Quotulatiousness

February 22, 2026

Britain’s recovery after a punishing existential war against a colossal European tyrant

Filed under: Britain, France, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The American Tribune considers how war-exhausted Britain staged a brilliant recovery after the decades of war against Republican and then Imperial France culminating in the exile of Napoleon to a remote island in the south Atlantic:

The grinding war is finally over after what feels like decades of bitter conflict on an inconceivably large scale. The entire world had become a battlefield in which the British had fought desperately to keep their imperial possessions secure in the face of vast hordes of enemies of all sorts, with the Navy and Army strained to the breaking point as battalions launched expeditionary raids and grinding, years-long campaigns everywhere from the steamy Orient to the Mediterranean, the bitter cold of the North to the coast and shores of Northern Africa.

Truth be told, victory, though it came in the end, had strained everything nearly to the breaking point. High taxes had driven the landed element to the breaking point. The necessity of convoys, of relying on domestic agriculture, of keeping the empire intact from an island the size of Michigan … had strained the British people and British society to the breaking point. Class tensions were high, taxes were already ruinously high, and to many elements, rich and poor alike, victory hardly seemed worth the immense cost in gold and blood.

And that was before considering the debt. The ruinous, mountainous, inconceivable debt. Well over 200% of GDP, it would later be calculated … and not at the negative interest rates of modernity either. Over 200% of GDP priced in real, somewhat gold-backed currency, with those who bought it demanding a real return. Ruinous, it was, ruinous! For this final conflict had been preceded not by many long years of peace, but by a similarly large, long conflict that had also involved campaigns across every corner of the earth, mutinous colonials, immense expense, and heavy taxation.

So victory had come. The war against an immense continental hegemon had been won, the international order was stabilized to the liking of and in accord with the ideology of the political elite, and the empire kept together in a hugely expanded state. But the cost had been high. Perhaps the cost had been ruinous …

I am, of course, describing Britain circa 1815, after its final victory over Napoleon at Waterloo. What followed was its century atop Olympus, the century where it ruled a quarter of the Earth’s surface, dominated all the sea lanes, was the world’s reserve currency, and became the world’s financial capital. Despite the expense, the defeat of Napoleon did not bring ruin, but success on an unimaginably immense scale.

What happened? Why did the Britain that defeated Napoleon become the hugely successful nation of the Victorian Age, but the Britain that followed the defeat of Hitler became a wrecked backwater, a miserable shell of its former self? The post-war debt load was similar. The human cost had been higher, but not remarkably so, particularly if the immigration outflows of the 19th century are considered.1 The logistical strains were similar, the social strains similar, and the fractious politics of the wars similar.

But the Britain of the 19th century became the hegemon of note, whereas that of the 20th century became essentially irrelevant. Mindset makes all the difference in the world, as I’ll show in this article, along with why this matters for Americans.

Britain after Napoleon

It is important to note that Britain’s immense imperial and economic success after the defeat of Napoleon was no sure thing. Yes, unlike much of Europe, it hadn’t been ravaged by invading armies. But it had lost its best colonies in the disastrous rebellion that followed the immensely expensive Seven Years’ War, a world war in all but name. It was staggering under a ruinous mountain of debt that could scarcely have been imagined earlier in the century: the national debt stood at somewhere around 210% of GDP, after post-war deflation had been accounted for, with somewhere around 10% of national GDP going just toward paying the interest on that debt.

Perhaps, worse, the population was restive. During the war, farmers and landlords had been pushed into embarking on extremely expensive schemes to drain and enclose land, schemes costing millions of dollars per thousand acres in today’s money; while that worked tolerably well during the war itself, as grain prices remained high, the expense and the cost of the debt used to achieve it was a crushing burden after the end of the war meant renewed trade and a fall in grain prices. That expense and the pain caused by it meant that not only were the farmers and the landlords struggling to make ends meet, but they had little left to pay agricultural laborers, who had their wages cut as a result, putting that bottom rung of the social ladder in an immensely precarious and dire economic position.

Much the same situation played out in the nascent industrial sector, where the end of war meant falling prices for finished goods and thus both lower profits and lower wages, angering industrialists and workers alike. As food remained expensive compared to wages, this meant major unrest, too. Thus, other than perhaps some financiers who were doing well off the debt, particularly given post-war deflation, most segments of society were unhappy at how the government was being run.

A high debt load that could only be maintained with high taxes, a highly restive and discontented population, and an economy-punishing bout of deflation are not the stuff of which great empires are typically made.

But the British figured it out, and did so without massive inflation, government default, or authoritarian societal repression.

  1. This is noted by AJP Taylor in his The First World War and Its Aftermath

February 21, 2026

QotD: Warren G. Harding’s successful depression-breaking policies

Filed under: Economics, Government, History, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

One is viewed as among America’s greatest presidents; the other perhaps the worst of all. One is hailed as a savior; the other as a failure. One is given memorials to enshrine his name for all time; the other is pushed into the sea of forgetfulness.

Driven by academia, this is where American history has placed Franklin Delano Roosevelt (in office 1933-1945) and Warren Gamaliel Harding (in office 1921-1923). It is impossible to see FDR absent a “great presidents” ranking; it is likewise impossible to see Harding absent the lowest rungs.

Both men came into office with an economy in tatters and both men instituted ambitious agendas to correct the respective downturns. Yet their policies were the polar opposite of one another and, as a result, had the opposite effect. In short, Harding used laissez faire-style capitalism and the economy boomed; FDR intervened and things went from bad to worse.

Despite these clear facts, in C-SPAN’s latest poll ranking US presidents, FDR finished third in the rankings, while Harding finished 37th. Surveying how both handled the economy, scholars ranked FDR third in that category, while Harding came in at 32. This is a tragedy of history.

America in 1920, the year Harding was elected, fell into a serious economic slide called by some “the forgotten depression“. Coming out of World War I and the upheavals of 1919, the economy struggled to adjust to peacetime realities, falling into a serious slump.

The depression lasted about 18 months, from January 1920 to July 1921. During that time, the conditions for average Americans steadily deteriorated. Industrial production fell by a third, stocks dropped nearly 50 percent, corporate profits were down more than 90 percent. Unemployment rose from 4 percent to 12, putting nearly 5 million Americans out of work. Small businesses were devastated, including a Kansas City haberdashery owned by Edward Jacobson and future president Harry S. Truman.

The nation’s finances were also in shambles. America had spent $50 billion on the Great War, more than half the nation’s GNP (gross national product). The national debt jumped from $1.2 billion in 1916 to $26 billion in 1919, while the Allied Powers owed the US Treasury $10 billion. Annual government spending soared more than twenty-five times, from around $700 million in 1916 to nearly $19 billion in 1919.

Harding campaigned on exactly what he wanted to do for the economy – retrenchment. He would slash taxes, cut government spending, and roll back the progressive tide. He would return the country to fiscal sanity and economic normalcy.

“We need a rigid and yet sane economy, combined with fiscal justice,” he said in his inaugural address, “and it must be attended by individual prudence and thrift, which are so essential to this trying hour and reassuring for our future”.

The business community expressed excitement about the new administration. The Wall Street Journal headlined on Election Day, “Wall Street sees better times after election”. The Los Angeles Times headlined the following day, “Eight years of Democratic incompetency and waste are drawing rapidly to a close”. Others read “Harding’s Advent Means New Prosperity” and “Inauguration ‘Let’s Go!’ Signal to Business”.

The day after Harding’s inauguration, the Times editors predicted “good times ahead”, writing, “The inauguration yesterday of President Harding and the advent of an era of Republicanism after years of business harassment and uncertainty under the Democratic regime were hailed” by the nation’s business leaders. I. H. Rice, the president of the Merchants and Manufacturers Association, told the press, “Good times are now ahead of us. Prosperity is at our door. We are headed toward pre-war conditions … Business men are well pleased with President Harding’s selections for his Cabinet and by the caliber of men he has chosen we know that he means business”.

Under Harding and his successor, Calvin Coolidge, and with the leadership of Andrew Mellon at Treasury, taxes were slashed from more than 70 percent to 25 percent. Government spending was cut in half. Regulations were reduced. The result was an economic boom. Growth averaged 7 percent per year, unemployment fell to less than 2 percent, and revenue to the government increased, generating a budget surplus every year, enough to reduce the national debt by a third. Wages rose for every class of American worker. It was unparalleled prosperity.

Ryan S. Walters, “The Two Presidents Whose Economic Policies Are Most Misunderstood by Historians”, Foundation for Economic Education, 2022-03-05.

February 15, 2026

How to Make The Economy Look Better Than It Is – Death of Democracy 03 – Q3 1933

Filed under: Economics, Germany, History, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 14 Feb 2026

Death of Democracy returns to Nazi Germany in Q3 1933. See Hitler enforce one‑party rule, sign the Reichskonkordat, tighten propaganda and press control, and expand work programs that feed rearmament. From July to September, follow the legal and cultural Gleichschaltung that normalizes terror and reshapes Europe’s future in this episode.
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December 15, 2025

The wrong way to address the credit card debt issue

Filed under: Economics, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Daniel Mitchell says that US politicians seem to have identified a real problem and they’re proposing solutions. Unfortunately, the biggest proposal not only won’t solve the problem … it’ll make it worse for the most vulnerable credit card debtors:

“Credit Cards” by Sean MacEntee is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .

According to a new report from the New York Federal Reserve, Americans have accumulated over one trillion in credit card debt, an all-time high. It’s a record that would make financial advisor Dave Ramsey lose the remaining hair on his head, but even worse, the share of balances in serious delinquency climbed to a nearly financial-crash level of 7.1%. In other words, Americans are borrowing more and paying back less.

This alarming trend has naturally drawn the attention of politicians eager to offer a quick fix.

Unfortunately, the solution gaining bipartisan traction is a blanket cap on credit card interest rates. Like most political quick fixes, it is an economic prescription guaranteed to harm the very individuals it claims to protect.

The impulse to cap rates is rooted in a fundamental economic misunderstanding. It treats the interest rate as an arbitrary fee levied by greedy banks rather than the essential economic mechanism it is: the price of risk. This misguided philosophy is embodied in the legislation introduced by the populist duo of Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), which seeks to impose a nationwide cap on Annual Percentage Rates (APRs), sometimes as low as 10%.

Make no mistake: two politicians don’t know better than the marketplace and the law of supply and demand that governs it. The consequences of imposing a price ceiling on credit are not debatable. They are historically certain. Interest rates on credit cards are higher than on mortgages, for instance, because credit cards are unsecured debt. If a borrower defaults, the bank cannot seize collateral to cover the loss. The interest rate must therefore be high enough to reflect the expected default rate across the entire high-risk pool.

It’s wrongheaded. Faced with the possibility of a government-imposed price cap, credit card companies would of course respond as any company would. They will stop extending credit to those who will possibly not pay them back. Studies show that even a cap as high as 18% would put nearly 80% of subprime borrowers at risk of losing access to credit. In other words, the 10% cap proposed by the Hawley–Sanders alliance would have truly devastating effects for credit access, potentially eliminating millions of accounts.

The victims of this policy will not be the wealthy, who already qualify for prime rates; nor will they be the financially literate, who pay their balances in full. The victims will be the economically vulnerable, the working-class single mother needing a short-term buffer, the recent immigrant attempting to build a credit score, or the young person trying to establish his or her financial footing. For these individuals, the Hawley–Sanders policy will deliver not cheap credit, but no credit at all.

November 11, 2025

How not to solve your housing affordability crisis

Filed under: Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Devon Eriksen explains why allowing fifty-year mortgages are not the solution that financial journalists seem to think they are:

    Wendy O @CryptoWendyO

    I don’t think a 50 year mortgage is bad.
    It gives everyone more flexibility financially
    You can pay a mortgage off early
    Not sure how else to lower home costs in 2025

Buyers: “How much will this house cost me?”

Sellers: “What’s your budget?”

Buyers: “Well, it was 500K, but with these new fifty year mortgages, I think it could stretch to million.”

Sellers: “I have an astonishing coincidence to report.”

Look, I don’t know exactly who’s retarded enough to need to hear this, but if you throw money at something, you get more of it.

Which means that if you subsidize demand, you get more demand.

And if you have the same supply, and more demand, price goes up.

This is how the federal Stafford Loan program made college a gateway to permanent debt slavery. Subsidize demand, price goes up.

The reason people don’t understand this is that most people are only smart enough to think about individuals, not populations.

They think if you have more money, you can buy more things, as if things come from the item store in a Japanese console RPG, where the store always has infinity stuff to sell you, and infinity money to buy your loot.

People who are capable of thinking about large groups quickly realize that money is just a way of distributing things.

Like, there’s a limited supply of things, and you’re just choosing who gets them. Having more money doesn’t make more things.

Except … it should, shouldn’t it?

Eventually?

Like, if apples get super expensive, because somebody invented a new kind of apple that’s so delicious that everyone wants them, then the price of those apples goes up, so more people start growing them.

So why doesn’t that work with houses and colleges?

Why don’t the super-inflated prices of those things inspire profit-minded people to make more?

It’s almost as if there were some sort of gatekeeper, whose permission you needed to make a house or a university.

But that’s impossible, because this is a totally capitalist country, so you can just do things, right?

Ian Runkle/Runkle of the Bailey chimes in:

Okay, let’s talk about 50 year mortgages.

First, let’s talk about what sets the price in a market where there’s more demand than supply. It’s set by what people can afford to pay, which means the payment/month.

What that means in practical terms is that the total price isn’t the limiter. It’s the monthly payment.

So, if X house is going for a price that has a 2500/month payment, the market is going to land total prices on a 2500/month payment.

So, increasing the mortgage terms makes things more affordable for about six months before the market adjusts. After that, it stops making it more affordable.

But “affordable” here doesn’t mean inexpensive. In fact, quite the opposite. Extending from a 30 year to a 50 year mortgage is likely to double the cost of credit.

But that’s before the prices adjust upward to “eat” the supposed affordability gains.

This doesn’t make houses more affordable, it makes them more expensive by far.

November 6, 2025

Reactions to Tuesday’s budget announcement

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Economics, Food, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Mark Carney’s government finally got around to releasing their 2025 budget and lots of folks have thoughts and concerns about what is in it and what isn’t in it. After all, it could be the best possible budget, but it would still not satisfy all concerns … and nobody is pretending that this is anything close to “best possible” territory. Sylvain Charlebois says that the budget ignores the food insecurity issues and grocery prices for ordinary Canadians:

Graphic stolen from Small Dead Animals.

For a government that often talks about food affordability and insecurity, Budget 2025 offers surprisingly little that directly addresses either. There’s no bold food strategy, no affordability roadmap, and no new incentives for domestic food production. Yet, in between the lines, Ottawa has quietly set the stage for some indirect relief — not through grocery subsidies or consumer-facing policies, but through infrastructure, trade, and administrative reforms that could make the food system work a little more efficiently.

The largest signal comes from the government’s $115 billion infrastructure plan, one of its so-called “generational investments”. The new Trade Diversification Corridors Fund aims to modernize ports, railways, and airports — all chronic weak points in Canada’s food supply chain. When bottlenecks ease, goods move faster, and perishable products arrive fresher and cheaper. While no one in Ottawa framed this as a food-price measure, logistics efficiency has long been one of the most effective — and least visible — forms of price control.

[…]

Still, the absence of a broader vision for food affordability stands out. After years of grocery price volatility and public debate about “greedflation”, Canadians might have expected a more direct focus on food resilience — investments in innovation, local processing, or retail transparency. Instead, the government seems to have opted for a quieter, systemic approach: strengthen the arteries of trade and logistics, and trust that efficiency will trickle down to the dinner table.

The budget forecasts a $78.3 billion deficit for the 2025-26 fiscal year, which is significantly higher than notorious spendthrift Justin Trudeau’s last budget number. This adds to an already staggering $1.27 trillion debt load, which is nearly double what it was just before the pandemic. In the lead-up to the budget release Mark Carney had hinted at major sacrifices to be made, and while there wasn’t a lot in the document directly corresponding to sacrifice, the need to service that long-term debt will do the job quite adequately.

In the National Post, John Robson says that the budget is “elbows up, IQs down”:

Since I was last propelled years ago into the purgatory known as “the lockup”, where journalists spend budget day, have either process or contents improved? No. Instead they now insert a false stolen-land “acknowledgement” before even getting to the same old same old labeled bold and new. Which is especially troubling at this supposedly critical juncture.

The document is the familiar brick, 406 paper pages and 493 digitally with no explanation for the discrepancy and no excuse for the length. (Or for being called “Canada Strong” with an inexplicable picture of a ship.) Especially as the Finance Minister gabbled “This is a budget that talks to everyday Canadians,” and its purpose is to state plainly how much the government intends to spend, where it hopes to get the money and how far short it already knows it will fall, you shouldn’t have to wade through 248 pages of sludge to find out.

As P.J. O’Rourke said, “beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud”. Though we “privileged” insiders search “Summary Statement of Transactions” and voila, submerged on p. 249 (all references digital) is a $78.3 billion deficit next year if all goes well, and the national debt increasing $80.5 billion so it already didn’t.

Much commentary, and special-interest attention, focuses on trivial fiddles. But what matters is that Leviathan is in hock up to its horns, with interest payments projected at $55.6 billion next year, soaring to $76.1 billion by 2029-30. If the Lord is willing and the creek don’t rise, both forlorn hopes. NDP MP Leah Gazan, who would jail you for “downplaying” residential schools, snarled about not supporting an “austerity budget” but she won’t get the chance.

Some may bleat that times are tough. Indeed the finance minister’s campaign-speech “Foreword, Budget” gasses “The world is changing, profoundly and in real time; we are no longer living in an era of calm, but of significant change”.

The projected deficits are clearly hallucinatory, as the Liberals never seem to get deficit spending to go down, running deficits every year since 2015:

However, on the ludicrous side, the feds want to spend money to “investigate” Canada taking part in the freaking Eurovision contest:

On the slightly less ludicrous side, Noah considers the military aspects of the budget:

Budget 2025 outlines the government’s generational investment to quote, “defend Canada’s people and values, secure its sovereignty, and position the nation as a strong, reliable partner to its allies“. This starts by initiating a process of rebuilding, rearming, and reinvesting in the DND, CCG, and CAF to provide everyone with the necessary tools and equipment to protect sovereignty and bolster security.

Budget 2025 starts by outlining the government’s previous commitment to accelerate investments to meet NATO’s 2 per cent defence-spending target this year, which is five years ahead of schedule.

Budget 2025 goes a step further by setting Canada on a path to meet NATO’s 5 per cent Defence Investment Pledge by 2035. This will be broken down into two categories, 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2035 in core military needs, including supporting the CAF, modernising equipment and technology, and building up defence industries, and 1.5 per cent on security-related infrastructure and investments.

This reinvestment in defence and security is the largest in decades, totaling $30 billion over a five-year horizon on an accrual basis. This funding is allocated across three main pillars: $20 billion for capabilities, $5 billion for infrastructure and equipment, and $5 billion for industrial support.

On a cash basis, Budget 2025 proposes to provide $81.8 billion over five years, starting in 2025-26, to rebuild, rearm, and reinvest in the CAF. This figure includes over $9 billion in 2025-26 that was previously announced in June 2025. This is the funding previously set out for Canada to reach the 2 per cent NATO target.

Key investments from this $81.8 billion fund include $20.4 billion over five years to recruit and retain a strong fighting force, which incorporates the previously announced updates to pay and support for CAF health care.

An additional $19.0 billion over five years is allocated to repair and sustain CAF capabilities and invest in defence infrastructure, including the expansion of ammunition and training infrastructure. Upgrades to digital infrastructure for the Department of National Defence, CAF, and the Communications Security Establishment, particularly for cyber defence, are funded with $10.5 billion over five years.

Finally, $17.9 billion over five years is designated to expand Canada’s military capabilities, with investments in logistics, utility, and armoured vehicles, as well as counter-drone, long-range precision strike capabilities, and domestic ammunition production.

This is a serious chunk of change, although sadly, and as you will see, we don’t get a major breakdown of what this looks like. What we are left with are general piles of money, which isn’t always a bad thing. It’s also expected. The budget is set for a timeline before many critical capabilities will be delivered, so they won’t be included. Almost everything comes after 2030.

July 7, 2025

Why the Cold War Gave Us LEGO, Credit Cards, and Video Games – W2W 35

Filed under: Economics, Gaming, History, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 6 Jul 2025

Think the 1950s were all poodle skirts and jukeboxes? Think again! From the first credit cards and modems to LEGO bricks, video games, and even skateboards, discover the surprisingly futuristic side of the Cold War era.

In this episode of War to War by TimeGhost, Sparty dives into the forgotten innovations of the 1950s that still shape our daily lives in 2025.

Topics covered:
• The first commercial credit card (Diners Club)
• The birth of the computer modem
• The first microchip and the rise of computing
• “Tennis for Two” – the 1950s’ video game
• LEGO and the System of Play
• Skateboards before Marty McFly

The 50s were WAY more high-tech than you think!

#1950s #coldwar #inventions #historyyoudidntknow #SkateboardHistory #lego #timeghost #techhistory #Modem #microchips #creditcard #videogames
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June 7, 2025

The US President Saves Germany – Rise of Hitler 18 – June 1931

Filed under: Britain, France, Germany, History, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 5 Jun 2025

In June 1931, Germany teeters on the edge of collapse — facing riots, unemployment, and a banking crisis. Amidst chaos and international pressure, US President Herbert Hoover offers a dramatic moratorium on war debts, giving Germany a critical lifeline. Can this American intervention stabilize the Weimar Republic, or is disaster still on the horizon? Explore how global politics, economic turmoil, and desperate diplomacy shape a nation’s fate.
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May 1, 2025

When “looming dystopia” is the preferable scenario

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Elizabeth Nickson on just how badly the great and the powerful have managed to screw up so badly that instead of opening for Anthrax at the Hollywood Bowl, “Looming Dystopia” might actually be one of the better possible futures we face:

I asked Grok to show me Looming Dystopia opening for Anthrax. This is the “in Gothic style” version.

I am a person of faith, of Christ, not a very good one, but one who has been devoted for a long time. I’m not saying I didn’t spend twenty years in the great big glittering world, where I indulged every whim, lived among the powerful, beautiful, God- hostiles, adopted their habits of speech and dress, went to every small exquisite museum, the play of the moment, the art openings, the restaurants and parties, became a sophisticate able to live within that world as handmaiden or companion. I mean, for almost ten of those years, I had a husband who never, not once, came home without a present. But even that came of prayer, of a desire fulfilled a wish granted, of prayer, as in “You want this? Ok then, you will sicken, but here it is”.

That world – the enrichment of culture that came out of the 80’s and 90’s – determines today. That life is the model and goal for many and in fact, now the design, the plan laid out by those who plan the future of the world. Humans shunted deliberately into city life, then enhanced via surgery and chip. Indulgence, consumption, fighting for preference, ambition. Cultural creatives, unmarried, oddly-sexed, politically left would determine the future, their gifts the siren call of the arts, fashion, grand bohemia, Hollywood, eat, drink and travel merrily. The end goal of life: your individuality, your woundedness, your self care, the full expression of your specific gifts. If you are lucky you too can be Lady GaGa or BlackPink and have stadiums roar when you appear. Other humans? The state will take care of them, do not worry. Maybe they will die off. Like dinosaurs.

The central banks have gamed this going forward, making the insane assumption that this social movement was permanent. Did they depend on feminism and drugs to stop the next step, ie, young people leaving the city to build families? Even if they did, they thought they could stop it. Why? Because fascist greens like John Kerry, told them that rural regions must be left to “recover”.

Therefore they gutted the suburbs of financing, because “poor land use”, and “too much car required”, which is preposterous in the Americas with all this land. What else does a young family want but trees and parks, and lawns and a neighborhood of friends, not riven with whores, crackheads and murderous migrants?

The ‘08 crash was predicated on Thatcher’s fiscal success in selling people their council houses in the 80’s. Wonderful! thought Bill Clinton’s team, let’s lead marginal Americans into housing, and lo, we still haven’t paid the freight for that insane idea. I had a paralegal friend in Florida who was foreclosing on $500,000 loans to actual crackhead whores. Clinton’s people, lost in their greed and benevolence, forgot that the British council estate dweller was homogenous, placed, as in deep roots in the area, and stable. In the U.S and Canada, idiot banks lent to just about any joker who turned up with a plausible story. Then the speculators invaded, everyone cashed out merrily, then ka-boom. And pioneering walking away with $100 million from government “service” was Jimmy Johnson, Head of Fannie Mae.

I mean, it’s stupid. The western world’s current bankruptcy (and it’s severe) was caused by Central Bank clowns. Those ridiculous, repellent, hideously expensive COP #8,789 conferences had two outcomes: banks would be compelled to lend to green, require green, require climate mitigation, and jump through DEI, ESG hoops, and governments would chunk up green regs. And prosperity would bloom! Not only that, they surreptitiously, across the world, funded actual companies that poisoned the air, water and land. And when I say “they funded”, I mean the taxpayer did. A lot of our money went into insane outfits like this:

And just like Malcom Gladwell’s tipping point – it took ten years – boom, economic activity came to a screeching halt, except for the wreckage of green energy enterprises everywhere, government debt and re-financing. For instance, the Obama-created outfit, the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, that consists of three solar concentrating thermal power plants in California burned through $1 billion before it collapsed in February. It is one of thousands across the west, all subsidized by the taxpayer. Unwittingly. The press is so embarrassed, they don’t report the trillions lost to green energy projects.

Again, the central bankers own this.

Central bankers have become a metastatic cancer on the economy. By definition, they are late adopters on the marketing curve. By the time they notice something and make their plans upon it, it’s over and something new is growing. Today, the mega-cities everywhere are emptying of everyone over 30 with an income, even or rather especially in China, where the young have just said … nope, a pox on your Commie plans. Chinese, European, British, American, everyone is trickling back to the towns of which their ancestral memories sing, where they can root, where they can live smaller, without environmental toxicity, the rank depravity of the super-culture, the ruinous stupidity of green. The great cities are now super-dangerous for women, and that is spreading as the autocrats in power force violent young men into towns. Last week a young woman in Vancouver fought off a migrant who tried to kill her three times in Stanley Park. My modest, Christian, pioneer family who built the early city along with their community of 10,000 and neglible government, made that park in the early 1900’s; my great grandmother was the first woman to ride a bike in bloomers through that park. It was so safe for 100 years you could let kids play in it after dark, calling them home with a whistle. It is one of the world’s great urban parks, more astonishing than Central Park. This is an outright tragedy. And it is unnoticed, unreported, except on TikTok.

April 23, 2025

“Liberals have never met a crisis they didn’t think they could spend their way out of”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Jesse Kline refutes Mark Carney’s recent diss against libertarians:

The Liberal Boomer in his natural state (spotted on social media, 20 April, 2025).

“The capacity of the federal government to invest in the economy, to support businesses and individuals, will ensure that we bounce back strongly.”

That was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announcing an $82-billion support package at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it could just as easily have been Carney, who said over the weekend that, “In a crisis … government needs to step up.”

At a Saturday news conference, the Liberal leader unveiled his party’s election platform, which includes $130 billion in new spending over four years to fend off the threats posed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

“It’s said there are no atheists in foxholes, there should be no libertarians in a crisis,” Carney argued to justify the continued spending spree.

This offends me as both a libertarian and an atheist. In fact, Canada would be in much better shape today if there were a few libertarians in the room when the Liberals were dealing with the numerous emergencies they’ve faced over the past decade.

The problem with crises is that there’s no way to predict when the next one will hit. But a prudent government should expect the unexpected and leave some fiscal room in the budget to address unforeseen events, while working to fortify the economy during good times so it can withstand the bad. This is not what the Liberals have done.

They took a $1.9-billion surplus in the 2014-15 fiscal year and turned it into a $25-billion deficit in 2016-17.

[…]

And so, we got more Big Government programs that we could ill afford, while Trudeau turned away world leaders looking to Canada to help solve an energy crisis resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Now, as Carney prepares to launch another massive spending spree to deal with the effects of U.S. tariffs, he’s pledging hundreds of millions of dollars for unnecessary programs, including permanent funding for the Sexual and Reproductive Health Fund to make it easier to abort babies, and $400 million for IVF treatments to create new ones in a test tube.

Needless to say that if there were some libertarians around the cabinet table during the crises of the past 10 years, we likely wouldn’t be facing a major economic upheaval with a $40-billion budget deficit, which Carney wants to increase to $62 billion, and a national debt approaching $1.26 trillion.

Spending always appeals to the voters at election time, and the Liberals have been past masters of using that to get into power. But even though there may be a lot of ruin in a nation, even the biggest of nations eventually runs out of money. According to a report from Policy Horizons Canada, an in-house government think tank, we’re well on the way to reaching that ruin and nobody will like what that looks like:

The report warns that by 2040, housing affordability is essentially limited to the wealthy or those with family help; most new homeowners get help from family, some depend on intergenerational mortgages and have several generations of family living together, and others enter “alternative” household mortgages with friends, with a growing percentage of homeowners also owning rental properties.

“Inequality between those who rent and those who own has become a key driver of social, economic, and political conflict,” reads the report.

Moreover, the report highlights a growing dependence on intergenerational wealth, noting that by 2040, inheritance is widely seen as the only reliable path to prosperity. “Society increasingly resembles an aristocracy,” it states, as family background — particularly property ownership — becomes the defining factor in determining one’s opportunities.

Canadians in this future rarely mix with others of different socio-economic status, and there is a clear disconnect between the aspirations of the country’s youth and economic realities, which leaves most with limited expectations of success.

And finally, the rapid propagation of artificial intelligence has dramatically reshaped the labour market. By 2040, the rise of artificial intelligence will have significantly diminished the availability of jobs in creative and knowledge-based professions, once seen as stable paths to upward mobility.

[…]

As a result of the six factors, Canada’s economy could shrink or become less predictable, with the consumer economy shrinking in size, and a higher proportion of very wealthy, older people holding the capital capacity for investment in new businesses. Labour unions could also grow in power and size from a frustrated population. The mental health of Canadians could suffer from living cost challenges.

With these upward mobility issues, Canada may become a less attractive destination for immigrants, and there could be an exodus of young workers, which would exacerbate the issues with supporting the public and social services that support the country’s growing cohort of seniors. This could also result in a labour shortage in industries where artificial intelligence is most difficult.

Perhaps most dystopian is a partial reversion of Canadian society to a trade-and-barter and neo-hunter-gatherer society by 2040, in response to declining trust in formal systems and reduced access to traditional economic opportunities.

[…]

The report’s vision of a future Canada — where trust in institutions collapses, effort no longer yields reward, and people yearn for systemic change — carries echoes of that dangerous historical crossroads, where ideological extremes once flourished in the face of prolonged despair.

With all that said, how likely is this precarious scenario of Canadian society in just 15 years from 2025?

According to Policy Horizons Canada, its “research suggests that it is plausible and would create challenges across a range of policy areas.”

March 17, 2025

German politicians are willing to literally bankrupt the country to keep the AfD out of power

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Germany, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

eugyppius is clearly no fan of Friedrich Merz, the CDU leader and presumptive next Chancellor of Germany, but even he seems boggled at how much Merz is willing to concede to his ideological enemies to get himself into that position:

Let us summarise, briefly, what has happened so far:

  • The CDU are the party of fiscal responsibility. His Triviality the Pigeon Chancellor Friedrich Merz presented himself throughout the campaign as an unusual fan of Germany’s constitutionally-anchored debt brake. He told everybody that he could not imagine ever borrowing in excess of 0.35% of annual GDP, so interested was he in limiting the tax burden of future generations.
  • All of the while, Merz and his advisers were scheming in secret about how they might overhaul the debt brake, firstly because they could not give the slightest shit about the tax burdens of future generations, and secondly because they spent the months since November 2023 observing what happens when a government that has no ideas is also deprived of money. “I have no ideas,” Merz said to himself during this time. “What happens if like Olaf Scholz I also end up with no money?”
  • Exactly two weeks ago, U.S. President Donald J. Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky had a verbal spat in the Oval Office. This spat put the fear of God into the Eurocrat establishment, for whom the Ukraine war has become a sacred and essentially religious cause. Merz capitalised on the panic to unveil his massive debt spending plan. He and his would-be coalition partners, the Social Democrats, announced that they wished to spend 500 billion Euros of debt on “infrastructure” and untold hundreds of billions of debt on defence. This would entail adjustments to the debt brake, in the same way setting your house on fire would entail adjustments to your living arrangements.
  • This massive spending package will require a constitutional amendment, which can only be achieved with a two-thirds vote of the Bundestag. In the newly elected Bundestag, Die Linke and AfD will be in a position to block this amendment and Merz will be stuck with the debt brake. Thus Merz wants to break the debt brake in the final days of the old Bundestag – a strategy that has put him in the amazing position of groveling before the election’s biggest losers. Specifically, Merz has spent the past few days feverishly negotiating with the Green Party, who will not even have any role in his government, just to get them to sign off on his insane spending plans.

I wrote a lot here and on Twitter about the election nightmare scenario I called the “Kenyapocalypse” – a hypothetical in which the Greens and the Social Democrats would each be too weak to give the Union parties a majority on their own, such that Friedrich Merz would be forced to negotiate a coalition deal with both of them at once. In the end, Kenyapocalypse did not happen; the CDU avoided it by a razor’s breadth. Merz, however, turns out to be such a monumental retard that he has managed to recreate a simulacrum of Kenyapocalypse for himself. The man has been on his knees kissing not only Social Democrat but also Green ass for days. He has been begging the Greens to sign onto his debt plan, and the Greens have finally agreed, in return for the following concessions:

  1. The “defence” funding that will be exempt from the debt brake is to be defined as widely as possible. All kinds of things will count as debt brake-exempt “defence” spending now, probably including various climate nonsense.
  2. The 500 billion-Euro “infrastructure” debt is to include 100 billion Euros specifically earmarked for the “Climate and Transformation Fund” – the central financial instrument of the energy transition. This is basically infinity windmill money, you might as well set it on fire. Beyond this specific allocation, any projects that contribute to making Germany “climate neutral by 2045” will also be eligible for the 500 billion-Euro exception. This whole thing will be a massive wad of debt for Green nonsense and I would like to take this moment to laugh at everyone who told me how happy I should be that Merz was trying to fix Germany’s bridges with this debt bullshit. Nothing of the sort is going to happen.
  3. You will note that the explicit goal of achieving “climate neutrality” by 2045 is slated to be among the very few positive political points anchored in the German constitution. “Climate neutrality” is a more expansive concept than mere “carbon neutrality”, or net zero. It describes a utopian state of affairs in which human actions have no influence on the climate whatsoever.

These are prizes the Greens could not achieve even at the height of their influence, in the 2021 elections. Strictly speaking, the entire traffic light coalition fell apart over a matter of 3 billion Euros. Now the Greens are getting 100 billion Euros for free, all because Merz is determined to become Chancellor whatever the cost.

January 7, 2025

Justin Trudeau announces his resignation … and a nation rejoices!

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Rather than letting Canadians have an election, Justin Trudeau announced that he is resigning as Liberal party leader but that Parliament will be prorogued for long enough for the Liberals to run a full leadership campaign. This means that Trudeau’s replacement will likely be prime minister for roughly as long as it takes for Parliament to come to order after prorogation and not a minute longer. Nice work, Justin!

Full credit to the Babylon Bee for their coverage:

It’s impossible not to feel that Trudeau’s ego has been the biggest player in our national psychodrama over the last few months (years, actually), as it seems inevitable that Trudeau’s hapless successor is going to be the Liberal Party’s version of former PM Kim Campbell, although probably not being reduced to a caucus of two seats in a landslide, as Campbell endured.

The Line‘s immediate response quite properly describes Trudeau as “an absolute Muppet”, and I think that’s pretty unkind … to Muppets:

There was only one major thought that crossed your Line editors’ minds when watching Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation speech on the porch of Rideau Cottage on Monday morning: “Jesus Christ, the absolute self regard of this fucking Muppet.”

Yes, that’s harsh. We’re even almost sorry about it. And we’ll touch on the humanity of it all in a moment. But for now, like, gosh. This isn’t good.

We are well aware that much of the media will be replete with mopey paeans to the decade-long service of this prime minister, even as he announces his entirely hypocritical plan to prorogue Parliament until March 24 in order to enable his party to assemble a chaotic and hasty leadership race. You’ll get none of that from us here at The Line. Trudeau deserves no such consideration — at least not at the top. From where we sit today, the sheer arrogance of this man, and the party that has enabled him, has just locked the nation into months of parliamentary paralysis in the midst of what is likely to shortly become an economic trade war and a broader international geopolitical realignment.

While we fully expect news of Trudeau’s resignation to lead many of our readers to sound the bells, we share none of their relief. The decision he announced on Monday demonstrates a total lack of respect for voters, an utter disregard for the good of the nation, and a profound obliviousness to the realities of the international environment we are about to find ourselves in.

And while we’d like to give Trudeau some credit for demonstrating an ounce of genuine humility in his resignation speech, too much of it was crammed with statements of breathtaking, overweening egotism; he pegged his decision to leave squarely on internal divisions — a fantastic parting “fuck you” to his caucus that abrogates any attempt at accountability for his own policy or leadership failures.

Trudeau repeatedly justified his decision to ask for the house to be prorogued by noting that Parliament had become dysfunctional, the opposition parties had stalled business of the house on process questions, and the government was in need of a “reset”.

This blithely ignores a few points, including the fact that part of the reason Parliament has been stuck in a procedural quagmire is because Trudeau’s own government has refused to hand over a potentially incriminating dossier that may demonstrate thwacks of taxpayer cash being siphoned off to well-connected businesses and insiders via what the opposition has deemed a “green slush fund”.

This is a matter upon which the Commons’ Liberal speaker ruled against his own party. The Liberals could have stopped the pseudo-filibuster by turning over to Parliament the documents that they are required to turn over. They didn’t.

The very foundations of the Westminster parliamentary system are rooted in the concept of confidence: if you can’t maintain the confidence of the house, you cannot rule Parliament. Prorogation is a procedural tool intended to govern ordinary logistics. It should never be used to circumvent a matter of confidence — and while it was delicious to watch Trudeau squirm on this point during his resignation speech, defending Stephen Harper’s 2008 use of it in order to justify his own, the fact remains that both leaders have now set and affirmed a dangerous norm that undermines one of the foundational democratic concepts of our democracy and how it functions.

When a government finds itself this battered and unpopular, and when a long-serving leader has announced that he’ll step down, while prorogation may be legal, there’s only one politically and even morally right thing to do. There is only one way to “reset” parliament. Only one.

Call an election.

Paul Wells says “The Liberals give themselves three months to save the furniture”:

He was late as usual. He sounded sad. The wind blew his script away. He said more or less what you expected. When his time in office ends at the end of March, he’ll have been prime minister for a few months less than Stephen Harper was. His party has very little chance of recovering, but more than it had yesterday. It would have been so easy to pick his own time, maybe at the end of 2022, but apparently these decisions are hard to make.

Things happen fast. It’s been six weeks, Monday to Monday, since Donald Trump threatened 25-per-cent tariffs on everything Canadian. Three weeks since Chrystia Freeland resigned from cabinet. In two weeks Donald Trump will be sworn in as President of the United States. Justin Trudeau’s resignation is a pure product of this crisis.

I see a straight line from Trump’s Truth Social outburst of Nov. 25 to this week’s events. Trudeau’s circle once thought a second Trump victory would help them make the case against Pierre Poilievre. It’s fair to say the results are not up to their hopes. With Elon Musk continuing his hobby kibbitzing in the politics of countries around the world, Canada will now stand as a warning to governments elsewhere: Trump and his crew can take you down.

Having stalled until he ran out of options, Trudeau will now become incidental to events. There’s a lot going on. Wistful tribute speeches in the House of Commons will have to wait. The Trudeau succession will play out quickly, in four arenas at once: Parliament; the Liberal Party; the electorate; and Canada’s national security. Events in each venue will influence the others.

Some people accuse Trudeau of doubling the national debt during his time in office — from C$612B in 2015 to C$1.2 trillion currently — but as mathematically inclined commentators have noted, Trudeau also successfully engineered the decline of the value of the Canadian dollar so that the actual increase in national debt is less than 55%! Success!

At Spiked, Tom Slater bids farewell to “Canada’s first black prime minister”:

Yes, Justin Trudeau – the man who proved that in these topsy-turvy political times you can be a liberal and an authoritarian, and painfully woke while also having spent much of your youth in black face – has finally resigned.

The writing’s been on the wall for some time now. After historically low poll ratings, came the resignation before Christmas of his deputy, Chrystia Freeland, who clashed with Trudeau about how to tackle president-elect Donald Trump’s imperious threats of a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian goods. In the end, Justin jumped before he was pushed.

After almost a decade in power, he will step down as prime minister and Liberal leader as soon as a successor can be found. Polls suggest that, such is the hole he has left his party in, whoever replaces him will likely face a shellacking in the upcoming election.

Where did it all go wrong? When Trudeau took the reins of his nation back in 2015 – following in the footsteps of his father, Fide … sorry, Pierre – he rode on a wave of popular support and corporate-media swooning.

With the election of another pampered rich kid south of the border a year later, Trudeau was praised in the international media as the anti-Trump – progressive, pro-migration and drop-dead gorgeous, to boot!

Indeed, the next time an establishment scribe slurs Trump supporters as doe-eyed dolts dazzled by celebrity, point them in the direction of the gushing coverage of “hunky” Trudeau, who seemed to govern as if he was in a budget version of The West Wing.

Soon enough, he began carrying on like an unsubtle caricature of a cringe, establishment liberal, chiding women for saying “mankind”, instead of “peoplekind”, and declaring that he was insisting on a 50:50 male-to-female cabinet “because it’s 2015“.

Trudeau is the apotheosis of a hectoring style of politics that assumes voters are terrible bigots in need of lecturing, and women and minorities are perennial victims in need of his paternalistic assistance.

I’m frankly amazed it took the good people of Canada almost 10 years to wipe that smug look off his face.

September 21, 2024

Statistics Canada notes significant decline in life satisfaction and hope for the future

Filed under: Cancon, Economics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In one sense, we should be quite used to Statistics Canada giving us unwelcome economic news, given the state of the Canadian economy over the last decade. What seems less in character is that they’re connecting the dots between our obvious national financial decline and showing how directly it has impacted ordinary Canadians’ views about life in Canada and what they expect in the future:

Life satisfaction among Canadians is on the decline. Based on data from the Canadian Social Survey, levels of life satisfaction have been tracking downward since the summer of 2021, when quarterly monitoring of key Quality of Life indicators began. Less than half (48.6%) of Canadians aged 15 years and older were feeling highly satisfied with their lives in 2024, down from 54.0% three years earlier.

Not only is life satisfaction down, but so is hopefulness about the future, which dropped from 65.0% to 59.7% from 2021 to 2024. These results are based on a new study released today, “Charting change: How time-series data provides insights on Canadian well-being”, which sheds light on changes in overall life satisfaction, hopeful feelings about the future and financial well-being. It examines differences and trends across various dimensions, such as age, gender, racialized and non-racialized populations, and 2SLGBTQ+ populations.

Decline in life satisfaction more common among young adults and racialized Canadians

Life satisfaction can be considered a pulse check on Canadians’ overall well-being. While this indicator of subjective well-being has been declining for the past few years, there is nonetheless substantive variation in life satisfaction across different demographic groups. Younger adults (aged 25 to 34) had notable declines in their life satisfaction in 2024, with their proportions declining an average of 3.9 percentage points per year since 2021. By 2024, fewer than 4 in 10 (36.9%) of these adults were highly satisfied with their lives.

Meanwhile, seniors (aged 65 and older) maintained their high level of satisfaction, with 61.5% being happy with their lives in 2024. This measure of subjective well-being has remained relatively stable among senior Canadians since 2021.

In addition, racialized Canadians, who are younger on average than non-racialized Canadians, saw greater drops in life satisfaction than their non-racialized counterparts. The proportion of racialized Canadians reporting high levels of life satisfaction fell from 52.7% in 2021 to 40.6% in 2024. This decline was more than five times higher than the decrease observed for non-racialized Canadians, who experienced a decline in life satisfaction of 0.8 percentage points per year from 2021 to 2024. In 2024, over half (51.5%) of non-racialized Canadians were happy with their lives.

It really is a bad sign when the largest province in Confederation is also becoming the most disheartened by its economic prospects:

May 17, 2024

Canada Post is in deep, deep trouble

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I was vaguely aware that Canada Post has been in financial difficulties for a while, but I had no idea things were quite this dire:

You’d better believe that the Canada Post Corporation is in very deep trouble. Here’s how they phrased it in their 2023 annual report:

    Canada Post’s financial situation is unsustainable.

“Unsustainable”. Well that doesn’t sound good. Think they’re just putting on a show to carve out a better negotiating position? Well, besides for the fact that they’re not currently negotiating with anyone, the numbers do bear out the concern:

    For 2023, the Corporation recorded a loss before tax of $748 million, compared to a loss before tax of $548 million in 2022. From 2018 to 2023, Canada Post lost $3 billion before taxes. Without changes and new operating parameters to address our challenges, we forecast larger and increasingly unsustainable losses in future years.

In other words, it’s madly-off-in-all-directions panic time.

Hey! You know I can hear your condescending sniff: “I’m sure this is just a temporary disruption. They’ll figure out how to fix the leak and get themselves back on the road like always. They’re too big to fail.”

Yeah … not this time. The competition from digital communications (i.e., the internet), FedEx, and UPS isn’t going anywhere. Letter delivery nosedived from nearly 5.5 billion pieces in 2006 to just 2.2 billion in 2022. And vague references to “major strategic changes to transform our information technology model” don’t sound much like magic bullets for reversing the decline.

But Canada Post’s labour and pension costs sure are marching bravely forward. In fact, if it wasn’t for Parliamentary relief in the form of Canada Post Corporation Pension Plan Funding Regulations, the Corporation would have had to pay $354 million into the pension plan in 2023 alone. But that $354 million — plus whatever additional amounts show up in 2024 and besides the $998 million in existing general debt — are still liabilities that’ll eventually need paying.

February 24, 2024

Never mind the unfunded liability … money printer go brrrr!

Filed under: Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Kulak at Anarchonomicon points out that the US government’s debt situation — which was alarming 20 years ago — has continued to get worse every year:

Libertarian Economists have been predicting this collapse of the federal system would happen “By About 2030” since before 2008. I remember in high school in the early 2010s listening to Ron Paul lectures and visiting USDebtClock.com, this was a hot button issue after 2008 … (then of course there was no political will to do anything and everyone just stopped talking about it)

I honestly forget that everyone around me doesn’t already know this, this is so common and accepted in libertarian and economic circles, and everyone who knows it got bored of eyes glossing over when they tried to explain it (in an autistic panic) decades ago.

US Unfunded liabilities:

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, US Debt, and Federal employee benefits and pensions, are all basically intergenerational ponzi schemes that require constant 1950s level population growth amongst the productive tax paying middle-class to maintain. By 2000 it was obvious this population growth was not happening, that population was beginning to age and collapse, and NO, the illegals at the border weren’t adequate replacements … (they weren’t adequate to prop up federal expenses in 2000 when they were still Mexican, now that they’re Guatemalan, Haitian, and Senegalese they’re almost certainly a net drain).

The Specter of Mass Boomer retirements with few to no children and grandchildren to replace them and pay for all the costs of their retirements and healthcare was maybe the slowest but most assured crisis ever to be seen in human history … Demographics is destiny.

This was a foreseen problem in 2000 when US Debt to GDP (just the portion that’s already been spent and interest has to be paid on) was 59% of GDP. Today the US Debt to GDP ratio is 122% of GDP whilst just in the past 24 years. Absolute US Federal Debt (not including state or local) has grown from 5.6 trillion dollars to 34 trillion dollars (102k per citizen: man, woman, and child). just the interest that has to be paid out of your tax dollars on that debt is set to eclipse ALL US Military spending sometime this year … And by 2028 Debt to GDP will be 150% (46.4 Trillion, 132k per citizen, 12 trillion more in 4 years, with no additional spending bills) and the Interest (at current estimates) will be over 2.5 trillion dollars, over a third of all Tax Dollars brought in will be spent on just interest, because dollar confidence has collapsed and the only way to keep inflation from destroying the dollar has been to radically raise the interest rates the Federal Reserve offers.

Now all that, That catastrophic state of things, is just the debt, the money that’s been spent … The real crisis is the Unfunded liabilities, all the promises the US has made to Boomers (who dominate the vote) and others about money they’re GOING to spend.

As of now total Unfunded liabilities stand at 213 trillion dollars, $633,000 per US Citizen (Man woman, and newborn babe)… These are all dollars the US has promised to pay to someone somewhere at some point: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Federal pensions, VA Benefits, etc. And cannot in any politically feasible way restructure or get out of.

If no one ever contributed another dime to social security, and in so doing was promised in turn significantly more than that dime (it’s a Ponzi scheme, it loses money in proportion to and at a greater rate than the money being contributed to it (every dollar you contribute you’re promised multiple dollars in return, and your dollar is not invested, it just pays off previous contributors)) … If everything froze and every young person was locked out of ever receiving Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, the Unfunded Liability would be $633k per every man, woman, and child … that’d be the debt a newborn American would be born with.

However because it is NOT frozen and it will not be, by 2028 that number will Rise to $837k and an ordinary household of 4 will have seen their, politically unavoidable, family obligation in future tax payments to the federal government increase by $804,000 in just 4 years.

If your response is that your family doesn’t even make 804k in 4 years and there’s no way you could ever pay that much in 4 years given its just going to increase at a faster rate the next 4 years … CONGRATULATIONS! 90% of families don’t make that much, and less than 1% of families could ever afford to pay that much in taxes in a 4 year time.

This has been slowly growing for decades, and in the late 2000s and 2010s Ron Paul types were screaming that those Benefits needed to be reformed NOW (in 2008) or they’d drown America. But of course, cutting benefits is political Anathema to boomers, so nothing was done …

The Course of Empire – Destruction by Thomas Cole, 1836.
From the New York Historical Society collection via Wikimedia Commons.

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