Simplification

One advantage to yesterday is that it simplifies analysis of where we are going as a country.  We have returned the same divided government that was unable to pass a budget for the last several years.  Oddly, in the short term this means that there will be some clear fiscal changes:

1)  Sequestration will happen.
2)  We will dive over the 'fiscal cliff';
3)  As a result, government spending is set to decline sharply and taxes are about to go up sharply.

That points to something like a start on the deficit, precisely because the government is incapable of action and agreement.  Pre-planned fires like these, however, will not last forever:  at some point, autopilot won't be good enough.

I'd feel sorry for any of you about to get hit by massive tax increases, except that really under Obama you're lucky to have jobs at all.  I do regret the collapse of American military might that will be demanded by sequestration, but 'they won' -- and the one thing they've always hated most was military spending, which is the largest part of discretionary spending.  They aren't ready to struggle with the entitlement issue, but they are ready to gut the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

8 comments:

Eric Blair said...

Well, the US tried dumping the military after WWI. That didn't work out.

After WWII, (which was, obviously more destructive), the US decided that it had to keep the big military, (and troops quartered on our defeated enemies) and the long cold war struggle kept the thing going.

Really, everybody was looking for a way to downsize their militaries after '91 and that did happen in many places.

The terror war can be managed in a lot of ways, and increasingly, it looks like the oil in the mideast isn't that important after all.

So, yeah. Bring everybody home. Reduce the size of the military. Go right ahead. Let's stop playing some sort of world policeman.

I do not think that will end well, but only time will tell.

William said...


Barter.

William sends.

RonF said...

It's not that they are unwilling to deal with the entitlement issue. It's that they are trying to make the U.S. an entitlement state. They'd just as soon get rid of the military entirely, as it stands in the way.

E Hines said...

So, yeah. Bring everybody home. Reduce the size of the military. Go right ahead. Let's stop playing some sort of world policeman.

That kind of isolationism didn't work after WWI, either. Today, though, it'll be far more dangerous. With today's technologies and weaponry, a Pearl Harbor will destroy us--we'll have no time to rebuild our own weapons systems, no time to convert (to build from scratch) our manufacturies to produce the necessary weapons systems, no time to train the soldiers to operate the weapons systems, no capability to respond. The first, and second, blows will eliminate us as a polity and as a society; our smoking ruins will go the way of Carthage.

We need to keep a large military establishment, keep it well-trained and heavily equipped, and keep serious establishments Over There, to draw the fire, so we can respond. Over There establishments won't proof us against terrorist nuclear strikes in our homeland, but they'll help.

I sense a lot of defeatism in the air. This, though, is a generational struggle. It won't be won by a single election (2010, which was a wave election), nor will it be lost by a single election (2012, which was not a wave election). The next four years are going to be ugly, but we need to stay in the fight--we need to continue to carry the fight to them, not respond to their actions.

Eric Hines

Kim said...

I don't see the decrease in spending, just a change in what we spend for,entitlements over military being one set.

Texan99 said...

I see Venezuela and Greece in our future. I hope and expect to be dead before the change is complete.

Ymar Sakar said...

Well, people will get the civil war they wanted so hard to avoid, in part due to not taking necessary precautions before it got this bad. Oh well. If people really wanted to test their ability to survive in a civil war, they now have the chance. Whether that be a post apocalypse setting or a post depression setting remains to be seen.

That hit on Petraeus was pretty well done too. Classic Axel Rodd Chicago precautionary hits.

Ymar Sakar said...

At this point, America won't regain any semblance of "working politics" until somebody has the guts and means to execute 50% of the corrupt bureaucracy, right then and there. And given recent events, that just makes the inevitable, more close to the current time stream.