Government Spending By The Minute

Credit goes to Odins Lounge for reintroducing me to this group.  So here is a nice little breakdown of government spending by the minute.  And let me just give my own answer to the question on whether or not we have a spending or revenue problem; if you cut the entirity of the US defense budget and still cannot make up the difference between spending and revenue then you have a spending problem.

The Price of Parasites

Parasite, it is a noun. It means one of three things.

"1. An organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, known s the host from the body of which it obtains nutrients"

Think tapeworms and the like.

"2. A person who receives support, advantage, or the like, from another or others with out giving any useful or proper return, as one who lives on the hospitality of others"

Think of that one guy you meet in college that was living on the couch of your dorm room friends yet didn't see the need for businesses to make profit. Alternatively it could be expanded to children who have no intention of ever repaying their obligations to their parents, either financially, or through care during their parents golden years. Lastly, physically capable bums and welfare queens come to mind.

And funnily enough in ancient Greece it meant:

A person who received free meals in return for amusing or impudent conversation, flattering remarks, etc.
 

Think of the legion of toadys and sycophants that follow the rich famous in the private sector or the legion of hangers-ons in the political sphere.

But what I am posting about refers to the first quote.  We have a huge parasite problem in America, and throughout the West, today. The trillion dollar deficit alone attests to this, and before the crisis it was a $ 400 billion dollar deficit. Finally, even discounting our deficit we simply need to refer to government spending as a portion of GDP and see how it has continued to creep higher through out America's history.

The ultimate problem we have is that no one wants to admit that they, or their company, or their industry, are engaged in parasitic behavior.  Just look at this article on Ars Technica and the weak defense, or rather apologetic argument, put forward towards federal programs funding video games. It is one of the most frustrating things today.  Everyone is in favor of a balanced budget and conservative spending habits, but their program is absolutely vital to the nations interest and needs to be funded by the government. Why in the age of near free information and ubiquitous communication do we need to spend $ 445 million on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? And how can we justify Federal spending on a hobby that generates more revenue than Hollywood!

If you try hard enough, and are willing to suspend reality long enough than we can certainly justify any government spending.  The problem America has today is that rather than ask "Is this something we (the government) should spend our money on?" we instead go "Why isn't the government doing something about it?" or "We need government money". And not only have we slowly turned ourselves into little more than clientela in a modern day form of Roman patronage but we actively sneer at those who generate wealth. 

Currently 41% of our entire GDP is somehow government spending related, local, state, and federal. That is 6 Trillion dollars, more than the GDP of any other nation on earth save China, and we some how don't spend enough? What you are seeing now, decreasing economic opportunity, is the result of parasitism, patronage, socialism or whatever you want to call it. 

But think about it this way, you as a citizen of the United States all ready owe $ 51,000 in Federal debt alone and chances are that is more than you make in a year. But to add further salt to your growing wound that debt isn't shared evenly, no it is not by a long shot. If your working at all, and thusly have your wages garnished by Uncle Sam, then that makes you a tax payer, you have to shoulder the burden of everyone else who cannot pay, which raises your share of the debt to $ 141,000. That is the price you will pay for parasites.

 

If Regionalism Is An Issue In Many European Nations Then How Can We Expect The EU To Survive?

Separatist movements of one form or another have always existed.  Usually they are merely the idle talk of academics and or fringes, unknown to most of the public who reside in the very areas the activist seek to 'liberate'; just look at the Republic of Cascadia movement in my neck of the woods. However, there are times when serious movements arise and have potentially major geopolitical impacts.

For two decades we have been told of the inevitability of the European Union. That this new supranational entity would sweep the barbaric concept of nationalism under the rugs and create a European counterweight to the United States.  Yet, here we stand, just a scant 3 years after the Treaty of Lisbon and I have very serious questions regarding the long term viability of such a union.  There is a Scottish Independence Referendum coming up. Catalonia is actively pushing Spain for more autonomy. There is talk of partitioning Belgium between the Walloons and the Flemish.

These aren't eastern European nations like Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia that were held together by passing political circumstances, these are nations with long histories of being tied together.  Begium, a nation of the Dutch speaking Flemish and French and German speaking Walloons, has existed since their independence from the Netherlands in the 1830s.  Scotland and England have been a part of the United Kingdom since 1707 and the same monarchs since 1603. Spain has existed as an essentially unified nation, albeit with many secessionist and autonomous movements throughout its history, since the late 15th century.

So if nations with histories spanning hundreds of years, through varies economic difficulties and wars, are having trouble holding themselves together during this time of crisis; then how exactly am I supposed to believe that the European Union has a future?

Yes Sotomayer I Want to Gut it

How things have changed in just a few short years. In perhaps the most unanticipated outcome ever, the supreme court is reviewing affirmative action for colleges, and it looks like they might change their ruling from less than a decade ago.  A quick recap, back in 2003 the Supreme Court ruled that while outright quotas for race were unconstitutional, that colleges could leave promoting diversity up to their own judgement. Essentially saying that as long no one openly admitted it, selecting students based off of race was OK since it promoted the ever sought and much praised diversity.

Now in a twist of irony:

Abigail Fisher, a white woman who was denied admission to the university and who filed the lawsuit before the justices, whether the modest racial preferences used by the university (University of Texas at Austin) crossed a constitutional line.
 

I say irony because women have benefited heavily from many affirmative action like programs, and now that they constitute the majority, especially Caucasian women, of individuals who attend college they are now speaking up about the how wrong such policies are.  Imagine the reception a Caucasian man would have received if such an argument was brought to the supreme court?  Now, I know there are some out there that would attribute this to a feminist conspiracy to keep the gains they have received via government action and redistribution and don't want to risk losing them, since in many ways men are the gender that has been suffering most recently, but I don't think that is the case.

Despite the feminists wishes, we do not live in matriarchal society, men still occupy the majority seats of power, but we do live in a feminized culture.  And this feminized culture is one that is artifically supported.  Once the grass eating herb prostrating males learn that endorsing such wrong headed ideas earns them nothing but contempt; and once the charasmatic but character deficient alphas see no benefit to be had from crusading for the she-demon brigade, then the system ends and comes crashing down.  There aren't even enough women who support modern feminism to keep it alive, and without the support of men, then the results are forgone.

But I digress. The real news is that there stands a decent chance that a terrible policy, that I would argue has actually hurt minorities, will be overturned.

The member of the court who now probably holds the decisive vote, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, tipped his hand only a little, asking a few questions that indicated discomfort with at least some race-conscious admissions programs.

Those questions, along with his voting record, suggested that Justice Kennedy may be prepared to limit the Grutter decision. He told Mr. Garre that he was uncomfortable with the university's efforts to attract minority students from privileged backgrounds.

"What you're saying," Justice Kennedy said, "is that what counts is race above all." 

If a relatively liberal judge can express unease with the policy as it stands, and considering that justice Kagan has recused herself from the proceedings means that there is a real chance this law policy could change.

Now this is ignoring how utterly worthless college has become for so many individuals; but that is a separate battle in itself. What we see here is, perhaps, the beginning of the end of equalism.  That ill-conceived notion that everyone is equal outside of just being treated equally under the law. Who knows, this may even save some minorities from majoring in worthless degrees and foisting upon themselves tens of thousands of dollars of debt for a degree in victim studies that will never see a positive return on investment.

Of course there are those who are expressing the gradual of real justice and fairness where we abandon the victim mentality and start judging individuals not off their genders or race, but off of what they have done. The meritocratic system that made us so great.  Cue Barack Obama's appointee who thought that a Latina women, with the richness of her life, could reach a better conclusion than a white man.

"You don't want to overrule Grutter," she said. "You just want to gut it."

Yes Justice Sotomayor I want to gut it. It is wrong, unethical, and unconstitutional.

Statism In Its Current Form Will Not Survive Generation Y

Ignoring the ill-effects of misbegotten government entitlement policy, and how the ensuing austerity will certainly kill the public's faith in socialism; there is one other reason why statism will not survive in its current form. Obama and the democrats have noticed a growing trend in this country, that trend being, as Joe Kotkin dubs them, the growth of the single nation.  Singles have overwhelmingly bought the narrative by Obama and the democrats for a variety of reasons. None the least of which is that an entitlement society allows member of my generation to prolong adolescence.  However, as Joe Kotkin points out, more and more married couples are starting to move towards the other side of the isle. It makes sense on the surface since those of us with progeny care about what happens to America 20 and 40 years down the road, at least in theory.

Now of course the republicans are only a smidgen better than the democrats, and by smidgen I mean that the forces of freedom have established Dunkirk style beach heads from which to argue the cause of freedom and fiscal responsibility in a party that is almost as left as the democrats themselves. However, arguments about fiscal responsibility, traditional American values and worth ethic, and a long term view of the world will most certainly appeal to those with families.

So while the democrats celebrate their growing political clout, as can be seen by the gradual bluing of the electorate, my state was solidly republican less than 20 years ago and now is solidly blue today, those victories will most likely be pyrrhic.  Both in the sense that the democratic party is mortgaging future votes for votes today, and in the sense that the coming generations after us, who will not even have the false promises of an entitlement state that we enjoy today, will solidly reject the democratic party, and perhaps overwhelm the statists in the republican party and turn our little citadels into full style Normandy beach heads of freedom.