How do you envision USA over the next 10 years?

Our GDP is $16.3 trillion. Our accumulated DEBT IS $16.7 trillion So IF the govt taxed every person AND business at 100%, we couldn't pay off our CURRENT debt due. That, of course would bring the GDP to ZERO. And our contracted future debt stands at more than $200 trillion. And you prattle mindlessly about left and right. D's and R's. Both are certifiably insane. Dems at 100% insane, Repubs at 99% insane. Dems are spending at $1.3 trillion per year more than we have and Repubs allow them to continue.. IF there was a battle between D's and R's there would not have been Continuing Resolutions funding the govt the last 4 years. There would have been a SHUT DOWN of the govt until spending matched INCOME. But REELECTION is the only concern of politicians no matter what side of the aisle. We have 535 Congressional seats, there aren't 50 of them occupied by people worth spit.

 

No-one knows what's going to happen next week never mind in ten years. Most of you are equivalent to sham psychics except they tend to be funnier.

 

Experience, logic, a grasp of the basics of business and money, and intelligence, all together are extremely helpful and accurate in predicting the future. Business leaders MUST do so each and every day.

Ideologues are unaware of that burden, among many other facts of life.

 

That'll be why they're all doing so swimmingly well.

Yep. The neo-cons and their bastard offspring sure are ideologically driven.

 

I just finished reading Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower, the story of events leading up to World War 1. Mostly it is the story of how those of excessive privilege who felt fully justified in their own selfishness led to conditions which made the war happen. There were those struggling to correct the imbalances of power, but those in power would not listen. Each nation tended to be copies of the individuals making it up, so Germany felt it was the super nation, Great Britain and France the same, and the US the new kid on the block convinced it should compete with those across the Atlantic who were bound and determined to extend empire. Wealth was completely out of balance with the average citizen starving while the nobility and the Carnegies, Astors, Fricks, etc. gloried in their "deserved" privilege. How familiar it all sounds. Koch brothers, and others of your ilk, how at home you would have felt. So, I fear we are in for turmoil out of which, if we are extremely lucky, we may emerge. But that will certainly require some luck. If things go on as they are with the privileged nations, groups assuming that they deserve their privileges and everyone else should work to assure their continued power, then we will probably get to have the equivalent of a French revolution.

 

People's day to day lives will be pretty much the same as they are now. Same as they were 10 years ago.

 

Evidently you're trapped in politics. Reality is far different from politics and politicians. In politics, the left buys votes from the incredibly stupid by promising them everything. The right tries to do the same but they don't lie as well. In any case, the incredibly stupid NEVER collect on the promises.

Politics is just one part of the overall problem. It always is.

 

The middle class will no longer exist, there will be the ELITE Class and the poor class or needed slaves for the Elite class........

There will be an alarming decline in population due to poverty and genetic food manipulation to accelerate the plan.............(Monsanto Protection Act) or Codex Alimentarius.....

There will be a massive decline in home ownership through the Agenda 21 plan........

Basic human rights will all but diminish through extensions of the Patriot act......

This about sums it up..............

 

Na, America will get progressively worse politically but our natural resources and innovative melting pot of individuals will keep the US govt going strong beyond the next 10 years. Although inevitably their will be more laws and less freedom we are also looking at a major energy boom that is likely to put our economy back in a very dominant position for at least a decade.

 

I can't decide between post apocalyptic wasteland and culturally diverse socialist utopia. As with most left and right extremes, the reality is likely somewhere in the middle.

 

These so called "Angry old white men" you are talking about are the ones that make "Obamacare" possible. When we lose all the" Angry old white men" who is going to pay for everything?

 

You say they made everything possible. I say they made much impossible by their declarations that they deserve their wealth, those who want decent wages just don't recognize the new global market, public transportation is a waste since they and their private jets don't use it, public education is flawed and therefore worthless. If you can't afford private schools, then you don't care about your children, and on and ON.

 

I'll call 1 800 Psychic Hotline if I need a bozo to make crap up about me, thanks.

 

This looks about right.

 

America will spend the next ten years still recovering from the last sixteen years of the most corrupt and reckless leadership ever witnessed.

 

Sounds just like the GOP.

 

Proof POSITIVE that conservatives don't know JACK S--- about economics. That was absolute garbage on a level that anyone who believes it should be laughed right off the board. Complete LUNACY!

Dan let me explain something to you about basic economics. Money gets taxed not just once but, rather, EVERY TIME ITS SPENT. And guess what the gov't does when the government does when they get it? They spend it TOO. They don't burn it. They don't keep it. They SPEND IT! That means other people get to have it. Then they get taxed when they spend it too.

So the more times that money gets passed around, the more times it gets taxed, and the more money is generated in taxes. But the money is STILL THERE. It doesn't go away. And the more times the money gets passed around the better an economy you will have. Its called TRADE.

In fact the worst thing you could have is a bunch of people hoarding the wealth and not spending it. Which is what we have in this country. Which is why the country is in such dire shape. The absolute best thing the gov't could do for this economy is raise taxes on those who are hoarding the wealth and put that money back into play. This is why tax cuts for the rich have not led to a dime's worth of prosperity. And they never will. In fact the more conservatives have gotten what they wanted the worse things have gotten for the almost everyone. But these idiots will NEVER learn no matter how bad things get. Conservative brains simply do not function.

The rich like to say that if all the money was equally distributed that it would soon be back in the same hands. The idea being that those who didn't know how to invest it would spend theirs and soon be broke. But think about it. With all that spending going on consumption would increase. Increased consumption would lead to increased production. Which would lead to increased employment. Which would give people more money to spend. So you end up with a lot more than you started with. This is called an "UPWARD economic spiral". That's as opposed to the "DOWNWARD economic spiral" that conservatives brought us.

Odd as it may seem even the rich would end up with more if they were taxed more. Its easier to make money in a thriving economy than it is to pinch pennies in a dying economy.

 

BTW Dan don't feel like you've been singled out. That was just a classic example of the kind of ignorance that calls itself conservatism. There are lots of people going around saying things like you did who don't have a clue WTF they are talking about either.

 

If on the present course I envision the US in the next ten years thusly:

A continuing rise in the youngest demographic for new HIV infections ages 13-29...a trend that started right at the same time the push to mainstream gay began..

A shrinking middle class, so much so that the power to buy anything outside basic shelter, food and medicine will strip away profits from other manufacturers...and a rapid, exponential decline of our economy thereby into a 2nd or 3rd world status.

Under attack from Russia, China and their newly purchased allies we've offended with our bizarre and ever more indulgent social policies and chest thumping.

And...

dissolving as a Union. American experiment failed...

Or, failing that, having launched nuclear weapons in a last-ditch pathetic attempt to try to "cling back" what we had...and losing it all anyway by irradiating the Northern Hemisphere and thereby, ourselves..

If we change policy now to a more generous and socialized stance economically, enact universal healthcare and bring jobs back from overseas...

And.. rein in our political extremes where offensive and bizarre, frankly unrelatable behaviors live and thrive like gay-everything and neocon war machining...

And... practice humility for what we have done in Iraq and the torture thing...

And...turn Dick Cheney over to the Hague...

We stand a chance as a country that can regain it's former strength, world standing and prestige. A country that shakes hands instead of breaks skulls. A country that stands for moral strength and restraint instead of "anything goes" in steamroller fashion..

 

Howard Storm was shown during his NDE that America had the opportunity to make better choices and be saved from economic collapse....but we will have to make some changes!!!!

It is kind of encouraging that he is talking in terms of the next century or two though!!!!

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/storm03.html

 

America will have a new national Holiday called Confiscation Day. It will be celebrated on President For Life Comrade Barack Obama's birthday in August. Comrade Barack usually leads off the festivities on that day by climbing to the top of the Lincoln Memorial or the Washington Monument and flinging the contents of multiple bags of gold coin down onto the howling mob of his supporters below. The first time this was attempted, Comrade Barack, more appropriately did so from a perch above the Martin Luther King statue, but the protection afforded by that lower height was inadequate, one of Comrade Barack's supporters, in his exuberance, managed to grab hold of a presidential pantleg causing Comrade Barack to lose his balance and fall injuring the presidential genitalia in the process. Reggie love was inconsolable for months.
The Holiday originally came about as the result of a magnificent tactical, political and economic manuever by Comrade Barack and his closest advisers, inspired by the EU Bankers attempted confiscation of the Russian Oligarchs funds on deposit in the Cypriot banks back in March , 2013. More shipping containers filled with money plied the surface of the Meditterranean than containers filled with trade goods in the month before the Cypriot Confiscation Day.
The proceeds of the US Confiscation Day event were used to pay down the debt incurred to the Chinese Communist during the first five years of Comrade Baracks presidency. After that initial event took place, Comrade Barack immediately realized the brilliance inherent in that fiscal move and declared it to be the new national norm from that day forward, all Americans immediately became equally poor, equally destitute, and could now start earning their way from an equal and even playing field, unlike before, except that Government could now intervene into who won and who lost in the economic foot race, instead of the results being determined purely by chance, intuition, intelligence, hard work and perseverance as before. And when one group perceived itself as being economically disadavantaged the Government, in its infinite wisdom, could intervene by simply declaring another confiscation day event and all would have to start over afresh, anew, again. Except for those groups the Government, for whatever reason, in its infinte wisdom, chose to smile on, even temporarily.
Many happy Confiscation Days to you all.

 

They already have confiscation day. They run it a few times a year, and call it quantitative easing aka monetizing the debt.

 

We'll all be pledging allegiance to the Yen.

 

Sonny, I'm retired from running a multimillion, multi national business. I'm quite familiar with the complete bull(*)(*)(*)(*) theory called the Velocity of Money. Its pure crap from start to finish.