When a country goes bankrupt and cannot pay dividends to its bond-holders (usually foreignors), it says: "Sorry, we can't pay. We're shutting up shop." This is what Argentina did -- one of the latest in a long string of examples during the last century -- but its government survived, albeit in ramshackle condition. However, when an "advanced" country, which has made a statutory contract with its citizens to look after them in their old age, or ill-health, says, "Sorry, we can't pay", then government itself loses its validity altogether.[snip]
[snip]<<<< THE FISCAL OVERSTRETCH THAT WILL UNDERMINE AN EMPIRE
Over the past 20 years the Medicare budget has risen five times faster than the defence budget and that trend seems likely to continue
Niall Ferguson and Laurence Kotlikoff
So what is going to happen? According to Profs Gokhale and Smetters, the only ways to eliminate the fiscal imbalance are to increase taxes or slash spending. But neither of these things will happen soon. On the one hand, the Bush administration is ideologically committed to tax cuts. On the other hand, Medicare and Social Security constitute the "third rail" of American politics: any candidate for office who touches them is guaranteed to receive a violent, possibly fatal, shock.[snip]
Isn't the most likely scenario that the unendable war against global terror will be converted by the Bush administration (or its Stepford successor) into an internal state of emerrgency, wherre the big wallets will get their profits and everybody else will get [whatever he gives them]. This is already in its nascent stages, isn't it?
Hermann Broch was prescient here. One of the characters in his _The Sleepwalkers_ explained that the war could never end (he as talking about WWI, but that's not relevant, really), because then governments would lose their purpose (their institutional orientation in the social world).
--
On the plus side, I've really liked the news about the new NYT chief editor, Keller. He says that you cannot run a newsrroom as "an endless combat mission." The troops need to be able to go home and recuperate occasionally. His predecessor was into rraising the "competetive metabolic rate". (Of course there is a way to run a newsroom humanely in an endless war: You hire 3X staff, and then you can run a 24/7 operation and the staff still have human lives.)
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
