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| Riding For A Fall | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Aug 23 2004, 07:06 PM (51 Views) | |
| cmoehle | Aug 23 2004, 07:06 PM Post #1 |
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Chris - San Antonio TX
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Just started reading Peter G. Peterson's Running on Empty. And would like some opinions about his thesis. He seems to have conservative principles and a constrained vision. If his thesis is true it seems to me like a looming crisis being ignored for the sound and fury of the supposed culture war. Riding for a Fall: "Three long-term trends are threatening to bankrupt America: the urgeoning costs of waging the war on terrorism, the U.S. economy's increasing reliance on foreign capital, and rapid aging throughout the developed world. Washington must understand that committing the United States to a broader global role while ignoring the financial costs of doing so is deeply irresponsible.... "The United States would greatly benefit from a serious and realistic discussion of the total cost of its long-term security agenda. It is a discussion that would lend welcome urgency to efforts to control the federal deficit, and, in particular, to reform ballooning entitlement programs. It is a discussion that would reconnect the domestic and foreign policy communities by requiring every policymaker to make a tradeoff: "How much am I willing to pay in tax hikes or benefit cuts in order to fund my security priorities?" Most of all, it is a discussion that ordinary Americans would welcome. People know in their personal and family lives that they cannot call for new sacrifices or promise new benefits without carefully considering the consequences. Why, they wonder, should things be any different in national life?" |
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Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order. --Barry Goldwater | |
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| DanHouck | Aug 23 2004, 07:20 PM Post #2 |
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Land of Enchantment NM
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I'm more concerned about running out of oil than getting too old. Our immigration policy, or more accurately, our lack of one, does result in a lot of younger people continuing to enter the country. The U.S. is practically the only western nation (plus Japan) that will have serious population growth over the next 50 years. We're going to continue to be a lot younger and more energetic than the Europeans and Japanese. The current oil situation on the other hand is a wake up call. Relatively minor supply disruptions, or even the threat of them, are resulting in spiraling prices. OPEC is no longer able to regulate the supply/price situation. This is a classic indicator that the system no longer has the necessary surplus to create the slack that would absorb said minor disruptions/threats without this kind of price location. Now factor in the liklihood of rapidly falling production from the aged Saudi fields and we have a recipe for economic collapse of the entire world economy. That's what I would describe as riding for a fall. Dan |
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2:26 AM Jul 11