A.J. DiCintio
The SS Obama: children and young adults go last
By A.J. DiCintio
Despite the propaganda issued by the president and his liberal minions, the stubborn things called facts show that the economic policies advanced by Captain Barack and his crew must inevitably result in a fiscal shipwreck that will wreak its greatest pain upon the nation's children and young people.
Regarding this tragic (and, I would argue, immoral and unnatural) inevitability, let's begin with facts about the nation's debt and deficits.
The national debt, a suffocating incubus we are placing on the innocent breasts of our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, has grown from $10.6 trillion when Obama took office to $15.6 trillion or 100% of GDP, the danger point for any country, even one as powerful as ours.
However, what makes the USA's fiscal condition truly critical are these truths about the unsustainable federal deficit, which Obama promised to halve during his first term.
For the past three years, it has averaged a monstrous $1.5 trillion annually or 10% of GDP, another universally acknowledged economic flash point whose danger is illustrated by the following reality:
If a reelected Obama would cut the deficit to "just" $1 trillion a year by heavily taxing the 54% of Americans who actually pay federal income tax (keep in mind that his "Buffett Rule" brings in only $40 billion annually), by 2016 the national debt will represent a crippling 110% of GDP, even if the economy were to grow at a dreamy 4% annual rate and the Fed would continue to play with its dangerously explosive ZIRP (zero interest rate policy).
However, if we consider the president's history dispassionately, we are forced to conclude that as a devoted proponent of big, centralized government, Obama will never do anything serious about avoiding the inevitable catastrophe that awaits if we don't do something fast about sensibly ending America's participation in what John Mauldin calls the world's Debt Supercycle.
Following are a few key elements of that history:
. . . Instead of focusing on the nation's economic plight like a hawk, Obama joined with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to use every rotten trick in the political playbook not to truly reform healthcare but to ram the sixties welfare style Obamacare plan down the nation's throat, all the while lying that it would cost $900 billion when the truth is it will require close to an economy-wrecking $2 trillion in new spending (see latest CBO figures).
. . . Instead of using recommendations made by the bravest members of his debt commission to forge a new, fair, fiscally honest, bi-partisan economic plan for the nation, he summarily dismissed the ideas and their authors, thereby marking himself as guilty of one of the most cowardly, dangerously irresponsible acts ever committed by an American president.
. . . Instead of exhibiting brave economic leadership and urging Congress to do the same, he has, for the past three years, sent Congress tax-spend-and-borrow budgets so outrageous that to protect him and themselves, Harry Reid and other Democratic Senators have not just prevented a Senate vote on his budgets but have prevented any meaningful bi-partisan reform budget from being voted on.
And instead of speaking honestly with the public that the nation's fiscal problems ought to be regarded with the fright that Jefferson attributed to the sound of "a fire bell in the night," Obama has pursued the politics of big government achieved through division and class warfare, choosing to ignore the principles that lie behind the true American Dream in favor of embracing those preached by miserably failed institutions such as the Chicago Machine and miserably failed men such as leftist radical Saul Alinsky.
Having established the reality of the ugly burden Obama's economic policies are certain to place upon America's children, we turn to their effects upon young Americans, ages 18-34.
After more than three years of Obamanomics, embarrassingly huge numbers of this group are unemployed or severely underemployed to the extent that 43% are living with their parents (as opposed to 10.5% in 1983) with home ownership among the group having fallen nearly to its low point in the past 29 years.
For young people, those facts are rightly disturbing. But what will be downright sickening for them and their mothers (as well as their fathers and grandparents) is what happens when a profligate country addicted to borrowing implodes.
However, as unpleasant as it is, the truth must be told; for to remain silent is to tell young Americans to imitate people who refuse to see a doctor for fear of being informed they are afflicted with a serious illness.
To understand the devastation of such an implosion, we can turn to Spain, a country that before the bust of '08 chose to live in an arrogant dream in which hip Spanish Obamas claimed to have created an economic machine that churns out not just free lunches but breakfasts and dinners as well.
Of course, like all false dreams the Iberian iteration was destined to turn into a nightmare, and it has, producing current not-so-hip, debt-choked Spain with a shocking 50% of its young people unemployed, overall unemployment at near depression era levels of 22%, and a future that portends much more suffering before conditions can even begin to improve.
As reported by John Mauldin (frontlinethoughts.com), the ironic sadness of the world in which Spain's young people find themselves has been poignantly captured by Ignacio Escolar, a former newspaper editor and author of a popular Spanish political blog:
"[Young people are] the least hopeful and best educated generation in Spain. And it's like a national defeat that they have to travel abroad to find work."
A national defeat, yes, but infinitely more important, a horrific national tragedy that may bring a lifetime of anguish to an entire generation.
That's why with America's national deficit and debt continuing to spiral out of control, real median household income having fallen to 1995 levels, good jobs in scarce supply, unemployment and underemployment stubbornly holding at severe recession levels, and a president fighting tooth and nail for an enormously more expensive, more powerful, more intrusive federal government modeled on Europe's failed "social democracies," it's virtually impossible to believe America's women, including the 85 million mothers among them, will accept the course Captain Obama has plotted for this country as one that best serves their families, today, tomorrow, and for decades to come.
© A.J. DiCintio
April 22, 2012
Despite the propaganda issued by the president and his liberal minions, the stubborn things called facts show that the economic policies advanced by Captain Barack and his crew must inevitably result in a fiscal shipwreck that will wreak its greatest pain upon the nation's children and young people.
Regarding this tragic (and, I would argue, immoral and unnatural) inevitability, let's begin with facts about the nation's debt and deficits.
The national debt, a suffocating incubus we are placing on the innocent breasts of our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, has grown from $10.6 trillion when Obama took office to $15.6 trillion or 100% of GDP, the danger point for any country, even one as powerful as ours.
However, what makes the USA's fiscal condition truly critical are these truths about the unsustainable federal deficit, which Obama promised to halve during his first term.
For the past three years, it has averaged a monstrous $1.5 trillion annually or 10% of GDP, another universally acknowledged economic flash point whose danger is illustrated by the following reality:
If a reelected Obama would cut the deficit to "just" $1 trillion a year by heavily taxing the 54% of Americans who actually pay federal income tax (keep in mind that his "Buffett Rule" brings in only $40 billion annually), by 2016 the national debt will represent a crippling 110% of GDP, even if the economy were to grow at a dreamy 4% annual rate and the Fed would continue to play with its dangerously explosive ZIRP (zero interest rate policy).
However, if we consider the president's history dispassionately, we are forced to conclude that as a devoted proponent of big, centralized government, Obama will never do anything serious about avoiding the inevitable catastrophe that awaits if we don't do something fast about sensibly ending America's participation in what John Mauldin calls the world's Debt Supercycle.
Following are a few key elements of that history:
. . . Instead of focusing on the nation's economic plight like a hawk, Obama joined with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to use every rotten trick in the political playbook not to truly reform healthcare but to ram the sixties welfare style Obamacare plan down the nation's throat, all the while lying that it would cost $900 billion when the truth is it will require close to an economy-wrecking $2 trillion in new spending (see latest CBO figures).
. . . Instead of using recommendations made by the bravest members of his debt commission to forge a new, fair, fiscally honest, bi-partisan economic plan for the nation, he summarily dismissed the ideas and their authors, thereby marking himself as guilty of one of the most cowardly, dangerously irresponsible acts ever committed by an American president.
. . . Instead of exhibiting brave economic leadership and urging Congress to do the same, he has, for the past three years, sent Congress tax-spend-and-borrow budgets so outrageous that to protect him and themselves, Harry Reid and other Democratic Senators have not just prevented a Senate vote on his budgets but have prevented any meaningful bi-partisan reform budget from being voted on.
And instead of speaking honestly with the public that the nation's fiscal problems ought to be regarded with the fright that Jefferson attributed to the sound of "a fire bell in the night," Obama has pursued the politics of big government achieved through division and class warfare, choosing to ignore the principles that lie behind the true American Dream in favor of embracing those preached by miserably failed institutions such as the Chicago Machine and miserably failed men such as leftist radical Saul Alinsky.
Having established the reality of the ugly burden Obama's economic policies are certain to place upon America's children, we turn to their effects upon young Americans, ages 18-34.
After more than three years of Obamanomics, embarrassingly huge numbers of this group are unemployed or severely underemployed to the extent that 43% are living with their parents (as opposed to 10.5% in 1983) with home ownership among the group having fallen nearly to its low point in the past 29 years.
For young people, those facts are rightly disturbing. But what will be downright sickening for them and their mothers (as well as their fathers and grandparents) is what happens when a profligate country addicted to borrowing implodes.
However, as unpleasant as it is, the truth must be told; for to remain silent is to tell young Americans to imitate people who refuse to see a doctor for fear of being informed they are afflicted with a serious illness.
To understand the devastation of such an implosion, we can turn to Spain, a country that before the bust of '08 chose to live in an arrogant dream in which hip Spanish Obamas claimed to have created an economic machine that churns out not just free lunches but breakfasts and dinners as well.
Of course, like all false dreams the Iberian iteration was destined to turn into a nightmare, and it has, producing current not-so-hip, debt-choked Spain with a shocking 50% of its young people unemployed, overall unemployment at near depression era levels of 22%, and a future that portends much more suffering before conditions can even begin to improve.
As reported by John Mauldin (frontlinethoughts.com), the ironic sadness of the world in which Spain's young people find themselves has been poignantly captured by Ignacio Escolar, a former newspaper editor and author of a popular Spanish political blog:
"[Young people are] the least hopeful and best educated generation in Spain. And it's like a national defeat that they have to travel abroad to find work."
A national defeat, yes, but infinitely more important, a horrific national tragedy that may bring a lifetime of anguish to an entire generation.
That's why with America's national deficit and debt continuing to spiral out of control, real median household income having fallen to 1995 levels, good jobs in scarce supply, unemployment and underemployment stubbornly holding at severe recession levels, and a president fighting tooth and nail for an enormously more expensive, more powerful, more intrusive federal government modeled on Europe's failed "social democracies," it's virtually impossible to believe America's women, including the 85 million mothers among them, will accept the course Captain Obama has plotted for this country as one that best serves their families, today, tomorrow, and for decades to come.
© A.J. DiCintio
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