On 04/10/2006 06:13 PM, Michael Hipp wrote:
Net Llama! wrote:
On Mon, 10 Apr 2006, Michael Hipp wrote:
I'll stick my neck out. Here's how to solve the whole mess:
- Withdraw our military from any place that has more sand than trees and
any place where they're not wanted. Maybe just withdraw them from
everywhere.
- Eliminate all imports of foreign oil.
- Eliminate all foreign aid or UN subsidies.
- End the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty (did I
miss any?)
- Use the $trillions savings from the above to fund a crash program of
energy independence (whatever it takes: solar, fuel cell, hydrogen,
biomass, ANWR, etc.).
Once the crazies in the middle east no longer had foreign oil money to
fund their misadventures, they would quickly dwindle back to obscurity
where they belong. If it weren't for oil and oil money we'd have little
(real) reason to care and they'd have no resources with which to cause
mischief.
Add to the above:
- Close our borders to all but the most trusted visitors.
- Expel anyone within our borders who has no legal right to be here.
- Add a 15% import tax to any goods or services crossing into the country.
I was mostly with you up until that last one. You do realize that the US
has a trade deficit right? The last thing we want is to piss off all the
nations to whom we owe money, by raising tarrifs on their stuff.
It's *because* we are in a trade deficit that we should raise import taxes.
By making them angry, at the very worst it would only advance the schedule.
What exactly do you think will happen when it eventually becomes obvious to
them all that the US cannot repay those debts? Or can we just go on borrowing
forever as our obese Federal government finds more ways every year to spend
more than we make.
We either don't repay the loans or we open up the printing presses and pay
them with severely devalued dollars. Either option amounts to a default on the
loans. It's only a question of when.
If anyone reading this takes exception to any of these suggestions,
realize Bush is about as likely to do any of the above as the Democrats
are. But if they did, it could it hardly be worse than what we have now?
I dunno, a severe depression, as a result of a tradewar with the EU, China
& Asia (on the whole) would make things pretty damn bad around here. We'd
look back on those "good ole days of the 'wars'" as an improvement.
Only in the short term. In the long term we would be much better off. We might
even learn to not repeat many of the excesses of the last 60 years.
Hah! You say that as if this is the first time we've made these
mistakes. We need to elect more intelligent people to office if we want
to end the stupidity. Re-electing idiots to a 2nd term only proves to
me that the majority of those voting have zero clues and/or aren't
paying any attention.
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L. Friedman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
LlamaLand http://netllama.linux-sxs.org
18:25:01 up 41 days, 14:57, 1 user, load average: 0.49, 0.28, 0.23
_______________________________________________
[email protected]
Unsub/Pause/Etc : http://mail.linux-sxs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/general
