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..
[Homestead] Seventy Four Trillion Dollars,
Tvoivozhd, 10/17/2004