41% Say American Dream is Lost

Posted in response to a Yahoo! article with the title:

"41% of People Say American Dream Is Lost; 63% Say Economy Getting Worse

A new survey by Yahoo! Finance shows Americans have a disturbing lack of hope and a frightening lack of retirement planning.

Among the highlights of the poll:

-- 41% of Americans say the 'American Dream' has been lost.

-- 37% of adults have NO retirement savings and 38% plan to live off Social Security.

-- 63% of Americans believe the economy is getting worse, including 72% of those over the age of 55."

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Even those of us who HAVE been planning for retirement have been stymied by several things:

1. The stagnant job wages that have been going on for a couple of decades (has not been keeping up with the cost of living).

2. The undermining of the US labor market by sending jobs to sweatshops in countries that don't protect their worker's or their environment and have a rock-bottom cost of living compared to the US. There's no way the American worker could ever compete with that without the US also becoming a third-world economy (we're on our way there, it seems).

3. The skyrocketing healthcare costs that were unforseen by most people. Who would have guessed that healthcare insurance could cost a couple over $1000/mo?

4. The crash of the housing market that has eaten into potential retirement equity. (people could plan to move into a smaller house at retirement, and/or to a cheaper area and use the difference for retirement-- but NOT ANYMORE).

5. The crash of the banking system which has, if not eaten up retirement accounts, have at least set them on a trajectory of stagnation for at least the next decade if not longer.

And if you want to point a single finger, I'd say you can point it at the INVISIBLE HAND of GREED that runs this country like an iron fist-- the COMPLETE AND UTTER CORRUPTION of GOVERNMENT by MONEYED INTERESTS.

My RETIREMENT HOME is going to be the TENT CITY forming on the NATIONAL MALL. Does HOOVERVILLE have a BASEBALL TEAM?

Hayek a conservative after all?

Posted in response to a negative review of Robert H. Frank's "The Darwin Economy." A statement made blaming the creation of the Fed for the worlds economic ills was made, which I thought poorly supported (not that I'm particularly a fan of the Fed, but I'm not convinced it is the Evil Empire some seem to think it is).


You are quick to lay all economic problems at the feet of the Fed's influence. I don't think you've demonstrated that it's simply the existence Fed itself that is inherently faulty simply by pointing out some of its actions that turned out badly, or interpreting them as causal-- you seem to be cognizant of that point. However, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to eliminating it, but I would need to know what you propose to replace it. An answer of "nothing" only tells me that you have no idea what will replace it. It's a ghost of Hayek, an etherial phantom that does not and cannot exist. Decentralized banking only means that the banks will choose on their own how they will centralize without regard to any democratic process, without any social involvement other than whatever meager influence their customers can exert on them. The fact is, banks exert significant control over our economy, I think we have a right to some say as to how they go about it. No, in fact, I think we have an OBLIGATION.

Society is necessarily a balance between collective interests and individual interests. That's simply a fact of life. The more you try to decentralize by eliminating "coercion", the more opportunity you provide for individuals of similar interests to choose to aggregate and collude against others of differing interests. The problem with an absolute anarchy is that there is nothing that keeps a bunch of people from getting together, forming a collective and exerting control. The tyranny of that control may not be substantially different than that of the despot dictator or maladapted representative government.

The question boils down to, what form(s) of collective(s) are you willing to tolerate? Many are quick to stand up for market collectives. This may very well be due to positive characteristics of such collectives that are quite desirable. But collectives cannot be prohibited simply by eliminating coercion, because coercion will form independently, as we've seen in corporate collectives. In fact, only coercion can eliminate coercion. The free market ideal that many are so fond of praising is not at all possible, because the level of freedom required for its existance is more than enough freedom to allow the elimination of it via collective interests, EVEN if government did not exist at all. There are in fact, TWO roads to serfdom, the path to socialism OR the path to free market capitalism, if you follow either of them far enough. The only difference in the latter is that a few more select individuals may escape via wealth or privilege.

We've certainly seen that a market so free that even government is for sale, is a "proven failure," for a significant number of people. And oh yes, we know that if government was powerless you probably think this wouldn't be a problem. But if government was powerless, that does not eliminate control and coercion, it only hands it over to collectives only beholden to society's interests in a peripheral way at best.

And there is another important fact that's relatively new (post-Hayek). Arguments for humans being incapable of understanding societal and economic dynamics sufficient to exert successful control over them may not be true for much longer. In fact, some may argue that it's not even true as of today. Computer information systems, simulations, evolutionary algorithms, etc., are being used today to model, predict, leverage, and even manipulate markets. How long before society can be modelled sufficiently enough that a lot of that experimentation I mentioned before can be performed at great speed and without impacting society at large, leaving proposed adjustments vetted to a much higher level of confidence than we've ever had or the classic economists ever imagined? What new strategies may be identified? We can only guess, but it is unlikely that there will be none. Will it solve all the worlds social problems, probably not, but I think it has the potential to make things better-- and even if it doesn't, we need to find out for sure anyway, as it is just too important to simply remain complacent that unrestrained free market dynamics is the best we can do, because frankly, it cannot withstand the very liberties it enjoys. And, do we want to leave these new information power tools only to potentially hostile (to society) forces? Or do we want to make sure that we can wield them as well? I suspect that given all of this, that Hayek might have decided that being a conservative was a good idea after all... :-)

The very definition of socialism in "A Road to Serfdom" is now an antiquated one that didn't foresee what individuals can accomplish via collectives on their own, with technology, and at what speed, and how collectives can form now and in the future, and how they can coexist with capitalism. Individuals can be a member of multiple collectives simultaneously, given modern communications. Suppose you had a free market but individuals chose instead to enter into collectives for the advantages they offer? Do they not already? Suppose an ad-hoc collective of individuals chose to form in order to target market or government forces that it sees as hostile to its interests? And of course, corporate collectives are long known to form anticompetitive or otherwise socially abusive pacts, as well as ones that no doubt have positive effects on society. As long as there is more than one person alive in the world, collectivism is here to stay in one form or another, the only question is, what forms will they be. If you just throw up your hands and let it be a total free-for-all, then you're just leaving it all to someone else who will take charge, I guarantee.

Cut, Cap and BS

Cain said, "Am I my brother's keeper?" It looks as if he and Ayn Rand are the inspiration for the current GOP programs.

Socialism becomes more popular when jobs are scarce-- in socialist countries everyone has a job and noone is homeless, which, if you are homeless or jobless, begins to look better than where you are.

The social programs of the 1930s were an attempt to remedy that particular flaw in the US "markets uber alles" system, which at that time had a decided lean towards Social Darwinism, and left a huge number of people without jobs and homes. The quickest way to accellerate a return to the bad old "buddy can you spare a dime," days, will be to undermine the social safety net-- which will clearly render MORE people homeless and jobless, because without a safety net, more people NEED jobs to keep off the streets. You don't want to encourage people to leech off the system, but SS/Medicare/Medicaid recipients paid their dues into it for years, it's not a "free ride" like some people claim. The big problem with Medicare/Medicaid, is the Pharmaceutical companies are milking every cent they can get out of our health care system. FIX THAT, and you get a big lowering of medical costs which would do us all some good, rich and poor (except big Pharma, my heart bleeds-- must be the Coumadin).

But it takes the ability to stop parroting the knee-jerk cheers of your favorite political "team" and use your brain a little bit-- which unfortunately, it seems a lot of people either aren't capable of or are unwilling to do.

The big question then becomes, how to get more jobs going w/o killing off the safety net. That's where the tough problem is.

You could lower our overhead by pulling our troops back home, but then you'd have a bunch of unemployed GIs-- still, it might be cheaper to put them to work in works projects than keeping them sustained overseas. Then again, it may produce an unstable middle east-- eh, that is, a MORE unstable middle east.

You could raise taxes, which everyone hates for the most part, but I don't see any way around it-- AND I suspect even the GOP will break their word and do it because they have to if they get in next season. We know most previous GOP presidents were not above raising taxes-- though they may figure out some "stealth" taxes, disguise them as something else. Remove subsidies, loopholes, etc., but that may kill off some businesses in the process or raise prices. I think it's gonna happen, no matter who's in charge, red or blue, Teaparty be damned. There's few other options, and we probably need to exercise any and all options we have. The Bush administration charged two wars to the credit card, but lowered taxes and then passed the TARP on the way out. Part of me would like to see what the GOP would do to pay for all this-- no doubt they'd raise taxes and blame the Democrats for making them do it. Right now they're using it all as an excuse to tear down the President, and pander to business interests big time by rolling back everything in sight. None of that is helpful, but if they were in charge they'd actually have a harder time of it because their actions would have consequences that they might not be able to blame on the Democrats.

I don't know what else there is-- there's some waste and bureaucracy in the Fed government, but outside of the Military and the safety net, there's not a lot there, and a lot of it isn't just useless BS.

There's no magic answer. Chants like "cut cap & balance" are pure braindead political posturing-- the problem is too complex for such a simple fix. Don't forget the laws of unintended consequences-- there are BIG TIME side effects to making big changes, tha can easily make the "cure" worse than the "disease." Any politician who thinks he "knows" the "right answer" is as full of it as they get-- we need to proceed with caution and take steps that WON'T break what's currently working for us. Raising taxes is undoubtedly one of those steps.

And you have to ask yourself, who as the ABILITY to pay-- because right now, we don't just need everyone to pay their "fair share," we are going to need MORE than everyone's "fair share" to get out of this mess I suspect. We can't just "cut" our way out of it, because the side effects would be worse if we tried-- the problem is not that we're spending too much, so much as we've SPENT too much, charging wars and bank bailouts to the credit card. The money is SPENT ALREADY, now it's time to pay the bill.

Of course, we could always liquidate some government assets-- maybe Mariott would like to buy the White House and rent it back to the President. What other real estate have we got? Any gold left? The price is high right now, could be a good time to sell-- though it'd drop the price big time for all those gold bugs out there (but it is a bubble, after all)...

Debt Crisis: Time for a FIRE SALE

Industry has always been at odds with labor. Until fairly recently, much labor was performed by slaves. But eventually the slave-labor gravy train was over. Industry then had to negotiate with labor and provide incentive. When labor was in short supply, industry had to offer competitive incentives.

Before long, industry looked for cost-saving ways to provide incentives. They got the bright idea that offering retirement plans allowed them to take money that would otherwise be paid immediately in wages, and utilize or invest that money and ultimately have to pay less in the process. Then, industry got the idea that encouraging their employees to instead invest in the stock market for their retirement let them off the hook for managing retirement plans, and helped to shore up the stock market and public sentiment towards it, as now everyone had a vested interest in its success. Before that, the markets had an especially bad rap with the general populace, and the significant influx in cash into the markets helped smooth the ups and downs somewhat, and enrich those poised to take advantage.

But eventually the baloons popped, employment and manufacturing was outsourced, and the market could not keep going up forever, and many people took a big hit in their retirement wealth. Now it was jobs that were in short supply, not labor.

Industry then got the bright idea that since jobs are in demand, the "job creators," (i.e., industry itself) should be given even greater tax relief. This might not have been a bad idea, EXCEPT for the fact that the job shortage occured as a direct result of industry excesses in the form of unregulated and unwise banking procedures and an associated bailout of the banks, ill-advised military adventures motivated largely by business interests, and the generalized outsourcing of manufacturing and labor. The massive resultant debt then can only be paid from only three available sources, corporate profits, the middle-class retirement plans, or government owned assets (gold, real-estate, etc.). That's all there is, their ain't no more.

Was the deficit the responsibility of the middle class? Only to the extent that they voted for corrupt and self-serving greedy idiots. Do they deserve to be made to pay? Debatable, but probably not. Can they? Yes. Is it a good idea? No, it will have a direct impact on profits, given the hit everyone will take in their purchasing power. Is it therefore justified? No.

Was the deficit the responsibility of the business class? Partly, in thinking that the "free market" will fix its own problems and is not vulnerable to abuse and therefore regulations are unnecessary. Do they deserve to be made to pay? Partially. Can they? Yes. Is it a good idea? Not particularly, it will impact the availability of jobs. Is it therefore justified? Only to a limited extent, perhaps.

Was the deficit the responsibility of the government (and by extension, all of us?)? Yes. Do they deserve to be made to pay? Yes. Can they? Yes. is it a good idea? Given the alternatives, it's not a bad idea-- they could always buy back assets should it get its act in order sometime in the future. Is it therefore justified? Probably yes.


I think then that the single most important solution to the debt crisis is the one that neither party is discussing-- the liquidation of government assets. Sell enough gold and real-estate or other assets to pay down the debt. It may be painful, but not as painful as either of the other two alternatives.

More Randian Nonsense

This bit was in response to a comment on my review of Atlas Shrugged on Amazon. The comment ultimately cited a piece of the Galt speech essentially stating that you were either right, wrong or evil-- that those who see the gray areas in choices are the worst of all. The commenter then presumed I must be in my late 20's and "haven't produced anything," then admitting he "could be wrong," but that I should "Let them [readers of Rand] discover reason and self-reliance on their own. It can only do good in their lives and is a step in the right direction."

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No, you are wrong. About many things. I'm in my late 50's and have produced a considerable amount. I've produced many things that are valued by society, and also many things that are not. I have learned that mere production is not enough. I write software, compose music, and create art, among other things. But beyond that, I've been learning how to produce something far more important than any of that, and that's how to contribute to the happiness of others. In fact, all my creations have always been with the idea of contributing to the happiness of society. But of course, Rand has nothing but her utter disdain for "society."

But to distill the world into givers and takers is in fact a simple minded picture of reality. Not only that, Rand must contrive who is who to the extreme, in order to contradict that reality-is Robin Hood a giver or a taker? Obviously, he does both-but what is the net result? When the genius corporate exec produces a new metal from resources strip mined from public lands, destroying acres and acres of forest in the process, and polluting the atmosphere with his foundries, is he a producer, or simply a "user", a "taker", a "looter?" How many successful rich people in this world are of which variety? The problems are in fact very complex, such that probably none of us fully understand. To stick to a simple black and white representation of the world that bears only vague resemblance to reality, is at best "kicking the can down the road," to use a popular phrase, and at worst, outright destructive. I claim at the very least, that it's not *useful* as it leads people to believe that the gray areas do not exist, when they may be the most important factors to consider. A healthy respect for what we do not know does not exist when we've convinced ourselves that the problems and solutions are all simple black and white ones. The false dichotomy takes hold and ignorance rules.

And then we have the Rand and her minions who have convinced themselves that it's okay if all you want to do is to take all you can, justified by what is called "production." But what they have missed is that the true value of "production" is related to the value of the products to society. Am I a worthwhile producer (in the "Randian" sense), if all I produce is great music that no one but me wants to hear? What justification does Rand have if productivity is only for the benefit of the producer? Am I a proper "Randian" producer, if what I produce makes 10 people happy at the expense of making 20 miserable? Would Rand say that as long as I am happy that's all that counts? If so, don't forget that what it takes to make me happy is to surround myself with happy people. Is an individual, even a genius one, who ultimately takes (in the form of profits and the use of common resources) more than he produces properly considered a producer? How do you measure the net-gain vs. net-loss of such a producer, and how would Rand look at the difference?

Successful producers are not just those who have a certain genius. They also have to have a certain amount of luck. For every rich genius you can find, I can show you several others who have as much genius but aren't rich because they lacked the requisite luck. Being born into money, going to school with the right people, having the right teachers, liking the right things at the right times. Genius does not develop and prosper in a vacuum; it requires a proper environment, just like seeds need water and fertile soil to grow. It needs the luck of having landed in the right environment. And that environment includes many of the rest of us.

Like it or not, you share this planet with millions of others, most of which are NOT geniuses. They may struggle far more than you because of it, but even the genius businessman needs them, as that is where customers and employees come from. And the janitor is every bit as important as he is, because without one the trash piles up and the customers and employees hold their nose, avert their eyes, and next time shop or work somewhere else where the neat and clean is valued, and the provider of it given his due.

Another thing that Rand is completely off the mark about is emotions. She thinks herself so completely rational, but clearly she is motivated by emotions-anger without a doubt. She seems to forget that happiness is itself an emotion, and one that in my opinion is pretty ridiculous when achieved in complete isolation. What she misses is the role of emotions in society and where they have value. As it turns out, emotions and irrationality have a specific and important place in successful human relationships, and modern scientific studies, in both psychology and economics, have shown this. Emotions are something that Rand herself can be seen to have no shortage of, but doesn't understand well enough to see it.

Reason and self-reliance are laudable goals. I'm all for them. Ayn Rand's path to them however, is stunningly dysfunctional. Your Galt quote is a prime example-- the "man in the middle" is not saying that no choice exists, he is saying that there are more than two "sides" to evaluate. He is saying "what about strawberry?" when Galt is claiming that the choice is only chocolate and vanilla. Only the simplest of problems can be reduced to a clear dichotomy. Often there are pros and cons to a choice, tradeoffs to be made, unintended consequences to be identified. I don't say don't make a choice, only to make sure you are not choosing from an oversimplified and propagandized pair of ideals that have little or no bearing in reality.

The "No Free Lunch" of Ayn Rand

This was posted in response to an Atlas Shrugged book review on Amazon.

I had characterized Rand's philosophy as essentially, "genius is really great, we should structure our society to make everything easy and cheap for them, and everybody else stays out of their way so they can do great things." One of the faithful just said that my interpretation was "idiotic." So I asked essentially if that was the best he could do and not be more specific. He then called my original comment a "tortured misinterpretation," and that I should address a specific Rand quote to provide some evidence.

I immediately went to the Galt speech, but before I was able to choose which juicy item I was going to post, someone else responded with a doozy which hit the nail right on the head:

"The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the `competition' between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of `exploitation' for which you have damned the strong.

We required that you leave us free to function - free to think and to work as we choose - free to take our own risks and to bear our own losses - free to earn our own profits and to make our own fortunes - free to gamble on your rationality, to submit our products to your judgment for the purpose of a voluntary trade, to rely on the objective value of our work and on your mind's ability to see it - free to count on your intelligence and honesty, and to deal with nothing but your mind. Such was the price we asked, which you chose to reject as too high. You decided to call it unfair that we, who had dragged you out of your hovels and provided you with modern apartments, with radios, movies and cars, should own our palaces and yachts - you decided that you had a right to your wages, but we had no right to our profits, that you did not want us to deal with your mind, but to deal, instead, with your gun. Our answer to that, was: `May you be damned!' Our answer came true. You are."
...
"Neither [Rearden] nor the rest of us will return until the road is clear to rebuild this country-until the wreckage of the morality of sacrifice has been wiped out of OUR way [emphasis added]. A country's political system is based on its code of morality. We will rebuild America's system on the moral premise which had been its foundation, but which you treated as a guilty underground, in your frantic evasion of the conflict between that premise and your mystic morality: the premise that man is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others, that man's life, his freedom, his happiness are his by inalienable right." -- Atlas Shrugged

The Rand disciple then asked what I objected to, to which I responded:

What I object to primarily is the implication that these wannabe-gods are operating in a total vacuum. Apparently, no credit at all is afforded the peons ("starving in their hopeless ineptitude") whose actual toil is in fact instrumental in implementing the deity's grand visions. And no responsibility is acknowledged whatsoever to insure that the little guys (or their customers, for that matter) aren't simply taken complete advantage of by these superior beings. And of course, we see repeatedly in reality, that the "superior intellects" are often not above taking full advantage of the inferiors over which they lord their paychecks. To then take full credit for providing apartments, movies and cars while they enjoy mansions and yachts makes me think of the religious con men that drive Rolls Royces paid for by the hard-earned contributions of their congregations.

As if those paragons of industry don't need the rest of us to keep the engines of their successes operating. It's laughable, really that they could go off and do better by themselves-- or would be laughable, if so many out there haven't bought into that particular fantasy.

Frankly, I think the opposite story of Atlas Shrugged would be far more interesting. Let all the "lower class" worker peons leave and leave it all to the ubermensch, and see just how far they get without the armies of paid grunts to pull it all together.

But we all live in society together, with each others consent. Louis XVI forgot that, to his regret. I’d say it’s best to think more like a team player, than to try to figure out how much you can get out of the system for nothing. The tax-evader rich guy at the top is in reality, the equivalent of the welfare mom, just at the other end of the spectrum where the numbers are larger. The only difference is, the guy at the top can get the government to make his tax evasions legal, while the rest of us cannot, and have to make up the difference.

As an example of some of the things overlooked here-- pensions were paid workers in order to attract them to jobs, because the competition in the free labor market required it. Employers could have instead paid higher wages, but providing a pension is a worthy idea-- and in fact, might be more cost effective for the employer—who invests less money than they might otherwise have to pay out in higher wages, given the fact that the pensions won’t be drawn upon right away and the investments will grow over time. Pensions weren’t created to “redistribute wealth,” they were a more cost effective way to competitively provide more benefits in lieu of higher wages. Pensions can be seen as delayed wages, agreed upon as a condition of the employment contract. To renege on it later is bald-faced theft. Did the genius manager at the top screw up in setting up a viable investment plan for the pensions? Maybe so, but that doesn’t make the little guy at the bottom who needs that pension check the one that should suffer for it. And maybe reality means they all have to compromise, but after it’s all over if the little guy is homeless and the guy at the top is still living in a mansion and enjoying his yacht, I’d say the compromise was inequitable.

Social Security and Medicare have similar characteristics, and the government has a vested interest in encouraging people to prepare for their old age so that they don’t end up either street-urchins, dying in the street, or as an extra load on the healthcare system, not being able to pay their way. But people don’t always estimate well in that regard, and when the economy takes an unexpected downturn can find themselves unprepared. Who let who down in that case? You have a vested interest in a society full of people that are healthy and not homeless, even if you don’t recognize that fact. Providing a safety net is in fact an employment benefit, and is one of the benefits of working in the US. Pulling the plug on it is every bit as much a theft as the pension case.

Taxes pay for common services that we all need, no matter how much money you make or how stellar your performance, if you use roads, you need to help pay for them, and everyone uses roads in one way or another, if you eat food chances are it got shipped to your local market over roads. And those common services are getting more expensive for a variety of reasons, some of which are related to major gaffes made by those at the top while they were accumulating all that wealth and creating all those jobs. One of those common services is fighting wars—is not the protection of your mansion and yacht by crack military troops worth more than it is to the guy who has a tiny little shack in the bad part of town?

And there exists a segment of society that needs help, that simply can’t do it on their own. Sure there are some lazy slobs that would take advantage of a system to help them, but perhaps that brilliant intellect can figure out a way to handle those without impacting those who are really in need. Rather than penalize everyone for a few miscreants, why not design a system better able to detect or withstand them?

When people are young they may incur large tuition debts with the idea that they will eventually make enough money so that it makes financial sense. Well, it doesn’t always. I have a friend who’s a specialist MD. She has many of the same debt problems the rest of us may have had at one time or another, though her numbers are proportionally bigger. She makes more money, but got herself into bigger debt. Rent on doctors office space is very high, equipment is expensive, insurance, yada yada… Ok, so it may be poor planning, but that’s not particularly uncommon, no matter how much you make. But when the numbers are bigger it makes sense that the sacrifices must be as well. If the little guy at the bottom is asked to sacrifice a big chunk of his paycheck because the economy is bad or our debt is out of hand, why shouldn’t the wealthy guys at the top be expected to sacrifice a more proportional amount as well? It’s said that the 14+ trillion dollar debt amounts to about 40K or so per person. So we could all pay off the debt by tossing in our 40K. But should the little guy who’s making less than that be expected to pay the same as the guy with the mansion and yacht? I don’t think so

When the economy gets in trouble, you rich guys may just have to move into a smaller mansion and downsize your yacht. It’s part of being a team player in a society that you otherwise would seem to feel no compunction to pillage to your hearts content, as if you have no responsibility to the rest of society at all.

Again, it’s not about redistributing wealth, it’s about PAYING YOUR FAIR SHARE, which is a larger amount if you have reaped larger benefits from taking advantage of what the system and society has to offer. You are not operating in a vacuum, where only you are responsible for all of your success. The system is not just YOU, and the idea that if you all went away it would come crashing down is, in a word, “idiotic.” Your part of a team that includes all of us, whether you like it or not.

When the trillion-dollar debt merry-go-round breaks down...

Hmm-- US national debt. Right now it seems to be $14+ Trillion:

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

Increasing at $4.15B/day, each citizen's share is almost $46K.


I'd say these are the ways that the debt can be addressed:

1. Raise taxes. Will make things worse in a bad economy, and piss everyone off. Republicans will fight it tooth and nail, unless they're in power, where they've been known to raise them on their own. Things to look for: stealth taxes, other reformations which amount to raised taxes by other names.

2. Get it from Social Security. Don't look now, but it's ALREADY been looted, and transitioning to a private system will be more expensive short-term, since they'll have to cash in those bonds even quicker. To do away with it entirely, or to privatize it would redirect the income stream elsewhere anyway, so it's of little use. And never mind that those bonds may be rather illusory, the ritual of keeping them in a binder at the bottom of a file cabinet makes them real enough to create a huge scandal if they're simply voided out of hand. Whether or not you call it an "entitlement" in a derogatory way, they represent insurance premiums paid as a condition of employment by every employable person in the US, that were supposed to be in exchange for something.

3. Raise the SS retirement age. Already doing that. Doesn't produce very much income, mostly just slows the cash-in of those bonds to cover the outflow. Helps a little, but not anywhere near enough.

4. Reduce defense spending. Not gonna happen, as that is really all the PTB want out of the US government, those shiny war toys.

5. Declare bankruptcy. Not gonna happen, is tantamount to #4.

6. Reduce spending. Except for SS, Defense, Medicare & Medicaid, it's digging nickels and dimes out from between couch cushions. Look for: hits to Medicare & Medicaid-- it'd be better to cut costs by eliminating patents on prescription drugs (free market, anyone?) and let the rich subsidize drug R&D instead of the sick, but Pharma won't sit still for that and they get you elected.

7. Print more money. Seems to work short term, but penalizes the middle class who don't have many assetts to protect. Look for: more and more wealthy folks looking for protection from this. Somebody's going to get stuck with the bill via this one. Kinda like that lunch meeting where everybody left one at a time, and you got stuck last with the bill, except the bill is several trillion dollars. Last one holding dollars, loses.

8. Sell off government assets. Might actually work, but will have a hard time getting anyone to go for it (selling the country off to furriners again). A lot of these assets are military as well, though selling old hardware is a good way to get rid of old junk we paid too much for new. The $350B in gold would help a little, but could conflict with #7, because $350B isn't enough to do it all by itself. Radio spectrum, loans, lots of properties. Look for: big gold selloff, once the price has been pumped up enough by dollar drop? Not sure if they have the stomach for that.

So what else? Ain't that about it? #7 looks like a big winner! -- works short term, the rich can avoid the downsides as long as they don't move too fast and get noticed. Probably easier to pull off than any of the others as well....