America’s Decline We Must Face
We’ve reached a place where we must fix what lies in the hearts of Americans decline. Our political leaders or Business Leaders have made a catastrophic choices. We as a nation can’t rely on them to fix what has been broken. Time for Americans to take off the blinders and take a look at what’s really happening in our country. We need to make choices that will put us back on the right path.
The decline of our country is primarily a decline of our culture. The morals and ethics of our political leaders and the American public are in disarray. The American public has their head in the sand, thinking that the government will take care of us and fix things. But with the trillions of dollars in debt America faces, it will never go away and America cannot afford to pay it off. America’s does not even collect enough taxes to pay the interest on the debt.
So in this article I’m going to discuss some of the problems that we are facing in America and the decline of American Dollar and then later on we’ll talk about some of the choices that we have As Americans to fix the problems and right the ship. Or we will face the demise of the American dollar and the America as we know it.
We have lost our sense of Honor, humility and dedication to personal responsibility, for more than 200 years, that made our country the greatest hope for mankind. We have become a country of people who believe there well-being is someone else’s responsibility.
These problems manifested in different ways but at the root they’re all part of the same essential problem. The corruption of America isn’t happening just in one part of the country, it’s happening all across our country. It’s the moral decay, it’s agreed, it’s the desperate grasp for power and it’s destroying our nation.
As Americans we know in our bones that something is terribly wrong with our society. Most people can’t comprehend what’s truly wrong but they feel it deep in their bones that something is wrong but they don’t know what to do about it. They go through life with blinders on with their head in the sand thinking that things are just fine in my neighborhood. It seems that everybody in our country have lost their moral bearings from the highest government officials and senior corporate leaders all the way down to the school teachers and local community leaders. The ethics of our fellow Americans seems to have changed from one of personal integrity and responsibility to get yours. The all-out attempt by any means possible to get the most amount of benefits with the least amount of work.
One of the first problems faced in the Americans is their entitlement argument. The American idea of entitlement argues that because you were born into a rich Society other people owe you something. Some politicians like to argue that the poor never have a real shot at the American dream so the nation owes them something. And the poorest Americans feel that the government or the people owed them something. The more obvious problem is the idea that the government is responsible for fixing this. But our American government has proven its inefficiency for dealing with the poverty in America.
This leads to one of the core problems in America. Government does not produce anything, anything the government gives to one group or one person it must first take from someone else. This take and give sucks Capital out of the productive economics and uses it to fund activities that are largely unproductive. Always remember that the government has to take resources from someone before it can give them out to others. This act of taking destroys the economy. The more you take from the productive member of society, the less productive they become. That’s the primary lesson of the history of socialism. Yet many of our political leaders seem oblivious to the iron law of human nature.
So how does the government go about taking the resources it has promised to distribute? The first is obviously they must raise taxes. You don’t need me to tell you our politicians have taken full advantage of their power to tax. But they have reached their limit. Taxes can no longer be raised without people fleeing the states. This has happened in several places like California, New Jersey, and New York to name a few.
In Maryland the Democratic state government couldn’t balance the budget 2009 so it decided to double the income tax rate on citizens with more than $1 million dollars in annual income. But what happened was the rich left the state. The number of million-dollar income in the state of Maryland declined by more than 30%. Rather than gaining the productive $1.6 million and income from these filers Maryland collected $100 million less than it did the year before.
In 2014 only 53% of the US population paid federal income tax. Those taxes are not evenly distributed across the whole country. The burden of the overwhelming amount of taxes the government collects falls on just a few people. The top 25% of our country pay nearly 90% of all income tax collected.
Now let’s talk about the corruption of Americas Debt!
Taxes are the most obvious way the government takes what it wants to redistribute. But the government has reached its limit for what it can generate from new or higher taxes. When the government realizes it cannot take any more from you through taxes it uses debt to take from your children and grandchildren.
As of December 2014 the US government owes roughly $18 trillion dollars.
The number is so large it’s meaningless. No one can comprehend how much money $18 trillion dollars really is. A better way to think about it is each American taxpayer owes roughly $153,000, that’s like a whole additional mortgage.
In 2014 Harvard’s Harvard study put it this way. If the federal government spent its yearly Revenue exclusively on debt reduction and ceased all its other operations it would take three or four years to pay down the debt. The government could pay down the debt in one blow if it simply took more than $52,000 from every person living in the United States including children the elderly and the unemployed. If this one time debt reduction fee were levied only on those in the workforce the cost would be over a $106,000 per person. And it’s not just the federal government that has become addicted to debt. If you add up all the government, corporate, and Consumer Debt Americans are roughly $60 trillion dollars and debt. If the government had to pay even 6% interest on its debt it would cost nearly $1 trillion dollars a year. And that’s just to pay the interest on the debt. The entire government brings in less than $3 trillion a year on taxes.
Now let’s talk about Americas student loan debt.
Student loan debt is another large bubble waiting to burst. As of 2014 student loan debt totals more than $1 trillion dollars. The average college student graduate with $24,000 in debt and by their late twenties has racked up more than $6,000 in credit card debt. Meanwhile the medium earnings for Americans aged 25 to 34 equals just $34000 to $38,000 a year. This is causing a large problem in the young adults that are starting out their life with personal debt of 100% of their income. What does this say about the state of our economy and the future of the next Generations? All the signs show that the debt piling up on our youth will become another catastrophic bubble in the American economy. The problem is that one-third of adults will probably default on their loans. This causes a large problem for the economics of America in the future. According to the Wall Street Journal 33% of student loans are held by subprime borrowers the riskiest folks.
Next we must talk about the auto loan business. Now more people than ever before are borrowing money to buy cars. As of 2013 America’s barrowed $783 billion dollars against our cars and trucks. Nnbelievably 34% of It is now owned by subprime creditors. In the past the terms of the loan did not outlive the life for the car. Under those conditions an Auto loan was extremely low risk. Now with the changing of loans and the longer terms up to 84 months which is 7 years and the lowering of the down payments have now created a problem in the auto loan industry. Now more than ever automobile loans are going default and become and subprime.
All of these problems with American that we’ve talked about when all these bubbles pop, it’s going to become catastrophic for American people.
American people have become addicted to debt. The government has become addicted and Reliant upon debt. The sense of entitlement across our nation has gone rampant. The culture of today’s people and government tells the people that they are owed something they cannot afford. And our government is leading by example and piling on debt to pay for things thay cannot afford.
The United States has become the largest debtor in human history.
It’s disgusting that we would leave a burden like this for our children and our grandchildren.
All this debt of America has open the door for financial corruptness of America and the ability for other countries to corrupt America. Not to even mention the ability for the government to pay off the debt we have accumulated. We are fast approaching the point where the government cannot even afford to pay the interest on the debt. All this is causing the corruption of our currency.
The degradation of Americas currency
When a government taps out its ability to increase its tax revenue and its debt becomes too mountainous to maintain, it has one last way it can take what it needs. And it just might be the most dangerous for our culture.
It prints the dollars it needs to pay for what it wants.
Throughout history the government was bound by the gold standard. Meaning the country had to have in gold reserves the amount of dollars being printed. Until the mid-twentieth century the dollar represented the size of the gold reserves. Reserves limited the dollars available in circulation. But in 1971 President Nixon severed the ties between the gold and the dollar. From then on the government was free to print as much money and take on as much debt as it would like. And the government has sure used and taken advantage of that. During the crash in 2007, 8 and 2009’s the financial crisis all the government bailing out they did was done by printing more money. They ran the printing presses Full Tilt 24-7. Which is causing the value of our American currency to plummet. Not many Americans understand the problem with these actions of just printing the money they want. The problem is the federal government just print more money when it needs it because it cannot collect more taxes to cover its debt or the things that they want to do with the money. Printing money does not create wealth or stimulate the economy. Instead it simply makes each dollar less valuable and leads to higher prices called inflation. That means the average person is working harder producing more but cannot buy as much as they used to be. As a result we have been left with a heavily debted economy that is still led by consumption. Our system rewards debtors and punishes savers.
The American people now owe the Chinese government nearly $1.5 trillion dollars. It has been clear that China would soon be pulling the strings on America financial system. For most Americans these big numbers don’t mean much but to keep in mind this tab is now hundreds of billions of dollars more than what the US government collect in all income taxes. It’s basically an amount that we can never ever hope to repay. China is now engaged in a full-fledged currency war with the United States. Chinas ultimate goal is to become the publicly traded currency of the world. Right now the U.S. dollar is the main currency of trading throughout the global markets. But because of America’s degrading dollar China is now stockpiling gold in reserve to make the Chinese dollar more powerful. If the Chinese can strengthen the Chinese yen and become the global currency of the world it will then take over the currency Market in the world and very well could possibly take over the financial markets of the United States of America. The Chinese are slowly heading their exposure to the Dollar by becoming the world’s leading gold investor. By building a huge stockpile of gold they will be able to back their currency with the world’s traditional form of money, gold. Once they make the yuan freely freely convertible to Gold, they will have created tremendous demand for their bonds and their bills by making their currency the world’s most reliable. The impact on the American dollar will be catastrophic.
Largely the Western economies are trying to deal with her death by desperately printing more dollars trying to print their way out of debt. This printing of dollars the lack of gold reserves is causing the American dollar to lose value.
So to sum up this conversation with the trillions of dollars in debt the lack of ability for the government to collect enough taxes to settle this debt. That puts Americans at a huge disadvantage in the global market. The ability for foreign governments to control the financial future of America, the lack of ability for the present American taxpayers to pay off this debt, puts a huge burden on our children and grandchildren. This debt does not just go away. There’s only two choices, pay it back or go bankrupt. Financially it’s almost impossible for the American government to pay off this debt. For the American government to go bankrupt would be catastrophic.
I am a father of four and a grandfather of 3, my oldest son is 29 my youngest grandchild is two and a half. I am absolutely fearful for my children. I’m disgusted at the American population and the government of America that is basically saying leave it to the Next Generation. Yes you may be six feet under by time this all takes place but your children and grandchildren will not. It’s time for Americans to see the realization that the debt we created is a very big problem that must be faced now not later. The lack of moral and ethical obligations of our government and the people with in America to deal with these problems and push it off is becoming catastrophic. If we don’t make changes Life as We Know It in America being the greatest country in the world will soon crash.
Now this all seems bleak. I do have faith that it can be fixed my problem is I’m not sure Americans are willing to face the problem. If your household was in $60,000 or $100,000 of credit card debt you would stop spending. You would stop the bleeding. You would get on a budget. You be forced to start fixing the problem. Americans are not doing that.
Chief Inspiration Officer
Vincent St.Louis
Fighting the forces of Mediocrity
Connect with me on FaceBook HERE
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