blackmail tool: Developing economies the world over, held hostage by their U.S. holdings, kept flush with cash as long as they continue to loan us money - thus increasing the magnitude of our power over them - but easily biddable, because the threat of economic consequence kept them from directly opposing us.
Then came the final days of the Bush Administration, and the opening days of the Obama Administration. And the inflationary plans of the political left used up, in one paroxysm of spending, ALL of that stock of blackmail, all of the value of our international goodwill, all of our reliable creditors' pocketbooks; all of it, gone. Our greatest tool for maintaining the peace, gone.
Chinese college students laughed openly at our Treasury Secretary when he told them U.S. treasury bonds were a safe investment.
Now the left is scrambling to figure out why they spent the way Keynes told them to, and they still don't have a pony.
Your bottle is fucking empty. You figure it out.
