31 Replies to “The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire”

  1. The graph doesn’t go back in time nearly enough. That said the idea that more govt spending = more jobs is demonstrably false.

  2. This is one great graph. It was always ridiculous to think that pumping up an already massive government would help the rest of the economy. Fattened regulatory budgets in the EPA, OSHA, MSHA, and even Homeland Security only make it harder to do private sector business in this country, and the huge debt increases scare the daylights out of anyone with any sense.

  3. The reverred myth that NEW DEAL/Keynesian economics stimulates economies has been shown to be as effective as Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement controls military aggression.

  5. I’d -love- to see that graph for China. But we can’t, because the Chicoms don’t release that kind of info to anybody, including their own internal planners.
    Which tells me it don’t look good.

  6. Wow. Proof positive the saviour has done a magnificent job of ensuring the USA will be bankrupt in short order. Dark days ahead. If I were American I would be looking to emigrate to the Great White North for personal survival and the sooner the better.

  7. That same graph in varying degrees could most likely be applied to many European countries.

  8. The success of Obamanomics at creating an entrenched constituency of voters who prefer to be wards of the state is indisputable, the politics of fear will keep these voters firmly on the Democratic plantation. Liberal media has already declared Obama the winner of the 2012 election, they say he’s unbeatable, and many Republicans seem to agree since they’re too afraid to lead an opposition to Him.
    Liberals are pleased with themselves at how they are managing to crumble the ‘American Empire’ from within, they especially appreciate neutering traditional foreign policy and look forward to people around the world being subject to the tender mercies of Chinese foreign policy.

  10. The private sector GDP of 2010 is what it was in 1998. All net growth in GDP has come from the public sector – from growing debt. The enviro-regulatory leviathan has ground net industrial growth to a standstill. The oil industry alone could generate 3,000,000 new jobs, if allowed. Nominal growth during the period of this graph came from the tech and housing bubbles – phony diversionary growth. Meanwhile the US has wasted trillions on the so-called wars on drugs, terrorism, and poverty, (all with perverse consequences) while allowing millions of Mexicans to invade and colonize much of the country, draining the welfare state further. The anti-industrial revolution is almost complete. Ayn Rand was an optimist. Obama didn’t cause much of this decline but he is certainly in favour of everything that did.

  12. Obozonomics . . . dig Barry, dig faster. Your master plan to destroy the American economy isn’t happening fast enough for the AFL-CIO.

  13. The deficit in the US would be basically completely eliminated if tax rates were set back to where they were in the 90s. Many US citizens seem to think they shouldn’t have to pay taxes, but they also expect social security and health care. Unfortunately you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

  14. Obama has set up America like bowling pins for the recking ball of economic collapse.
    A decadent man for a society that has lost its own principles.
    Like us beause we never set a watch on the people we allowe to rule us.
    Now we all pay the piper.

  15. I have a Homer Simpsonish line I use at work – “since government jobs are so great, why don’t we ALL work for the government!?” While I say it in an extremely sarcastic way, the graph and the state of not only the US economy but many economies simply shows that far too many people don’t embrace what a ridiculous statement it is.
    If Wisconsin was any indicator of what is to come based on a measly increase in pension contributions and a couple of bucks for health care benefits, wait until Altas finally shrugs.

  17. Amos, you mean repeal the Bush tax cuts and go back to the Clinton years, largest tax hike in history?
    Sure, that’d work… not.
    Most US citizens already don’t pay taxes. That’s because they don’t really have any money to take. Rich citizens are leaving high tax locations like NY. The really, really rich are leaving the country entirely, because they want to -stay- rich. Next up will be raiding private retirement plans, as they are in Ireland. I forsee riots.
    Have you ever thought that if the US just spent less, things would work out? You know, as a wild sort of day dream?
    IMHO, a truly -large- tax cut would have that effect. Not a Laffer Curve, Regan tax cut which increases tax revenue, not a little paper cut like Bush’s, I’m talking -eliminates the EPA, Dept. of Education and all entitlements kinda cut. You know, zero out the Income Tax completely.
    I think something like that could probably fix that spending/employment curve pdq. Its cause by stupid people with too much power spending money that isn’t theirs.

  18. Gresham’s Law states that bad money (like freely printed govt fiat money) drives out good money because people start hoarding their hard earned good money.
    And smart people don’t or won’t invest in a hokey BS economic business environment like the one the US is disintegrating into presently, courtesy of Goldman Sachs and their bankster friends.
    The United States of Austerity is coming.

  19. Phantom:
    You’re right, a large chunk of the US doesn’t have any money left to give. The best option is to repeal the Bush Tax Cuts for those making over $250,000. Marginal tax rates for the super-rich haven’t been this low in the US since before the Great Depression. Unless they want to learn Japanese or Korean, there aren’t really any developed countries with a lower tax rate for them than the US. This would not even come close to the largest tax hike in history. In fact, it wouldn’t even be as large as Clinton’s increase in 1993. The economy sure didn’t collapse after that one.
    If we’re talking about cutting spending, end combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The country clearly can’t afford it.
    My main point is though that the majority of people in the US want to keep their Medicare and Social Security, they just don’t want to pay for it. People are living beyond their means and they just aren’t willing to cut back.

  20. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
    You can make a graph to show that anything you believe in is true.
    They picked a portion of history when the US is involved in military operations in two theatres, and include the section where the unmonitored ponzi scheme of an investment system fails.

  22. No, Amos, income tax increases will not solve the problem. All it will do is encourage yet more people in the top tax brackets to leave the country, much as happened in Ireland.
    The only tax solution that can raise revenue is a VAT tax.
    The real problem is spending, not taxation. The US has to address the unfunded liabilities in medicare and pensions. And it has to trim back discretionary spending. It goes across the board, but the US simply cannot afford to fight three wars simultaneously and the military infrastructure to support it. The US cannot afford to maintain 12 carrier groups, and a large army and a large air force.
    It also cannot afford the environmental and development policies that have brought industrial development to a halt for the past 30 years.
    The solution has to be a mix of all of these and more, not just taxation.

  23. This comment over there made me laugh:
    Wintery Knight
    I don’t understand. If the media calls it a “stimulus” then it must STIMULATE the economy, right? Otherwise they would have to called it porkulus, waste-ulus or spendulus. And they didn’t do that!
    4 · Like · Reply · Subscribe · 17 hours ago

  24. The US spends more on military than the total military spending of the next ten most armed countries in the world. This is one area where spending can be cut without compromising actual defense effectivness.

  25. That graph would apply to BC as well.
    It would be amusing if it wasn’t so sad, to hear the once ‘rightwing’ Liberals say that the HST will create jobs and help the economy flourish….
    Tax increases do not stimulate economies, but governments need to realize they have a severe spending problem!

  26. Don’t bother coming to, the great white north.
    Wikileaks has said, the N.A.U. is on the way. The Americans were just waiting for Harper’s majority, to implement the N.A.U. start-up, with baby steps at first. Canada, the U.S. and Mexico are going to be, just one big happy country. With the common currency of the Amero dollar. The European Union, is a total disaster. Sounds like they will have to, go back to closed borders.
    You would have to be as brain dead as Martyn Brown, not to see the HST has destroyed the province and the peoples lives. The HST was designed for big business, and big businesses only. That is who, Campbell and Harper work for. BC is bleeding jobs. The HST has forced the cost of living, right out into orbit. The BC people knew that, and so did the, “Harper government” and the BC Liberal government. Harper and Campbell would steal your eyes, and then come back for the sockets.

  27. My what a lot of whining from BC about the HST. Pretending that the HST is what’s dragging down the economy. Fact is, BC’s economy started tanking decades ago. The mining industry is dead, kiboshed by far too many prohibitions and projects trashed by government. From a net exporter BC has become a large importer of electricity, even though it’s got lots of low cost, undeveloped hydro potential. Site C, anyone?
    And just why is it that BC exports raw logs and not finished wood products? Oh yeah, far too many government disincentives to ever set up shop there. And why is it that BC has no gas industry worthy of the name? Oh yeah, all those offshore drilling prohibitions.
    HST didn’t force the cost of living right into orbit. A flood of new residents driving up the cost of real estate is a far larger factor in increasing household costs.
    BC has all of the resources to have as vigorous an economy as any province in Canada. But and endless string of prohibitions have foreclosed all too many of them.

  28. “The deficit in the US would be basically completely eliminated if tax rates were set back to where they were in the 90s”
    That’s true; tax cuts increase government revenue, as has been proven by Bush II, Reagan, and even JFK.
    However, increasing government revenue isn’t what obama’s about; his plan is wealth redistribution, plain and simple. Ask Joe the plumber.
    mhb23re

  29. @ cgh, exactly. BC is the Greece of Canada and Ontario is fast becoming the Spain of Canada. You would think that the voter would eventually wise up and quite electing these bums.

  30. Not precisely, Ken. Ontario isn’t quite the Greece of Canada. What happened in the last mayoralty election in Toronto? What happened in the last federal election? What looks likely to happen this coming October?
    The next several years are going to require just as much discipline from the federal Tories as the previous five, if this seeming shift is to be long term and not a one-time fluke. It will be required to make sure that Ontario becomes comfortable with its blue alignment with the West.
    Greeks are certainly in full denial mode, but Ontario seems to be taking a different route.
    I agree with you that BC at the moment seems a lost cause, as is Quebec. But attitudes in Canada’s heartland are shifting. Whether it’s long term or temporary remains to be seen.

  31. “And just why is it that BC exports raw logs and not finished wood products?” – cgh
    BC does both. In 2010, BC exported $28 billion in commodities, $9.1 billion of which was forest products (4% of which as logs worth $373 million). BC also exported $2 billion in gas and $5 billion in Coal.
    Why does BC export logs? Because the Asian market pays at least 25% more than the domestic market. Every province in Canada is free to export logs as is almost every other forested jurisdiction in the world. Only BC has federal and provincial regulations impeding those sales. Export Proponents have to offer the logs domestically and can buy-off takers with alternative logs.
    No one in their right mind would build a new second growth sawmill on the Coast as they would have to compete with the interior in dimension lumber and likely see a return of the labour problems that they are all too familiar with.
    If log exports are so bad when people have bought the timber by either paying stumpage on it or they grew it on their own land, who has the right to direct them to manufacture further. Should wheat be converted to bread and pasta before being allowed to be sold. Should coal be burned locally and forced into electricity before it is sold? Big Labour’s talking points have sure permeated the so-called conservative mindsets?

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