On Democrats and Republicans; A League of Their Own

On Tuesday, a small percentage of North Carolina’s population will vote in relatively gerrymandered local, state and federal election districts meant to favor candidates from one of two political parties.
Both Democrats and Republicans promised the baby boom trillions of dollars in unfunded benefits, like Social Security and Medicare, for their kids to pay for on top of high student loan debts. Both parties bailed themselves out of mistakes with trillions of dollars in debt handed down to an oblivious generation that won’t reap the prosperity their parents knew. Now we live within a bubble of promises based on expected revenue from the biggest global stimulus in history.

We have allowed a few powerful interests to overtake American democracy, similar to how football team owners control the NFL. Most NFL revenues are divided up between teams in two conferences. At the federal level, most targeted campaign contributions are divided up between Democrats and Republicans, depending on who is likely to win and/ or hold more power. Most football fans and political constituents tend to cheer for their team, even though the financial foundations of both football, and our political system, benefit both sides of similar oligarchic power structures, while minimizing effective participation.

Most local governments are proceeding on the assumption that the good times will continue to roll like they did during the “dot com”, war and real estate bubbles. Until they popped.

American political power is dependent on elected officials, and their constituents, not understanding what they should. In 2008-09, both parties chose to penalize well run businesses by rewarding poorly managed firms with bailouts.

The plans to fix what was broken relied on many who profited from the problems in the first place. Insiders did very well in the aftermath of the financial crisis. America’s middle class was mostly left out, as good paying jobs continued to disappear due to technological advances, outsourcing and lack of domestic capital investment.

The unanimous Declaration of the 13 American colonies cited “imposing Taxes on us without our Consent” as a reason to rebel against England. The U.S. House of Representatives handed the authority to raise revenue to an unelected set of central bankers at the Fed. The economic and political leadership of both major political parties in the greatest nation in the history of the world covertly hiked taxes via inflation of our currency by allowing the Federal Reserve to print by fiat, yet most are pleasantly unaware.

A consequence of the bailouts and deficit finance via printing preserved the status quo political power of America’s two dominant parties. After 2008, free market capitalism was suspended to “save” the system with price controls via artificially low short term interest rates and funny money supported by both Republican and Democratic establishments.

Instead of severe economic downturns, what occurred instead has been a global central bank digital currency printing fest, which created what I consider to be a monetarily induced economic coma for most of the world’s developed nations. “We” artificially stabilized the economy by appropriating the future income of younger voters and their children via borrowing and increasing taxes via inflation, forcing our kids to pay more to live. When things were looking grim for the political elite who sustained economic and political power via the bailouts, a new round of steroid like “Quantitative Easing” commenced, kicking the can down the road until the next time the populous began booing again.

In a free market, when risks are taken by the private sector and it doesn’t work out, failure is supposed to follow. The same is supposed to be the case for politicians. Neither occurred and few were held accountable. Candidates not towing their party’s positions have been excluded from contention, or dismissed as “radical” or “irresponsible.”

Most Americans are placated with funny money as “we” collectively expect Russia and China among others, to confidently exchange food, oil and manufactured goods for ever larger denominations of legally counterfeited, consistently debased U.S. dollars.

Some of our emerging market “trading partners” appear to be balking at our currency regime that inflicts inflationary taxation on their populations.

They send us actual stuff, and we send them exponentially produced digital pieces of paper backed by God’s name, our word, the military and control of international trade.

Sooner than later a high enough proportion of a younger, underemployed, underpaid, educated and overly indebted generation will discover the betrayal.

I fear global standards of living for many may get much worse before getting better, and very few running for office want to say so. I believe we are somewhere near Peak Ponzi. The longer our children take to figure it out, the worse the likely outcomes before recovery.

http://yesweekly.com/article-18170-a-league-of-their-own.html