Citizen soldier army? You’ve got to be kidding.
Why do you think the draft was abandoned and replaced with a mercenary force recruited from the poor and unemployed? Wasn’t it because too many white pipsqueak officers were fragged in Vietnam? The George Bush bunion exemption was always available for the sons of Those Who Really Mattered, but it is always safer to recruit bright potential drug lords from among the Black and Brown and train them to be great soldiers than to rely upon the flaccid sons of the white middle class for your officer class.
I agree. Technology hasnt improved the declining eroei, it has simply allowed us to chase resource deposits with a lower eroei. Also consider that the reason the US continues to be able to consume so much is because of the reserve petrodollar status. It is importing and consuming the rest of the world’s resources.
“Most of us are not rioters or socialists.” Every country in the civilized world is socialist, Tonya. Where 'ya been? I’m a Canadian democratic socialist and damn proud of it!
Our worst fear is ending up like the US where it is super easy to convince people that socialism is BAaaad. And people protesting police murder of black people are ‘rioting.’
In the minds of many Americans police murdering black people is okay, but police asking white people to mask up is putting the dear things on a slippery slope to Auschwitz. Completely idiotic.
I don’t need to get to know the members of my local reserve unit because I have already known them for years. I myself am center, lean conservative. Many of the people I have served with are the same way. There are military members of all political leanings but MOST (70+%) of the ones I know from the units I have been in lean right or slightly right. Could other units be different? Sure, other units could be different. Personally I do NOT mix my politics with my service. I have served presidents of both parties. Its about the country. As far as what communities. Every community in the country probably has at least a few serving reservists or guardsmen in it. You might not realize it but the guy or gal delivering your mail, repairing your car, flying your airliner, delivering your baby or, teaching your children might just be a reservist or guardsmen. I believe in the constitution. You want to find out what military reservists or guardsmen really think first hand? Join up. We are always looking for good people. Someone has to take my place when I retire shortly.
my views are my own and in no way represent the official views and positions of the US military.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01402390.2019.1692660?src=recsys&journalCode=fjss20&journalCode=fjss20
https://brandongaille.com/27-intriguing-us-military-racial-demographics/
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military
My share of the deficit is about 300k for my family of 3. I am dumbfounded where the money has gone. Being that local governments should take care of the basics of law enforcement and elementary schooling, There is not much for fed to do. Yeah they do stuff like regulate insurance, agriculture, medicine etc… But the a lot of it is MILITARY…and the crazy homeland security fear agenda. and even that is little in comparison. I am sure a lot goes to incarcerating people for petty crimes that cost a lot more to society than the crime. ( they spend time locking up small timers not big-timers because its easier, I can cite examples here … ) And then you have the welfare roll , its pretty big , but at the end of the day, I dont see 300k for my household over the last 20 years. ( most( almost all ) of this debt is in the last 20 years ) This doesn’t include another 300k paid in taxes over the last 20 years. And yet I do not see many new interstates , universities, airports and other critical infrastructure. Highways are over-crowded and as are universities( much harder to get accepted - all florida public universities are now greater than 4.0 on average acceptance ) Not a lot of new hospitals. Bed count per capita has fallen continuously for 60 years to less than 1/2. Our own medical schools do not produce near enough Drs…as we need. Most are foreign educated now.
This is far from the american dream. People get out school and pay student loans for decades. And no matter how much money you make its never enough. Retirement seems impossible. Paying your children’s education seems impossible. Responsible middle america cannot afford more than one child… While those in low-income have many to get handouts. ( they incentivize socialism and laziness ) You must choose whether you are tax payer or hand-out beneficiary. The former is getting too hard. So, hard normal people have to find scams to cheat and steal. Most people that have money did it by taking advantaging of someone either illegally, or at minimum, unethically and immorally.
You must tax the money where it is and balance the budget. However , I do not see this happening any longer. That opportunity was missed about 12 years ago. I think we should all pay are taxes with play money like the gov’t has loaned and given us.
I do not see a solution to the problem. failure is evident. And considering how long ( less than 20 years ) to get really out-of-control, I do not think we will be years from disaster , rather we will be only months. This pandemic is enough to push it over the edge. Its not a bad thing - it has to happen. There will be no federal reserve in 5 years. there will be now US economy in 5 years. There will likely be no US in 5 years. Someone better start writing policy and come up with a contingent government. I do appreciate that Dr Martenson has focused on your own responsibility and resilience and prosperity. But at the end of the day, we will eventually need to work together to survive unless the world population is cut by 75%…
Agitprop, thank you for that amusing post. It came close to provoking a full on belly laugh. But I think it may be more fittingly placed in the Definitive Humor Thread.
I’ll contribute my own bit of humor as well. Enjoy!
How many Socialists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Just one, but when it inevitably fails, they will be sure to inform us it wasn’t a real light bulb.
Yes lumber is up about 200% in last year mostly since the pandemic. It wont come down. By the time supply gets better, inflation and other factors will cause higher prices. It makes it very hard to sell or buy a home at the moment. But it would be easier if you were coming into the market the first time rather than flipping. Housing market is in short supply. Would seem to be hard to buy, but even harder to sell and buy, if you get out too cheap to move into something else , you could be in a lot of trouble.
That post was f***ing beautiful. Mahalo.
Viva – Sager
Barbara, we will be too busy overseas somewhere, say Venezuela fighting to “help” the citizenry but our motivation will be control and the free flow of the largest oil reserve in the world right outside our back door. The military gets called upon to unite the country behind a favorable cause. So, I am NOT on the side of filling our streets with our son’s and daughters to fight with us for the removal of 4 out of every 5 chickens I may have, or half of my lambs and turkeys. We have been down this road many times before and we only need to prepare ourselves from ourselves. There is evil everywhere and it will be unrestrained, even within our own family’s. Folks that never seen this coming will want what you have because they can do the math. They see you have abundance so will offer you " 5 cheeseburgers tomorrow for one cheeseburger today". Good Luck, and remember," the only fear you have to worry about is fear itself". I am very generous but, I do feel it is fair to expect that work I must do that I need help on can be made whole by those I help and in return help me. Especially in a family as large as mine. I cannot feed 127 people and these are my Sisters, Brothers, their kids and their kids. I would love too but I can’t. Besides, most all have thought I am paranoid and silly. I am but I’m right to do what I’m doing and besides, I love every second my work around our small but productive piece of land (12 acres, mostly Oak trees and Maple, Pine trees, etc… Now, I have been getting more and more attention of late as they (family members) are waking up. I started a new area to grow another garden not because I will need it but because it gives me more capital for what I believe will be as good as Gold in the not to distant future. I wish you the very best luck and contentment that you can gather. Peace
I know a lot of people are worried about the military mission in this dooms day scenario. What part they will take , or literally what will they take from you. I assure, when things melt down enough , and they will - there will be no US military. As ex military. I know where the back bone of our military manning comes from. Its your average inner city minority and your rural gun loving homesteader. None, which will ever take arms against their own by any type of force. They will lay down and roll-over surprisingly quickly. The US military will be useless against its own. Completely and utterly useless.
Babylon, Sumeria, Rome, Spain, Portugal, Spain, France, Netherlands, South Africa, Germany, Britain, the US, now China.
Has anyone to yet to recognize, let alone act against, the inflationary, debt-accruing algorithm that is inherent in fractional reserve banking, the destructor of currency and nation-state? https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10215479626098467&set=a.2581078740917
@agitating prop "Most of us are not rioters or socialists." Every country in the civilized world is socialist, Tonya. Where 'ya been? I'm a Canadian democratic socialist and damn proud of it! Our worst fear is ending up like the US where it is super easy to convince people that socialism is BAaaad. And people protesting police murder of black people are 'rioting.' In the minds of many Americans police murdering black people is okay, but police asking white people to mask up is putting the dear things on a slippery slope to Auschwitz. Completely idiotic.Name one place where socialism has been "successful" (good for the people) for more than 1 generation. Do it, say "that wasn't real socialism", or upgrade your perspective. If you're intellectually honest you'll have to do one of the 3. You're buying into false narratives designed to weaponize you against your fellow citizens. Your cities are burning and you're supporting those behind it. That's what's "completely idiotic".
There are several examples of ‘socialism’ working on the planet for more than one generation – and successfully. Western European nations, Canada, etc…all doing better than the U.S. They are not perfect just better than end stage capitalism where all the wealth accrues to the top.
In collapsed Communist countries, the people were always told that their ongoing failure was due to their struggle to wrestle the last vestiges of capitalism from their system.
Now in the U.S. there is a similar doctrine where failures of that system are being blamed on the undermining influence of socialists and the left wing and yadayadayada.
And looking at California, I totally get why people would believe that. But that isn’t the source of the problem. The source lies at the federal level that taxes far too little and supports the military far too much. A crazy quilt patchwork of social programs, with huge bureaucratic costs are offloaded onto state, county – as a result.
This isn’t so much about socialism as it is about trying to do an end run around a federal government that funds war while ignoring things like universal health care, building and maintaining mental hospitals for those who desperately need this kind of care, etc…
Democratic socialism that enshrines the rights of the individual, with an emphasis on personal responsibility, is the answer to the problem, not the problem itself.
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2018/07/08/sorry-bernie-bros-but-nordic-countries-are-not-socialist/#685f6c9d74ad
Forbes magazine is using a precise definition of socialism in a precise context, which is not how the talking heads use it. I suspect for most left-leaning Americans, they’re just looking for the looser and now more common usage, sometimes referred to as democratic socialism, and which Forbes, with its capitalist bias, prefers to call “compassionate capitalism”. In Canada, it means that we have collectively (democratically) set up and maintained a government-run, tax-based, single payer health care, elder care and education system which has proved to work (in my opinion) much better than the “owe-your-life-to-the-insurance-companies” system in the US for health care. It’s far from perfect, but it works well. Niggling over terms doesn’t get us any forrader.
I have very good insurance through my employer so you can keep your socialized medicine. I could get FREE healthcare through the VA but I would rather pay my copays. Socialized “Masshealth” death paneled my mother. Then they tried to confiscate he rest of her estate to pay off the cost of healthcare she did use even though she was paying “premiums” every month into that Crummy system. You can keep it. For the poor in the USA given them the VA system where people can pay in a sliding scale for income. Give the vets Tricare Insurance. Leave people with good insurance alone!
You’re making my point for me - thank you! I am talking about the Canadian and “nordic” systems, not the bastardized US one. What happened to your mom is NOT what would have happened here in Canada.
Vshelford and Mysterymet both make very good points
Just because something is government dispensed “single payer” does not mean socialist or non-capitalist. I have been to the hospital and to clinics many times in my country. I used to work (4 years) for a major pharmaceutical company here and have asked related questions at the clinics and hospitals I have visited over the years regarding price and competition.
We have single payer wherein the Japanese government takes money (social security payments) from each person based on their previous year’s income to make sure that everyone pays into it. Each hospital visit gets the same reimbursement, and for every service the doctors/nurses can tell you exactly the true cost of materials and treatments. This is because they have a very active capitalist system wherein many device/materials providers are competing on price and quality. With single payer, hospitals/clinics benefit by minimizing costs and handling many patients, who are free to visit alternative hospitals. If you dont have insurance (and lack a good reason, they will take the real cost and triple it and bill you triple). If you have a good reason for lacking the national insurance, they just make you pay the actual cost (which is similar to the out-of-pocket costs that Americans pay in America for the same thing.) Because of the incentives, low cost materials/treatments combined with highly skilled workers may take the place of very expensive machines/drugs of dubious but extremely profitable value in the US. This includes simple things like blood drawing and particularly interventions, which are only used as a last resort.
Here is a real life example: an American nurse was bragging to me that she uses a high tech 100$ needle to draw blood that avoids pain. Just two weeks earlier in Osaka I complemented a nurse who drew blood for me without me really noticing it, due to her skill. The entire health checkup in Osaka, which included blood work, doctor consulation, EKG etc. was $100 without insurance and I paid cash… as much cost as the high tech needle used by the skill-free American nurse. I am not exaggerating.
Even the dentists can quickly tell you the real cost of a service. In many cases the true cost is similar to the out of pocket costs experienced in the US sick care system.
Meanwhile, private insurance and private providers thrive for those who want more service. In other words, I can without national insurance get a cavity filled, tooth capped etc for the same price as my out of pocket costs used to be in America.
My point is that a single payer national health plan can be very market driven with much lower costs and better outcomes compared to the existing monopolist/hedgefund driven system affilicting the US.
We dont seem to have death panels here and I don’t know much about that. Maybe because the doctors are in charge , and maybe because a very active private health insurance exists in competition…
Come to think of it, maybe we do have death panels. A death panel consists of a doctor-patients relatives meeting wherein the doctor explains “this is what we can do under the national health insurance” and proposes what he can do for out of pocket costs that could be billed to the patient. This is why private insurance still exists for those who want to go beyond the normal treatments or who have particularly difficult cancer etc.
I had this kind of death panel consultation a few years ago following a head injury. I suggested an MRI and the doctor said that national single payer plan would not pay for that but he could do it for $300 payment.
Masshealth is state run “insurance” in massachusetts. It is closer to socialized medicine but state government run not national government run. The state death paneled my mom. I will never support socialized medicine.