What to look forward to

What Do We Have To Look Forward To?

Thanks Pat; What a great response! I hope people read it. As far as the house goes, I am deep in mud and material problems.

Mike; Thanks for the comment, you always seem to be way ahead of the curve.

Since someone asked, I’ll tell the story on the house building progress. A few weeks ago I side tracked myself to build a little storage shed because I was low on materials, specifically blocks – I still need 600 blocks to finish the foundation. I’ve already told the story about how 3 of the main distributers for building materials had shut down because Obama was re-elected. I can’t get blocks unless I order the whole load and even then it would probably be spring before they were delivered, they’re not making blocks. I could buy partial loads from surrounding areas but would pay double for the blocks and double for the delivery because it’s a partial load, I’m not doing that – I’ll wait. When the ground firms up again (freezes) I’ll parge the parts of the foundation that are in and I will pull a couple hundred blocks from a shut down distributor in Georgia, to stay busy but with an empty rental property in Missouri, I’m not in any hurry to over spend the budget on the foundation on the house here.

Late this past fall we planted some winter wheat in areas where we think we will put garden space this spring. My idea was to throw in some radishes to help loosen up the soil.

Barb seems to like them right about now - not too hot and not too sweet.

In the last 4 or 5 posts I tried to lay some basic fundamental concepts on political history and economics. Enough that I hope everyone sees the flaws in the political concept of paying down our national debt with future less valued currency. There is zero chance that congress will do anything meaningful to stop the spending spree. It is clear that the president has no understanding of our history and that congress has no grounding in economics. Even the most modest of households have to balance their budgets, everyone understands you can't spend more than you make for very long before there are serious consequences, there hasn't even been a federal budget for the last 4 years.

Personal perspective on what to expect for the next 4 years.

The political operatives in power now have 4 assumptions at the base of their policy making decision process.

1)    Spending is not the problem.

2)    We can always borrow money.

3)    We can always raise taxes.

4)    By lowering the value of the dollar we can pay back older debt with lower value money. Obama believes this policy actually saves money and it shows up in his budget proposal as debt reduction.

You can pretty much be assured of increases in back door taxes – Obamacare, tax increases when you transfer your 401K into a Roth tax free plan, increase in capital gains tax and reduced tax deductions are good examples of back door taxes that have already been passed. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

Increase in the retirement age. Not only in Social Security but because the Federal Reserve is holding interest rates low, you’ll get a much lower return on investment forcing you to put off retirement. The unemployment situation causes competition for work and lowers wages, a further deterrent to retirement. You won’t be getting any pay raises or a better work, upward mobility is a thing of the past.

Cuts in Social Security and Medicare are pretty much guaranteed. We pay for these programs and they “borrow” from them, you can be sure they will steal whatever they want from them (you). As they do you will see a sharp decrease in services, as a matter of fact they are going to use money from Medicare not only to fund Obamacare but to raise the level of Medicaid.

Of course there will still be hyper inflation, as it continues you will lose more and more of your purchasing power – continue to take a hit in your standard of life. They can’t continue to pretend that it doesn’t exist and if GDP stays stagnant our currency will fail, not to zero but 50% is pretty likely. Think bologna and spam for protein. Gold and silver won’t save you, look at history and you will see how they handle that.

The stock market is over inflated with imagined value in high tech markets that can’t possibly remain stable for an extended period of time. We can’t keep subsidizing agriculture to produce ethanol without it impacting our food production and exports. We can’t keep pouring money into alternative energy that will never be a viable alternative.

As this administration becomes more arrogant and enabled by stupidity they will continue to mess with the Constitution and Bill of Rights ( they will be going after the 10^th amendment next after they circumvent the 2^nd amendment ), congress will continue to, go along to get along and all the taxpaying, law abiding people will pay the price. You will see the non productive members of our society, the people who don’t pay taxes, the folks on welfare and food stamps and illegal’s, raised to the level of hardworking, taxpaying middle class folks through increased entitlement programs in an all out class warfare battle to ensure the leveling of American society.

The advent of Obama’s second term terrifies me, because his socialist agenda is so obvious yet no one is standing up to him. He already has more power than any president in history with the National Defense Authorization Act – Title X, subtitle D, subsection 1021 &1022. My question is – how much more of your rights are you going to give him?