finest rant In Ages:
"Rebuilding New Orleans would require creating both barrier islands and wetlands between it and the winds of the next big hurricane. The bill for that is about 32 billion. That's less than half a single Iraq appropriation, but apparently the US just can't afford it. Apparently killing Iraqis is more important than rebuilding New Orleans. Tax cuts for the rich are more important than rebuilding New Orleans.
Thirty two billion dollars is, in fact, peanuts for the US. This isn't just shameful, it's pathetic. I'm willing to state, unequivocally, that if an equivalent disaster occured in Canada the Federal government would find 32 billion dollars, even if it had to borrow it. Given the 10/1 rule, that would be the same as 320 billion. But we'd find it, and we'd rebuild. (Maybe we should offer to buy New Orleans from the US. Seems you can't afford it anymore. It'd be a fixer-upper.)
The last five years in the US have been a huge looting expedition. The entire proceeds of the productivity gains of those years have gone to corporate bottom lines, from whence they have been given to privileged. Ordinary working people have actually LOST net worth and not seen their paychecks grow one cent, while the rich have gotten richer.
At this point the US can afford its spending because the rising power, China, is funding it. If the Chinese were to simply stop funding the US, you would either have to wipe out all discretionary spending, end social security, or demobilize the majority of your army.
You are a great power the same way Spain was in the final years before it subsided into irrelevance. Because other people are lending you the money to keep your fantasies going.
The Chinese, Japanese and Koreans kept the dollar up. The Europeans bailed you out of the New Orleans gas spike. Everybody is lending your consumers money to spend. Your central bank is running the presses hot (the current bank rate is negative after inflation). In order to make the economy look good you have taken entire areas of inflation off the official books. Add back in asset inflation and take out hedonics and not only does US GDP not look good, it's been deflating for some time.
You've stolen not just from your children, but from your grandchildren. And unless you're in the last five years of your life, you've stolen from yourself. You are going to pay, and pay, and pay for all this and if you're lucky all you'll pay is money. But many will pay with great suffering or with their lives.
New Orleans won't be rebuilt because the looting must continue, and that 32 billion, small potatoes that it is, is earmarked for outright theft. New Orleans is Democratic, and black and poor and there's no percentage in really rebuilding. There are other places where the graft rate is much much higher - to the right people.
Those whom the Gods would destroy they make mad. But they make them mad by giving them unearned riches. You never earned these riches, they were earned by other, earlier generations. Divorced from the hard work that created it, and butressed by hubris - a belief in American exceptionalism; that you were "special" you thought that there could be no end to the money, no end to the power, no end to the good times, so you didn't keep a firm hand on your purse and an eye on your politicians.
Bush is just the most extreme case of this. A spoiled privileged brat who never had to work for anything his life he has one strategy and one strategy only - go to the wall on the assumption that he can outlast his opponents.
Problem is that he's using your money, your reputation, your lives as his bank. He's the house - and the house's credit is America's credit, and damned if he's going to lose no matter how much American money or how many American lives he has to spend.
Problem is, Bush's right. You are "special". You couldn't be allowed to fail.
But you have. It's over. It's gone too far. Oh, it may take another year for things to begin to fall apart, maybe more, but it's gone. You've spent your surplus and borrowed against your grandchildren's sweat. The Baby Boom is about to retire, the military is overdrawn, and your creditors are looking for a way, any way, out.
And your rich are laughing. 'Cause they think that you poor schmucks (and everyone who isn't their retainer will soon be poor) are going to pay all the bills for all their looting and they are going to collect - because hey, they've leant you some of that money and they'll break legs for the foreign debtors. So you're going to give them everything they want, and maybe, just maybe, they'll let you work for a few bucks an hour to make them rich. Maybe.
Probably not.
Because you're suckers. And they didn't get rich by giving suckers an even break.
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Tax cut anyone?
C'mon. You know you want one."
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