We're going to make the wrong one because you, I, and the rest of the citizens of this nation won't demand AND ENFORCE the correct one.
Two two choices are:
- Attempt to muddle through in the current border situation with the roughly 17 million, or somewhat over 5% of the US population here illegally and unable to work and pay taxes, about 20% of those arriving just in the last couple of years and essential none of them forced out, all of whom have few or no skills and are wildly-massive resource sinks, including disease, no capacity or care about others property and lives and more.
- Attempt to continue to have a Federal Government that literally spends $3 for every $2 it takes in via taxes, much of which goes directly and indirectly to the above bullet point and what isn't covered is forced onto state and local budgets which they have no means to collect in taxes either. All of this is directly inflationary; the era of being able to coast on the $300-400 billion a year in increased trade sequestration is permanently over as a result of sanctions leveled when the Ukraine-Russian hostilities began (not that this was a permanent situation in the first place; it was destined to eventually end anyway.) If it isn't clear by now that 20% insurance increases on an annual basis and up to 50% or more in some places as businesses and consumes engage in fraud (aka "Florida") to try to stay above water, never mind the ramp in fuel and transportation costs and similar cannot continue and wildly exceeds that of wages, I don't know what someone is supposed to tell you other than "you're going to continue to get squeezed until you go bankrupt if you don't stop it", even though you don't want to hear it.
- Attempt to continue to play the game that "housing is expensive because of tight supply." No, housing is expensive because we set up a huge boom in refinances that were used to goose the economy through rate manipulation that Congress suborned along with President Trump and Biden, and the Fed went along with. Yellen was personally and directly involved and instead of being hung out to dry she was rewarded with being Treasury Secretary, exactly as Geithner was after he machined up the 2007/08 blowup at the NY Fed desk. Rather than be pilloried or even executed for the damage they did they got rewarded and you and I let it happen.
- Attempt to continue to play the "college cost" game. Same basic problem: Obama was just the last piece of it by federalizing loans but hardly the first piece. Rather than resolve it we allowed a bunch of screaming children irrespective of their physical age to charge it all up with no capacity or thought of how they were going to pay, and then we went even further and gilded all the colleges on top of it.
- Attempt to continue to ignore 100+ year old federal anti-trust law in the medical industry which was confirmed to apply at the USSC twice in the late 70s and 80s. While I generally find "Zero" to be just that the facts are that when you're right, you're right and in this article they're right. That article clearly documents a wild-eyed repetition of the exact conduct that wound up at the USSC with Royal Drug and which the drug and insurance companies LOST, which should have instantly led to 10 years in federal prison for every single pharma, drug store and insurance company executive involved at the time and for the last 40 years since. This is not a question of "to be litigated" it was decided FORTY YEARS AGO and is a FELONY. If you think its just there in the medical system rather than everywhere from your "loved" doctor on to every hospital in the land you're dead wrong and since you won't do a damn thing about it you will soon be just plain dead as it will be unavailable when you can't pay for it and neither can anyone else, including the government with their cost-shifting schemes.
The PPI data makes clear that all the screamers about "inflation is coming down and it will be ok" are full of crap. They're full of crap because exactly zero of the drivers, which are the above facts and more that all tie into the same thing ("there's a free lunch right over here!") are false.
The other alternative is to:
- Declare an invasion and post the military and State Guards on the border with orders to stop it by whatever means are necessary. Peacefully demanding said persons immediately cease and return before crossing into the US if you can, by deadly force if you must. In addition all of the DACA folks (which has just again been declared illegal) and every other illegal immigrant must immediately leave and any employer, landlord or other person employing, renting to or otherwise harboring, aiding and abetting an illegal alien must be indicted, imprisoned and the instrumentality of their illegal aid forfeited. "Muh that's unfair" cries notwithstanding this has to be done. This will immediately restore budgetary capacity within states and cities and has to happen right here, right now.
- The budget must be balanced. The biggest element of this problem lies in CMS and all collusive practices must be forced out by jailing the guilty parties, no matter who they are. The purpose of a Congress and specifically in the House is to determine as representatives of the people what to fund and with what to fund it. If you can't fund it now you can't have it, period, end of conversation. The fruits of productivity increases belong to the people as a whole, not to a few mavens in Congress who manage to amass tens of millions of dollars over a career while making $170,000 salaries -- quite-obviously they are gaming it and stealing the money, whether in the stock market or otherwise.
- The housing market must be left alone. Prices will crash. Demand will cool as we get rid of all the people who have no right to be here. Remove five percent of the population and suddenly apartments and similar will become more reasonable, which takes pressure off. Prices decrease and suddenly people can afford to buy again. No, rates must not be manipulated lower again under any circumstances; today they actually stand at historically-reasonable levels in a 2% inflation economy. Borrowing money for three decades should cost about three to five percent more than the rate of actual inflation. By this standard rates are still too low but as we get rid of the deficit spending they will come into line with reason staying right where they are. Yes, many people will wind up bankrupt. That's ok; the purpose of bankruptcy is to promote clearing of markets and it will function exactly as it always has to do precisely that.
- College lending must be ejected from the Federal Government, returned to entirely-private except for perhaps Pell and Stafford, and dischargeable in bankruptcy. The price of college will crash. So be it. Today the Internet makes college a dubious proposition in the first place other than for personal interaction. Thus they should have to provide something better than what you can find in a web search so let's see it, colleges! If you can't then you go broke. That's how it should be.
- The entire medical system must be de-monopolized and de-colluded and those who refuse imprisoned across the board. I've written much on this through the years -- here is the way to do it. Costs will come down by 80% or more if we do this. At the same time we must make it illegal for pharmaceutical firms to grade their own homework when it comes to drugs; the data at this point is clear and convincing that a huge percentage of the drugs are outright frauds in that their claimed results are not reproduceable. The latest is the furor over OTC decongestants which, it is alleged, are worthless despite being peddled to all and sundry for years.
None of that will be easy, of course. Nor will be the tax structure changes and spending cuts necessary to bring the budget into balance. But the choice is stark: We can either do all of it or our society and economic system will collapse. A Ponzi scheme always eventually collapses because it is exponential and yet the number of people and resources of a given place are finite -- always.
This is an exponential graph. It is not my data; it is official government data from the US Treasury.
If we do not stop this here and now the nation will be economically and you personally, along with your children, destroyed.
No, you will not manage to evade it while your neighbor gets screwed. You will also get screwed.
Attempting to game this as we have in the past by, for example, letting in millions of unskilled, low-wage workers who then cost more than they produce in an attempt to "drive down" compensation not only won't work it has and will make the problem worse. Ditto suppressing interest rates for house purchases, allowing the taking of unlimited loans without a care in the world whether the job someone gets as a result of having a degree will cover the cost, allowing medical and pharmaceutical firms to price-fix through collusion that has been illegal for more than a hundred years and more. Permitting offshoring by putting environmental pollution "over there" and then behaving it doesn't exist, along with enabling literal and functional slavery in said nations must end right now with any firm that does that being subjected to tariffs sufficiently high to render that behavior uneconomic.
We have played this game for the last two decades and I've been reporting on it since 2007.
We either stop it now by whatever means we must use to force the government to do so or this nation will collapse -- including those who think they are "rich and powerful", both within and beyond the government today.