An utter collapse of the United States economy won’t come from the private sector, a Wall Street executive, the expansion of Walmart or even corporations outsourcing much of their work to places like India or China. When a collapse does take place and provide tremendous pain to Americans, the primary culprits will be the Washington elite.
Whether it’s the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1933, President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s war on poverty in the 1960s, President George W. Bush’s two wars or President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, politicians are at fault for the demise of the nation.
Just touching the surface of America’s problems shows: $16.4 trillion national debt, borrowing 46 cents of every dollar spent, $122 trillion in unfunded liabilities and expenditures, constant military intervention around the world and creating 128 million dependents on the federal government.
Indeed, the constituents are at fault for electing these Democrats, Republicans and Independents (Americans are eying Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman). However, these politicos are the ones enacting legislation that initiate debt, deficits and tremendous burdens on future generations. Although the country is largely divided, it can certainly be agreed on that politicians have inherited way too much power over the decades.
Here are nine reasons why politicians will (or have already) cause an economic collapse:
Debt & Deficit
Economic Collapse News has reportedly extensively on the debt. The national debt has ballooned from $1 trillion three decades ago to surpassing the $16 trillion mark in 2012. It is expected to grow even more in the next few years when it hits $20.3 trillion in 2016 and $25 trillion by 2020 (some estimates point to 2025).
Politicians have been the ones maintaining budget deficits for all of these years. Even when President Bill Clinton had the opportunity to tackle the national debt when he had the celebrated budget surpluses (used from raiding Social Security), he only paid down $30 billion.
For many years now, the federal government has spent more than it has taken in. It doesn’t seem as if the president or the Congress will cease this practice anytime soon. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) doesn’t project any balanced budgets or budget surpluses in the next few decades.
This is indeed troubling as deficits add to the debt and it eventually engulfs the entire federal budget and nothing would be left over for social programs, military endeavors or entitlement programs.
Regulations
The Republicans did it. The Democrats are doing it now in the White House. Regulations have been running rampant in the U.S. for quite some time. It is believed that regulations will help the average American, while also keeping businesses in check, even though it helps large corporations and hurts the small- and medium-sized businesses.
Eventually, entrepreneurs will get too frustrated with the regulations that they will not enter the world of business. Heck, other businesses may just close up shop and head overseas to operate their companies.
It was reported in September that present and future regulations at the federal, state and local levels are costing Americans and businesses approximately $1.8 trillion annually just to abide by the thousands of pages of tiny font. If not, they could be fined and just closed down by regulations that are not even passed by the House of Representatives or Senate and instead by regulatory bodies.
Taxes
Similar to the regulations, the level of taxation and the number of taxes have become too much not only for the average citizen but also for those wanting to establish their own business. There is a tax on businesses for everything: excise taxes, sales taxes, franchise taxes, self-employment taxes, fuel tax, state unemployment insurance tax, personal property and real property taxes and much, much more.
For some reason or another, the geniuses in Washington and at state capitols concluded that by taxing success it would somehow generate prosperity for everyone. Instead, it has led to job losses, lack of the projected revenues and less employment opportunities, as a report in September showed.
Perhaps, and this could be surprising, former Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum had it right when he proposed a zero percent corporate tax for manufacturing businesses in order to bring back that sector, which left the country a long time ago.
Welfare
According to the latest data from the Department of Agriculture, the number of Americans on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, is at an all-time high of more than 47.7 million people. The program has cost taxpayers $74.6 million.
In total, as noted before, there are 128 million Americans dependent on funding from the federal government. With domestic policies like this, it’s no wonder why the country has turned into a populace that wants something for nothing, believes nothing should be cut and elects individuals to take (steal) money from the affluent in order to fund other programs.
Welfare spending has become so bloated that it has now developed into the largest federal expense to the tune of more than $1 trillion, which is more than the national defense, Social Security and Medicare.
A Heritage study found that “over 70 percent of all federal spending went to dependence-creating programmes.” Here are the specifics of the report:
– 128,818,142 people are enrolled in at least one government program.
– 48,580,105 people are on Medicaid.
– 35,770,301 people receive their retirement income from Social Security.
– 43,834,566 people are on Medicare.
– 39,030,579 people are living in a household where at least one person accepts food stamps.
– 6,984,783 people are living in subsidized rental housing.
– 2,047,149 people are receiving a higher-education subsidy.
War
Politicians love war. The 20th century was consumed by war (WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq) and since the world entered the 21st century, the U.S. has been bogged down in two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is presently bombing other countries on a daily basis in countries like Yemen and Pakistan.
No matter how the neo-conservatives and Keynesians try to defend it: war does not and never will create prosperity for a nation. All it does is allocate money from the private sector to bomb bridges in other countries, rebuild them and then bomb them again. It does line the pocket books of the military-industrial complex, though.
At a time when the U.S. government needs to make substantial cuts to the budget, it seems all options are off the table in regards to its foreign ventures, 700-plus military bases in 130 countries and the swollened Pentagon budget. Of course, politicians expect the American people to fight these useless wars, but will never enlist themselves or family members.
Waste
It is argued that even if the U.S. cuts wasteful spending, it would only take a very small percent out of the budget (something along the lines of 0.1 percent). However, even if that was cut, it would still put a few hundred million dollars back into the pockets of everyday Americans.
Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn publishes an annual report titled Waste Book. The frustrating (or comical) study looks at ways how the public servants in Washington waste taxpayers’ money on egregious projects.
Here are some examples of the waste over the years:
– $2.6 million to train Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job
– $13 billion has been wasted or stolen in Iraq; $7.8 billion can’t be accounted for
– $3 billion re-sanding beaches, even when the sand washes back into the ocean
– $500,000 to paint a Chinook salmon on Alaska Airlines’s Boeing 737
– $100 million on unused flight tickets, which were never refunded
– $60,000 per hour to shoot Air Force One photo-ops in front of national landmarks
– $1.8 million for a private golf course in Atlanta, Georgia
– $2 billion a year for farmers not to farm on their own land
Now these are just a few examples out of thousands. If politicians at the federal, state and local levels are so wasteful of money that is not theirs then how could they be trusted to be given even more taxes that President Obama and the Democratic leadership so desperately yearn for.
Bad Policies
Government is known to be the institution of idiotic policies. One of the latest ideas coming out of Washington was a $1 trillion platinum coin to help pay off the debt. Another idea was to get rid of the country’s gold (see how well that looked out for the British government).
Over the years, the federal government has initiated many policies that have had unintended consequences and hurt the very people that were intended to help, minimum wage laws, affirmative action and Sarbanes-Oxley to name a few.
In the present administration alone, there have been numerous boondoggles that just handed money from one hand to the other in the name of jumpstarting the economy, including cash for clunkers, bailing out the automotive industry and giving financial institutions and foreign banks trillions of dollars.
Using the idea of stimulus, why doesn’t the federal government save the industries that went under decades ago? Ice delivery and the horse and buggy companies are just a couple that “need” saving and to be stimulated.
Lawyers, Lawyers and Lawyers
So many lawyers become politicians. Congress doesn’t mostly consist of small business owners, but rather lawyers. In the 111th Congress, 54 percent of Senators 36 percent of Congressmen were lawyers. These people make up the very laws that they themselves will follow if they (if ever) leave Congress. Isn’t that a conflict of interest?
No Respect
The government has no respect for the taxpayers or even for the Constitution – how many laws are passed each day that are in direct conflict with the Constitution? As noted with waste, politicians have no respect for the taxpayer, even if they repeat it time and time again that they do. If they have no respect for you then how could you expect them to have respect for your money and time?
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