I like it when I come across someone who can put the issue in to just a few paragraphs. Every now and again, I’m able to do that, myself (it is harder than you think) – but I’ve yet to be able to describe our overall condition better than this entry over at Economic Collapse:
…We are like that one couple that almost every neighborhood seems to have that has two shiny new cars in their driveway, that dresses in designer clothes and that seems to have plenty of money to take vacations and yet is in debt up to their eyeballs.
The truth is that the United States keeps getting poorer every single month. The term “trade deficit” is not very sexy, but it is critically important to understand if you want to comprehend what is happening to the U.S. economy. Every month tens of billions of dollars more wealth goes out of the United States than comes into it. We are continually getting poorer.
To cover up our declining national wealth, we have gone into staggering amounts of debt. We have maintained our lavish standard of living by piling up staggering amounts of debt on the national, corporate and consumer levels…
I’m telling you, boys and girls, our only way out of this is to balance our budget and then start making, mining and growing things here in the United States. Balancing the budget will stop the bleeding and prevent national default – while making, mining and growing things will actually create wealth with which we can then pay off the massive debt we’ve already got. If we do anything other than balance the budget and start producing, we’re economically doomed.
The United States is still, by far, the richest nation in the world – we’re just not using our wealth. We have too many people on one form or another of the government dole; we have too many people engaged in non-productive enterprise; we’ve locked away far too much of our natural resources because of environmental and other concerns; we’ve taxed and regulated ourselves to the point where business reasonably feels its just easier to do business in China, of all places – we’ve killed the goose which laid the golden eggs for us.
Decline is not inevitable – people choose to decline. What do we choose? We can get out of this – in 20 years, we could be sitting on top of the economic world once again. All we have to do is show a willingness to face harsh realities, and then get to work.
Will we do it? Time will tell.
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