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  • From: Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] Seventy Four Trillion Dollars
  • Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2004 12:13:28 -0700



"The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct." - Marcus Tullius Cicero"


According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, households in the middle 20 percent of the income scale -- the "middle class" -- receive only 9 percent of the benefits. Their average saving will be $162. Those in households with incomes from $200,000 to $500,00 will be $2,390 better off.

It is important to remember that these latest tax cuts are ALL being financed with borrowed money -- money that must be paid back---THE TAX CUTS ARE NOT TAX CUTS, they are simply increases to the Public
Debt by "The Borrow and Spend" President and "The Borrow and Spend" Congress---which means exactly the same as if you max out your personal credit card---it has to all be repaid PLUS COMPOUNDED INTEREST!!


The leading edge of the American baby boom generation is now just TWO presidential terms away from claiming its Social Security and Medicare benefits. "With UNFUNDED entitlement liabilities at $74 TRILLION in today's dollars - an amount FAR EXCEEDING THE NET WORTH OF OUR NATIONAL ECONOMY - and with payroll taxes needing to double to cover the projected costs of Social Security and Medicare, how can any serious person not call entitlement reform the transcendent domestic policy issue of our era?" asks former Commerce Secretary Peter G. Peterson, whose book on this subject, "Running on Empty," provides a blueprint for a bipartisan solution to this problem for any president daring to lead.


The SECOND group of boomers barreling down the highway are the young people in India, China and Eastern Europe, who in this increasingly flat world will be able to compete with your kids and mine more directly than ever for high-value-added jobs. Attention Wal-Mart shoppers: The Chinese and the Indians are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top. Young Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs are not content just to build our designs. They aspire to design the next wave of innovations and dominate those markets. Good jobs are being outsourced to them not simply because they'll work for less, but because they are better educated in the math and science skills required for 21st-century work.


The THIRD group of boomers our next president will have to deal with is from the Arab world. The Arab region has had the highest rate of population growth in the world in the last half century. It has among the highest unemployment rates in the world today. And one-third of the Arab population is under the age of 15 and will soon be entering both a barren job market and its child-bearing years. There are eight Saudis under age 15 for every one between ages 45 and 60.

It is important to try to salvage Iraq in spite of the mindless blunders by the Bush Administration---we need to make Iraq our partner---we have no other Mideast possibility which can act as a blueprint for governmental, cultural and economic change in the Arab world. It is now an iffy propostion, having step-by-step been converted from an odds-on favorite, to heavy odds against. But it is impossible to cut and run---an absolute guarantee of Mideast chaos, and the waste of all the money and lives we have spent and are continuing to spend.

If we fail, the next president is going to need PLAN B - some combination of oil conservation that reduces our exposure to this region, a new military strategy and a renewed focus on promoting better government there through diplomatic and economic means. The Arab world is not even close to educating its baby boomers with the skills needed to succeed in the 21st century. Left untended, this trend is a prescription for humiliation and suicide terrorism---a stronger return to the religious waus of Salah Al Din and the Christian Crusaders..






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