Don’t forget, the business owner pays double into social security with no extra benefits.

If your credit card limit is $10,000 and you carry a $9,900 balance, you call the issuer and ask for an increase to $15,000. This cycle will repeat until you are denied another increase. If approved, are you better off? Of course not. You will fall deeper and deeper into debt hell. At some point the interest on the debt will consume so much of your income that you will fall behind on true necessities such as food and shelter.

Obviously, our government plays by a completely different set of rules.
However, there are similarities. At what point does the national debt become unsustainable? IMO we are there now or certainly knocking on the door. What services will be cut or disappear? Will it be the military, social security, healthcare? The list is endless. Our legislators can’t simply tax their way out of this.

How many times have we heard that the “rich” must pay their fair share? Unfortunately, these people never define exactly what fair share is. The Laffer Curve is an attempt to determine the maximum amount of taxation that can be levied before a decision is made by an individual or business that it’s simply not worth the effort to generate additional income. The answer varies between 50% and 70%. In other words, why would I work extra hard and additional hours to make an additional $100,000 if the government takes away $70,000 of it?

Also, don’t forget the insane pension liabilities that will throw fuel on the fire of fiscal incompetence.

Well, we have had huge election "problems" for quite a long time. Too many Americans seem to want to stay in denial about that. So, they get who they are 'given'.

We can see to a large degree what has happened with our own two eyes. Yes, there is a labor shortage, not only for McDonalds, but in an entire wide range of professions. Including law enforcement officers, doctors, nurses, home care workers, pilots, the list goes on and on.

The pandemic had a big impact on this. We lost 1 million people to the pandemic, and tens of millions more got sick. I don't want to argue whether all the people actually died of COVID or with COVID, there were millions of "excess deaths" above the normal trend line....argue if you want, but it was significant enough to lower average life expectancy by more than a year in this country. Folks were locked down and had plenty of time to think about their lives. Many families decided that living life to the fullest was more important than making as much money as they could. Lots of families decided to downsize and do with less in order to have one parent stay at home with kids. There were millions of "excess retirements," i.e. the number of retirements exceeded the normal trend line by millions. Folks saw that life can change on a dime and decided enough was enough. Look how many early retirements are apparent in The Villages. The result is that we have far more job openings in this country than the number of unemployed workers. 4% unemployment is what the economists call "full employment."

I don't think it's going to change anytime soon and will likely get worse. The next three years are the peak of the Baby Boomer turning 65. Through 2027, 11,300 people will turn 65 in this country every single day. Some may stay in the labor force, but most will leave it. Meanwhile, we have a birth rate that is at its lowest in 100 years. We do not have enough births in this country to match the number of deaths. Without immigration, our country's population would go down every year.

Finally, and this is really not political but a fact, there are some jobs that Americans either can't or won't do. 80% of the workers on farms are foreign born. We need people to harvest our crops, vegetables, fruits and nuts. According to farmers in many parts of the country, Americans won't do this backbreaking work regardless of pay. There are other occupations as well with very few American-born workers.

Actually we get who we vote for over and over again.

This the thinking that got us into inflationary problems.

Why do you think politicians leave office richer than they were when going in?

In many, many cases, not so.

The election problems are legion, have been for a long time and are ongoing, as previously stated. There is MUCH information about it easily findable online.

Access to inside information and access to giant Govt coffers with one method being the one I mentioned above.

Some clever types even created an ETF that tracks primarily the trades of the former Speaker of the House - she's done so very well in the market for years (inside info). An ETF that tracks the stock trades of Democrats in Congress has been beating the S&P 500 on the strength of Magnificent 7 tech bets

This thread is going to get shut down soon! :$: We're venturing into verboten land.

Who writes tax laws? lawyers, they write in those loopholes that only they can cash in on. common people have to follow the lopsided law. Just like inheritance tax, taxing stuff that taxes was ALL ready paid on. Legalize stealing.

We will all pay with higher debt default called inflation like we have now. The only way out of their counterfeit money racket is thru self-custody Bitcoin. The young will be forced via poverty/survival pressure to figure that out.

Aside from the fact that that is illegal it would throw the credit markets into chaos, the credit rating would be such that interest rates for government backed securities explode upward if in fact anyone would buy them

So easy to budget when all there was, was cash.
Budget was balanced when pockets and wallet were empty!

Seems that they should raise prices enough to reduce the number of cars to 6 to 8.

The problem is you are trusting CNN to tell you the truth and not just be lying again about "death and destruction in 30 years".

Humans have died out of suffered world wide disaster many times in my lifetime, according to CNN experts.

My PhD is based on debt so I feel I am reasonably qualified to answer this.

If you want to predict the future study the past. In this respect the answer can be found in David Graeber’s anthropological book DEBT The First 5000 years. Its worth a read and shows how debt has formed our history. The impact of debt is far reaching from politics, war, rape, slavery, treason and uprisings. When debt becomes too great people become poor, disillusioned with their leaders/the system and then there’s an uprising. Countries keep printing money to get over the short term problem but debt has to be repaid or deflated. You also need a catalyst. The banking crisis was the start, Covid was the next. We just need a change in climate that wrecks food stocks for a year or two and cause inflation (in Europe we have this with the war in Ukraine).

Add to this tax systems and changing demographics around the world. The western nations are getting older with promises of early retirement, people living longer and ring fenced state pensions vs market based private pensions. Assets bought over the past 40 years were purchased on supply and demand, but in the long run will depreciate. This will cause future pensions to decrease. Maybe people will work longer… but this will create a young/old, and public/private pension divide.

Hard choices and a REAL risk of a world war is coming. 15 to 20 years max. Then we’ll see the great re-distribution that is muted. Debt will end up being written off and the ultra wealthy will be brought down a peg. This will be at both personal AND national level as we see a redistribution of global powers.

So tips. Putin threw the first stone after Covid. China I think is sitting watching and waiting for the west to deplete its cash, exceed its ability to repay debt, and then it will strike… maybe Taiwan, more likely via a financial war that crashes markets and destabilise economies, cause internal conflict to weaken a nation (sorry guys - I’m a Brit looking at you, and your falling into this trap). Too much debt - internal political polarisation and internal hatred = recipe for cicil strive).

What I agree with the author of this thread, thank god we are old. Make the most of the next 10 years, be wary about the following decade, and remember this prediction in the 3rd - if we are still around and haven’t nuked, starved or fallen into anarchy as Darwins theory of survival of the fittest applies.

Sorry no good news from me, other than make the most of every day. Taking a lead from Peter Sellers Being There - Summer is over, we are heading into mid autumn, winter is coming - and from it will come spring, summer and a repeat…..