The current economic situation comes from eating out our substance. This Depression has been delayed, but expanding, since around 1990. We have begun to eat the foundation beneath our wealth, and the outcome will be absolutely disastrous. The outlook is amazingly bleak, and the only reasonable solution will never be implemented by our Republicans and Democrats.
I attribute the progression of this collapse to three primary problems. First, we stopped manufacturing in America. Consequently, we upped the tax ante for those players who tried to continue. Third, we created a spending spree.
When we stopped creating wealth, we were the richest nation in the world. We had enough cash in hand to finance several decades even though we knew it could not last forever.
We taxed the lion’s share from producers and manufacturers (employees and employers) to feed and house the displaced. When we packed up our production and sent it away to foreign lands, we could afford the alternative from the money in our collective savings. It was cheaper — in almost every way.
The logic in our situation called for rebuilding industry — newer, better, more up-to-date. Instead, we went crazy building houses and shopping malls. Fully 40% of the new jobs from the millennium change to now have been construction, real estate, and all the supports for the boom. Not only did we fail to create wealth, we spent the last of it. We went into a thirty-year debt with five to ten years of wealth.
Now our businesses are gone, our homes are falling apart, we have maxed out our personal and governmental credit, and anything we try to rebuild will have to come from China, India, Mexico, and a host of Pacific Islands.
The solution is quite simple, really. We have to tighten our belts and go to work. We must convert our assets into production, and stop spending money. Many of us have already lost everything, but not our will to survive.
The great remaining obstacle to the solution is Congress and the succession of Presidents who brought us here. We never could afford a few trillion here and there, and we need to stop them from trying.
In my opinion, we will not. We will continue to sail the ship of state right into the rocks.
May God grant that I am wrong.
Posted by ddelany 
