It's the new national pastime. Fuck baseball. Its consumption. The only true lasting American value that's left.
Buying things.
Buying things.
People spending money they don't have on things they don't need.
Money they don't have, on things they don't need.
- George Carlin
That is one of my favorite quotes from the late, great stand up philosopher. Most people refer to him as a comedian. In his earlier days, he most certainly was one. But towards the end of his life, his routine was no longer funny. At least I stopped laughing when he started ranting about the ugly truths of our Brave New World Order.
From the macro level to the micro level, George summed up our National Past time quite correctly.
From a quick Googoliath search:
US Federal Government Tax Revenue for Fiscal Year 2011 - $2.3 trillion
US Federal Government Expenditures for Fiscal Year 2011 - $3.6 trillion
To be more precise...
The enacted 2011 budget called for $2.314 trillion in receipts and $3.630 trillion in outlays, according to the September 1, 2011 Mid-Session Review.
How exactly was this $3.630 trillion ($1.316 trillion of which is money we don't have, and most certainly most of it spent on things we don't need,) spent? According to Winston over at the WikiMinistry of Truth:
24% or $835 billion to fund entitlement payments for the Medicare & Medicaid pyramid scheme;
20% or $725 billion to fund entitlement payments for the Social Security pyramid scheme;
19% or $700 billion to pay off the Military Industrial Complex to continually wage fiat wars on foreign shores;
19% or $646 billion on "non-defense discretionary" aka Government payoffs to corporate campaign contributors not a part of the military industrial complex - like Big Ag, Big Oil, and all the other "Big" entities;
12% or $465 billion on "Other" aka all the other government entities, programs and bureaucracies that rely on Federal Government outlays to exist;
and finally, 6% or $227 Billion on Interest.
Interest....on what? Why the national debt, of course. We the sheeple must pay interest to the foreign T-Bill "investors." We also have to pay interest to the Federal Reserve Usury Serfdom Cartel for their invaluable fiat money creation services.
This last category is key when you consider the dialogue being recited by the actors in our current episode of the long running dramatic series American Democracy.
Both sides have their version of "balancing the budget."
Both Jackasses and Pachyderms (henceforth to now be referred to as Jackyderms) will debate it as if it were the real solution to all our woes. They hold it up as the holy grail of maintaining the MANDATORY status quo of butter and guns aka our welfare/warfare system. This idea is what they endlessly debate on calling it "Balancing the Budget." Whether it's on a State, County or Federal Government level, all of our lying liars (politicians) pay lip service to this ideal.
The Pachyderms call for an amendment to the US Constitution that requires the Government to "balance" the budget. They claim we need to amend the Constitution and then cut taxes to balance the budget.
The Jackasses say no amendment is necessary, we just need to play with the numbers, cut defense spending and raise taxes and the budget can then be "balanced."
But the Jackyderms are all ignoring the real problem - whether we "balance" the budget or not, we are still in tremendous, ever escalating and exponentially expanding debt to foreign creditors and the the Federal Reserve Usury Serfdom Cartel (who create the fiat currency to fund the Governments deficit spending by selling T-bills to foreign creditors like China).
Balanced budget or not, the fundamental root of the problem never gets addressed - our system as set up and running since 1913, is based on the fact that all money spent by the Federal Government is debt-based and loaded with usurious interest that requires servicing in perpetuity....i.e. the debt never, ever gets paid off.
If the proposed budget is in the black (more tax receipts than budgeted outlays, as it was under Jackass Billy Bob), than the Government simply spends this surplus, sooner or later, rather than try and pay off the principle of the national debt.
If the proposed budget is in the red (as it's been since Pachyderm Dubya took office), than the Government simply keeps voting to raise the "debt ceiling." (And make no mistake, the Jackyderms always vote to raise that ceiling.)
In either case, the root cause of our debt never gets addressed...i.e. every single dollar that gets created by the Federal Reserve system is based on debt, and we the sheeple are stuck with the bill to service that debt.
Servicing the debt....this the lynchpin of our enslavement as a people.
Our system is designed on purpose to keep we the sheeple debt enslaved for perpetuity.
Balanced or not, our budget NEVER gets around to actually paying off the debt. A balanced budget will still be focused on servicing our ever-escalating debt, not actually paying it off.
The Jackasses claim MORE BUTTER, LESS GUNS will balance the budget.
The Pachyderms claim LESS BUTTER, MORE GUNS will balance the budget.
Balanced or not, the debt remains, and the debt continues to grow via interest and the continual borrowing required to keep the whole system going.
The Jackyderms never really propose the only true solution...the only one that could ever really work in the long run:
Stop buying things we don't need, with money we don't have.
