"The Great Sucking
Siphon of America's
Wealth!"
from "In Defense of Rural
America"
By Ron Ewart,
President
National Association of Rural
Landowners
and nationally recognized author and
speaker on freedom and property rights issues.
©
Copyright Sunday, December 1, 2013 - All Rights
Reserved
As published on
Newswithviews, November 27, 2013
This article is also
available on our website at:
NOTE:
In our Thanksgiving message we included a link to a new video we
created entitled: "The Christmas Night
Obama Stole Our Kids". Unfortunately, the link was
deffective. Here is the correct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke5kZ69MYV8&feature=youtu.be
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"It is an inescapable fact that
there will always be the rich among us and there will always be the poor among
us. Sometimes the rich will make a wrong decision, lose their
wealth and join the poor. Sometimes the poor will break the bonds of
poverty and join the ranks of the rich. It is the natural
order. When government tries to even the playing field by passing
laws, they muck it up every time and their meddling usually hurts the poor and
the middle class, but never the rich. In the process, their
entitlement programs allegedly designed to even the playing field, become the
great sucking siphon of America's Wealth."
Ron Ewart
The other night, not being able to
find anything worthy to watch on what has become a mostly useless and debase
entertainment venue, we turned the TV to the history channel and watched a
documentary on America's aging infrastructure. In the two-hour long
program, they touched on every form of infrastructure, from roads, bridges and
rail corridors, to water and sewer systems and dams, to oil and gas
pipelines, to generation facilities and the electrical power grid, to river
and lake levies and to our our sea and fresh water ports.
Many of these systems were built well
over 50 years ago and some over 100 years ago. But like all systems, they
begin to fail over time from the ravages of weather, rust and corrosion,
electrolysis, earth movements, growing loads beyond capacity and inattention by
those in charge. Water pipes burst daily all over America, releasing
billions of gallons of domestic water onto streets and into houses and
businesses. Bridges fail costing millions in replacement and lost lives,
like the 2007 collapse of the I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the
2013 collapse of the Skagit River bridge in Mount Vernon in Washington
State. Roads age, crack, slip and slide costing millions in vehicle
damage, lost commerce and even lives. Gas pipelines blow
up resulting in millions of dollars in property damage and again, more
lives. Levies break during times of severe floods and destroy thousands of
buildings, crops and lives. Derailments occur due to aging steel
rails, decaying ties and loosening rail spikes, ground slippage and
sometimes sabotage. Hazardous chemicals are released into the atmosphere
and wholesale evacuations are mandated. Sea and fresh water
ports fill up with sediment requiring constant dredging and aging docks are
deteriorating and failing. As the entire infrastructure systems age
without maintenance, upgrades and replacement, the cost to the economy,
jobs and lives will accelerate.
In a recent report by the American
Society of Civil Engineers they forecast a short fall of at least $1.6 trillion
by the year 2020. Public safety is being marginilized due primarily
to lack of state and federal funds. Why?
Since FDR instituted Social Security
and a laundry list of government subsidies for individuals and businesses and
President Johnson implemented Medicare, Medicaid and the Great Society
programs, the cost of entitlements has exploded.
At the beginning of the 20th Century
entitlement spending was around 0.4% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product
(GDP). By the middle 1930's FDR expanded social programs to 2% of
GDP. By 1950, entitlement spending increased to 3.3% of GDP.
But by 1960, in just 10 short years, entitlement spending jumped to 5.1% of
GDP. In 1965 the Congress passed Medicare and Medicaid and the Great
Society programs, sending entitlement spending to 11% of GDP by 1975. By
the 1980's entitlements were 13%. In 2010, entitlement spending had jumped
to 19% of GDP. In 110 years entitlement spending in the U. S. has
increased almost 5000%. Why?
Pensions, especially to unionized
government employees, are also on the upward march. Huge portions of
pension liability are totally unfunded and a ticking time bomb for future
generations.
Government health care costs have
also risen sharply. In 1980, health care costs were at around 3% of
GDP. 20 years later in the year 2000, they were at 5% of
GDP. With the implementation of Obama Care in 2014, health care costs are
projected to skyrocket. The unfunded liability for this increase will grow
exponentially as well. The tax burden to fund this built-to-fail program
will be born on the backs of the working middle class and the
young.
(Source for the above statistics,
with graphs, can be found at: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/entitlement_spending)
Today, it has been reported
that over 47,000,000 Americans are using food stamps, now called SNAP
credit cards. Today over 50% of the American population is receiving some
kind of government assistance, not including social security and Medicare.
Why?
The 2013 federal budget, around $3.5
trillion, shows 62% for welfare, Medicare and other health care, social
security, unemployment and labor. Military spending is only 18% of the
total budget. That 62% of the budget is mandatory spending with built-in
annual increases. Discretionary spending is just 30% of the budget, where
the Congress can fudge with numbers. 6% of the budget is in interest
payments on the ever-rising debt due to borrowing money from the Federal Reserve
and foreign nations to fund entitlements. What happens when the interest
rate on the debt rises? Now, it is being kept artificially low by the
Federal Reserve. The FEDS can't keep the interest rate low
forever. On $17 Trillion of the nation's debt, if the
interest rate rose just 1%, the interest payments on the debt would
rise by an astounding $17,000,000,000. (That's
Billion with a capital "B")
It is estimated that 110,000,000
producing Americans are supporting 88,000.000 non-producing Americans.
That equals 1.25 producing Americans supporting the non-producing
Americans. This number continues to decrease as more Americans find
out they can lie, cheat and steal (just like the
President) to get on the producing Americans' gravy train, enforced
by a liberal government who is more interested in buying votes than doing
something altruistic. Where is the money to come from to pay for the
rising number of non-producing Americans? Government borrows it on
the backs of your children and grandchildren!
This is exactly what is happening to
social security. The ratio of workers to beneficiaries is
decreasing. In other words, the funds are slowly drying up. In 2005
it was 3.3 workers for each beneficiary. In 2040, when Social
Security is expected to exhaust its pool of funds, it is projected that
there will only be 2.1 workers for every beneficiary. That is a recipe for
an unmitigated financial disaster and an economic melt down. Medicare and
Medicaid are taking us even closer to this disaster, every single day.
This is how the liberal agenda
works. Liberals come up with a plan to supposedly help people, but never
take into account the long range unintended consequences for not adjusting the
plan over time to changing demographics or funding sources. Obama Care is
on the same path to ultimate destruction.
There is an analogy of the situation
where the producing Americans are replaced by people pulling a cart going up
hill. In the cart are other people getting a free ride.
The pullers of the cart start to grow uneasy and begin to ask why the people in
the cart don't have to pay for their ride. (It was the
Obama Administration that removed the requirement to work for welfare
subsidies.) Some of the pullers decide to break out of the
pack of pullers and join the people in the cart. Eventually, human nature
being what it is, the cart grows too heavy loaded with free riders and
the pullers can no longer pull the load, or even hold the load against
the force of gravity. The cart, no longer supported by the pullers,
begins to roll backwards down hill where the people in the cart crash at the
next sharp turn. If you don't get the analogy, you are one of the free
riders in the cart.
In 110 years have Americans grown so
weak that 50% of Americans can't exist without some form of financial, housing
and/or food assistance, or all three, from Mother government? Or, has
government, in its continual search for votes to stay in power, lured millions
of weak Americans into the welfare trap? If you don't know which party has
been doing the "luring" for the last 110 years, once again you are one of the
free riders in the cart and are doomed to crash.
By now it should be readily apparent
why there is no money to maintain, repair and replace our aging infrastructure,
the infrastructure that keeps the wheels of commerce turning, the infrastructure
that delivers our food, water, electricty, sick and injured people and the
goods we buy to maintain an American life style that we have grown used to and
depend on.
It is this great liberal sucking
siphon, over the last 100 years, that has so degraded America's wealth to the
point where the "pullers" can no longer hold the cart of "free riders" against
the force of gravity. Without a bunch of "free riders" getting out of the
cart and joining the "pullers", the cart will crash. Like family members
enabling an alcoholic and thus ruining any chances of recovery, so the liberal
government enables the "free riders" purposely, to buy their loyalty and their
vote, so that liberals can remain in perpetual power without any regard to the
damage they have done to a once-free and prosperous America.
The "pullers" have become enablers to
the "free riders", at the point of a government gun. Perhaps it is
time for the "pullers" to let the cart go and let the "free riders" try to save
themselves so that maybe they, in their life times, can raise their heads up
high with pride in self-reliance, independence and individual
responsibility and join the ranks of the "pullers" ..... before the cart
crashes and America just becomes another third-world country.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
Next week we once again take on the
IRS in an article entitled: "An Angry Warning to Obama's
IRS". Instead of rolling over for IRS demands, we are taking
them on in a full frontal attack. Remember, in many cases, the best
defense is a convincing and determined offense.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
For all you rural landowners,
don't forget to check out our newly released Rural Landowner Handbook
HERE. If you
are an urban or rural landowner you will find this highly informative handbook
invaluable in fighting government without hiring an attorney. The
resources in the handbook alone, are well worth the
price.
No comments:
Post a Comment